Void Domain, Book 03 полностью

Lady Ylva sat at her own table in the back of a classroom. Her head rested on an upraised fist as she slouched back in the chairs. An almost perfect recreation of the pose she had on her large throne; all except for the fact that her tiny legs didn’t quite reach the floor. They just kind of dangled in the air.

Nel wished she possessed the kind of impulsiveness required to just up and hug the little girl.

Zoe Baxter was in the same room as Ylva, teaching, so Nel skipped over that strand of hair.

Arachne and Genoa were out fighting. Again. Nel rolled her eyes. The first few days, she had been glued to watching them. Their fights were very flashy and interesting, but quickly dulled as Nel realized there wasn’t much actual danger. Neither had managed to kill each other. Nel suspected they both were holding cards in their sleeves just in case they ever had to actually fight one another.

Genoa’s daughter sat with Sister Cross’ daughter in a different class. History by the looks of the textbook.

An empty seat at Juliana’s side gave Nel pause. Her breath hitched as a long, black hair moved into position.

Nel let out a small sigh. She’d been worried for nothing. Eva looked extremely relaxed in a large pool of steaming water. Her eyes were shut and she had a faint smile on her face as she rested her head against a headrest set outside the pool.

Eva’s companion looked distinctly less relaxed. The girl, who Nel vaguely recalled seeing around Eva on occasion, had her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around herself beneath the surface of the water. Only her head above her nose poked out. Her eyes darted between the ceiling, Eva, and the door to the room.

It was somewhat maddening. She was squandering the fairly impressive hot springs of their dorms. Not as impressive as Lady Ylva’s bath, of course.

Nel had half a mind to go and take her own bath right then and there. She restrained herself with no small amount of reluctance.

Her final fetter–a vial of blood that was heavily coagulated despite the preservative vial–drifted over in front of Nel. Eva wouldn’t be able to make use of such a decayed sample, but Nel didn’t use haemomancy.

The boy attached to the fetter was disturbing as always. He had a blank, vacant gaze that Nel normally attributed to victims of spectral possession. That Ylva had been in the same room and hadn’t obliterated the ghost was the only reason Nel second guessed herself about the boy’s condition.

That it probably wasn’t a ghost didn’t make it any less unnerving.

Nel blinked one set of eyes. He wasn’t in a classroom. Or the Brakket dorms. The floor had orange, interlocking hexagons with red hexagons in the center. Featureless white walls separated numbered doors. A hotel?

The little girl that never left the boy’s side was absent.

Nel detached her vision from the fetter and moved outside the hotel. The town didn’t appear to be Brakket. The roads were all different and it was missing the lake and Brakket Academy itself. It was not missing the mostly deserted feeling.

Back inside the hotel–and it was a hotel albeit a small one–Nel peeked into one of the rooms.

Her heart skipped three beats.

Three things sat in the room. One had sharp razors for arms. They hung in front of him like scythes. Another was a bird of some sort. At least, it had the wings and beak of one. Nel wasn’t sure it would be able to fly without a heavy dose of magic. The third looked like someone had literally stapled Arachne’s black chitin to its body.

With some morbid curiosity, Nel checked the next room. Four creatures, all similar to the first three. The next room only had two. Then six.

Nel stopped and focused back on the boy’s fetter.

He wasn’t in the hotel. The boy stood on the street between the two Brakket dorm buildings. A scowling, patchwork woman stood in front of him.

An army of monsters stood at his back.

Nel bolted, ignoring the fetters that fell out of the air. She ran out of her private clairvoratorium and around the massive hole in the throne room. Her hand froze as it touched the ornate handle leading out of Lady Ylva’s domain.

The Order was surely looking for her, at least cursory glances, if not active searches. They would not abide a rogue augur. Especially not one as ‘compromised’ as Nel.

Nel bit her lip and made her choice.

Eva hummed a soft tune to herself. She had never been one for music. Unlike most of the students at her old school, Eva never owned any sort of music player. At her old school, nearly everyone had one. They’d listen to them in the halls, during lunch, and in the classroom if the teacher permitted. She had seen a handful of people with headphones around Brakket, but they were far less prevalent here.

As such, her tune was just a formless rhythm. It didn’t have any purpose or meaning beyond filling the silence.

And what a silence it was.

Irene hadn’t said a word in half an hour.