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He puts up both his hands as if frightened, but a smirk taints the gesture. “All right, alright, Mr Jones.” He is barely affronted. I know several London-born boys that would have drawn on me for the attitude alone. “Maybe you’ll show me a thing or two, next time we meet an androphagus.”

Someone shushes us. Another comments on our disrespect; we are speaking over the Hunter who’s come to address us.

“This is a gift,” the Hunter is saying, taking the podium from Dean Drearton. “What you have now is a chance to prove yourself, the very essence of you. But as much as it is a gift, it is also an exchange. Kryptos Logos endows something upon you. The Mantle you choose will define the rest of your life. But,” a short laugh undercuts her words, “as per a personal habit, I’m letting myself get too far ahead. The choice of the mantle is an entirely different task altogether. Admissions should hold your focus. They are far more pressing — and it would serve you all to concentrate on them. Far better to worry on that which you can control than to fret over the imagined exams you might never have to take.”

A polite chuckle ripples through the crowd. Neither Leo nor I laugh, but I doubt it’s because he has a refined sense of humour.

I watch the Hunter. Something undercuts her tone. Not fear, exactly, which has a stench to it, and usually struggles to be so perfectly hidden. But an awareness. A weariness. Like being in the hall at all is setting her on edge.

It does not bode well for the trials.

The two great doors on either side of the dais shift and open suddenly. A great creak echoes through the hall.

“Through there,” the Dean says, “you will begin your admission to the University.

It’s a ceremony. I see all the marks of it. The people who’d opened the doors are wearing togas. Their faces are obscured by masks in the shape of bulls and leopards. Symbols of Dionysus—which makes little sense. Dionysian mysteries are all about control—or the lack thereof. Of losing it, of seeing every refined thing in you melt away. My heart begins to race. I want to know the meaning. I want to understand.

“Please proceed in an orderly fashion.”

The crowd buzzes again in reaction, anticipation like needles underfoot, animating all their bodies. They split down the middle, the seam of the crowd unravelling them into two columns that funnel through each door.

My stomach opens up and I suffer through a terrifying, dizzying instance where I’m terrified of what’s behind them.

“What is this?” Leo asks me, nodding to the Dionysian masks. “A Hellenistic fan club?”

Up close he is nothing short of godlike. Symmetry, warm golden tone beneath his skin, a gleam in his eye that conjures for me the whim of the fae.

Stop it. Christ.

“Or a cult,” I offer. I’m relieved when Leo smiles at me, even though he was an ass earlier.

“Bet you know more than me,” he says with a grin, and I know now why he’s chosen to sidle up to me and not the Lin siblings. We cut a deal in the forest over my brother’s body. Cigarette, and all the University’s secrets. For that face, I might have spilt it all, if I knew any. I watch the pink flesh of Leo’s tongue press against the back of his teeth. He’s waiting for me to answer; I don’t.

“Come on, Mr Jones!” He slaps me heartily on the back. He’s all muscle and strength. I feel it reverberate through me.

I choke and play it off with a cough. “Why would I ruin the surprise?”

“I’d rather you ruin it than let me find out the worst.” Still smiling, but something in the facade is cracking. I feel another gaze on me; turn and find Fred spinning away.

Just as I’m thinking I’ve found a friend, there’s the truth of it. This is an intelligence mission. They’re all in it together.

I play to his hand. My lungs yearn for a cigarette. “Well, Shaw, what happens if you go in and find out it is indeed a cult? That the reasons so few stories escape this place is because so few people do?”

Leo scoffs. He’s grinning, but his eyes darken; a morbid turn to his energy. “I’d much rather know now so I can skip heartily back into the wilds and get eaten.”

We’re swept along. I find myself passing over the threshold, and there’s a shift in the air, a tension that fills the small vestibule waiting on the other side.

We pass the threshold, both physical and metaphysical, and I whisper the name of what I’m seeing, Leo shivers at the sound.

“Phlebotomia.”

7

LESSON SEVEN

Bloodletting.

I can’t hold back my surprise, even when I am the expert in Leo’s eyes.