I come to with a gasp, sitting just as I was before Patricia’s walk. There’s a sound I can’t quite parse. An “—ee” sound. I hear it again. “—ee?” A question. I blink and see Patricia on her knees, her hands trembling on my shoulders. Her mouth moves, and this time I hear it. “Bree?”
“Patricia.”
“Oh, thank God.” She pulls me in tight for a hug, then sits back. “You were here, but you weren’t here. Breathing but unresponsive. Louisa wouldn’t let me call on her again. I had a feeling I should wait, but—”
I shake my head to clear it of the fog, but the memories—my memories now—cling. Images paint the inside of my mind, pulsing through my consciousness like drums. Abby’s back. Mary’s hands. Bloodcrafters. The determined look on Pearl’s face. The crossroads child and his golden-orange gaze. The Shadowborn Gate.
A pack of hellhounds crossing to our world.
My eyes find Patricia’s. “You have a sister named Ruth.”
She blinks. “I did. She passed a few years ago.”
“Oh,” I whisper. “I didn’t realize.”
Patricia smiles like she knows what I’m thinking. “I’ve walked with her. I miss her, and yet I see her when I need to. Why do you ask?”
“Because I walked with her too. When she went to school here. When was she enrolled?”
“She graduated maybe twenty-five years ago. Why?”
It feels like she’s just punched me in the gut. My mother was at Carolina twenty-five years ago, maybe living in a dorm not far from where Ruth was that night.
Then, I remember what Louisa showed me—Pearl’s baby that was cast away, the red-eyed man who was its father—and dread in my stomach grows until it chills me through. “I have to go.”
“Go where?” Patricia blinks. “What did you see?”
“They showed me those memories on purpose,” I murmur, scrambling to my feet. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
“Bree! What happened?”
“I’m sorry!” I’m already pulling my phone out of my pocket as I run.
* * *
Nick doesn’t answer my call, but it doesn’t deter me. I have every intention of sprinting through campus and straight on to the Lodge, until I realize I have to stop somewhere first.
Because as urgent as my new missions are, I have to see it.
When I reach the statue, it’s like I’m looking at it for the first time.
Carr stands in full Civil War uniform with a long-barreled rifle grasped in both hands. The sculptor, whoever he was, made sure that Carr’s spine was straight, his shoulders back, and his chin up. A soldier proudly standing for a war that wasn’t won.
That venomous rage returns.
Heart pounding for too many reasons to count, I think back on the Wall of Ages and its Lines and the mixture of disconnection and frustration I’d felt staring at it. Then, from the monument’s place of honor at the top of Carolina’s campus, I look back on the school’s buildings and manicured lawns and brick walkways. I let my gaze draw lines here, too, from building to building, from tree to tree, from buried lives to beaten ones, from blood stolen to blood hidden. I map this terrain’s sins, the invisible and the many, and hold them close. Because even if the pain of those sins takes my breath away, that pain feels like belonging, and ignoring it after all I’ve just witnessed would be loss.
I stand at that statue and claim the bodies whose names the world wants to forget. I claim those bodies whose names I was taught to forget. And I claim the unsung bloodlines that soak the ground beneath my feet, because I know, I just know, that if they could, they would claim me.
I don’t know why I do it, really, but before I go, I turn around to face that statue, press both palms against it, and push. I imagine all of the hands that built Carolina and suffered on its grounds pushing through my palms too, and while the statue doesn’t budge, it feels like I’ve sent it a message.
Maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel stronger. Taller. Like I might have the roots to grow just what I need.
And then, with fire in my veins, I turn on my heel and run.
27
SARAH AND TOR are talking in the foyer when I come hurtling through the front door.
“Bree? Are you all right?” Sarah asks, taking in my disheveled appearance.
“Where’s Nick?”
Tor frowns. “Driving his dad to the airport.”
Damnit. I’d completely forgotten. Lord Davis is flying to the Northern Chapter to meet with the Regents. “When will he be back?”
“He’s meeting us at the Tap Rail tonight in an hour, newbie,” Tor says, crossing her arms. “Why?”
The bar. God, I’d forgotten that, too. Which means I can’t talk about the Gate and the mysterious figure until later. One crisis at a time, Matthews. If Nick and Lord Davis are both gone…
“I need William.”
Sarah’s brows shoot up. “Are you injured?”
“No.” I start for the hallway that leads to the elevator, but Tor steps into my path.
“Then why do you need him?”
I glare at her, too tired to play nice. Sarah steps in. “He’s downstairs in the infirmary.”
“Pages don’t go down there unless they’re told,” Tor protests. “Listen, Matthews, you can’t run around doing whatever you want—”
“Torrrrr,” Sarah groans. “Bree, go ahead.” The look Sarah gives Tor is the look you give someone who tries your very last nerve, even when you love them more than you can stand. It suddenly becomes clear who’s really calling the shots between the Scion and her Squire.
Down in the infirmary, I find William alone, sitting in a back corner behind a desk, typing on a silver laptop. He looks up when I enter, but the smile on his face disappears when he sees me. “Are you okay?” he asks, standing up, eyes already searching me for injury.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Well, no, I’m not fine.”
His face goes from relief to a wary curiosity. “What’s going on?”
A nameless red-eyed man rises up behind my eyes, followed by his amber-eyed son. “Sel isn’t human.”
William’s gray eyes widen a fraction. “Sel’s our Merlin and Kingsmage.”
“I don’t mean his titles, William!”
A muscle in his jaw twitches. “What’s this about?”
I pace as I talk. “Lord Davis made it sound like Merlins are humans who are just naturally magical. But that’s not true for Sel, is it?” When I look up, I see the subtle flex of William’s fingers, the minute jump of the pulse in his neck. My jaw clenches; I know what secrets look like by now. “You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?” he says blithely, reaching for some paperwork.
“That Sel is Shadowborn.”
“Close the door,” William orders, his voice sterner than I’ve ever heard.
How many more secrets are there? “I—”
“Please.” His lips press into a line.
I follow my friend’s command because of the “please,” but I feel my trust in him bleeding away with every step I take back to his desk.