Page 14

Ipost the letter before breakfast.

The postal window is near the refectory, a wooden hatch in the wall with a brass bell and a clerk behind it with cloudy eyes who looks like he’s been sitting there since the school was founded. He takes my letter without a word and drops it into a canvas sack with dozens of others.

Serena Greythorn, Harrow Lane, Fernhollow, Bracken Isles.

I didn’t tell my mother much, just that the food is good, the bed is warm, and I wore the gold shawl she likes so much. I also told her I’ll be home on Saturday, once the week’s classes are done.

Two more days. I’ll see her and Gibson on Saturday. It feels like I’ve been here for weeks already, not three days, and I catch myself missing things I didn’t expect, like the sound of the kettle going on, the feel of the Great One’s bark under my palm and the decaying sweetness of her turning leaves, even the creak of my mother’s chair as she shifts toward the window. I wonder if she remembers I’m at school and hope that Gibson reminds her gently if she doesn’t. It makes my heart pinch a little, picturing her scared and lost in her own mind, especially those moments when I know Gibson isn’t there and she’s all alone. It makes me second-guess everything, why I’m here, what kind of daughter I am to leave her like this, how truly selfish I must be to put some of my own happiness ahead of hers.

With that weight on my chest, I eat my breakfast, somewhat relieved to see that I’m one of the few students here and I don’t really see anyone I recognize. I’m sure Avelene’s invitation to her dorm room would mean I’d be fine to sit with her during meals, but when my heart and mind feel all torn up with guilt, I know I’m not the best company and definitely wouldn’t give a good second impression.

When I’m done, I do my best to focus on my next class, which is Wards and Protections taught by Professor Hetch. It’s located in a tower room that smells permanently of chalk dust and something burnt. He’s a wiry, twitchy man who speaks too fast and draws diagrams on a slate that he wipes clean before anyone’s finished copying them. The class involves building a ward around a candle flame and holding it steady while Hetch tests its edges, which he does by jabbing at it with something he calls a standard intrusion, but he looks like a kid trying to pop a bubble with a stick.

I hold my ward. It doesn’t pop. Hetch merely nods and moves on to the next student. Something tells me praise at Collegia Mortis is hard to come by.

After class is over, the day opens up. I spend the afternoon in my room mending a pulled thread on my good dress and working through the chapter on structural memory that Vale assigned, which is dense and dry and nothing like how I actually experience the dead but which I force myself through because I suspect he’ll ask about it and the last thing I need is to be unprepared.

By late afternoon the sky outside my window is fully red. The Bleeding is in full effect and earlier than normal. I’ve never seen it from inside the Mortis before; on the islands it was always a distant thing, a burgundy tinge to the clouds, the sunsets too vivid. Here, behind the leaded glass, the light fills the room and everything turns warm and amber.

I think of my grandmother’s saying: when the sky remembers, the dead grow restless.

Then I get dressed in my warmest wool gown for Cemetery Class since it’s literally held outside amongst the graves. The evenings are cool, not quite cold enough for my heavy coat, which is good because I left that at the cottage. I tend to run hot anyway.

I head out toward the cemetery and am surprised to see a group of my classmates assembled near a low archway in the west range that opens onto the night and the bridge to the cemetery beyond.

Avelene waves her cane at me, gesturing for me to come over. As I approach she elbows the boy beside her.

“Saturna, hello,” she calls out. “This is my brother. Ambrose.”

He has the same dark eyes, the same warm olive skin a shade deeper than hers, the same sharp features softened into something more open. His hair is chestnut brown, and up close his smile is even nicer. He’s taller than Avelene by a head, broader in the shoulders, and he radiates a steadiness that makes me think of the grove of oaks behind the cottage—rooted, solid, and content to be exactly where he is.

“Ambrose,” he says, extending a hand. His grip is warm and firm. “That reading you did in Bone Work, how you knew she was a seamstress? That was impressive.”

“Thank you,” I say, caught off-guard by the compliment.

“He means it,” Avelene says. “Ambrose doesn’t do flattery. But only because he can’t help but flatter everyone.”

He shrugs and keeps smiling. “What can I say, I’d rather be the cause of someone’s good day than the cause of a bad one.”

Well, if that isn’t the most wholesome outlook. The Hallward twins seem to be a breath of fresh air in this gloomy place.

Someone lets out an amused huff of air at Ambrose’s response. I peer around him. Leaning against the stone archway with his arms folded and the distinct air of someone who is present but only grudgingly, is a dark-haired, lean, sharp-jawed guy. I’ve noticed him in every class this week, always somewhere near the edges, watching more than participating.

“Harken Locke,” Avelene says with a jerk of her chin before she leans in close and whispers. “He doesn’t talk much.”

Harken gives me a nod. I nod back.

Veronelle arrives last in a dark blue coat with long gloves and takes her place beside Ambrose without greeting anyone. But she glances at me and raises her chin slightly in acknowledgment, which honestly is more than I expected.

As a group, we start walking and cross through the archway and down a flight of stone steps to a path along the sea wall. The Mortis rises behind us, lit windows glowing against the dark, and ahead the bridge arches over black water toward the low mass of the Sanctum Cemetery. The sky above is that deep Bleeding red, almost violet at the top, and the fog rising off the water is tinged with it, pink and strange.

“Who remembers when the Bleeding started last year?” Ambrose asks as we walk, his tone easy, conversational.

“October first,” Veronelle says. “And the year before was October seventh.”

“It started September third,” Avelene says. “That’s almost a full month early. My grandmother would be having a fit.”

“Our grandmother had a fit about most things,” Ambrose points out.