Page 36 of Spark of Sorcery

There’s something hovering in his eyes – something I wonder if he can see in my own.

“I’ll be holding you to that word,” I tell him.

When I return to my room, I write a short note of my own.

Tudor knows who was responsible for what happened in the trial. He is going to deal with it.

I send the note to Beaufort via raven. An hour later, another bird is knocking at my window.

And we can trust him?

I consider that look in his eyes, the determination in his voice.

Yes,I reply.We can.

Chapter Thirteen

Briony

I sleep with my body curled around the stone, my arms clutching it tightly to my chest. All night it radiates heat, vibrating against my body and by morning I swear the cracks have penetrated more deeply into the stone’s surface.

Is it broken? Did I break it somehow?

Once again I consider returning to Professor Tudor and showing him my treasure. Or perhaps I could brave the library again, see if it would help me find a book that could identify the stone.

Neither of those options seems appealing. Instead, I sit in bed and flip through that book again. I reread the account of my meeting with Beaufort. Look again at the description of what happened in the maze. It seems all the other students were hooked out of that maze as soon as that beastgot too near, or the bramble started to entwine them or any other danger ventured too close for comfort.

Did Madame Bardin manufacture things somehow so that I wasn’t saved? Or was it that shadow? Did that shadow interfere somehow?

This book isn’t going to answer my question though. However, as I’m flicking through pages again, I realize it might help answer another.

I skim through the pages, hunting for the night Odessa trashed my room. I find a description of my room being destroyed, only I was wrong. It wasn’t Odessa at all.

It seems someone else hates me as much as Odessa does. I guess I’m not surprised. Although, if I’d had to place money on this, I’d have guessed Henrietta would have been the one to destroy all my possessions.

Not Linette.

Iamsurprised that a shadow weaver like her didn’t find the stone buried in the bottom of my closet. If the stone pulls me towards it – a commoner – I’m certain it would attract the awareness of someone who can wield magic.

I flick through the next few pages. There is other information in between. A fight between two Iron Quarter boys. A description of a new homework club. And details about that day’s meal. Then there I am returning to my room and finding it trashed.

And right beneath, the information I was hoping for.

The girl from Slate Quarter lifts the firestone from her bag, relieved to find it was not stolen.

Firestone.

I’d always suspected and then dismissed the possibility. Firestones haven’t been found in the realm for hundreds of years and the last ones vanished around the same time.

But here it is in black and white. The stone I found, thestone that called me to it, is a firestone. I just don’t know what the hell that can mean.

I insist we hang out in my room the next day, which my friends definitely do not understand given that I probably have the worst room in the academy. Plus yesterday’s sunshine is long gone; today there’s an icy wind sweeping through the academy and right through my ceiling, bringing with it the odd flake of snow.

“Do we really have to hang out in here?” Fly asks me for at least the tenth time, poking at the pathetic flames in my very small fireplace.

It is a lot warmer, a lot more comfortable and a lot less vermin-infested in Clare’s room, but I’m already going to have to be dragged away from my stone for the evening. I don’t want to be parted from it for the entire day. Not now I know just how special it is – even if I don’t understand what that can mean and what if anything a firestone can do.

However, I do have someone who might be able to help me – a walking, talking, breathing encyclopedia.