Page 13 of A Fate Everlasting

I swallowed. “So, they’re symbolic. Of what awaits them… where, exactly?”

She hummed, as if weighing how much to tell me. “Up or down. Light or dark.”

“Doesn’t sound like a place.” A shiver traced my spine. My mind scrambled for logic. “But they don’t always wear them? Just for dinner?”

Verrine tilted her head slightly as though I were an amusing puzzle she was piecing together. “Forsupper, yes. It’s a formality, a reminder. The wings are like finery, formal wear, justnot yet fullytheirs.”

“So, it’s part of the uniform.”

Her lips curved slightly. “I suppose.”

“And what do you mean, they haven’t earned them?”

“Well,” Verrine smiled knowingly, then. “That is what graduation is for.”

“Hm.” I responded, folding my arms again. I didn’t like the sound of that. We wound through the gothic corridors, and I admired the vaulted ceilings, wondering what on earth this place was. I called ahead to Verrine a few times to ask, but my words were met with a deafening silence.

She paused outside of two massive iron doors, and her attention moved to my collarbone. “Jewelry is not permitted with the standard uniform. Refer to the code of conduct.”

I reached for the pendant. “It’s all I have left of my mother.”

“Rules are an obligation?—”

“Not a suggestion. I know,” I ground out.

Verrine smiled thinly. “Good. Then do stop wasting my time, Miss Davenant.”

The door groaned open, spilling dim candlelight across a room that felt lost in time. The air was thick with the scent of aged parchment and something more acrid, a metallic tang that sat heavy on the tongue like the ghost of alchemy itself. This wasn’t a typical chemistry classroom.

Shelves lined the walls, heavy with vials of strange, shimmering liquids, some still clotted with residue from failed experiments. Glass alembics and copper distillers hummed faintly, their contents swirling like captured storm clouds, while open flames licked beneath bubbling cauldrons, casting flickering shadows against the vaulted ceiling.

I pulled out a stool at the back of the room, the wooden legsscraping against stone. My palms were damp against my skirt, my fingers trembling despite the warmth of the room.

A woman emerged from the storeroom, her presence kinder and warmer than anyone I had encountered here. Her hair, long and starlight-silver, cascaded in waves past her shoulders. She carried bottles with the careful reverence of someone handling something very fragile—or something very dangerous.

She smiled, warm and knowing. “Welcome.”

“You’re hosting detention, Esmerelda,” Verrine snapped. “Use her in any way you wish. I’ll be giving Mr. Darkblood detention as well, thank you for that tip off Arabella.” Her eyes narrowed cruelly. “Expect his arrival soon.Ante post.”

Shit.Verrine pulled a thin device from her pocket, her hands flying quickly over the keyboard as she turned to leave.

Esmerelda’s fingers curled and uncurled in the fabric of her skirts, betraying a tension that her composed expression couldn’t quite mask. The prospect of hosting detention unsettled her, but clearly not as much as the name that lingered between us.Mr. Darkblood. It was a name that seemed to stain everything it touched.

Dante. The vile creature from the dining hall. The one whose silver-eyed presence I still felt in my mind like an awful echo.

“Headmistress,” Esmerelda said timidly. “Just a moment, please. I heard something about the Archangels.”

I bit my lip, somewhat satisfied. I was right. This was a place for religious fanatics. Verrine stilled.

Esmerelda swallowed hard, darting a glance at me before pressing forward. “They’re missing.Gone.I heard—” She hesitated, like she was afraid to say the words aloud. “What does this mean?”

Verrine tilted her head, her expression vague. Then, with even more sharpness than usual, she said, “It means nothing.”

Esmerelda blinked. “But if they’re?—”

“Compose yourself at once.” Verrine’s tone was cutting enough to make the woman flinch. “The system remains intact. The ether flows as it should. We are not in danger. Order, as always, will be restored.”

Esmerelda wrung her hands. “But if they aren’t guiding it, who is? I dread to think…”

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