Page 48 of The Deadliest Candidate

She opened the third envelope, and her heart skipped a beat.

Dear Miss Sullivan,

In light of Professor Saffyn’s continued absence, we would like to extend our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please find enclosed our written permission to access the Sumbra Wing of the Carthane Athenaeum. We wish you luck with your thesis research and the rest of your candidacy.

Fern thought of her notes, in their hiding place—years’ worth of work—all that reading, so many books hunted down, and all this patience required of her, especially now she was here.

She clutched the third envelope and closed her eyes in a sigh.

Finally.

With only one dayuntil the next assignment, there was no time to waste, so Fern made her way straight to the Sumbra Wing, located at the very back of the topmost floor.

When she arrived, she faltered in her steps. Two Sentinels stood at the end of the vaulted corridor. They neither moved nor reacted to her; they stood like statues of living wax in the shadow of an alcove. Facing them across the corridor was the Sumbra Wing.

The stone archway of its entrance gaped open like a waiting mouth.

Fern hurried past the Sentinels and through the entrance. Carthane seemed older here: heavy arches of rough-hewn stone supported the high ceilings, and there were too few windows to illuminate the labyrinth of towering bookshelves.

Instead, spindly floor candelabras stood like rusty skeletons, sallow candlelight revealing the thick spines of ancient tomes. In the centre of the room was a narrow line of desks, the lamps there unlit and covered with a fine layer of dust.

Fern had come to Carthane knowing exactly what her research topic was. After so many years studying Sumbra, everyone expected her to be interested in Gateways. Their history, their creation—hundreds of years of blood sacrifices, atrocious acts committed for the sake of knowledge.

It was easy enough to give in to Sumbra, the call of its entities and all the power and knowledge they offered. But years of studying Sumbra had taught Fern only one thing.

That it was time humankind learned how to close Gateways.

It was a controversial topic. Gateways could be abandoned by their entities and become dormant, but they could never be closed. They were, inherently, damage made to the world, a rip in the fabric of existence. Such damage could not easily be mended.

Many had tried, and failed. Fern had collected and studied those attempts, every last one of them, painstakingly, over years. And now she had reached the crux of her project, and it was time to find a solution: a way to close Gateways.

There was only one book on the subject. And it was right here in Carthane, in this very wing she now stood in.

She set her things down on a desk, turning on the lamp so as to easily find her way back. Each wing in Carthane held a directory; she glanced around until she spotted it.

At the end of the room, standing beneath a cupola of dull stone, a statue of a winged creature held a tablet of stone. Upon that tablet rested an enormous book—the directory.

From afar, the statue appeared almost like that of an angel. It wasn’t. It was a towering figure stooping, five wings rising from its back. It was headless, crooked bones protruding from inside its neck like a collar of thorns. Its arms were almost human, roped with muscles, but its chest gaped wide, the bones of the ribcage jutting out like teeth to reveal a straining, bulging eye.

A cold shudder jolted Fern.

This was a statue of a Sumbral being—not one of the petty beasts from the realms beyond the Gateways, butone of the cosmic entities that kept that Gateway itself. Though the sculptor had well captured the features, the sharp bones and deformities of the entity, the statue was inaccurate in one aspect: the real entity would have dwarfed the statue ten times over.

Fern’s footsteps slowed. Though she could tell that the statue was nothing more than stone, she could not help the instinctive fear slithering through her. An unexpected wave of nausea roiled in her stomach as a dull sound hummed in her ear, taking the shape of her parents’ voices.

A figure detached itself from the shadows of a nearby bookshelf.

Fern started. Her hand darted to her waist, finding nothing. Her dagger, of course, was still hidden in her room. After the attack on Vittoria, she had vowed to carry it with her everywhere—she had been too distracted to remember.

The figure emerged into the faint light cast by a distant window.

“Oh. Miss Sullivan.”

Léo Lautric raised a hand and brushed the hair from his forehead, the gesture oddly self-conscious. Though he had been drinking at the party the previous night, he seemed completely untouched by the headache that lingered in Fern’s skull.

He wore black this time, the pallor of his face almost spectral in the faint daylight from the window. The bruises under his eyes were livid, far worse than Fern remembered them looking when she’d danced with him. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.

Fern’s fear dissolved, thickened, boiled into irritation. What the devil was he doing here, lurking like some ominous creature? And why the Sumbral Wing?

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