Page 53 of Malcroix Bones Academy

The bell over the door tinkled melodiously, and he was gone.

The four of us didn’t move at first, just looked at one another in silence.

Then Miranda let out a cynical-sounding grunt.

“Well, boys and girls,” she said, once it was clear the odd encounter had really and truly ended. “I think we just met the class prick.” Miranda glanced at Draken, eyebrow raised, a faint smile at her lips. “That was him, wasn’t it? It had to be.”

Draken grunted, but didn’t reply.

From his eyes, he agreed with her, though.

“Caelum Bones,” I murmured under my breath.

I continued to stare at the door of the tea shop, frowning in puzzlement.

13

Inside The Iron Gates

We didn’t need a map to find the academy.

The idea was laughable once I understood the basic geography of the hidden city and the university at its center. Malcroix Bones Academy took up the exact center of Bonescastle, as well as the valley where it lived. All we had to do was walk roughly four blocks in any direction, and the school dominated our view, at least if we were looking in the right direction.

Walk five blocksawayfrom the school from the square where we landed, and I could see the high walls looming over the buildings. Walkcloserto the valley’s center from that same square, and we ran into those walls within four blocks.

The school grounds were vast, walled, magically shielded, and nestled in a relatively flat basin surrounded by low and high hills, which is where most of the city of Bonescastle lived. Walking away from the academy in any direction meant the walls, and eventually the buildings inside those walls, grew visible due to the higher elevation.

Walk far enough, and one had a view of the entire city, with the walled campus forming a city-within-a-city at its center.

Malcroix Bones Academywasthat center.

I wandered in and out of stores with Luc, Miranda, and Draken for hours after we left the tea shop. We didn’t have to be at Eustacia Morwormer Hall, (which everyone called “Worm Hall” for short, according to Miranda, who read aloud from the orientation guidebook she received but I somehow didn’t), until seven o’clock that evening. We needed to arrive on campus in time to find our assigned rooms and don uniforms and robes for the formal supper that accompanied the first assembly, but that left us around four hours to kill.

We’d all gotten house and room assignments with our last letters, along with preliminary schedules, which, in my case, had everything on it I’d requested, to my enormous relief. Those last bundles also included magical maps that showed the location of every building, every classroom, every professor’s office, the library, every common area and dining service, every study center, lab, greenhouse, coffee shop, lecture hall, bridge, field, temple, garden, and magical experimentation area.

Better yet, the maps were spelled to belong to each of us personally, and updated according to wherever we needed to be on a given day.

The maps even came with alarms, and the ability to set timed warnings.

I quickly discovered I could also add things verbally to the map’s schedule, using a keyword I alone controlled, which meant the maps doubled as calendars.

Now, on my map, only Worm Hall glowed with color, along with my assigned room. Both remained a cool blue until around five o’clock, when they turned a slightly less laid-back yellow. According to the key, at six o’clock, they’d turn orange, then redat roughly twenty to seven, depending on how close the owner of the map might be to Worm Hall.

After this first evening, Miranda said, we’d primarily eat at our assigned college dining rooms, not at Worm Hall. The school had seven colleges in total, but my letter hadn’t said how they were assigned. Since I had no idea how many students attended Malcroix Bones, I also had no idea how large each college might be.

I’d been thrilled to discover I’d be living in the same building as Miranda, Luc, and Draken. Miranda and I were even on the same floor.

“They must house all the first years together,” Luc pointed out reasonably.

I frowned at my map. “But there are seven colleges, aren’t there? I would have thought it would be six, given that.”

“Apprenticeships, masters, doctorates… they probably make up the seventh,” Luc said. “I imagine the classes get a bit smaller every year,” he added. “Especially after the fourth. Our college likely changes every year we progress through the program. I was told academic clubs do more to sort students by areas of study than the colleges where we live.”

I nodded, and felt that excitement grip me again.

I’d lost it somewhere, in that odd encounter with the mage with the white-blond hair. The fact of seeing him there, existing in my current reality, unbalanced me for at least a few hours.

Hisrealnesscompletely threw me.