Page 68 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

The Great Lawn

Both of us fell on the other side, landing in deep, thick grass.

I just stayed where I fell at first, on my hands and knees, gasping in cold, wet air. It was freezing in this new place, and it hit me that I’d been marginally protected from the elements before, even inside my aunt’s ridiculously cold house.

Now, an icy wind went right through me, cutting into my skin as if I wasn’t wearing anything at all. It made me gasp in breaths that seemed to need thawing inside my lungs.

I needed to get up.

I needed to get inside, anywhere inside, but somehow, I couldn’t make myself.

Caelum pulled himself back up to standing, and held out a hand.

“Come on,” he growled. “You’re going to freeze to death.”

“Where?” I asked numbly. “Where can we go?”

“Where? Where do you think? Inside the bloody school. You’ll literally die out here, Shadow. And I don’t think this is a night we want to be caught out of doors by the security patrol, covered in Magical blood.”

I looked around, bewildered, as the implications of his words sank in.

We were on the grounds of Malcroix Bones Academy. Without a mirror. Without anything.

He’d brought us back to the Great Lawn.

Vulcan Lake sparkled under the moonlight just west of where we were. I could see a few lights on in Malcroix Mansion up on the hill, and a few more in the various college buildings that lived mostly on the other side of the lake.

Most of those windows were dark, however.

Somehow, he’d traveled us here without a mirror, without wings, without a carriage, and practically instantaneously.

How could he travel like that? Had he used some kind of teleportation spell?

I’d never even heard of such a thing, and what would that even mean, when it came to the dimensions between Magique and Overworld?

How had he gotten past the Malcroix protection fields, the chimeras that guarded the school, when no one could even sneak a hand mirror in here without it being detected?

Then again, how could anyone do what he’d done to Ankha?

I pushed my questions aside, and fought to slow my breaths.

Before I could bring myself to speak, his deeper voice broke the silence.

“We should go into the lake,” he said. “It’ll be fucking torture, but we might have to. We’ll go up to the campus directly after.”

“No.” The thought made my bones hurt, my teeth rattle. “No. I can’t. I really can’t.”

“We have to.” His words were insistent now; he’d made up his mind. “We can’t go up there like this. We fucking can’t, Shadow.”

“Use magic.”

“What the fuck kind of magic?” he growled.

“Cleaning spells aren’t for people. You’d rip off a whole layer of your skin.

Somehow, I don’t think that’ll make either of us less conspicuous.

” His voice grew impatient. “Come on. Get up. I won’t let you drown.

Or freeze to death. We’ll go in together.

The sooner we get it over with, the better. ”

When I didn’t move, he walked towards me with forceful strides, and without seeming to slow his steps, he scooped me up off the grass and into his arms. I kicked against him feebly for a few seconds, but my heart wasn’t in it. I really was exhausted.

I also wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.

For the same reason, I didn’t scream, even when he walked both of us into the freezing cold lake without putting me down.

I clung to his neck, my teeth chattering for real, and completely outside my control.

I swore in several languages right by his ear, but only clung to him harder.

He walked us both out deeper until he was in up to his chest, then, still holding me, he bent his knees to fully submerse us in the dark water.

He still gripped me tightly when we both came up, gasping.

That time, I really did have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming.

“Rub your face,” he said, gruff. “And your hair.” He paused, then added, “I need to do the same, Shadow.”

My teeth still chattering uncontrollably, I nodded and climbed out of his arms.

Without letting myself think about any of it, I did as he said.

My whole body was shaking violently, but I scrubbed my face and neck and shoulders with my hands, then dunked all the way underwater and scrubbed and rubbed at my hair.

My breaths got short and painful within seconds.

My face hurt. My arms ached. I started losing feeling in my legs and feet, until I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to walk myself out.

I was still rubbing my arms and sandals and clothes when Caelum walked back up to me, forcing his way through the water to reach where I stood.

His hair was white again. His face was pale and pink in equal measure.

Again, he didn’t ask, but wrapped his arms around me and lifted me up.

It wasn’t until then that I realized he no longer wore a shirt.

“I transformed it,” he told me, nodding towards a stick floating on the surface of the lake. “You’ll need to do the same with everything you’re wearing when we get back. And take a real shower. With soap. Not too hot, though, not at first, or your body’ll go into shock.”

I stared at the stick that had been his shirt, then at his bare chest. He was no longer wearing the gold paint, but I saw some remaining smears of it.

I also noticed something else.

Scars decorated nearly half of his chest, at least the parts I could see.

The hieroglyphs that lit up while he’d been performing magic were no longer visible, but the scars were unmistakable.

Some of them looked old; they’d stretched wider with his muscles and skin as his shoulders and chest broadened. I stared at them, and opened my mouth.

He must have seen where I was looking.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Don’t ask me, Shadow. Not tonight.”

I closed my mouth and nodded. Then, despite what he’d just said, and what I’d silently agreed to, I asked him a question anyway.

“Is that why you charmed your body before?” I said. “To hide them?”

His jaw ticked visibly.

He continued to walk us out of the lake, his long legs sloshing hard through the dark water to bring us back to shore. By the time he’d climbed back up the grassy bank, past the reeds and onto the edge of the Great Lawn, I’d decided he wasn’t going to answer.

“Yes,” he said, not looking at me.

I nodded, and bit my tongue.

He reached the higher part of the grass and set me down on my feet.

I regretted losing contact with his skin.

The wind immediately cut through me, making my teeth chatter all over again.

His skin looked nearly blue, but I guessed he was right, that we couldn’t risk someone coming across us with me in his arms.

Something about the thought startled me.

Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it had simply been long enough, finally, for that numbing shock to be wearing off. Either way, my mind seemed to be working faster again, churning through everything that had happened that night, everything I’d seen.

Everything I still didn’t understand.

Somewhere in that, I found myself thinking about our situation for real.

We’d just washed my aunt’s blood off most of our bodies. We’d barely got out of there alive. We’d nearly been caught when the authorities descended, authorities who likely would’ve sent me away for good, if they didn’t just kill me outright.

I’d left Arcturus. I left him there to wake up, to find?

“You can’t tell anyone.”

I looked up, and hard, gold irises met mine.

“Shadow.” His voice verged on harsh. “I can feel that brain of yours going, and I’m telling you right now… you can’t tell anyone anything. None of your little fucking friends. Not Forsooth, or any of the other teachers. No one. You have no gods-damned idea how bad it would be if you did.”

I could only stare at him, uncomprehending, after he’d said it.

Some part of me did understand, though, even without any of the specifics.

I’d known, of course, that he had secrets.

I’d known for a while now that he played a sort of role on campus, that he wore a mask most of the time, even around his so-called friends, and not the gold one he wore to play Skyhunt.

I’d somehow missed the true import of those things, despite the hints he occasionally dropped, the comments about the restrictions placed on him that he threw my way, but now I could feel the weight of everything he wasn’t telling me.

I could feel the weight of him, of the secrets I could no longer ignore or pretend not to care about, whatever it was that made him how he was.

“What you did…” I stopped as the image from those final moments flashed behind my eyes. I shook my head to push them away. “There’s no possible way we’ll get away with it. Someone will know. They must’ve had someone watching the house?”

“Shadow.”

“Can’t we talk about this?” I demanded, abruptly losing control over my voice.

“I need to know if you mean it when you say no one’s coming after us, or if that’s just wishful thinking.

You barking orders at me isn’t going to cut it…

I need you to talk to me about what we just did.

I can’t just pretend nothing’s happened, that we didn’t both just wash the blood of an actual person off us?”

“Yes. You can. You can pretend, Shadow. You have to.”

When I stared at him, his eyes flinched, but his lip only curled.

“You knew who I was. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

“I’m not one of your idiotic royal friends,” I snapped. “I know you’re not that. You wouldn’t have been so offended that I called you a bigot if you were, and anyway, I’ve known for a while that you’re not who or what you pretend to be. Only Alaric seems to actually see you, apart from?”

“Apart from you?” he jeered, eyes cold. “We have quite the high opinion of ourselves, don’t we, mongrel?” His voice lowered back to a threat. “And shut the fuck up about Greythorne, will you? You don’t know the first thing about me and him.”

I wrapped my arms around my torso.