Page 46 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

His smile grew a harder edge.

“You mean besides my family?” he asked dryly.

“The Greythornes. The Warringtons. The Exegers. The Voltaires. The Bloodstones. The Fortunas. There are others.” His eyebrow lifted.

“A hundred years ago, I would’ve added the La Feys to that list. But their orientation changed around the time your great-great-grandfather had a falling out with mine. ”

At what was probably a stunned look from me, he shrugged.

“There’s a whole list of families who’ve widely been known to harbor certain views about Overworlders,” he said. “It’s the worst-kept secret in Magique. That list is significantly longer than the one I just gave you, incidentally.”

I frowned. “You’re telling me your own family are suspects? And Alaric’s?”

His mouth hardened. “Of course my family are suspects.”

Before I could react to that, he stopped suddenly, and turned.

“Wait… Alaric’s?” His gold eyes grew a harder scrutiny. “You know Greythorne?”

When I didn’t say anything, his jaw hardened.

“How do you know him?” His eyes slid out of focus.

After barely a second, I let out a low scoff. “Please stop trying to read my mind. I can feel it now when you do that, and it’s really obnoxious.”

“Do you know Alec?” he demanded. “Or not?”

I fought with how to answer that.

Alaric already told me Caelum was the reason he’d gone out of his way to avoid me for the past month.

He’d also made it clear Caelum wouldn’t like it that we were friends.

While I thought it utterly ridiculous on one level, to cater to Bones and his nonsense, another part of me hesitated on the possibility of causing problems between them.

Maybe, selfishly, I didn’t want to lose Alaric again.

“You are friends.” That time, he didn’t word it as a question.

I looked up, and Bones was staring at me, bewilderment in his gold eyes.

“How?” he asked pointedly.

“We both lived at Dragon’s Keep all summer,” I said, a touch defensively.

“He was the first person I met here. He was nice to me. And then he was in my bridging course, and he taught me a lot about Magique. He even went with me to Wulfric’s Bank the first time, to officially take possession of my inheritance.

” Pausing, I added warningly, “Please don’t flip out on him over this.

He’s been avoiding me since the school year started because of you, worried about how you’d react.

And he is my friend. I’d like to keep it that way. ”

Hesitating, I added, maybe as a peace offering, “And he’s who I was with last night, by the way. You asked who I hung out with, after I drank the gold amulet? It was Alaric. I finally caught him alone long enough to ask him why he wouldn’t so much as look at me whenever any of you lot were around.”

Caelum stared at me, his expression blank.

He opened his mouth, closed it, then frowned, his eyes leaving mine.

I definitely got the impression I’d knocked him off balance, but I still wasn’t really sure why, or which part of it actually bothered him.

I could practically feel some reaction in him, intense enough that I worried he really would lay into Alaric when he next saw him.

Eventually, when Bones didn’t speak, I forced my mind to circle back to our previous conversation.

“Tell me more about Dark Cathedral,” I said, cautious.

He hesitated a few seconds before answering, and I could practically feel him not wanting to let the Alaric thing go.

It might have been funny under different circumstances, but as it was, I simply waited, and he did let it go, temporarily at least. Shaking his head, he exhaled a little forcefully, and returned his attention to the piles of documents.

“How much do you know about them?” he asked.

“Very little,” I admitted. “I only really heard anyone talk about them for the first time last night. They’re some sort of secret society, right? One that likes darker branches of magic, hates Overworlders, and plots about various things?”

He snorted, and shook his head.

“That’s wrong?” I asked, when he didn’t elaborate.

“It might be factually correct… sort of… but you clearly don’t take them seriously enough, if you can describe them like that,” he muttered.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like they’re a rich social club wearing masks and matching robes, holding seances in their mansions in the middle of the night.” He gave me a half-incredulous look. “I wouldn’t recommend that as your approach, if you ever run into them for real.”

“Fine. How would you describe them?”

The serious look returned to his eyes.

“A cult of dark Magicals that’s been around for over a thousand years,” he said without hesitation.

“They have fundamental philosophical differences with the current order. They think the Magical world has lost its way. They don’t believe in equality between Magicals, much less between Magicals and other races.

They want to return to the old ways, where the greatest magical powers ruled over everyone else.

They want Federation Europa gone. They want the Ethnarch gone.

They want the Council of Ancients gone. They want to go back to kingdoms run by the sorcerers with the strongest, most deadly magic. ”

I thought about that, and about the human parallels.

When I didn’t speak, he picked up another file, and set it in my lap.

“They’re growing,” he said, his voice warning.

“They’re popular, and more mainstream than the Council would like most Magicals to believe.

They’ve tripled in lower-level membership in just the past four years, ever since they began actively recruiting.

Their inner circle is small, but they’ve got a lot of foot soldiers. And they’re getting more brazen.”

I thought about that, and frowned. “How do they communicate with their foot soldiers without everyone knowing who they are?” I asked. “I’m assuming it’s illegal to openly plot against the Magical government?”

“There’s a mage who speaks for them,” he said.

“Who?”

Bones shrugged. “No one knows. He wears a mask.” His gaze turned inward as he added, “He gives instructions roughly twice a month, sometimes more often, and always from different locations. He delivers so-called ‘missives’ from the inner circle, too. They call him The Priest.”

“The Priest,” I muttered. “What’s with all the church references?”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked, a touch coldly.

“Masked, huh?” I gave him a pointed look. “A golden mask, maybe?”

Bones looked away. His eyes went back to the floor as he picked up a nearby file, but I distinctly got the feeling my question brought his walls back up.

I regretted that, but I was honestly a little afraid to ask him how he knew so much about all this.

Was it from his family? Or did everyone who counted among the royals know these things?

His jaw hardened, like he’d heard that, too.

“I do want to know,” I said. “Why the church references?”

He sighed, and lowered the file he’d been reading.

“They view themselves as direct descendants of the gods,” he said.

“Or, perhaps more accurately, the Pharaohs and their sorcerers… particularly when they were one and the same. It’s why adherents believe Dark Cathedral comes straight from the religious movements of that time.

” He quirked an eyebrow. “So not human churches, Shadow. More like temples and priests for the conduct of ancient magics. It’s believed ‘Cathedral’ is a slightly skewed translation of huut-netcher, which is something closer to ‘god house.’”

I thought about that, remembering my questions about Worm Hall. “Do most Magicals still believe in those things?”

“Depends on who you ask,” he said absently. “Many do. Many also believe it was those early sorcerers who caused the rift between the human and Magical worlds. The theory is, we were all one world before that time, human and Magical alike.”

My eyebrows rose for real at that.

I opened my mouth, but Caelum had already moved on.

“Their goal has always been, in part, the overthrow of Overworld. That’s partly due to those beliefs.

To them, both kingdoms belong together, both ruled and overseen by the Magical race.

” He didn’t raise his eyes. “They get very specific about that. They’ve called for the eradication of three-fourths of the human population.

So you might want to take them a little seriously, Shadow.

They’ve got a lot of power, and magic, and support from families with considerable wealth and clout. ”

A deeper pain hit my heart as his words sank in.

I had been taking them seriously, despite what he thought, but now I wondered if I’d ever get real answers on who was behind my parents’ deaths. Was Dark Cathedral who Bones really thought killed my parents? Some global network of rich fanatics who wanted to genocide the entire human race?

And if that ideology was truly gaining popularity here, like Bones said, what hope did I or my brother have of any kind of normal life?

Bones gave me a probing look. “If you’re wondering why not all humans, they plan to enslave what’s left. Assuming they can be trained well enough to be useful.” He paused. “Any guesses as to how they’d view someone with your pedigree?”

I held his gaze, but that pain in my heart worsened.

“Should I assume you’re a card-carrying member, then?” I asked bitterly.

His eyes held mine for a breath too long.

I could have sworn I saw a flicker there, a reaction of some kind, but it was gone so fast, I couldn’t identify what it was, or even if it had been real. Then his lip curled. The last of that open, sincere quality I’d seen leeched from his gold eyes.

I couldn’t help regretting my words once it was gone.

“I wouldn’t rule it out, mongrel,” he sneered. “You’d be a fool to trust that I’m not, just because I need something from you right now.”

I wanted to scoff at him, or tell him he wasn’t as scary as he thought he was.

I also wanted to believe he didn’t mean it, but the truth was, I didn’t know.

I had no idea what he believed, really. Maybe it was enough that a lot of people in his immediate orbit, including his family, did believe it.

He’d grown up hearing it, inhaling it in, like the air he breathed.

Something about him saying those words aloud, without his friends being there to hear it, even behind the protection of his prick-persona mask, made me more sad and tired than angry.

I didn’t let myself think too closely about why that was, though.