Page 74

Blood in the Varnish

T he sky was paling when we returned to the courtyard, the first fragile fingers of dawn stretching over the horizon. The grounds lay blanketed in frost, and the stained glass above the main hall caught the weak light, casting fractured colors across the stone steps.

No one spoke.

Our footsteps were soft, too soft for how loud everything inside me had become.

We were exhausted—physically, magically, emotionally. The rush of discovery, of near-death and ancient truth, had left us hollow. Even the victory of survival felt dulled under the weight of what we now carried.

As we reached the divide between dormitories, we paused. Just long enough to exchange quiet nods, unspoken promises.

Then we splintered, fading one by one into the quiet dark.

I climbed the spiral stairs to the fifth floor, my steps sluggish as I made my way down the long hall.

I peeled off my coat with trembling hands. The satchel that had felt like an extension of me now felt too heavy to bear. I placed it gently on my desk and stood there for a long moment, watching the frost gather on the edge of the window.

The Raven’s Echo sat cold and unmoving at my chest.

Am I meant to do this?

Or have I only inherited someone else’s curse?

I sat on the edge of my bed, shoes still laced, body too tired to move and too wired to rest.

That’s when I heard the soft knock at the door.

Just once—a mere whisper against the wooden frame.

I almost wondered if I imagined it at all. I stood slowly, the heaviness of the night still clinging to me, and opened the door quietly.

There he was. Samael, his silhouette etched against the dim hallway like a fragile shadow. His coat slung loosely over one shoulder, a dark bruise blooming just beneath the collar of his shirt. He looked as worn as I felt, but the moment our eyes met, something in me eased, lifted, breathed.

We didn’t speak.

We didn’t have to.

He simply stepped inside.

We sat on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder, the silence between us not awkward but thick with the things we didn’t say, couldn’t say.

I felt the weight of the night pressing down, remembering how close we came to losing everything—to losing each other.

I closed my eyes, just for a moment, letting his nearness soothe the chaos inside me.

My shoulder brushed his, and he unbuttoned the top of his shirt with a quiet wince.

The slash across his ribs had begun to scar but looked raw and angry. The tattoos that covered his chest—once proud and deliberate—seemed faded, dimmed by pain.

I swallowed hard, the sight of his wounds tangling with the fear and relief that still clung to me like a second skin. I wanted to ask him a thousand things, wanted to tell him a thousand more, but the words stayed trapped. They’d always stayed trapped.

Instead, he spoke first, his voice a low murmur. “I should’ve protected you better,” he said.

My fingers found the edge of the blanket. A soft, fraying comfort between us. “You nearly died doing exactly that.”

He exhaled, slow and quiet, as if releasing more than just breath. “I’ve faced worse, but this—this is different.”

I turned to him, searching his face for something I couldn’t quite name. “Because it’s me?”

He met my gaze, and the honesty there was almost too much to bear. “Because it matters.”

The words struck deeper than they should’ve, unearthing feelings I’d fought to ignore. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t cling. We didn’t dare. It was more fragile than that, more precarious in its tenderness. He let me see him, really see him, and the truth of it was enough to unravel my resolve.

Instead, I reached for the jar of salve Lydia had made weeks ago and carefully spread it over the wound. He tensed once, then stilled under my hands. The room was quiet, but it hummed with understanding, with the fears we couldn’t say out loud.

It was the most honest we’d ever been.

I try not to wonder what it means. If it means anything at all.

He sat with me until the sky began to brighten, until the shadows in the room started to lose their edge. When he finally left, it was with a lingering look back, a look that told me everything I was too afraid to hear.

I’m not sure how I feel about him, about us, about anything.

The uncertainty weighed heavier than exhaustion, heavier than fear. It tied a knot inside me that wouldn’t unravel, that felt as if it was pulling tighter with each breath I took. I lay back on the bed, eyes wide in the dim light, the Raven’s Echo a cold presence against my chest.

I almost convince myself that the voice I heard in the woods was a trick, a cruel joke played on me by the universe.

I almost believe it, almost. Though deep down, I know better.

The truth of it sat like a stone, like a curse.

It is a curse, I think.

I closed my eyes, and all I saw was Samael’s face. All I heard was the echo of his words, bouncing off the walls of my mind, sinking in past all my defenses.

Because it matters.

The confession was a gentle violence, an unraveling of everything I thought I could keep contained.

I’d always believed distance would protect me.

That if I didn’t let myself feel too much, I could keep from breaking.

But he made it impossible. The bruise on his skin was a bruise on my heart, and I couldn’t pretend that it didn’t exist. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t care, that I didn’t feel the pull of him even now, even when he was gone. Even when I was alone.

My family’s legacy was a larger mystery, more terrifying with every new clue.

I wondered if I had the strength to uncover it, to survive it.

I wondered if I had the strength to let anyone close enough to try.

I needed to be certain that this—whatever it was—wouldn’t leave us just as ruined as the Vale Sisters left themselves.

The room was silent, but my thoughts were loud enough to drown it out.

I fell into a restless, uneasy sleep.

I awoke long after the first students stirred.

I hadn’t slept—not really. The restless dreams had finally calmed to a simmering quiet, a silent acknowledgment that I couldn’t outrun what I had learned.

But I felt more grounded somehow—like being seen had stitched something back together inside me. More than fear. More than expectations.

I got ready slowly, methodically, hands steady but my heart still racing ahead.

By the time I made my way to the dining hall, Bethany and Leander had already returned. The sun had just begun its descent again, the day wasting away to darkness.

I met them just inside, both of them looking wrung out and uncharacteristically quiet. Preoccupied. They were pale and both glistening with sweat.

“Detention?” I asked, watching the rare strain in their eyes.

Bethany flopped dramatically into the armchair. “With Coldwell. For three days. Morning and night.”

She groaned and dropped her head into her arms on the table, hair spilling over her face in a red curtain.

Leander pulled out the chair next to her, wincing as he sat. “It was brutal. He didn’t ask a single question, not even about curfew. Just barked orders like he was training us for a military assault. We spent an hour levitating boulders in the snow.”

Bethany peeked up from her arm. “And then twenty laps around the courtyard. Twenty. Laps.”

“He’s really embracing his inner tyrant,” I said softly.

“No,” Leander replied with a weary smirk. “He’s always been a tyrant. We just usually weren’t in his line of fire.”

The scent of roasting root vegetables and bread drifted across the dining hall, but none of us moved for food. The exhaustion was too deep in our bones.

I glanced up just in time to see Lydia enter, her long coat drawn tight against the chill still clinging to her.

Her platinum hair was pulled back into a loose braid, and a stack of weathered parchment peeked from beneath her arm.

She spotted us and came straight over, sliding into the seat beside me with barely a word.

“You look like you’ve been through a war,” she said, glancing at Bethany and Leander. “Should I be concerned”

Bethany grunted. “Coldwell went full tyrant. No questions, just brutal drills. I think I saw my soul leave my body around lap fifteen.”

Lydia raised a brow. “So, no interrogation?”

“None,” Leander confirmed. “Just pain.”

Lydia set her satchel down, flipping open the worn flap and pulling out a few folded pages. Her expression shifted—more focused, slightly excited beneath the fatigue. “Then maybe it’s a good thing you were too busy running laps to dig further into this.”

She spread a page across the table, smoothing it carefully. The parchment was old, the ink faded, but her red annotations brought clarity to the looping script.

“I found this,” she said quietly, “tucked between the spine and the back cover of Cordelia’s binding. It must’ve slipped down into the inner layer. It’s not part of the journal—this was written on separate parchment. A note.”

She tapped the faded writing.

I leaned closer to read the looping scrawl:

‘Fear the dark, for in it you are blind.

The light is your lifeline. Without it, you will perish.

Do not stray from it, no matter the promise of shadows.’

A chill passed through me that had nothing to do with the winter outside.

Bethany leaned in, frowning. “Cryptic, much?”

“It sounds like a warning,” Leander said. “A very specific one.”

Samael arrived in that moment, his coat half-unbuttoned, looking more himself than he had earlier—but only just. He moved with that signature quiet grace, but there was a new alertness in his eyes, a sharpened edge.

He dropped into the seat beside Lydia, nodding to us. “What did I miss?”

“We found another message,” Lydia said, gesturing to the parchment. “Or maybe even—a trial.”

He scanned the writing quickly, then looked up. “Darkness that kills, light as survival. That sounds less like a metaphor and more like literal magic.”

“I think so too,” Lydia agreed. “Something that feeds in the dark. Maybe a warded gate, a cursed chamber, a realm shrouded entirely in shadow. Whatever it is, Cordelia clearly didn’t want anyone stumbling in unprepared.”

I stared at the page again, reading the words silently.

Fear the dark.

That meant this next relic—if that’s what the message referred to—wouldn’t just be hidden.

It would be guarded.