Page 22 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

“It’s not presumption to use my actual name…

Draken.” Thinking about that, I scoffed.

“Anyway, you nearly getting beat up on my behalf qualifies us for first names, I think. Not to mention a literal hour of you having to listen to me and Luc talk about theurgy texts, and me having to listen to you and Miranda talk about different wing designs.”

But Draken was still stuck on the first thing I’d said.

He snorted. “Beat up? That wanker wishes.”

He looked inordinately pleased, though.

I didn’t comment. I didn’t like the certainty in my gut, but I strongly suspected that fight wouldn’t have gone well for Draken.

No, that voice in my head whispered. It wouldn’t have gone well for the sweet-natured, son-of-a-movie-star mage at all.

Somehow, I forgot all about my summer for those few hours. My brain didn’t connect the dots for the second time until we were nearly inside the university grounds.

Then, all at once, I got there.

Alaric, my mind blurted.

I came to a dead stop on the sidewalk.

Alaric knew him. Alaric was one of them.

The thought popped into my head on the last block of road around Malcroix’s outer wall before we reached the front gate.

According to my watch, adjusted for Magique time, it was roughly fifteen minutes to six.

By now, I also knew the strange clock I’d grown up with in my kitchen in Southampton converted Overworld time to Magique time, and vice versa.

Most of the clocks here were much the same as those back home.

But the time wasn’t what made me stop in my tracks.

Unless I was very much mistaken, Alaric was friends with that blond prat from the tea shop. Alaric knew Caelum Bones.

He might even have strong opinions about how to approach him with an unconventional request. He might even act as go-between, so the Bones heir wouldn’t need to know the request came from me.

Moreover, while Alaric might be an impossible gossip and royal pain in my arse, he was extremely clever.

He would know how a mage like Caelum Bones thought.

He would know how to motivate him. In our numerous lunches, dinners, drinks, snacks, study sessions, and teas over the last however-many weeks, I’d learned that Alaric was startlingly insightful about people in general.

Moreover, he seemed to genuinely like me for some reason.

He also hadn’t struck me as a bigot, which was bizarre, really, given who he chose as friends.

Alaric could help me find out what I wanted to know.

Would he, though?

He’d called Caelum a friend, and I felt certain Alaric would be exceedingly loyal to his friends, deserved or not.

A small voice in my head also whispered I couldn’t tell him that I’d seen Caelum on the streets of Overworld London when I was ten.

I especially couldn’t tell him I’d seen Caelum Bones the day my parents got murdered.

I may not know much about this place yet, but that definitely struck me as dangerous.

As much as I liked Alaric, and I liked him a lot, I couldn’t risk that the story might be so big it could slip out of control, or out of Alaric’s ability to keep quiet.

Worse, if they were close enough, Alaric might confront Caelum.

Which meant I would need to tell Alaric a different story. Maybe a partial story, one that would convince him to help me without giving it all away.

By the time I got that far in my thinking, the four of us were passing through the tall gates that formed the boundary between Bonescastle and the grounds of Malcroix Bones.

A violent shiver ran through me as I crossed that line.

Stone towers on either side of the main gates had gold pyramids on top, crowned with sharp points that looked like onyx, or obsidian.

The gates themselves were elaborately wrought in what looked like gold and silver, with massive golden snakes coiled around and through the center, and gold and silver roses and vines wrapped around the frame.

Gilded butterflies and what looked like tree roots adorned the bottom supports.

The roses and butterflies flashed with twinkling lights as I passed onto the grounds.

That cloying feeling of magic pulled me out of my mind, and out of the problem of Caelum Bones.

For a few seconds, I struggled to even breathe.

The air felt electrically charged, yet strangely soft, as if a billion tiny feathers whispered over me, making my personal acquaintance.

The sensation lit the flame in the center of my chest, making it burn hotly, like a white brand.

It also reminded me of the last part of my first magical test, in that dark gymnasium.

I rubbed the spot where it burned, and glanced at my friends.

Their eyes appeared to be glowing.

They all seemed to be breathing strangely, and walking strangely, like me.

“I feel drunk,” Miranda proclaimed.

“Your eyes,” Draken said to me. He glanced around at all of us. “All of your eyes… do mine look like that?”

“Yes,” Luc said simply.

“Did you feel that?” Miranda murmured as we walked deeper onto the grounds. “That field we just walked through? It was like… I feel like something got dumped on my head. Or maybe like an ‘on’ switch got flicked inside my magic.”

Luc and Draken nodded enthusiastically.

“I think ‘walked into’ is more accurate than walked through,” I offered.

We were all speaking quietly, as if we were in a library, or a cathedral.

“I still feel it,” I added, soft. “I read somewhere that the mages who control the protection fields here tune them to amplify certain magics for whoever lives or works on the grounds, but it’s a lot more intense than I…”

I trailed as my eyes got pulled to the changing view. My mind blanked as the landscape abruptly reformed in front of us.

Before the change, I’d seen a long line of mown grass and dark, precisely-cut shrubs leading to a stone building that looked a bit like Oxford or Cambridge, or any other old English school.

All that got wiped away once we passed through what felt like a second layer of the magical field around the grounds.

Suddenly tall, blooming trees lined the path on either side. Softly glowing lanterns hung from smooth, white branches. Statues and stone benches scattered along a wide, shaded avenue that led to what could only be described as a castle in the near-distance.

“The entire thing is illusioned,” Draken said in awe. “The whole grounds.”

“But which version is the illusion, I wonder?” Miriam asked quietly.

“This one is real.” I spoke with a certainty I didn’t think to question.

Luc glanced at me. “Those magical fields you mentioned? We call them chimeras, by the way. I read they use all five main chimeric types extensively on campus, but the outer perimeter appears to be mostly shielding and tripwire… and illusion, obviously,” he added, glancing around at where we stood.

I’d stumbled across the term “chimera” a number of times in my reading, but realized now, in listening to Luc, that I hadn’t fully understood it, or read deeply enough on the subject.

I nodded anyway, and made a mental note to ask Luc more about that later.

I already had a feeling I’d be bugging Luc a lot over the next few days.

I also made a mental note to look up “chimera” when I ventured into Bones Library.

Miranda only stared up at the white, stone walls of the castle, silent.

My eyes followed hers.

That time, it sank in just how high those walls stretched. I’d never seen a stone building that tall, and it was likely just one of the structure’s wings.

I pulled my map out of my satchel. As I’d suspected, the map had transformed, too.

I nudged Draken to show him. Miranda and Luc stopped to stare, as well. The four of us studied the three-dimensional depiction of the Academy’s full grounds, our jaws probably hitting our chests.

“There are thirteen main buildings,” I said in awe.

I pointed at another section, which moved as if alive.

“Our college is over here now, near the main structure. Our rooms moved, too, Miranda… do you see? We’re still on the same floor with one another, but now we’re on the seventh, not the second… ”

Miranda pointed to a different landmark, one I hadn’t yet noticed.

“There’s a river through the center of the grounds,” she said quietly.

“And a lake, over there,” Draken pointed out.

“We must be here,” Miranda added, tracing the avenue through the woods. “They call this ‘The Promenade.’ It cuts through the center of the grounds, all the way to the East Gate. And those must be the Skyhunt fields…”

“Skyhunt?” I asked, puzzled.

“It’s a game,” Draken said, distracted. “That must be my dorm room there, then, assuming the assigned room numbers stayed the same. So we’re all still in the same college, and in the same building. I’m closer to you two on this map, only one floor below you and Leda, Mir, and four above Luc.”

“Still two to a room?” Miranda asked.

“Yes,” said Luc.

“Well, thank Isis for that,” the witch muttered.

“What are these?” I asked, aiming a finger at a row of long, narrow buildings not far from the east side of Vulcan Lake.

They were labeled as a single structure, but actually formed four separate structures, clustered close together but set apart from everything else.

From the whispers of light they emanated, they also appeared to be heavily shielded by magic.

More “chimeras,” as Luc would say.

“They must be the experimental magic ranges?” Luc guessed. “For sparring, untried rituals, new spells, dangerous magic, and so on.”

I nodded without taking my eyes off the long structures.

Luc’s explanation made sense. They looked a bit like shooting ranges, like something she might have seen in Overworld for setting off small bombs or heavy artillery. On this version of the map, all but one shed had been partitioned into multiple cells.