Page 147 of Serpent and Shadow

She didn’t say anything, but I didn’t really need her to, or particularly want her to.

Rather, the two of us just stood there, looking down at the looping, black and white image of Bones right before magical fire left his hand and exploded into the chest of the hooded stranger, over and over and over again.

I went back to the tower that night, just before it got dark.

Luc and Miranda insisted on walking me, and in the end, Jolie and Draken came along, too, while Nyx left for Bonescastle to meet her girlfriend in one of the pubs, a last chance to see her before classes started up again.

I wasn’t too proud to accept the escort back to Bones’s tower.

I also asked Nyx if she’d drop my mangled wings off at the Wing Emporium the next morning on her way back, and see about having them fixed and re-feathered, since the ones I’d had with me that morning were pretty mangled when I fell down that hill. I didn’t like the idea of having to rely on my spotting phasing skills if I needed to get out of the tower in a hurry. Having a reliable pair of wings near the largest window with a latch was a much preferable backup solution than accidentally propelling myself backwards in time a few thousand years, or finding myself in the Pyramid, or Malefic’s audience chamber.

Nyx just winked at me before she shrank down my broken wings to fit them in her bag. She then hoisted her satchel over her shoulder and held out her arms, asking me, Jolie, and Miranda for our opinions on how she looked.

She’d changed her hair colors to black with hot pink ends, magicked on make-up that made her eyelids and cheeks sparkle and her lips glow the same rough shade as the pink tips of her hair. With the make-up and new hairstyle, she wore a long, slinky, and form-fitting burgundy dress with combat boots.

Miranda cooed over her, then, Miranda-fashion, added a few touches of her own to make Nyx’s hair smoother and to add faerie-like sparkles to the pink ends. After stepping back to assess her, mouth pursed, she did a third spell to make her lipstick match the sparkles in Nyx’s hair, and then a fourth to thread a few more sparkles evenly over the burgundy dress.

“Perfect,” Miranda beamed.

Jolie and I glanced at one another and smiled, then nodded to Nyx.

She really did look stunning.

We walked her as far as the Mansion, and then I got worried about her being out on her own, all the way to Bonescastle without a single other person with her.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to come with you into town?” I asked. “You could come with all of us to the tower, and then Draken and Luc could walk you to the square, at least.” I bit my lip, trying to sound less nervous for her than I felt. “Or we could all just go together, and wait with you at the pub until Glinda gets there.”

Nyx smiled at me in a way that made it clear she knew why I was asking. She even looked a bit touched by my worries. Then she waved a hand, and her face changed, her hair color turning a stunning red and cascading down her shoulders and back.

“I’ll be fine,” she told me, winking again.

“You’re definitely spending the night?” I asked.

“Definitely,” she said, her smile twitching higher.

I felt marginally reassured.

Even so, I watched her for longer than was probably necessary as she made her way down the Promenade in the direction of the school gates. I fought to suppress my anxiety as I looked around at the gardens and the path, and even the windows of Malcroix Mansion that overlooked where we stood, hoping no one saw her change her appearance.

Other than a brief curtain twitch on one of the higher floors of the white tower, I didn’t see anything. I definitely hadn’t noticed anyone watching us from the school grounds.

I couldn’t entirely shake my nerves, anyway.

“She’ll be okay,” Miranda assured me, looping her arm through mine. “You know Nyx. She’s a beast at dueling. And she’s got some of the best protective spellwork I’ve ever seen. Even the royals leave her alone in Offensive Magic practicals.”

I nodded, and made myself smile back.

I didn’t say anything as I followed the others to the massive doors of the main entrance on the first floor of the mansion. I so rarely entered the mansion this way, it was strange to look up at the giant staircase from that angle, which showed off the waterfall design all the way up to the second floor, which was high given the ceiling height of the first. I gazed up the opening to glimpse even higher floors, where a lot of the smaller classrooms lived, along with the offices and residencies of the dozen or so instructors and professors who lived on campus.

Luckily, being nearly dinner time on a Sunday, the place was mostly deserted.

My four friends walked me all the way to the base of the tower and then said goodbye, after I insisted that they not miss dinner at Valarian.

Truthfully, by then, I needed to be alone.

I thought about that as I walked slowly up the stone steps, still feeling physically beat up, despite all the potions and creams and spells I’d been given over the past three days, and not only by Jolie. I knew I was mostly healed. My wrist was no longer broken. My shoulder socket worked almost normally again. My cracked and broken ribs had all been mended by Blackstone with one of his more disgusting potions.

But my exhaustion from the damage done by the lightning spells had been harder to shake. It was a bone-deep, pervasive kind of tired I couldn’t localize to any one part of my body.