Page 155 of Bone Year

“So what do I do?”

“You watch. You stay sharp. Don’t let yourself be told that the world is fine when your body is telling you something else. You have a good head on your shoulders, good senses about you. I can tell these things. And you watch your headmaster, girl.”

I blink.

“He is going to give a speech in the next day or two. He is going to mourn the dead and call this contained. I have known him for two hundred years and have watched him close doors a lot of people did not realize were doors at the time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he is good at keeping people from looking at things he does not want them looking at. I am not telling you he is your enemy. I am telling you he is not your friend. There is a difference.”

I sit very still. “Why are you telling me this?”

He looks at me for a long beat, his sharp eyes softening.

“Because you are one of the people he keeps watching when he thinks no one notices. And because I have been watching him long enough to know it is not the kind of watching that is meant to keep you safe.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“A power that does not yet know itself is the easiest to remove. A power that learns its own name in time becomes a war.”

— Aldric Family Record, Sealed Archive

Eight weeks have passed since the midterm massacre.

Yes, that’s what people are calling it.

The wards have emptied of the worst of the casualties. Ellavee is fully recovered, and her scar has faded to a tiny pale line. Killian came back to class three weeks ago with a limp, but he’s fine. And Jace…

He has been back for five weeks and hasn’t spoken to me once. He wears an eye patch now, and dare I say it makes him look even more hateful.

I have hope that once bone year is over, we’ll return home to Ironfen together for the summer break and mend things away from this place.

The headmaster did give his speech the morning after the Shoreland fissure massacre, as Cael predicted he would, and he’s been keeping the fear of a looming cycle present. But I can’t have constant anxiety over something that’s out of my control and still don’t fully understand. All I can do is become the best healer I can be, and with my hands cured, I’m on my way there.

Ellavee and Lux have helped me check a couple more places for the mirror, but nothing has turned up, which only further confirms it must be in the headmaster’s private quarters. Draven has been distant, returned to who he was before our trip to Holloweir, but I haven’t forgotten the glimpses he gave me of what’s underneath that rough exterior.

I’ve kept my end of the deal and not spoken a word about his true lineage, and he said in passing he would still help me the night of the ball after finals.

Finals and the ball are only a handful of weeks away.

Soon, I will have the answers I seek.

“Zuri and Cara found a dressmaker in Whitehaven who can do beadwork in only three days. Zuri said she’s going to wear emerald green, and Ellavee wants to wear pink, but she hasn’t found anything she likes yet.”

Lux has been rambling about this ball for days, and I don’t care what I wear to it, because I don’t plan on being there long. I haven’t told anyone other than Draven about the plan that night. I figured it’s better to keep it between us until after.

“Lux,” I say, urging her to take a breath.

She sighs and tucks her hair behind her ears. “You said you would go, and I know you don’t have anything to wear, and you’re running out of time is all I’m saying.”

She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms in Professor Nestor’s lab while we wait for him to show up.

I raise my eyebrows and bite my tongue. I have far more important things to think about than what dress to wear.

Like the fact that Draven is sitting three rows up and to the right, reading.

Or pretending to. The book in his hand hasn’t turned a page since I sat down, and I have been keeping track.