Page 100

The corridor is empty and long, and our footsteps are the only sounds in it as we walk toward the staircase. Saturna is half a step ahead of me and she doesn’t speak and I don’t either, both of us making sense of what Caranthis just handed us.

We reach the landing where she’d caught the step on the way up and she slows and turns toward me. Her lips press together like she wants to say something but can’t.

So I break the ice.

“He saw the tether,” I say.

“He looked straight at it,” she says. “He knew exactly what he was looking at.”

Which means he can see witch-level perception of the magical field, which is not a Mortis-trained skill. No, it’s a skill you’re born with, that is passed down through a specific bloodline. Which means Lair Caranthis, headmaster of the most prestigious necromancy institution in the realm, is something other than what his title says he is.

Lair Caranthis is a witch.

I think about the offer. The private instruction. The cautious framing of it, how he said gifts that extend beyond the curriculum, a more considered form of attention. I think about a man who could have had us immediately removed from this building for being in his office and chose instead to ask her to study with him.

Then I think about what Saturna told me about the sea wall. Caranthis’ voice saying I will manage her.

Manage her how, exactly, I’m not sure. Either away from danger.

Or into it.

“Caranthis didn’t do it,” she says.

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“No,” she agrees. “But think about the questions. The way he asked them. He was trying to understand what happened to you, not trying to find out if we knew who did it.” She pauses. “If he did it, if he killed you, his questions would have been completely different.”

She’s right.

We stand on the landing for another moment. The staircase below us is quiet.

“We still don’t know what he wants with you,” I say.

“No,” she says. “We don’t. But he knows I’m a witch because he’s a witch and, in that case, my secret is safe with him.”

She looks at the staircase and then she straightens, the look on her face shifting into the focused forward set that means she’s done sitting with something and ready to move. She starts down the steps and I follow, my brain switching over from Caranthis back to the memory of the cemetery. At some point, I’m going to have to tell her I remember everything about that night.

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

SATURNA

“Ihave to go upstairs,” I tell Baz, pulling my measuring tape from the sewing kit on the shelf. “I have to take measurements for Nelle’s bolero for Mortalia. I promised her and I’ve been putting it off and the guilt is catching up with me.”

He looks up from his notes. “How far is upstairs?”

“One floor. Few doors down.” I wind the tape around my hand. “Stay here. If you start to feel ill, come up to the corridor and wait, but stay out of sight if you can. You’ll look a little suspicious.” I flash him a reassuring smile. “I won’t be long and we’ve survived greater distances before.”

“Wasn’t very fun, though,” he grumbles under his breath.

“Just give me ten minutes.”

He gives me the look he gives when he thinks I’m underestimating something but has decided not to say so, and goes back to his notes.

I hurry up to Nelle’s floor with the measuring tape flapping beside me and knock on her door.

She opens the door promptly.