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Luo Wei grumbled to herself and arranged her face into a suitably surprised expression.
"Your previous classroom? Don't tell me you're a senior from the advanced division?"
Wordsworth lowered his arm. The fire in his eyes dimmed.
[I was. Not anymore.]
"Why?" Luo Wei probed gently. "Did you graduate?"
He said nothing. He just stared at the advanced division's church with blank, distant eyes, as if a tide of sorrow had already closed over his head.
"Ah, could it be..." Luo Wei clapped a hand over her mouth, her dark eyes darting. "Could it be that you... died young? Before you could graduate?"
She blinked her big eyes, excitement flickering in them. "Senior, um — would you mind telling me how exactly you died young?"
"Was it suicide or homicide?"
"Did the academic pressure get to be too much? Couldn't take it anymore?"
"Or was it a crime of passion? A love triangle? An illicit same-sex affair?"
Wordsworth had been in the middle of his melancholy.
He was no longer in his melancholy.
[None of those! Stop guessing wildly!]
This junior was insufferably nosy. If he didn't speak up and clear his name now, his reputation was going to be in ruins.
[I didn't die inside the academy. I was already an Undead before I enrolled.]
Luo Wei's lips curved for just a moment, quick enough that no one would catch it.
"What — Undead?" She stiffened. "But I've never heard that Siria Magic Academy admits Undead students?"
[Of course the academy doesn't admit them. I used a disguise to sneak in. If I hadn't blown my cover to save someone, I would have graduated long ago!]
The words tumbled out before he could stop them, and half his secrets went with them. Wordsworth froze, realized what he'd done, and scrambled behind the tree in a panic.
Even with a trunk as wide as a person between them, Luo Wei could feel the waves of regret and helplessness rolling off him.
"Don't worry, Senior. I won't breathe a word."
She set the oil lamp on a gnarled tree root, rose onto her heels, and slowly backed away.
"This is a hand lamp, for you. Don't put candles on the windowsill anymore — they blow out too easily, and they're a fire hazard."
"I'm leaving now. Goodbye."
Her footsteps faded into the dark. The oil lamp stayed behind on the root, its warm glow spilling across the leaf-strewn ground.
After a long moment, a dark head eased out from behind the tree trunk.
The girl was gone. Only the lamp remained, burning quietly.
Wordsworth stared at it. He reached out and touched it, then snatched his hand back. A pause. Then he reached out again and lifted it by its cord.
For him?
How had she known he liked light?
This junior was strange. The first time they met, she'd smeared blood all over his face. The second time, she'd asked whether he'd killed himself or been murdered. He should have been furious. But she'd given him a gift.
Undead were creatures of darkness. They couldn't produce light, and they didn't like being touched by it.
Wordsworth was the exception. He hugged the oil lamp to his chest and drifted happily into the church.
Under the willow tree across the stone bridge, Luo Wei watched him go and narrowed her eyes.
Compared to a puppeteer, Wordsworth seemed much more like the puppet.
His mind, his behavior , both a little too unguarded. Not the manner of someone experienced, or calculating.
No rush. She'd pried his mouth open tonight. Getting him to talk in the future would be far easier now.
She lowered her head and pulled a crumpled scrap of parchment from her sleeve. Still intact , good. She didn't want to have to redraw it.
She folded it into a neat little square, tucked it into her coin pouch, and headed toward the student council office in the dark.
Seven days of reconnaissance, and she had perfected the art of doing as little as possible.
She didn't actually need to walk the entire perimeter of the academy walls. She only needed to check in at the main square gate every three hours, leave her trace on the boundary line, and she was done.
The office was empty when she arrived. Even the owl was gone.
Spring was almost here. The field mice had eaten through their winter stores and were out and active, and for the past two nights the owl had been hunting them obsessively, not returning until dawn.
Luo Wei pushed the desks together, spread a cushion across them, and lay down.
Before closing her eyes, she summoned Niko and gave it strict instructions: wake her in exactly two and a half hours.
Niko tilted its fuzzy little head, hopped up beside her pillow, and fixed her with two enormous unblinking black eyes.
"Niko is a little alarm clock," Luo Wei said, lying on her side and poking one of its legs, biting back a smile.
Niko raised its pedipalps. All eight legs shifted, swaying left and right.
No. Niko is a little spider.
"Alarm clock." Luo Wei poked it again and closed her eyes. "Alright. I'm going to sleep. Goodnight, Niko."
Niko lowered its pedipalps, tucked in its legs, and settled down. Luo Wei's peaceful, sleeping face reflected in its jet-black eyes.
She'd had less than three hours in the afternoon. The moment she closed her eyes, she was gone.
The dreams were restless. The sky pressed down, dark and heavy, as if the clouds might crash to earth.
She stood on a barren hillside outside the city, head tilted back, staring up at something.
A crow's cry split the sky open. The dark clouds tore apart. Blinding golden light poured through the gap.
Angels descended from the distant clouds, spilling from a pillar of light, carrying divine wrath with them.
Blood-red haze spread across everything. Two vast, lidless eyeballs materialized in the sky, their cold gaze locking onto her, pressing closer , slowly, deliberately , studying her the way someone might study a speck of dust.
Found you. Blasphemer.
She has defiled the gods. Kill her.
Kill her.
A chorus of whispers flooded her ears, and with them came a strange, insistent itch.
It grew unbearable. Luo Wei reached up to scratch her ear, knocked her hand against the back of a chair, and jerked awake.
Niko leapt down from beside her ear, waving its legs to get her attention.
Luo Wei sat up in a daze. "Was I dreaming?"
Niko raised a claw and began circling the chair in anxious little loops.
"It's already time?"
Niko dropped to the floor, tugged at the hem of her skirt, then bounded over to the window. It turned and stood in front of the latched stained-glass pane, claws waving furiously.
"You want to go outside? Fine, fine..."
Luo Wei got up and cracked the window open for it.
BOOM!
Thunder cracked across the sky. A gust of wind slammed the window wide, sending her hair whipping around her face.
Lightning split the darkness. Another crash of thunder followed. And there, drifting between the black clouds , a faint, flickering gold.
Luo Wei stared at that sliver of light. So what she'd seen that morning wasn't an illusion. There really was something moving inside it.
What was it?
The dream surfaced in her mind. Her pupils shrank.
Angels?
Were they all here for her?
This was a disaster. Just yesterday she'd told herself she had options, an escape route. And now she'd walked straight into a dead end. Pride really did come before a fall.
She reflected on this for approximately three seconds, then decisively fished out the turtle shell she had neglected for days and stroked its smooth green back.
"It was wrong of me to ignore you. I promise , starting now, I will read my fortune every single day."
She closed her eyes, steadied her breathing, and sank into the star chart waiting inside her mind.
➤ Next: Despised by God
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