Page 154 of Architecti
My heart rate slows as I stare at the list of names.A hollow ringing trills in my ears.
I blink.
It has to be wrong.
I blink again.
Lex makes a strangled sound next to me.
Bastien rips the paper from the tower wall and scrunches it up.They’re shouting.Noise fills the courtyard.But I can’t hear anything.I continue blinking at the space where my name was.
Next to a number two.Beneath Aurelia Ravena.
She won.
She fucking took everything from me, and now she’s taken this.
I lost.
My chest is hollow, fluttering.Heart rate erratic.Everything is numb and loud and so, so silent.
I take a step.And then another.I need to keep moving.
Run.
Yeah, I should run.
I still have my scythe, I could fight him.I won’t give up.
A year of fucking training, working every night, every break, every spare second and all for Aurelia to snatch it from me.
Fucking Aurelia.
I really thought I stood a chance.My fingers curl around my scythe, furious that this is the choice I’m left with: my soul, or the woman I love.
How is that a choice?
Fuck the Demonic Favour.Fuck Ignatius.Fuck Aurelia.Fuck Architecti.
Architecti.Oh gods, there is a far greater danger in our midst, and no one realises.I’m not even sure Ignatius knows.
“Where’s Lucy?”I say to Lex and Bastien.
They shrug at me.
“Are you okay?”one of them asks.But I’m already making my way inside and down to the observation room.She said she was going to watch the exams.
I scan the observation deck.Lucy was definitely here earlier.
I check the whole of the fifth floor.Every practice and exam room, the reading areas and the other observation deck in case she moved.
She’s vanished.
I return to the first observation area and notice a stray notebook.Probably just a student’s.But my feet take me to it anyway.
It’s leather, stained and worn, that soft velvet only well-loved leather can produce.There’s a fountain pen knocked on the floor, ink splats haloing the nib.The lid missing.
My eyes narrow, I open the front page to see an inscription:
