Page 60 of The Ordeals
I frown and scrunch up the paper with the question mark scribbled on it. Clearly we won’t get any answers now. Professor Lewellyn talks a little more about Killmarth College, how the founders wanted a place of refuge for wielders to practise and learn when it was founded after the Fair Age just under a hundred years ago, how they valued courage, cunning, loyalty and resourcefulness above all. How each Ordeal until the final one isn’t designed to testour magic, it’s designed to measure these traits. I wonder at one of them … loyalty. Because surely such a cut-throat, semester-long entrance exam is designed to divide, not unite us?
But then I think about the Ordeals themselves. How I’ve formed alliances. How despite her not being my partner, I refused to leave Tessa behind, and Alden was prepared to go to the point of burnout to save the lives of those other hopefuls and give them a fighting chance. How we went out in the Morlagh that night to search for wolfsbane for Greg. And I wonder …
Have I got this all wrong?
If we’re being trained to defend against an attack from the cold ones, are they searching for the strongest, the most united year group?
When we file out at lunchtime to the hall below in Gantry, it doesn’t take long for the rumours to catch alight. That Knox isn’t just an alchemist, he’s spent the past year in Theine, for reasons unknown. Some murmur of a terrible illness he’s been fighting, some whisper of a shadowy organisation he’s embroiled in and some claim he’s just got out of prison, where he’s been detained by the Crown in Kellend, and hasn’t been in Theine at all.
I glance at him discreetly as I’m grabbing bread rolls at lunch, taking pieces of cheese and filling a bowl with pot roast. He’s sitting next to Alden and they’re both taking it in turns to crack jokes, their laughter booming down the table.
And Knox … perhaps I’m imagining it, but he really is strangely familiar. As though I’ve met some version of him before. He leans back in his chair and a slant of light catches his hair, highlighting the cut of his cheekbones and sliding over brown eyes. Not as intense asAlden’s, not as captivating and dark … but there’s a certain quality about him. He’s polished in a way I would find young men to be at society gatherings, clean-shaven with the kind of dewy complexion only money can buy. He’s not as tall as Alden, but his presence in the room is notable, and several male scholars are glancing his way with assessing, hungry eyes.
‘Do you feel like we’re witnessing a secret society reunion?’ Tessa whispers to me, her eyes sliding to Alden and then Knox.
Greg leans in and adds, ‘They went to school together like me and T. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a fair few secrets between Locke and Darley.’
‘Darley?’ I ask, interest flaring. ‘As in Darley Hall?’
Greg nods, buttering a bread roll. ‘Direct descendent of the founder. Last relation to attend was Ezra Darley a couple of decades or so ago.’
‘For a werewolf, you’re surprisingly knowledgeable,’ I say with a wink.
‘Woof.’
Tessa snorts, reaching for more cheese. ‘At least there haven’t been any more murders. Maybe it was Richards.’
‘He was a botanist,’ I say through a mouthful of bread, then swallow, wondering if he was responsible for poisoning his friend at the welcome dinner. After seeing him with that axe, I wouldn’t have put it past him. ‘But it could have been Zelene. She died in the maze too.’
Tessa and Greg begin speculating on the murderer and I sit back, contemplating the new stranger in our midst. When would I have met a Darley? If he’s related to one of the founders, that indicates an old magical bloodline … possibly old money too? Have I met him or this relative, Ezra, when I was on an assignment? Maybe he was one of my marks. I’ve lost count over the years, preferring to forgetthe faces and names of the people I have possibly condemned by putting them on the Collector’s map.
Then I remember, Ezra Darley was one of the names in that photograph in Darley Hall that Tessa and I found. The one taken twenty-five years ago. I look back at Knox and, with a jolt, find that he’s watching me. I hold his gaze and note something there, a flicker of recognition. He pretends to laugh at what Alden is saying, breaking eye contact with me and busying himself with his lunch.
Suddenly, I realise where I’ve seen him before.
He was with Alden in the bar the day that I first met him.
I eat in near silence, shovelling the pot roast into my mouth, keeping him in my periphery, trying to remember the snippets of that conversation. I leave the hall after nearly everyone else. As I walk out, I shrug my coat around my shoulders to ward off the chill. Inside my pocket I feel a folded sheet of paper. Frowning, I open it out and read:
Poison Garden.
Midnight.
You’re in danger.
My footsteps stutter to a halt. Spinning quickly, I check if anyone has followed me out of Gantry, but there’s no one. The hall was practically empty when I left and where there is usually the low hum of voices, there is an almost deathly quiet. I place my hand on the granite wall, a shiver brushing the back of my neck as I stare at the note, trying to recognise the writing. I’ve seen Alden’s handwriting, Tessa’s, Greg’s, many of the other hopefuls by this point in Lewellyn’s lectures we’ve attended. This handwriting is unknown and strange, like the writer deliberately disguised their own hand. And the note itself smells like fresh ink and printing paper, not like the mildewed walls of Killmarth.
Casting my eyes low, I hurry across the courtyard, heart thrashing behind the cage of my ribs. I would bet anything this note is from Knox, and he has a message for me. Or a knife. That haunting stare … I didn’t imagine it. Knox Darley may be Alden’s friend, but he may not be mine.
You’re in danger.
I know I shouldn’t. I know I should place this note in my room, ignore the summons and find out as much as I can about Knox before I make a move. But the trained part of me is being silenced by the other part … instinct. And I’ve survived so far here by trusting my wits more than anything. I fold up the note and place it carefully in my pocket. A knife or a message. I guess I’ll find out at midnight either way.
Chapter 20
Playing Games
‘You’re late,’ a voice says as I step into the poison garden. The wind has picked up, a scatter of rain dashing across my cheekbones as I close the gate in my wake.
