Immortal Consequences
I. V. Marie
For Mami and Papi,
I would have never believed in myself if you hadn’t believed in me first.
Te quiero millones de millones.
Part I
When She Fell
1
Wren
Wren Loughty hadn’t bothered to lock her bedroom door. She had come to accept that it was rather pointless to pretend that secured locks and protective wards would make a difference. There was simply no avoiding the inevitable. So when she awoke to a set of hands clamped over her mouth, the familiar scent of peppermint and sandalwood wafting up her nose, she wasn’t all that surprised.
In fact, she’d been expecting it.
What disconcerted her was the strange dream of her mother she’d been having only moments earlier. She always found it odd that they still held the ability to sleep and dream. The dead weren’t meant to dream. Though she supposed they weren’t dead—not really. They existed in the place between. The place parallel to life and death, the one right on the cusp of birth and the dawn of the afterlife.
Whatever that meant.
She tried not to give the transitory nature of purgatory too much thought.
Pale light pooled in through the sheer drapes, illuminating the ivy-speckled ceiling in a crescent shape. Wren blinked, her vision adjusting to the darkness, and refocused her attention on her intruder.
Augustine Hughes’s familiar slate-gray eyes hovered above her with smug amusement, the right side of his mouth curled into a smirk.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for the rude awakening, Loughty.” His gaze snaked over her face with careful precision. “Had to be sure you wouldn’t scream and blow my cover. You know…given your track record.”
Wren groaned in irritation. It was true that she had acquired somewhat of a reputation for disturbing the other students in Pettyworth House. Multiple complaints had been sent to Housemaster Marigold regarding her loud night terrors, which often woke up the others and sent them running out of the dorm.
It was a flaw…one even she could admit needed fixing.
August leaned closer. “I trust I can let go without you making a scene?”
Wren narrowed her eyes in warning and attempted to snap back with a string of obscenities, though her words were muffled by his hand. Either way, the message was clear.
Don’t push it.
August smiled and dropped his hand, his body still leaning precariously close. “No need for fighting words. I’m not here for a brawl, darling.”
“Then maybe next time you can knock, instead of slapping your hand over my mouth like some deranged serial killer,” Wren spat out, swatting him away. Her nightgown was thick enough that she didn’t feel embarrassed under August’s reproachful gaze as she stood up from the bed and made for the window.
She unlatched the hook and pushed it open, cool air wafting into the room. The silver glow of Blackwood washed over her in delicate streams, dancing through the thick nighttime mist. It would be easy to mistake the ethereal light for the glow of the moon, but Wren knew better.
There was no moon in the night sky. No Earth. No universe. No world that she once knew.
None of those things existed in Blackwood.
Not really.
August leaned against the wooden bedpost, arms crossed and face twisted into that perpetual smirk of his. He wore his usual uniform: black trousers with a white button-down, the sleeves rolled up over the muscles of his forearms and a black vest fitted over his torso. A tiny scar marred the skin beneath his right eye, a peculiar detail that had always intrigued Wren, though she hadn’t brought herself to ask how he had gotten it.
They rarely spoke about their old lives. And she wasn’t going to be the one to start.
Despite their animosity, Wren could acknowledge that she might have found August attractive if they had met when they were alive. He was conventionally handsome, she supposed, with his strong jaw and unruly dark curls. Not to mention annoyingly intimidating, weaseling his way out of most situations with his smoke-filled eyes and posh English lilt. Maybe they would have bumped into each other on vacation. She could see August sprawled confidently on some beach, muscles slick with sweat, remnants of sun lotion clinging to his naturally tanned skin as he basked underneath the warm rays of the sun.
The sun.
God, she missed the sun.
“Like what you see?” August tilted his head to the side. “I can paint you a portrait if you’d like.”
Wren rolled her eyes. “What do you want?”
“I’m about to go for a midnight stroll,” he explained casually, clasping his hands behind his back.
“And you thought I’d be interested in accompanying you because?”
“Because…” He slipped off the silver ring he wore around his index finger and flicked it up in the air like a coin. “It just so happens I have it on good authority that a new student is going to fall into Blackwood tonight.”
Wren’s entire body reflexively tensed. There was a large chance he was bluffing, seeing as August wasn’t exactly the most reliable and trustworthy person at Blackwood, but it was still a shocking thought.
It was a well-known fact that the arrival of a new student was a rare event, occurring only every few decades. Blackwood ran like clockwork; there were rarely deviations from this schedule. The academy prided itself on order and balance, on maintaining tradition. But a new student had already arrived less than a year earlier, which meant that if August was telling the truth…something in the schedule had changed.