13
Alina.
If there's one thing Umbra Noctis has taught me, it's that you don't need locked doors to hide dangerous secrets. All you need is a library and enough whispers to make the walls feel thinner than they are.
It started this morning, when the rain had driven half the academy indoors. Classes were delayed, corridors packed, and the air smelled faintly of damp parchment from the library down the hall. I'd been heading there to avoid another round of Lucien's "constructive criticism" in the dorm when I heard two girls talking in hushed voices by the archway.
"They say he's the fourth one this term," one whispered. "Vanished in the middle of the night."
"Same as the others?"
The first girl nodded. "No note, no body, no trace. Just gone. Like they never existed."
I should have kept walking. I should have filed it under "things that don't concern me." But my feet slowed anyway.
The second girl shivered. "My cousin swore she saw one of the Mystics that night. Tall, white cloak, the mask—"
The first girl's hand shot out, shushing her. "You're not supposed to talk about them."
They hurried off, and I stood there for a moment, trying to look like I'd just been admiring the stonework. Mystics. I'd never heard the name here before, but the way they said it made my skin crawl.
Inside, the library was quieter than usual. The scent of dust and ink was stronger, like the rain had pressed everything inward. I slipped between the tall shelves, pretending I had a reason to be there. My eyes kept darting toward the darker corners, half expecting a masked figure to step out.
Instead, I found myself in the section on Umbra Noctis's history. Most of the books looked untouched, spines stiff, gold lettering dulled with age. I pulled one at random; Founding of the Academy and the Pact of Realms. It was full of formal declarations and grainy illustrations of robed figures. In one woodcut, a group stood before the great portal. Most of them looked like the sort of people who wrote laws for a living, but in the center was someone different. Taller. Hooded. The faint outline of a mask. There was no name in the caption.
I shoved the book back and grabbed another, Notable Disappearances and the Great Silence. This one was stranger, more fragmented, like someone had tried to rewrite history but left gaps big enough to trip over. It spoke about "honored selections" who never returned, "summoned witnesses" who were "released from duty" without explanation. The words danced between formal and evasive, as if the truth had been folded away.
I didn't realize how long I'd been standing there until the chair beside me scraped back. Rowan dropped into it, leaning his elbows on the table with all the ease of someone who hadn't been invited.
"Morning, sunshine," he said, grinning like he'd just caught me doing something scandalous.
I frowned. "What?"
"That's what I'm calling you now."
"No."
"Yes."
Before I could argue, Lucien appeared, sliding a book onto the table with a quiet thunk. "Move your hair, sunshine. You're blocking the light."
I gaped at him. "Not you too."
Kael rounded the corner like fate had conspired against me. He glanced at Rowan, then at Lucien, then smirked at me. "What's wrong, sunshine?"
"I will end all of you," I said flatly.
Rowan's grin widened. "See? It suits you. You light up every room you walk into."
"I hope you trip on your own sarcasm," I muttered, but it only made them laugh harder.
They didn't stay, thank the stars, though Rowan lingered long enough to eye the titles I'd pulled from the shelves. "Research project?"
"Homework," I lied.
"Sure," he said, standing. "Careful what you read, sunshine. Books have teeth here."
I rolled my eyes until he was out of sight, but the hairs on my neck stayed up.
By the time I left the library, the rain had thinned, but the corridors were still crowded. I spent the rest of the day distracted, half listening in class and half replaying those whispers about vanished students. The instructors didn't seem worried. No one was making announcements or locking doors. But now that I'd heard it, I started catching snatches of conversation everywhere; mentions of rooms that stayed empty, of beds stripped in the middle of term, of names no one remembered until they did.
That night, the dorm felt odder than usual. Rowan was sprawled on his bed, flicking that coin of his. Lucien was reading, Kael sharpening a blade like we didn't have rules about that. I crawled into my own bed and tried not to think about the creak of the floorboards in the hall or the low rumble of voices somewhere outside.
When I woke the next morning, there was a small stack of books at the foot of my bed. Not my books.
The first was Forgotten Pacts and Hidden Bloodlines. The second, The Disappeared: An Unofficial Record. The third had no title at all, just a cracked spine and pages filled with dense handwriting.
I flipped through the first one. Margins underlined, pages dog-eared. The underlines always seemed to circle back to the same words: ancestry, inheritance, the hidden heir. My stomach knotted.
The second book was worse and much more specific. Accounts of students who had "slipped between the realms," some names I recognized from the whispers in the hall. A few pages had small symbols drawn in the corner; a crescent moon, a twisted star.
The untitled book was… strange. There was no author, no date, just a mess of notes, some crossed out, others rewritten in smaller, tighter script. There were sketches of the portal, diagrams of realms, and in the middle of one page, a list of surnames. Mine was there.
I snapped the book shut and glanced toward Rowan's bed. Empty. Lucien was gone too. Kael was at his desk, lacing his boots. He glanced over. "You look like you saw a ghost."
"I'm fine."
He didn't push, but his eyes lingered a second too long.
The day blurred past in a haze of classes and training. I kept catching Rowan looking at me across the yard, a little too amused for someone who hadn't been caught red-handed. Every time I got close enough to ask, he drifted off again, slippery as smoke.
It wasn't until after dinner that he cornered me. I was at my desk, pretending to read, when his shadow fell over the page.
"You like the books?" he asked.
I kept my face blank. "No idea what you're talking about."
He leaned down, close enough that I could see the glint in his eyes. "You really should read the last one. It's my favorite."
"Why?"
"Because it's about you."
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. "It's not."
"Oh, it is." He straightened, smiling that infuriating smile. "Of course, you'll have to get through the boring parts about realms and pacts first, but the ending's worth it."
I forced a laugh. "You're insane."
"Probably," he said lightly. "But I know a secret when I see one."
He turned to leave, then paused at the door. "Here's a riddle for you, sunshine. What's older than a crown, hidden in plain sight, and carried in the veins of someone who doesn't know they have it?"
I stared at him. "That's not a riddle. That's just ominous."
"Maybe." He winked. "Or maybe it's both."
And then he was gone, leaving me with the books, the riddle, and the creeping certainty that he knew more about me than he should.