Page 158 of Architecti
“You’re awake,” a familiar voice says.
“Thalia?Oh my gods, Thalia, help me.Get me out of here.”
She emerges from the darkness but something about her is different.Her mismatched eyes glower at me through the darkness.She holds a snarl on her features I’ve never seen before.Her shoulders are tight but wide-set, radiating power and confidence typically reserved for devils.
“Thalia?”I say, quieter this time.
She bares her teeth in a hideous smile, and they seem far, far sharper than before.
My stomach drops out.I back away from the iron bars.
“What’s going on?”I ask.
She stalks towards me, a key in her hand.It clinks in the metal lock and sets my teeth on edge.
“Out,” she says, her voice flat.
I hesitate; Thalia has always been so loving and affectionate towards me.I don’t understand what is happening.
“Move,” she barks and yanks me by the arm out of the cell.Her grip is a vice.I tug my arm, but her fingers dig harder, pinching my skin where she drags me.More and more people emerge from the darkness to line the corridor.All of them bearing pins above their left breast pockets.A symbol that makes my heart stop.
The Societas Mortis Architecti.
They all bow their heads as we pass; it’s reverent, respectful.But I don’t understand.My mind is trying to compute what’s happening.
“What are you doing with them?”I whisper.But as the words fall from my mouth, a rift carves through my heart.
She is not withthem.They are withher.
“All this time?”I whisper.“It was always you?”A trickle of cold flows down my back.I tug my arm again.
Her nails slice into my skin where she refuses to let go.
“Always me,” she says.
“But why?”
She laughs, harsh and grating as we approach Gardon’s arch and the Veil.
“You really have no idea who I am?”She shakes her head at me as if dismayed.As if I’m the fool for not knowing.
“Who?What do you mean?”I breathe as she stops us by the undulating expanse of the Veil.She extends a finger to the shimmering surface and draws it down from top to bottom, as if tasting the icing on a cake.
A waft of acrid air fills the corridor; it’s sticky and smoky and makes me cough.
“The real question, Lucy, is who areyou.”
And then she shoves me hard.I stumble back and fall between the folds of the Veil.
I’m back on my feet, screaming and lurching forward, but she’s already sealed the Veil shut, the scar healed over without a trace.
I’m trapped.
Fuck, I’m trapped.My heart rate climbs to a thousand beats a second as I frantically search my mind for the magic to cut myself out.But I’m inside the Veil with no access to the campus’s magic.I call upon my own magic.Reach for a memory, an emotion.Anything.But my heart is beating too fast.My mind whirring a stampede.I can’t reach it, it won’t come.
Oh gods.Oh gods.Oh gods.
I scan the area where I’m standing.It’s as barren and desolate as it is hot.Mountainous peaks of dark, craggy rocks and flat ground with barely a living thing in sight.Any plants I see are scorched and brittle, their stems and branches bone-white with skeletal leaves having scarcely more colour.
