“Hurry now,” Jace warned. “It’s still a long way.”
He took off up the steps with her in his wake. She found herself holding her breath for long stretches, expecting to be accosted by an alchymist or some other scholar on these steps. But as they wound around and around the narrow stair, they encountered no one. Most likely everyone was out watching the last of the legion marching toward the summit.
“Almost there,” Jace gasped out, his cheeks ruddy, his back soaked with sweat. She suspected a significant amount of that wetness came from fear. He slowed, pausing at a landing, and nodded toward the door there. “This leads out to the eighth tier.”
He was giving her one last chance to take another path. She could escape out that door and no one would be the wiser. “If you hid on this tier, I could fetch the prioress to you,” he offered.
She considered it, swiping her damp brow.
Before she could answer, a bell clanged loudly, muffled by stone, then growing louder as its ringing spread throughout the school.
The last of the latterday bells.
She stared at Jace and waved for him to continue. But he suddenly lunged at her and shoved her behind him. He leaned back to pin her against the wall. She panicked for a breath—then heard the rasp of a lock and the creak of a door being opened. Brighter light bathed them both.
Hidden behind Jace’s bulk, she could not see who entered.
“What are you doing here, Journeyman Jace?” a woman asked with a note of accusation.
Nyx cringed as she recognized the nasally voice of Sister Reed, the novitiate who taught the seventhyears.
Jace stammered for a frightened breath, then straightened but kept Nyx hidden behind him. “I … I was summoned by Prioress Ghyle, to pick up and return a copy of Plentiarorio’s Doctrine of Seven Graces to the scriptorium.”
Sister Reed groaned, “Then get about it, rather than blocking my way.”
Jace scooted to the side. Nyx matched his step to stay behind him. Sister Reed scuffed past them both, likely with hardly a second glance at someone as lowly as Jace. Still, they waited until her footsteps had faded before hurrying upward again.
The rest of their flight was a blur. Jace led Nyx up to the ninth tier, across a cavernous room under a candelabrum smoking with strange alchymies, and down a long, curved hallway. They encountered a handful of scholars, but Nyx kept in Jace’s shadow. Luckily, the others all appeared to be too involved in their own affairs or with what was happening outside to even note Jace’s hurried passage.
Finally, their trek ended where the black volcanic rock of the alchymists’ towers brightened into the white limestone of the hieromonks’。 Between those two, a tall arched doorway stood to one side of the hall, plated half in iron and half in silver.
Jace rushed forward and used a hinged knocker to rap loudly.
Nyx winced at the noise, expecting knights to rush down upon them from all directions. In truth, she couldn’t even be sure the prioress was still in her chambers. If not, Nyx was prepared to go shouting up and down these halls if need be.
I have no more time.
Finally, a faint shuffle sounded, and the door opened on well-oiled hinges.
Nyx exhaled her relief when she spotted the familiar countenance of Prioress Ghyle. The woman’s eyes narrowed curiously at the sight of Jace, then widened when her gaze discovered who stood beside him.
“Nyx?” Ghyle must have immediately surmised that something dire had happened for Nyx to be standing at her threshold. “Get in here.”
The opening was pulled wider, and she and Jace rushed through. The prioress closed the door after them and stepped to follow—then turned back and twisted the bolt in the door.
“What’s this all about?” Ghyle asked.
Nyx struggled with where to begin. She took in the room, which was circular in shape, lined by shelves of ebonwood on one side and white ash on the other. Dusty books, cubbied scrolls, and strange arcane artifacts filled the shelves. In the center was a table halved by the same woods. Nine high-backed chairs stood around it: four white, four black, with the last and tallest split like the table into ash and ebonwood.
Nyx realized here must be where the Council of Eight deliberated and discussed matters pertaining to the school, presided over by the prioress in the ninth seat. Nyx also took in the four tall hearths, presently cold, and noted other doors that must lead into the prioress’s private chambers.
Ghyle drew her toward the table. “What has you so distressed to risk trespassing up here?” she pressed.
Nyx opened her mouth to speak—when a stranger, seated with his back to them in one of the tall chairs, stood and faced them all. The man wore the black robe and crimson sash of an alchymist, but Nyx had never seen him before. He looked a decade or two younger than the prioress, with dark auburn hair tied in a tail and bright hazel eyes.
Nyx took a step away from the stranger, only to have the prioress hold her from retreating farther.
“This is Alchymist Frell hy Mhlaghifor. From Kepenhill in Azantiia. A former student of mine. You can speak freely in front of him.”
Nyx realized the man must’ve come with the king’s forces. Despite the prioress’s reassurances, Nyx didn’t know if she could trust a man who had arrived with the same legion who intended to sacrifice the captured bat.
The alchymist approached with a smile that seemed genuine. “Ah, this must be the miracle girl. Survivor of poisons. And the bless’d of the Mother. And someone the king demands we secure and take to Highmount.”
The blood drained from Nyx’s head at his words, dizzying her for a breath. “Wh … What?”
Jace looked equally shocked and turned to the prioress. “You can’t let that happen.”
Ghyle turned to the both of them. “Trust me, I will do everything in my power to keep Nyx here. Alchymist Frell was kind enough to alert me in advance, so I might ready my arguments.”
Nyx pictured herself being trussed up in chains and dragged to some dungeon in Highmount. She might never see her father or brothers again. But even that heartbreak paled in comparison with what was to come.
“I … I must tell you something,” Nyx whispered, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. She cast a guilty look at Jace, then concentrated on the prioress’s kind but firm face. “Something I’ve kept from all of you.”
“What does it pertain to?” the prioress asked.
“Moonfall.”
A gasp rose—not from the head of the school, but from the strange alchymist. He shifted closer. “What do you know?”
Nyx didn’t have an answer to his question.
Everything, nothing.
She slowly related all that had happened during that strange visitation, about the nightmare, about the disturbing visions—both in the past and atop some blasted mountaintop. She finished with, “I think I was rescued in the swamps by one of the M?r bats, raised as one of her own, alongside the one who visited me.”
Jace looked aghast, even stepping away from her.
Nyx sniffed back tears. As she fought against them, the alchymist leaned closer to the prioress. Nyx heard his whisper.
“You don’t think she could be the same child. Graylin’s—”
“Not now, Frell.” Ghyle held up a hand. “Such speculations can wait. But it is now clearer than ever that we cannot let this girl fall into the shadow of the king. That must not happen.”