Something is wrong, and Cyan feels powerless to do anything about it. He recounts the last teaching day before exams in his first year at Twelvelms as tensions mount and friendships are strained…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Descriptions of severe skin irritation
• Discussion of alcohol abuse
• Descriptions of a character in the midst of alcohol abuse
• Discussions of life-threatening behaviours
• References to self-harm
• Descriptions of severe child neglect
• Descriptions of an injured animal

Transcript

Something is wrong. 

You’re sleeping and I won’t wake you about this. You need your sleep and it’s not like you could help me anyway. Not because you aren’t fierce, little girl, you are. You’d wave your little fists at anything that came our way, I know. You’re our girl and our girl is a fighter. 

But you’re just so very, very small. 

Something is very, very wrong. 

I started feeling it about an hour ago. I woke up and it was right there behind my eyes, this horrible feeling of pressure, of fear. Of course I’ve been afraid for days but not like this. This fear wasn’t mine. It was coming from. From Felix. I’m almost sure. He’s afraid.

I’ve packed everything we’d need to run. Enough potion base for you to last for a week. Some bread for me and sea salt to mix with water for my skin. We’re close enough to the sea that we could go there, but I don’t know how to explain to you what would happen, and I don’t know what it’d do to you, small as you are, to be forced to be my passenger. But I could do it if we have to. Protect you with magic. Keep you safe. Take you to the sea. 

Except whilst we’re close to the water we’re not that close, there’s at least a mine between Abagnale’s protection spells and the water. I can’t concentrate on magic to keep us safe and on you and on running all at once and we don’t know what the Scarletts know about you. If they have your blood, if Reilly somehow… they could find you. They could maybe even find you just with Reilly and your father’s blood, Abagnale says. That’s why we have to stay here!

[CYAN GASPS]

Oh Tegid’s depths what am supposed to do? What do I do?

I need to calm down. That’s what I need to do. I don’t know what’s going on and I— I don’t know that it’s even fear I’m feeling or that it means anything is coming for us. I need to calm down. I need to calm down. And maybe it’s not reassuring to think that it’s just Felix who is in danger right now, but it’s something. It’s something. 

Talking is good. It helps. It steadies me. My mother used to sing when she was scared. I think this is the same. There’s magic in a Selkie’s song. I’ve never been much of a singer but since Abagnale pulled me out of that pool of my father’s blood I’ve certainly become a talker. And this is for you, I’m doing this for you, making a record of this for you.

Yes. Talk. I need to talk, that’s what I need. 

[INTRO MUSIC: This is the Twelvelms Conspiracy. Episode Eleven, Bonds and Burdens]

Reilly put distance between us after she found out what I was. I tried not to let it get to me, but with Felix keeping me at arms length too, I started to feel exactly as I had when I’d first come to Twelvelms; alone, monstrous, and uninvited. The only person who made that time bearable was Quinn. Reilly had stopped offering to come with me to the library and Quinn diligently filled her place instead, helping me whenever I got stuck. Her knowledge wasn’t as encyclopaedic as Reilly’s, but she was less prone to wandering off down barely relevant tangents, so on balance she was just as helpful. 

Selfishly, I also liked that Quinn was on my side in all of this. She’d known Reilly and Felix for much longer than she’d known me, so by rights that’s where her loyalty should have been. She would steadfastly insist on us all having breakfast together every morning, going as far as to start physically dragging Felix out of his bed to come down to the dining room, but otherwise, she was happy to give the others their space. 

‘It’s just very disappointing,’ Quinn told me. ‘Anyone would think she’d be thrilled to have a selkie around.’ 

‘Half-selkie.’ 

‘Yes, well, either way, Reilly should be probing you with questions every hour of the day. And if it’s about the fact you’d not told her until now, you were only doing as you’d been advised to by Abagnale. How could you know to trust her?’ 

‘It’s alright Quinn.’ 

Quinn shook her head, angrily thumbing through the pages of the book spread out between us. ‘It really, truly isn’t. I expect better from Reilly. And Felix? Well. It’s so patently about him and not you. Have you tried to speak to him yet?’ 

‘I. No.’ 

Quinn groaned. ‘Cyan. You need to build a bridge here. You care about him and I’m sick of you avoiding each other’s gaze. It makes breakfast incredibly awkward.’ 

‘Then maybe I should start eating in my room.’

‘Absolutely not. You are a scholar of Twelvelms, whatever the circumstances of your coming here might be, Abagnale clearly thought you were worth the risk. Regardless, you’re here now and you’re my responsibility. And I say you should eat breakfast with us.’ 

Quinn really seemed to believe what she said. I wanted to take her at her word but it was hard. I felt monstrous, especially with Felix accompanying me every night in near silence. He’d started bringing a bottle of wine with us, plucking one off the shelf as we walked through the storeroom at the entrance to the tunnels. Quinn knew he was looking out for me and she seemed to think that was encouraging, but she was also extremely adamant that Reilly leave Felix to his own devices when it came to the drinking. I couldn’t personally see the logic in that. She’d been so angry about the fact he’d been taught to use magic to hurt himself, but wasn’t this the same? He may not have been cutting his flesh but he was causing himself pain, even though he claimed to be dulling it. He was falling asleep in lectures. He’d thrown up in Practical Casting twice. Even though it didn’t seem to affecting the quality of his magic, it was clearly hurting him. 

I tried to bring it up with Quinn but she basically told me this was just how it was with Felix. You had to give him a wide berth to let him deal with things whatever way he would. Ah, that hurt me to hear. I didn’t want that. But she had known Felix so much longer than I had and she seemed to care about him so I concluded she just had to be right. So every day we’d go to the baths and he’d drink his wine and stare at the walls and I’d lie at the bottom of the water and pretend I couldn’t hear the way the breath stuttered in his chest, like he was trying not to cry. 

I tried to take comfort in the fact he was still showing up. At least there was that. It was a better state of affairs than the situation with Reilly. She wouldn’t even look at me. 

On the last Friday before our exams were due to begin Quinn finally snapped. We’d all been woken up extremely early by some shouting outside, so there was already tension in the air before we even sat down. 

‘It’s those fucking dogs,’ Felix grumbled, pouring whiskey into his coffee. Reilly pursed her lips but Quinn gave her a warning look before she could say anything. 

‘I’m sure they’re just doing what they can to keep us safe,’ said Quinn. ‘You ought to be grateful. You were so scared the night of Samhainn, I’d think you’d—‘ 

‘I wasn’t scared,’ said Felix, gulping his drink. ‘I was fucking terrified.’ 

‘Well, whoever broke in—’ 

‘It was a Spicer.’

‘Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. There are more Watcher’s here than there are guarding the Raeg itself. There’s no way anyone is getting in or out without people noticing.’ 

‘What about the tunnels?’ I said. 

Felix gave me an exhausted look. ‘The tunnels are all mapped,’ he said. ‘The dogs will be down keeping an eye on all the exits.’ 

I stared at Felix. Not once in our journeys to the baths had we come across a watcher or their familiar. There was only ever us and the bird. We had to light the glass candles ourselves every evening. Nobody was going down there but us. 

‘So that’s how you’ve been sneaking around,’ said Reilly, sourly. ‘I’d wondered how you managed to find a place to access seawater, but the baths under the school! It all makes sense now.’ 

‘Keep your voice down,’ Quinn warned. 

Reilly bristled. ‘Why? Worried someone’s going to expose the monster you’re protecting.’ 

I shrank in my chair. 

‘He’s not a monster,’ said Felix. 

Reilly clucked her tongue. ‘Right. Of course. He’s only a mythical creature previously assumed to be extinct who has a reputation of ripping out the throats of people who care for them.’ 

‘Care for them?!’ Felix hissed. ’In those stories, the selkies were fucking prisoners! Do you not understand that?!’ 

‘Can you all stop saying that word?!’ Quinn snapped. 

Reilly went stiff in her chair, staring at her toast and marmalade. 

‘You have to get over yourself, Reilly Rowse,’ Quinn.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t have told me if you didn’t want me to talk about it.’

‘Cyan is your friend.’ 

‘I hardly know him,’ Reilly countered. 

‘He took a risk, being open with you.’ 

Reilly glared at Quinn. ‘The risk isn’t only his though, is it?! I can’t afford to shoulder that burden. In case you’ve forgotten, Quinn, I’m not like you and Felix. All my prospects depend on me doing well at Twelvelms. Now I know that Abagnale has brought a—‘ 

‘Reilly,’ said Felix, voice low and steady.

Reilly hunkered closer to the table. ‘Abagnale has broken the rules. It’s not that I don’t admire his ambition, I really do. I can even imagine why he would do something like this. I just wish he’d waited until I wasn’t here. Or failing that, that Cyan had kept his mouth shut like he was supposed to. I cannot be involved in this. I’m sorry.’ 

Reilly got up from the table and marched out of the room. Felix, in the chair next to hers, sighed. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. 

Quinn smiled, exhausted. ‘Thank you.’ 

Felix shook his head. He didn’t look at me before he left. 

I shrank behind my scrambled eggs. 

‘It’s the stress of the exams that’s making her so high strung,’ said Quinn, miserably. ‘Once they’re done she’ll have space in her head to process this, and she’ll get over it. Especially once we go back to Deva for the summer. I was just so hoping we’d be able to get to a place of understanding before that.’ 

I had no idea what was going to happen to me over the summer. Abagnale would have a plan, I was sure, but I couldn’t fathom what it might be. I had a vague notion that he spent his summers doing research projects. Maybe I could go along with him. Or maybe I would be the project. Either way, it’d mean time apart from Quinn and the others. Whilst I hoped that maybe it would mean Reilly would have time to process what she’d learned about me, I also increasingly worried that in my absence she’d be able to convince Quinn that I was as risky and monstrous as she believed, and Quinn’s allyship would be gone when our second year started. 

And then there was Felix. I didn’t know what to think about Felix.

Quinn put her head in her hands. ‘It’s all just so ridiculous. Sometimes I wish I could just turn back the clock. Even to last summer… Not because you weren’t there. Just because. I don’t know. Everything’s been different since we came here. Of course, it was always going to be, I know that. We’re full mages now, this is the start of the rest of our lives. We can’t be parmagers forever. 

‘But. Oh it’s all just so absurd. If I could slow things down a bit, even. Put off these exams another few months. At least then we’d all still be going to the same classes, working towards the same thing.’ 

Quinn sighed. She leaned back in her chair, toying with the necklace her signet stone hung from. 

‘We used to build forts in the summer, you know. First, just Reilly and I, but Felix joined in once he came, too. We’d spend a week or so gathering supplies from the woods at the edge of the castle grounds, then choose a spot just inside the tree line.’

Quinn’s vision of summers at Castle Derwen made my mouth sour with jealousy. I could see it all so clearly. The ramshackle fortress built with boughs of fallen trees, held together with string and Felix’ magic. A place where they’d sit to read and tell stories, have picnics under the dappled shade cast by the trees above, in earshot of the stream that fed the castle moat. Deer would pass by and if they lay still and quiet enough, they’d come to forage for mushrooms in the undergrowth right by the fort’s entrance. 

It sounded lovely. Idyllic. The vast gap in our experiences ached in my chest.

As I got dressed alone in my room, I thought about Quinn, Felix and Reilly spending time lounging in the summer sun whilst I was locked in the attic of my father’s cottage, holding cloths soaked in seawater against my cracked and peeling skin, listening to the haunting songs of my mother, muffled through two layers of floorboards. 

Maybe Reilly was right and I shouldn’t have been brought to Twelvelms. Everyone knew I was not meant to be there. Even Quinn had made that extremely clear at first. She may not have known what I was, but she hadn’t needed to be, and saving Felix the night of the break in had made Quinn think that maybe there was some good in me, but she had started out being so convinced I did not belong and she was right. 

I might have told her I was half-selkie, but I’d only told her half of the lie. She still didn’t know my father was a mage, still had no idea I’d killed him. Felix had seen some shadow of that violence the night of the break in and the night I’d met his brother, but he still didn’t know. Reilly already hated me and thought I was dangerous to be around even without knowing what I’d done. 

It was hot, that day. We were almost at the summer solstice and the sun had been shining from four in the morning so it was already hot when Quinn and I walked to the main building. I kept my hand jammed into my bag, knotted into my fur. Reilly bristled when she arrived at Bionomy. She sat three rows away from Quinn and I. Felix sat with her.

‘Oh this is ridiculous,’ Quinn muttered as Reilly bolted from the lecture theatre before Quinn and I had chance to catch her at the end.

‘She’s just scared,’ said Felix. 

‘And what about you? Are you scared too?’ Quinn snapped. 

Felix pursed his lips. Quinn shook her head and marched ahead of us to try to catch Reilly, muttering under her breath.

‘You’re holding your coat,’ said Felix. 

I let go of it immediately. 

‘It’s the sun isn’t it? It’s drying out your skin. Maybe you should go and soak now?’ Felix asked. 

‘It’s the middle of the day.’ 

‘So? Practical casting isn’t until two. We’ve got three hours. What else you going to do? Sit there with your hand in your bag looking constipated?’ 

‘I. Okay.’ 

Felix glanced around, then turned back to the main university building. The entryway was busy, but nobody even looked up as we slipped through the big wooden door that led to the baths. Taking the tunnels made the baths feel distant and safe, but they really weren’t. They were right there under the main building. Every time we’d been there together, there had been scholars and teachers right above us. 

My heart was hammering as I pulled on my coat. 

‘They won’t come in,’ said Felix. 

‘How could you possibly know?’ 

‘In case it somehow escaped your notice, I spend a lot of time down here. A few of the professors come down in the evenings, but other than that, we’re safe.’

I nodded, taking off my shoes. 

‘You really think I’d let you be in danger?’ Felix asked, softly. 

‘I don’t know what I think,’ I admitted. 

Felix cringed. ‘Right.’ 

‘It’s not that I don’t trust you.’ 

‘You just think I’m mad.’ 

I glowered at him. ‘No?’ 

‘It’s okay, Cyan. You can say it. Gods know plenty of other people have.’ 

‘Why would I think you were mad?’ 

Felix laughed and there was a sharp, nasty edge to it. ‘Oh come on, be serious.’ 

‘You think I’d call you crazy because of the stuff that happened to you?!’

Felix stared at me. ‘I jumped out of a window and abandoned all my responsibilities.’ 

‘They shouldn’t have been yours in the first place!’ I hissed. 

Felix shrank. He turned to the wall. ‘I saw the way you looked at me when you found out.’ 

‘I don’t think you’re crazy, I— I don’t. I don’t! Is that what…? All this time that’s what you’ve been thinking?’ 

‘I didn’t know what to think and you never told me.’ 

‘What was I supposed to say?’ 

Felix didn’t answer. He stared at the ground. 

‘You don’t have to keep coming here with me,’ I said. 

‘What?’ 

‘Quinn knows now. She can be my look out,’ I said. 

‘You don’t want me here?’ 

‘It’s just you don’t really seem to want to be here. If it’s guilt about what happened on Samhain or… it doesn’t matter. You don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to come.’

‘You think I… that’s what you think I’m here for? Obligation?’ 

‘I don’t know. Come on, Felix. Things have been different.’ 

‘What. You mean since you went behind my back and—’ 

‘Quinn only told me because she was worried. She noticed I’d got better at practical casting and she thought you’d maybe. Taught me some tricks.’ 

Felix’s eyes were wide, but emotionless. ‘She thought I’d told you to hurt yourself and that’s why your casting improved?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘It doesn’t work by the way.’ 

‘What?’ 

‘Hurting yourself doesn’t actually work.‘That’s not why I’m good at practical casting. I used to think it was, but it isn’t.’ 

‘I. Oh.’ 

‘If you’re bad at practical casting or start with, if you hurt yourself all it will mean is you’re bleeding whilst you’re bad at it.’ 

‘So why do people think—’ 

‘Because blood is the key in a lot of old magic, all right? It’s botched logic, that’s all. If you were thinking of trying.’ 

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Good. Why do you think I still come down here with you?’ 

‘I don’t know. The bird, I guess.’ 

Felix shook his head minutely. ‘You’re ridiculous.’ 

‘You barely speak to me.’ 

‘You’re a fucking seal most of the time, hardly good for conversation.’ 

‘But you. You sit all the way over there.’ 

‘I’m studying. In case it’s escaped your notice, we’re at university and our placement exams will be on us next. Surely even without speaking to you, Reilly’s been drilling into you as much as she has me.’ 

‘Yeah but, you don’t need to study.’ 

‘What?’ 

‘You’re smart and you’re good at everything.’ 

Felix blinked rapidly. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ 

‘You don’t care about this stuff, you make that known pretty readily, but when we come down here, you spend the whole time with your nose in a book and it’s like— I don’t know.’ 

‘I’m here, aren’t I?! You need a look out. I’m looking out. You don’t need to worry that I’m going to have a break down or something.’ 

‘I’m not, I just—‘ 

‘What? You want me to lay into the gory details about what happened to me when I was a kid? Want me to get out my scars and tell you the dates I made every one of them?’ 

‘No! Why would I— do other people want that from you?’ 

‘Generally speaking they want me as far away as possible. Most people don’t think I should be here at all.’ 

‘That makes two of us.’ 

‘Except nobody knows what you are, Cyan. You get to keep it secret. I don’t get that privilege.’ 

‘You think this is a privilege?!’ 

‘I wish nobody knew. I wish there was a way for me to hide this. But there isn’t. Everyone knows what happened to me, to more or less of a degree, and it’s all they see when they look at me. I see it in their eyes. I’m the Traitor Prince of Coven Sambucus to everyone I pass and there’s no way around it. I’m a disgrace or a warning or a sad fucking story.’ 

‘That’s not what I think.’ 

‘Don’t lie. It’s fine, I get it. Poor little Felix. Better keep him away from tall buildings and sharp objects. So weak he couldn’t face up to the responsibility of being the next Sambucus Consul even though that’s literally the reason he was born. Maybe it would have killed me and maybe I didn’t care but that’s not why I jumped. I just had to get out and there was no other way. They didn’t think to put very strong protections on the window because of the cliff and the rocks and the sea because what fucking idiot would fling himself out in those conditions but I did because it was fucking worth it. I come down here because I give a shit. I told you I’d be your lookout and I am.’

‘And I’m glad, okay?! And I don’t think you’re— I don’t. I lived in one room before I came here. the attic of my father’s cottage. I could hear my mother singing through the floor but that was it. I only saw her… it doesn’t matter. Just. I get it. Okay? I get it.’ 

Felix frowned. ‘You only lived in one room?’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

‘But your coat. How did you soak.’ 

‘I had a basin and wash cloths.’ 

Felix blinked. ‘Your skin starts cracking up if you don’t soak for an hour every day.’ 

‘Yes, exactly! I’m not a— I’m not a person, Felix. I’m not— I’m not human, I’m a thing! Reilly was my friend and now she knows and she can’t even look at me because I am so fucking dangerous that just being near me is enough that it could ruin her life if anyone found out.’ The words turned thick and stuck in my throat. 

The anger and bitterness was completely gone from Felix’s expression. His eyes were wide, searching mine. ‘Reilly’s just worried about her future, that’s not your fault.’ 

‘No. What happened to you isn’t your fault. Maybe people do judge you but they’re wrong to. But Reilly is right to be scared of me, Felix.’ 

‘No, she’s—‘ 

‘Yes! Yes she is! My parents didn’t die in a car crash!’ 

‘Well, obviously I thought it would be unlikely that your mother—’ 

‘My mother fled into the sea after I killed my father to set her free!’ 

Felix blinked. ‘What?’ 

‘I killed him! I didn’t even mean to do it but I was just so fucking angry. It was so easy. I could feel all the water inside of him and I was so angry and tired and in pain and my mother was going to die if I didn’t do something and that water inside of him, it felt like it was mine. It felt like it belonged to me and he didn’t deserve to have it anymore and so I took it away, and it came out of him in red arcs like beautiful ribbons and they swirled through the air out of his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. I wish that I was scared when I saw it but I wasn’t. It felt good. I felt powerful. And then he dropped to the ground and the blood fell with him and he just lay there and he was dead, Felix. Dead. Because I killed him.’ 

I was breathing so hard I could smell my own blood. Felix was breathing hard too, staring at me, eyes wide. 

‘He kept you and your mother prisoner, like in those Selkie stories,’ said Felix. 

The words burned me, I don’t know why. 

Felix called my name. It was like hearing it from the bottom of the bath. I dropped into the water, felt it swirling around me. It felt like the world was coming apart. I twisted into my seal form to try to make the feelings smaller but they wouldn’t go. They wouldn’t. I turned and rolled through the water, swimming, desperate, furious. I wished I could get to the sea. I wished there was nothing ahead of me but miles of open water. I wished I could leave the way my mother had left, so I never had to look at Felix again. 

Felix dropped his bag to the floor. The thud rang off the cave-walls. I breached the water’s surface. He was staring at me. His eyes, flat and devoid of feeling before, caught an odd glint of light. 

Before I knew what was happening he was jumping into the water, fully clothed. For a moment he was completely submerged, motionless under the water. His hair swirled about him. My heart felt like it had stopped in my chest. I shifted forms and reached for him, pulling him upwards.

‘I can swim!’ He protested. 

We were face to face, his hands on my shoulders, mine on his hips. Too close. I let him go, twisted through the water to lean against the edge of the bath on my elbows.

‘I’m not scared of you!’ said Felix. ‘I’m not.’ 

The words echoed through me like I was otherwise completely hollow. 

‘Cyan,’ said Felix. ‘Please believe me.’ 

I shut my eyes, pressed them against my arm until I could see stars on the insides of my eyelids. 

Felix called my name again. He was closer than before, leaning up on the side next to me. I didn’t want to look at him. 

‘My father was not a good man,’ I said.

‘I gathered that.’ 

‘No, listen. He wasn’t a good man but he cared for me. He’d gone to great lengths to keep me alive. He’d bring me food and sea water to wash my skin with. He’d made sure there were books for me to read.’

‘You think that’s enough to—‘ 

’No! I don’t think I— I just. Listen.’ 

Felix dipped into the water, submerged up to his nose.

‘When things got bad my father would peel me from my bed and drape my coat over my shoulders, lay me in a copper tub full of seawater,’ I said. ‘Too weak to fight, to even resist him, I’d look up at him through the water’s surface. My throat was too dry to speak, but if I could have managed it, I’d have asked him to hold me under there until even my seal’s lungs started to cry out for air. Until, desperate, I’d suck in a lungful of that soft salt water and feel it fill my body. Let me sink, sink to the depths. 

‘He only ever held me under for a few seconds, though. He’d lift me out, pluck the hair from my eyes, and set me back on my bloody mattress, still sopping wet. My coat dripped a trail of water across the floorboards to my door. After he’d bolt it shut, he’d hang the coat on a hook outside. I’d lie there, listening to the steady drip drip of the water from my fur, feeling it dry inch by inch. He’d leave it hanging there a day or two. By the time I was well enough to get out of the bed and press myself against the old wood and scream for it, he knew he could lock it back in the chest downstairs.’

I wasn’t panting anymore. I was breathing slow, calm. I could taste my heart in my throat. 

‘If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him,’ Felix whispered. 

I finally looked at him. Felix was close again, and his eyes were burning. His signet stone glowed purple red through his soaked shirt. ‘If your father wasn’t dead, I’d wring the life out him with my bare fucking hands.’ 

I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore, Couldn’t stand the weight of it all. I shuddered into my seal form to try to make it feel smaller but it still didn’t help. He was still right there, looking at me like I’d not shifted forms at all. Felix leaned forward, touched his forehead to mine. ‘I do want to be here,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ Felix’s hands smoothed the back of my head. ‘I’m so sorry you had to do what you did. I am so glad that you did it.’

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, the waters of the bath gradually turning still around us. When we finally got out, we were laughing, awkward, unable to really meet each other’s gaze. Both sopping wet, we walked down the tunnels, headed towards Derwen house. 

‘You want to check on the bird?’ Felix asked, when we reached the fork in the path. 

‘Yeah, alright.’ 

When we reached the cells, though, it was clear right away that something was wrong. The iron bars were gone, receded into the stone walls around them. Straw was strewn across the floor, clogging the drainage stream down the centre of the room. Felix was breathing fast as he stood in the bird’s cell, kicking the straw aside like it might be hidden there.

‘It’s gone,’ he said, voice tight, eyes panicked. 

‘What do we do?’ 

‘I don’t know. How do we— what if he’s come for it?! What if he’s back?!’

‘We’d have heard, surely they’re be some kind of sign that something was wrong?’ 

‘Something is wrong, Cyan, the bird is gone!’ 

‘I know that, but maybe it just— maybe the Spicer found a way to sever the link and—’ 

Felix looked like a wild thing. ‘No! He’s taken it! He must have.’ 

‘We have to tell Quinn,’ I said. ‘She can speak to her grandmother about this.’ 

Felix was still frantic, but he nodded. We bolted back to House Derwen as fast as we could. When we got there, though, the whole place was in chaos. People milling about, talking. Others embracing each other in tears. 

Felix grabbed my arm so tight it hurt. ‘He’s back,’ Felix hissed, ‘he’s back.’ 

I searched through the crowd, looking for some sign of Quinn or Reilly, but I couldn’t see them. There were more scholars gathered out in front of the building so I led us there, Felix still clinging to me. Abagnale stood next to one of the Watchers who’d been patrolling the grounds of the school for weeks. She was on her knees in her pale purple uniform, sobbing over the body of a thing lying on the path. A dog. Her familiar. 

The dog was perfectly still on the path, except for the gentle, untroubled rise and fall of its chest. A fly buzzed over it, landed on the surface of its half-open eye. It didn’t blink. 

‘Hollow sleepers,’ said Reilly. She was in the crowd alongside us, next to Quinn, who had her hand over her mouth. ‘Hollow sleepers,’ Reilly repeated. 

Abagnale looked up from the dog, stared right at us. 

‘We need to go,’ said Felix, voice thin and taut. 

‘Cyan,’ Abagnale called over the crowd. ‘Come with me.’ 

Felix’s grip on my arm tightened. 

‘It’s alright,’ I said. Felix’ eyes were wide but his grip on my arm loosened enough for me to pull away and walk towards Abagnale, and the almost-dead dog in the middle of the path. 

He trusted that I’d take care of myself. 

I feel— I think he’s still afraid but I think it’s getting smaller now. I hope that just means he’s safe, or that he understands better what might be coming. He’s always trusted me to look after myself. I have to trust him to do the same. 

I do trust Abagnale.

I have to. 

[END]