Page 80 of Bone Year

I’m partly excited and terrified to think about leaving campus, possibly seeing a fissure up close for the first time in my life.

“Do you know where or what we’d have to do?”

“There are rumors that apparently we get paired up and sent to an active site. Small fissures, nothing too dangerous. But still...”

“Still what?”

“People have died during midterms before, Mae.” His blue eyes meet mine. “People die trying to become Veilguards all the time. Notice how few blood and breath years there are compared to us.”

I remember Elizabeth telling me we’d lose about half the bone year students by the end of the year.

“Yeah, some students fail. Others drop out.”

“Yeah.” He holds my gaze. “And some die.”

Chapter Nineteen

“A wound cannot heal if the one who carries it believes they deserve the pain.”

— Professor Nestor, Architecture of Flesh

The library doors groan shut behind me, and the cold hits like a slap. The perpetual winter here in the Frostlands sure is pretty, but the cold…that’s getting a little old.

Snow has started falling again while I was buried in books. A fresh white layer of powder coats the ground and the bare branches overhead. The campus is silent, and I’m starting to wish I hadn’t told Jace to go back without me an hour ago.

I breathe into my hands to warm them.

My bag is heavy with borrowed books. Notes on corrupted tissue. Case studies of riftling wounds. An old leather-bound journal detailing experimental treatments most healers considered too dangerous to try.

It’s not much, but it might save Nella’s life.

My breath fogs in front of me as I cross the courtyard. The snow muffles my footsteps.

I’m halfway to the dormitories when I feel that uncomfortable familiar prickle at the back of my neck.

I walk faster, and still the feeling doesn’t leave me. It sharpens instead, pressing in at my back like a shadow with weight, a presence that is close and getting closer.

My hand slides into my satchel. Fingers close around the scalpel handle.

I spin, grab a fistful of fabric, and use my momentum to slam him against the wall. The blade is at his throat before my mind catches up to my body.

Amber eyes stare down at me.

Draven.

Snow clings to his dark hair, half down and falling in pieces around his face. His breath clouds between us. He’s not fighting back, just watching me with an eerie expression.

“Bale’s class is paying off,” he says.

“Why are you following me?”

“Who says I’m following you?”

“You were right behind me in the dark well after midnight.”

“It’s a path.”

“Bullshit.”