Page 5 of Liminal

“Done.” Ackland sighs, snapping his grimoire shut. “Ritarn Humi.”

The two-word incantation is all he needs to send the book right back to his study. It’s a trick I’ve seen him do a hundred times before, and he sounds just as unaffected now as he did on all those other occasions.

“She put up a fight,” the rector comments, amused. “You sure can pick them, old friend.”

My one-time mentor groans. “She was just a means to an end. Now, about that wine.”

I’m not dead. Or am I? I have no ideawhatI am, but their words make me bristle.

“Next time, pick someone a little less wriggly,” Talcott jokes. “She almost kicked me in the nose. And poor Edmund will have a black eye in the morning.”

My senses feel like they’re expanding. Blending. I’m aware of so much more than just myself. I perceive a whisper of a draught three floors above me, and the groan of a shelf under too much weight by the door. I can tell that one of the shutters on the cupola is damaged, but…

I can’t feel my own toes. Nor the brush of my hair against my nape, nor the weight of my eyelids.

It takes me an embarrassingly long time to put the pieces together. I’m dead—yet not—and somehow, whatever ritual they’ve done has left me with a deeper connection to the Arcanaeum than I ever thought possible.

“Liminals.” The rector sighs the word, strapping his grimoire back into its holster. “They’re barely better than the dulls.”

The casual slur disgusts me, but no one comments or corrects him.

“Did anyone ever figure out her line?” McKinley asks. “It would be good to see if we can tap it again next time.”

“No,” Talcott replies. “For all we know, it may have been a grandparent or even further back. Not many of our kind willingly dally with dulls nowadays.”

“Edmund, dispose of the body,” Ackland commands lazily.

“Yes, Grandfather.” The sick bastard just helpedmurderme and yet, by his tone, he could be talking about the weather.

My eyes snap open, and I come face to face with… myself.

My own corpse stares sightlessly back at me, and when I turn my head to the left, I catch Winthrop embracing Rector Carlton in a one-armed celebratory hug.

Smiling. Relaxed. All of them are downright cheerful.

Precisely seventeen floors above us, the trapdoor slams shut. Theclangof metal-on-metal echoes down the stairwell and into the Vault, silencing them.

One by one, they turn back towards the altar.

One by one, their skin pales and their eyes go wide.

“Kyrith,” Ackland breathes.

I’m floating, drawing closer to them without the aid of my legs. My lips part, but my breath no longer whispers over them as I speak.

“You are allbanishedfrom the Arcanaeum,” I say, in a voice gone hoarse with rage. “As are your children, and your children’s children. From now on, the Arcanaeum will judge those who wish to enter these halls by merit, not by birth.”

I have no idea what I’m saying, but it feelsright. I get the sense I’m not really responsible at all, but rather that the Arcanaeum itself is responding to my pain and rage the only way it knows how.

Pain and rage that seem tempered—broken—without the burning in my blood that should accompany them.

“You can’t?—”

I’m right in front of Ackland now, and I reach forward, pressing my transparent finger against his chest.

“Your card is revoked.”

In the air between us, a cream-coloured card appears, stamped with hundreds of dates. A complete record of every single book he’s ever withdrawn from the Arcanaeum. There must be more here than most arcanists read in their lifetimes, the length of it trailing along the floor.