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I laugh. “That’s fair.”

“I want hellebore. A lot of it.” She tips her mug at me, eyes sparkling. “And a scandal.”

“Noted.”

Veronelle gets up and refills my mug without being asked. “Caranthis called a third-year to his office this morning. I don’t remember his name, Leonas? I think. He’s from Sogliano, very tall and skinny, white hair. He came out looking like he’d been slapped.”

I pause with the mug halfway up.

“The headmaster speaks to students? I haven’t met him yet.”

“He rarely does. He’s spoken to me twice, both times about the same essay for some reason. If he addresses you, there are generally two possible reasons.”

“Which are…?”

“You’re exceptional…or you’re doomed.”

Avelene makes an oh please sound into her mug. “That’s the kind of thing people say when they don’t actually know. He’s harmless, he just prefers his own company. Half the professors here do.”

I take a long sip. The warmth of the wine has moved down into my hands. I set the mug on the floor to keep from spilling.

“I can see that,” I say carefully. “They’re an eccentric bunch. Professor Vale especially.”

I hope they can’t tell I’m fishing for information on him. But from the way Avelene is looking at me, the same way she had as we left the cemetery, I know I’ve piqued her interest.

Harken takes a sip of his drink and clears his throat. “Vale had an incident a few years back. Nobody talks about it.”

“What kind of incident?” I ask.

He looks at me. His face is impossible to read. “The kind that stops being discussed.”

Then, as if he’s used up his words for the week, he goes back to his drink.

“His assistant went missing,” Avelene offers, lowering her voice as if Vale can hear us. “One day didn’t show up for class. No one knows what happened to him.”

I sit up straighter. “Oh? And that’s the incident?”

“Well, rumors spread, you know,” Avelene goes on. “Professor Vale was investigated but nothing came of it.”

“This is all hearsay, of course,” Veronelle says in a clipped voice. “This happened before any of us were here. Obviously Vale had nothing to do with it or he wouldn’t still be teaching.”

Ambrose sits up after a moment and claps his hands softly, trying to shift the air of the room.

“On that cheerful note, Nelle,” he says, giving her a look of mild annoyance, which is a lot coming from someone with his sunny disposition. “Where did Harken put the second bottle?”

“Under the bed.”

I let them move around me, pulling out another bottle. I drink from the mug, slower this time. The wine has gone warmer in my hand than it should be, or maybe I’ve gone colder.

What a sensible woman would be thinking about right now is Harken’s face when he said the kind that stops being discussed. Or Avelene lowering her voice to tell me about an assistant who went missing. The fact that Professor Vale was investigated because of that.

But apparently I’m not that sensible, because instead I’m thinking about Vale’s hand on mine on the headstone. The tight-wound thing I felt under his focus. The way his breath moved the hair at my ear when he said the stone is the anchor. The way my pulse point went warm against the stone and stayed warm all the way back across the bridge.

Then, as I have been learning to do, I push those thoughts away with everything else I’m trying not to think about.

I spend the rest of the evening drinking and talking with the group, eventually learning to call Veronelle “Nelle” like everyone else (“if you use my full name, it sounds like I’m in trouble”), and then eventually everyone starts to yawn, signaling time for bed.

Avelene walks me to the door and leans against the frame.