What Answered Below
The bells did not sound like bells anymore.
Their measured notes fractured above the courtyard. Bronze lanterns burned blue beneath the cloisters, and silver seams appeared between the stones under Aurelia’s knees. She tried to stand. The ground tilted.
Azalea caught her beneath the arms.
“No.”
“I need to see—”
“You need to stay conscious.”
Across the court, Thorne stood over the opened maintenance chamber. The fifth conduit lay among the broken remains of Orlan’s device, its narrow surface untouched by dirt. Everything else bore the marks of heat or strain. This piece looked clean.
Orlan struggled against Nia’s copper net.
“Cover it.”
Thorne turned. “Why?”
“Because it’s listening.”
The knocking came again. Three slow blows. The last traveled through the stone and into Aurelia’s teeth.
“Move everyone into the upper buildings,” her father ordered. “No direct magic against that object.”
The Alpha King’s sons entered through the practice gates. Matteo went to the west approach, Rafael to the maintenance chamber, Nico and Luca toward the adjoining classrooms. For once, their concern extended beyond the people they recognized.
Voss crouched before Aurelia. “Your name?”
“Aurelia Moretti.”
“Where are you?”
“Blackhawk.”
“What do you think of my restorative draught?”
“That it should be investigated.”
“Good. Still unpleasant.”
A stretcher floated toward them. Aurelia opened her mouth.
“If you fall,” Azalea said, “I’m telling Grandmother you argued.”
“That is emotional blackmail.”
“Yes.”
Aurelia sat.
* * *
The infirmary smelled of wet wool, lavender, and blood. Healers moved between beds with warm water and silver instruments. Beyond a curtain, someone cried for a brother.
Aurelia watched a girl with cropped curls struggle to lift a cup.
“Her hands,” she murmured.
“We’re treating her,” Voss said.
“The ward drained her from the extremities first.”
“That is useful information. Let someone else use it.”
Aurelia lay back. Her magic had withdrawn deep inside her, leaving her body to explain the cost. She could scarcely lift her arms. It should have been a relief to surrender responsibility. Instead, lying still felt like failing an examination nobody had announced.
Azalea sat beside her and took her hand.
“You stopped it.”
“Not all of it.”
“No.”
Her sister did not offer the easy lie. Aurelia loved her for that.
Across the ward, Theo helped an orderly move a supply cabinet. His shirt was torn at one shoulder. He looked toward Azalea between tasks, and each time their eyes met, her expression softened.
Aurelia’s own bond stirred.
Cassian stood near the treatment room, his left sleeve cut away. A dark bruise spread toward his collarbone, threaded with the gray corruption Orlan’s spell had left behind.
She sat up.
Voss pressed a hand to her shoulder. “No.”
“He was struck by—”
“And I am treating him. You may ask whether he’s dying if concern is going to keep you upright.”
Nia looked up from her ruined cuff. “That seems generous.”
Cassian approached. “I’m not dying.”
“The gray line hasn’t advanced?” Aurelia asked.
“No.”
“Pain in your chest?”
“No.”
“Difficulty breathing?”
“Only when Professor Voss poured something into the wound.”
“A deserved consequence of moving,” Voss said.
His mouth curved. Aurelia looked away before she could answer it.
He had refused to pursue their bond. Neither had begun a formal severance, a witnessed process either could request without the other’s permission. It carried consequences that deserved informed consideration, not a decision made in a crowded courtyard. Her grandmother had explained the distinction years ago. Aurelia had never imagined she would find herself grateful for the right to wait while resenting the ache waiting left inside her.
She would decide what happened to that bond when she was ready. His change of heart had not made the decision urgent.
* * *
Her father arrived after the last injured student had been admitted.
He spoke quietly with Voss. Aurelia heard stable, exhaustion, and, more sharply, no further magical exertion.
When he reached the bed, he asked before taking the chair.
“Orlan is in custody. The academy is under temporary lockdown. I’ve requested independent ward specialists.”
“Grandfather?”
“I sent for him.”
Relief crossed her face before she could disguise it. Her father saw.
“I’m glad,” he said quietly.
She looked down at the blanket.
“Did the knocking stop?”
“When the chamber was covered.”
Not reassuring. But information.
“I was told you directed the rescue.”
“We all did it.”
“I know. Theo braced the foundation. Nia restrained Orlan. Cassian removed the last anchor. Azalea steadied your magic.”
Aurelia studied him. He had asked, and listened closely enough to remember.
“I need you to understand something,” he continued. “You are not required to keep being the person who pays first.”
“They were trapped.”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t leave them.”
“I’m not asking you to.” His gaze moved toward Azalea’s hand around hers. “When someone offers to help, I hope you’ll consider allowing it.”
For a moment she wanted to tell him he had arrived sixteen years too late to teach her how to survive. Then she realized he had noticed the help she already accepted. He was asking to join it.
She did not know what to do with that.
“Grandfather tells me the same thing.”
“He has always been wiser than I am.”
* * *
Matteo came an hour later. He checked Azalea’s clearance first, then turned toward Aurelia.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
“I saw the court.”
“The damage will be repaired.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” He shifted his weight. “You should have called an instructor.”
“We did.”
“Then you should have waited.”
“For the students to stop breathing?”
His expression changed. “You placed yourself at risk.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not trained for academy emergencies.”
“No. Apparently that was someone else’s responsibility.”
Matteo looked toward the occupied beds. This time, he seemed to hear something beyond her tone.
“I didn’t know.”
“None of you ever do.”
She did not enjoy his flinch. That made the anger harder to hold.
Rafael appeared in the doorway. “Father needs you.”
After Matteo left, Rafael’s gaze rested on Aurelia’s bracelet.
“Don’t remove that.”
“Why?”
“It may be reacting to the foundations.”
“Did you recognize the fifth conduit?”
A pause.
“No.”
Then he left.
Azalea leaned close. “He answered too slowly.”
“Yes.”
* * *
By evening, rain blurred the windows. Nia returned with warm rolls and a container of stew, and Theo found bowls.
Azalea gently freed a twist caught beneath Aurelia’s shoulder. One of its gold cuffs had bent during the rescue.
“Grandmother will notice,” Aurelia said.
“Grandmother notices weather in another county.”
For a few minutes they ate without discussing royal failures or dangerous wards. Theo described a student who had refused evacuation without his enchanted lizard.
“Was the lizard in danger?” Aurelia asked.
“Asleep in an instructor’s office.”
“Then he had a point.”
“He wanted the office chair too.”
“Trauma affects priorities,” Nia said gravely.
Aurelia laughed and had to put down her spoon.
Cassian appeared carrying a small cloth pouch.
Nia looked over her bowl. “State your purpose.”
“Your hair cuffs,” he told Aurelia. “A few came loose in the courtyard.”
Inside lay three small gold pieces, cleaned of mud. One was scratched.
“You found these?”
“After the court was cleared.”
There was no audience waiting for his generosity. Only her friends and the quiet ward.
“Thank you.”
He nodded. Her gratitude seemed to unsettle him more than anger.
For a moment she saw the boy beneath his polished certainty. Then she remembered his eyes lowering to her scholarship ribbon.
She closed the pouch.
“I won’t stay,” he said.
“Your shoulder.” He turned back. “Tell Voss if the pain changes.”
“I will.”
After he left, Nia remained silent.
“What?” Aurelia asked.
“Nothing.”
“You have an expression.”
“I have several. It’s a versatile face.”
Aurelia set the pouch beside her pillow. She did not know whether she wanted Cassian to become better. She knew she could not make that the condition of her own peace.
* * *
Voss waited until the others went to wash their hands before returning with a notebook bound in indigo cloth.
“Dr. Baptiste?” Aurelia asked.
“A partial copy of her field notes.” The professor sat. “Eighteen years ago, the night you were born, I was here. Water rose from a basin without a spell. The old infirmary wards activated.”
“And the knocking?”
Voss’s eyes lifted sharply.
“Three times,” Aurelia said.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I had an unexplained event and a date. I wouldn’t build a prophecy around your lives because the timing frightened me.”
A sensible answer. Aurelia still wished she had known.
Voss opened the notebook. A sketch showed four channels around a central structure. Beside them, drawn in another hand, was a narrow fifth line.
“That’s it,” Aurelia whispered.
“The caption calls it a witness.”
“Witness to what?”
“The surviving diagram refers to another sheet. We haven’t found it.”
Beneath the drawing, a small crescent lay inside the hooked mark.
Aurelia’s hand moved to the base of her neck. Beneath her collar, the little crescent birthmark had begun to sting.
Her grandmother called it her little moon. Azalea had no matching mark. It had never seemed important.
Until now.
“What is it?” Voss asked.
Before Aurelia could answer, a single knock sounded beneath the bed.
The window blackened.
Not the sky beyond it. The glass itself.
A hand struck the other side, fingers spread against a surface where there should have been three stories of open air. Behind it stood an older Black woman, her gray-streaked braids drifting as though underwater.
Her mouth moved.
Voss stood so abruptly the chair fell.
“Evelyn?”
Words formed in the condensation beneath the stranger’s hand.
THE TRANSFER IS TOMORROW.
The woman looked directly at Aurelia.
Then something behind her caught her wrist and pulled her out of sight.