Page 43 of Foresyth Conservatory
“I suppose, but they are also conduits to truth.” His fingers feathered the edge of his book, index finger still jutting in the middle to keep his place. “You have to get out of your head, sometimes. Go and apply your learnings in the real world to find the truth.”
“Now you sound like Aspen.”
“Him and I don’t agree on many things, but about the practice of magick we do. It’s an application, an art. It’s true power lies outside of books,” his tone changed, becoming softer. “Magick is dangerous, but I believe it needs people like us, grounded in reality, in order to control it.”
I nodded. On that, at least, we were aligned: magick was dangerous—whether real or not. Even the mere suggestion of it could drive people to reckless, even deadly, ends. I had no doubt it played a role in Julian’s death. The Meister wanted me to test Tarot in the waking world—to embody the archetypes, to trace the source of its power, whatever that might be.
If Julian’s unraveling was entangled with magick, then I needed to understand its pull—not just how it worked, but how othersbelievedit worked. Belief, after all, could be just as potent as truth. And if I could decipher the shape of that belief, it might bring me one step closer to uncovering what truly happened to him that night.
“Thanks, Leone. That’s very insightful,” I said, stacking my books up in a neat pile. It was almost time for lunch. Nina was still out, so I’d have to call for Aspen to help get us out of here.
“And one last thing you should know. There’s a woman on the Council,” he said in the same hushed tone. “She goes by the name of Ash-Shaytan Al-Ahmar—the red devil, in Arabic. She doesn’t appear at every Council meeting, but if she does at yours, you ought to be careful. She wields a kind of old magick that even the other Council members are afraid of. Superficially she’s a kind of guardian for the Council, but I suspect she plays an even more prominent role than that. Just be careful of her.”
“Ash-Shaytan Al-Ahmar. I’ll remember her,” I said, nodding.
“Just hope she doesn’t remember you.”
The Acolyte & The Alchemist: Part IV
To Quill, first love was like first snow—gradual, then all at once.
Quill was mystified by the force of it. For the first time, he thirsted for something other than knowledge. At least knowledge had an end—in theory.
He knew he was doomed when love and knowledge became one and the same. He and Hamra spent their afternoons nestled in the stacks of the library, unraveling ideas, twisting them like thread between their fingers. When the light faded, they moved to their dormitories, spilling ink and coffee as they poured their thoughts onto the page.
Their minds intertwined, distinct yet inseparable.
And when they disagreed, they set their pens down and took the argument to bed.
“Do you ever wonder where it comes from?” Hamra asked one night, her voice a murmur against the hush of their room.
Quill twirled one of her curls between his fingers. “Hmm?” he hummed, kissing the bare slope of her shoulder.
“Power.”
Quill furrowed his brows. “That’s why I came here—to determine how knowledge transmutes to power. It’s a form of alchemy, in my mind. The Advisors have perfected it. They draw it from books and apply it.”
“Not all power comes from books.” Hamra traced a slow line from his chin down to his throat, resting her fingertip over his breastbone. “Some of it comes from here.”
Her eyes met his. He was already smiling.
“If that’s true, then call me power-hungry.”
Quill flipped her onto the mattress, pressing her into the sheets. He kissed down the column of her neck, then lower, where her pulse thrummed against his lips. The sound of it stuttered through his own chest, a rhythm he wanted to memorize.
She laughed, and at once, he thought of a sound to rival the beating of her heart.
“I never want to lose this,” he murmured, his mouth finding hers again.
But as soon as the words left him, he remembered how cruel Fate could be.
“To be a detective is not merely to sift through clues, but to confront the facts in their entirety, even those you’d rather turn away from. It is to weave a narrative from evidence alone, forsaking comfort and conjecture in the pursuit of truth. And when every piece has fallen into place, when what stands before you is the undeniable and irrevocable, it leaves you with no choice but to accept it—no matter how inconvenient it may be.”
—The Journal of Daniel Blackburne, 1906
Chapter 16: Bloodless and Barren
The following afternoon, I stepped into the garden in search of Sequoia. The air met me like a surprise—unseasonably warm and heavy for late January, as if spring had arrived out of turn. I inhaled deeply, the humidity clinging to my skin, urging me to shed my coat. After weeks cloistered within the House’s stone confines, the open air felt disorienting, almost indulgent.
