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Emilita considers this. She doesn’t seem frightened of me in the least, if anything it seems like she was expecting me. Perhaps she had seen everyone else come through.

Pietranera, she says. My village was Pietranera.

I thank her and she cocks her head, considering me in an unhurried fashion.

You are looking for someone else? she asks, as if she knows what I’m thinking.

I nod. I have a moment before the pull-back, at least I think so. Time is odd here.

My father, Atlas, my sister, Morena. Surname Greythorn. Have you seen them?

She shakes her head. I don’t know them.

I figured that was a long shot. But while I’m here, I might as well try to reach for them myself. Perhaps on this side of the veil, I can. I have done the reach every day for five years in different ways and never once gotten an answer, and while I don’t expect one tonight either, I can’t not take the chance.

But while I expected quiet, what I get is not that quiet.

It’s like reaching for a door and finding only the wall. Not darkness, not distance, but wall. The absence has an edge to it. I know where my father should be, where Morena should be. The veil doesn’t feel empty in that direction. It feels…sealed.

I don’t know what to make of this. Neither my grandmother nor my mother ever taught me what it means when the dead you reach for are not where they should be. I don’t know if they have moved on in some way I don’t understand, but even if they went to the afterlife, to the Fair Country as we islanders call it, they should still be reachable. They should still be somewhere. I don’t know if I am failing to reach them properly…or if something has happened to them.

And before I can swallow the horror of that thought, everything starts to move. I come back fast, my body on the far side yanking me back before the part of me in the veil has decided to return, rushing through stale air. I feel the fire of the clearing first, then the cold, stiff grass under my palms, then under my shift, and the sound of Caranthis’s voice saying my name.

I open my eyes.

He’s watching me. His face is composed but his eyes are not. He has read something on my face in the moment before my eyes opened that he had not expected and I have no idea what it was.

“Greythorn,” he says.

“Pietranera.”

He waits, raising a sharp brow.

“Her village was Pietranera,” I say, my voice sounding hoarse.

He nods and makes a mark on the parchment, then takes a step back from me. “Rise.”

I rise to unsteady knees. The attendant is at my shoulder and then I’m in my robe and slippers, walking back across the grass without looking at the north point. I know Baz is watching me. I know he has seen whatever look I had on my face, the same thing Caranthis saw.

I keep my eyes on my feet and rejoin the line.

Avelene gives my hand a squeeze, followed by a cautious smile. Everyone is peering at me as if to see I’m alright and I can only muster a vaguely reassuring look.

Harken is up next and I take the moment to look back at Baz. His hood is still up, his eyes gold as he stares right at me. His face, under the hood, is the face he had on the terrace at the formal dinner, a mix of heat and concern. He obviously knows that something happened to me, given how perceptive he is, and I don’t think he’s handling it well.

I try to give him a reassuring look in return, though I feel it’s a lousy impression.

The Trial continues around me with student after student, but it all turns into a blur. Whatever I touched when I reached for Morena and my father is still in me, making a nest, and though I have no idea what it was, I know I’m going to pretend all went well or I’ll make Avelene call for a healer.

The last student finally goes. The gong sounds a third time. Caranthis rolls his parchment and turns to the clearing and raises his hand.

“It is done,” he says. “You have crossed. You have returned. Go forth and enjoy the rest of Nox Anima.”

We all breathe a sigh of relief and turn in the clearing and file back down the lane the way we had come, two by two under the lanterns of the faculty, with the fireflies in a long green swarm overhead. I don’t look back at the clearing. I don’t look up at the Bleeding sky. I walk the lane with my eyes on the ground.

I’m going to need to talk to Baz about this. It feels significant in some way and he’s the only one I know who will understand, if only for the fact that he knows I’m a witch.

But if I’m going to catch Baz, it has to be tonight. He’ll be on the midnight ferry otherwise, and I don’t have it in me to sit with this for a couple days.