Page 69 of Wicked Bonds
I don’t believe him, but I appreciate what he’s trying to do.
We stand there, hands clasped hidden beneath the tablecloth, watching the festivities I want no part of. I watch everyone live, laugh and love. They look happy. Carefree. Not a feeling I can say I’ve ever experienced, but it sure looks like fun. I wonder if I’ll get to try it some day.
“Two years isn’t long enough,” Drake says quietly, and I realize he’s been thinking the same thing.
“No,” I agree. “It’s not.”
His thumb brushes over my knuckles, and for a moment I can pretend we’re just two normal people at a party, holding hands in secret. But we’re not. He’s dead, I’m dying, and everyone else is celebrating the thinning veil between life and death like it’s something romantic instead of the razor’s edge I’m balancing on.
“I should go,” Drake says eventually. “Wickersly’s familiar is prowling.”
Sure enough, Galanthis is weaving through the crowd, his yellow eyes scanning faces with unusual interest. Drake’s form starts to fade, but he squeezes my hand once more before disappearing entirely.
And then I’m alone again at the refreshment table, serving soul cakes to people who will outlive me by decades if not centuries,pretending everything’s fine while the bloodmark burns and burns and burns.
Thirty-Two
Rose
The soul cakes are running low, which is my excuse when Mrs. Bright passes by with her clipboard and perpetual frown.
“I need to get more from the kitchen,” I tell her, not quite meeting her eyes.
She looks at the platters with obvious disappointment. “The kitchen staff was supposed to prepare more than last year.”
“The shifters are really going at them.” It’s not entirely a lie. A group of them did descend on the table earlier like locusts, though they took one bite each, tossed them in the trash and abandoned the rest. “I’ll be quick.”
She waves me off with an annoyed sigh, already distracted by whatever Thorne’s pointing at near the bonfire, likely some tiny flaw in the decorations that needs immediate fixing.
I don’t go to the kitchen.
The hallways are eerily empty, everyone at the festival or, if they’re not, they’re taking advantage of the distraction to do things they shouldn’t in their dorm rooms.
The library is closed, but the door’s been left unlocked, probably for any professor who needs references for tomorrow’s lessons. I slip inside, breathing in the familiar smell of old paper and wood polish.
It’s completely dark except for the emergency lighting that paints everything in pale blue. I don’t turn on the main lights, they’ll be too obvious if anyone’s checking, but I don’t need them. My eyes have gotten good at adjusting, and I’ve noticed that, as my magic unbinds itself more and more, I can use more of my senses.
I wander the stacks at first, not really knowing where I want to start, just knowing that being here is more productive than handing out cupcakes to drunk witches. I run my fingers along the spines of the books, most of them leather-bound and old. It’s as if they stopped writing about magic before the 20th century. Which, I guess makes sense if magic doesn’t change all that much. The History of Supernatural Contracts. Bloodlines and Bondage: A Study of Hereditary Magic. The Complete Guide to Breaking Curses, that one looks like it’s been checked out a lot.
But something pulls me toward the back section, the one with books so old they’re kept behind glass. Except tonight, one of the cases is open. Just slightly, like someone forgot to latch it properly.
There’s a book inside that doesn’t look so special. Brown cover, no title, nothing distinct about it. But when I pick it up, my blood goes cold. It’s not cold, exactly. More like… aware. I swear I can feel a pulse beating through it, matching the rhythm of myown heartbeat. The mark on my arm flares up, not painful but insistent, like it’s trying to tell me something.
This is it. This is what you need.
The thought doesn’t feel entirely like mine. It’s my voice in my head.
The first page is blank. So is the second. And the third. I keep turning, frustration building, until finally, halfway through the book, text appears as my fingers brush the page. Not printed text, but handwriting that materializes like invisible ink being revealed.
To hide in plain sight, one must shift between what is and what is not.
The next page is a section where the text is in Latin, but there are notes in the margins in English, written in different hands across different time periods. One catches my eye immediately.
“The skill of temporal displacement for purposes of concealment.”
I read further. It’s talking about hiding things not just in space but in time. Shifting them slightly out of sync with reality so they exist in the same location but in a parallel moment. Always there, never there, findable only to those who know how to look.
Another note, in different handwriting: “There it exists between heartbeats, in the space between one second and the next. Physical location is irrelevant if the temporal alignment is changed.”
