Page 168 of Malcroix Bones Academy

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 andonto 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 wetalkabout 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 totalkto 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 actualpersonoff us?”

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

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