Page 90 of Architecti
We haven’t spoken more than five words to each other all year, and I don’t plan to share another five.Especially since she’s topping me in most classes and likes to smirk at me every time any exam results are released.
Lex interrupts my stream of Aurelia hate by plucking the paper from my hand and proceeding to pace up and down the kitchen.
Bastien’s toast pops.I duck around his arms and pilfer a slice before he can take it.
“Do you mind?”he says, swatting at me.
“Not in the slightest.”I butter it, add jam and take a giant bite when Lex stops suddenly, as if she were freeze-framed.
“What’s wrong?”I ask.
She reanimates and sprints from the kitchen.I glance at Bastien and then we both head after her.
We find her in her room, pulling out boxes, and emptying stuff from her wardrobe.
“You going to explain?”I ask.
But she doesn’t respond until she waves a very tatty-looking book at us.
“What is that?”Bastien says, his nose wrinkled at the sorry state of it.
She goesoffat full speed as the pair of us try to keep up.
“I knew the shape of the rune, but it doesn’t follow any of the grammatical rules of any demonic or necro language.So, I was thinking in the kitchen, was it a forgotten language?Was it cypher encoded?But I knew there was something I was missing because itwasfamiliar but wrong.Which got me thinking maybe it was a dialect or something we haven’t been taught yet.But obviously it wasn’t because I’m months ahead of our reading schedule, I would have known…” She takes an enormous dramatic breath and stares at us blankly, letting silence descend.
“Demon’s sake Lex, stop being a vaj tease.What were you missing?”I ask.
She laughs.“That’s the thing.I wasn’t missing anything.I said it didn’t look like demonic or necro languagebecauseit isn’t.”
“Then what language, pray tell, is it?”Bastien says.
“That’s the weirdest part… It’s celestial.Only nobody has seen or written in the celestial language in decades…”
If that’s true, then why the hell does Lucy have angelic runes on her body?
“I have to go,” I say, plucking the sketch out of her hands and leaving the apartment.
I stroll across campus, sticking to the shadows.While it’s not against the rules to be out of doors after lights out, it is still frowned upon.Especially with the amount of security patrolling campus.But it’s the campus itself that I’m more concerned about.
I’ve been dreaming of that voice.The whisper that’s becoming more of a snarl.
A threat.
A warning.
I’ve still not reaped Lucy.It wants what it’s owed.But we never agreed to a timeframe, so it can be as angry as it wants with me.I am not obliged to reap her on a set deadline.No matter how much pressure it applies.
And itisapplying pressure.
I scan the area ahead of me, it’s deathly still and quiet.Security must be patrolling the northern end of campus, and yet a gnawing sensation trickles down my spine.
“Leave me alone,” I breathe into the night.
Finis doesn’t respond, but my skin prickles like I’m being watched.As if the buildings have eyes and ears and claws.I’ve noticed more and more doors stay locked to me, or they swing shut harder than necessary, slapping my behind as I walk through.My belongings go missing and then reappear.The worst of it though, are the memories it pulls from the sliver of soul it has.It projects Aurelia breaking my heart into mirrors and windows.It shows my parents’ death over and over.
Some days I wonder whether Finis is haunting me or whether it’s me and I’m losing the plot.Maybe I’ve pushed too hard, trained too long and the magic is cracking my mind.Or maybe it’s that ever-fucking present ticking clock, the draining of time that’s sending my body into a freefall of fight or flight, burning up my adrenal glands and screwing my mind for shits and giggles.
A ribbon of dark sinuous magic is following me—a perpetual reminder that I am indebted, and the campus hasn’t forgotten.I shrug my jacket tighter around my shoulders, desperate to get out of the open and into a building.
