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But—I think I’m twisted in a base way. Who revels in something like this? Why does it feel so good to know she suffers like I do?

I rub my face and get down on my knees beside her. She flinches away, dragging her legs underneath herself, makes a noise like a half-formed, “Stop.”

I stop. I don’t get closer. “Victoria. . .”

“Can we not?” she whispers. “Let’s just—not.”

A silent scream rages in my throat. It’s vanished. Any kind of friendship we had—it’s gone. And I know it was never so very close, but it existed. Didn’t it?

I stand up quickly because I might rot on the carpet if I don’t.

“Come on,” I say, and I head for the door.

* * *

The cohort is much smaller than I remember. The dean clicks his tongue and opens up his pocket watch, sighing.

“Right,” he mutters. He raises a hand and gestures, just two fingers, and out of the morning mist come two Blood Hunters. They step out from under the colonnade, back near the dining hall, but they don’t come towards us. They split up. I watch them meander their way into various towers, various rooms. We’ve had an hour to eat and assemble, but not everyone is here.

It takes a while, but soon there are shouts. Then screams. I go completely still as I hear it, and I can feel the dean at my back, watching.

“What,” someone hisses beside me.

“They don’t wish to complete their trial,” the dean says behind us. He’s speaking like the delay is a slight inconvenience, and keeps looking over his shoulder for something near the west gate. “And only students or graduates may leave the grounds. You made the agreement when you came onto campus. In the Phlebotomia.”

Bloodletting—but not just for tracking us. For a blood bound, an unbreakable covenant. We all agreed, after all, to do this. To complete these trials. And the man did say we wouldn’t be able to live within London’s wards if we chose not to complete them.

I watch several screaming, struggling individuals be dragged from their rooms. The Blood Hunters have a student each, and those students are promptly restrained by something I can only imagine are Artificer-made shackles, because they both stop screaming and relax fairly instantly.

Someone darts out of a room and legs it first for the west gate before he spots us—then he turns desperately and barrels into a waiting Hunter. But another flees across the grass. There’s a whistle. Another Blood Hunter emerges to chase the runner.

“God,” the dean mutters. “Ah, here we are. Good, good. Come on, then.”

He calls out the last part as weary students emerge; some from their apartments, some from further in campus, near the library. We all make a show of ignoring the screaming of whoever’s resisting.

The Lins arrive. Fred looks haggard.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

She shrugs, but gives me a look. “Stayed up all night.”

“Thinking of leaving?” I whisper.

She stares right through me and blinks. “There’s no leaving,” she says softly, and we both turn to watch the Blood Hunters trap our fellow students. Fred puts a hand over her face and exhales into it.

“One more,” I tell her, and she nods, gives me a brief and very fake smile.

“One, two—good. Good. That’s everyone in your room, Mr Jones, isn’t it?” the dean asks, and when I nod, the dean gives me a grin. “Wonderful. Lucy will take you.”

A woman I hadn’t noticed before ducks her head as her name is called and steps forward.

“Follow me,” she murmurs placidly, and I wonder, if she is a graduate, how she ever survived this place. And that’s a judgement based on looks alone, but she seems sweet fundamentally, like the awfulness of these trials never managed to affect her. She is Indian, I guess, and wearing a black bycocket hat with netting draping. It makes her look like a funeral mourner, but it’s beautiful. She’s in a long wing collar in starch white, covered by a burgundy leather trench with a shoulder cape. A little S on her shoulder marks her Scholar—that thing I once wanted to be.

I have barely any time to wonder why we’ve been handed off to a Scholar. I see other rooms being led out of campus, but no one is heading in our direction. We leave the west gate out of the campus grounds, and I expect more people to run—but what’s the point? Hunters of all kinds surge into the green by the west tower on campus and watch us go. They will be stationed there until one of us runs.

We are led up to Ludgate. Most of the streets are empty. I crane my neck to the sky, as if time inside the campus is altered; London is never this quiet. But then we pass a main thoroughfare, and manage to catch sight of a procession. Something I’ve never seen before. A swelling mass of bodies. I think it’s a celebration, but it’s a different beast.

Workers, families, all of them are packed tight and shouting. Hunters on horseback or up on buildings, shouting orders in Latin, roughly pulling people to the ground. Violence against the people they are meant to be protecting.