Read Chapter 1: The Memory of a Handshake

The train had smelled of rain and cheap tobacco all the way from Lyon, and Élodie Marchand carried both scents into the courtyard of the Université de Magie de Montpellier like unwanted luggage. She stopped at the iron gate, her secondhand trunk thumping against her hip, and stared up at the sandstone façade. It was older than her hometown’s cathedral, older than the idea of France itself, and covered in vines that moved of their own accord—shifting, reaching, curling toward her fingers as if tasting her magic.

She pulled her hand back. Her scholarship letter had warned her, in elegant calligraphy, to *refrain from unsanctioned magical contact*. She’d read that line five times on the train, each time feeling the ink burn like a small accusation. Memory magic wasn’t supposed to be dangerous. It was supposed to be *useless*. The kind of thing rural grandmothers used to remember where they’d left their spectacles.

A bell tolled somewhere deep inside the campus, and a tide of students swept past her—robes of deep blue and burgundy, silver pins glinting, laughter echoing off the stones. Élodie tightened her grip on her trunk and followed them.

The orientation hall was a cavern. Chandeliers hung from a ceiling painted with frescoes of old mages—French, all of them, with pointed beards and long fingers—and the air buzzed with a blend of perfumes and the static hum of a hundred active spells. Élodie found a place near the back, pressed against a pillar, and tried to make herself small. Her blazer was the wrong shade of navy. Her shoes squeaked. Her magic—that useless, sticky gift—itched at the edges of her awareness like an unscratchable mosquito bite.

She counted the professors as they filed onto the dais. Seven of them, each introduced by a slim chancellor with a voice like honeyed gravel. Enchantments professor. Transfiguration. Elemental theory. Alchemical practices. Illusion craft. Divination. And then—

“Professor Isabelle Delacroix, Chair of Arcane History and Custodian of the Restricted Wing.”

Élodie looked up. Professor Delacroix was not what she’d expected from someone who guarded forbidden things. She was small, silver-haired, and wore a cream-colored suit that looked expensive and completely ordinary. She smiled warmly at the crowd, nodded once, and stepped back toward the edge of the dais.

The chancellor moved on to announcements. Course schedules. Safety protocols. Something about the library’s fourth floor being temporarily off-limits due to a “spatial anomaly.” Élodie stopped listening. She was watching Delacroix, who had pulled a small notebook from her jacket pocket and was writing something at speed.

The crowd shifted behind her, and Élodie felt a hand brush her elbow.

“Sorry,” a boy said, already turning away, and then he was gone, swallowed by the press of bodies.

But the touch had done its work.

Memory magic operated on contact—skin to skin, soul to soul—and Élodie’s was faster than most. Faster than she wanted. The image flooded her before she could shut it out: Professor Delacroix, younger by ten years, standing in a narrow corridor lit by flickering gold light. Shelves towered on either side, their contents bound in chains. The floor was stone. Dust was in the air. And in front of her, a man with a scarred jaw was whispering, low and urgent: *“If the register falls into the wrong hands, everything we’ve built will burn. You understand that, don’t you?”*

Delacroix’s response was cut off as Élodie gasped and stumbled back.

She blinked. The hall snapped back into focus. Students milled. Professors chatted. No one had noticed. No one except Delacroix.

The professor had stopped writing. She was looking directly at Élodie, her warm smile gone, replaced by something sharper—a scalpel under glass. Her eyes moved from Élodie’s face to her hands, then back. And she began to walk.

Élodie’s heart slammed against her ribs. *It’s fine*, she told herself. *It was an accident. A handshake. A fraction of a second. You’re just sensitive. That’s all. That’s all.*

“Excuse me,” Delacroix said, arriving in front of her. Her voice was kind, but her gaze was not. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”

“I’m new.” Élodie’s voice came out too high. “First year. Scholarship.”

“Ah.” Delacroix tilted her head slightly, and Élodie felt the weight of her attention like a physical object. “From Lyon?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“And your name?”

“Élodie. Élodie Marchand.”

A pause. Delacroix’s lips pressed together, and for a moment Élodie saw the woman from the memory—younger, sharper, standing in that chained corridor with secrets pressing against her spine. Then the warmth returned.

“Welcome to Montpellier, Élodie,” Delacroix said. “I hope you’ll find our archives to your taste.”

She turned and walked away before Élodie could answer.

Élodie stood frozen, her hands trembling, the ghost of that memory still burning behind her eyes. The register. The wrong hands. The fire. She didn’t know what any of it meant. She wanted desperately to believe it wasn’t real—that her magic had somehow invented it, a fever dream brewed from too much stress and too few hours of sleep.

But she knew better. Memory magic didn’t invent. It only ever showed you what was true.

She found her dorm room by following the smell of lavender and the sound of a fizzing charm gone wrong. The room was tiny—two beds, two desks, one window that overlooked a courtyard fountain where students were already performing impromptu duels. Her roommate was a girl named Margaux from Marseille with an aggressive bob and a trunk full of enchanted cosmetics.

“Élodie, right?” Margaux said, not looking up from the mirror she was charm-styling. “Your bed’s the one by the window. Fair warning: the glass has a mind of its own. It fogged up during my nap.”

“Thanks.” Élodie dumped her trunk on the mattress. The memory of the chained corridor was still pressing at her, images bleeding into the edges of her vision like wet paint. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to think.

But Margaux was apparently not finished. “So—what’s your discipline? I’m Illusion craft. Three generations. My grandmother could make a dragon out of a paperclip.”

“Memory magic,” Élodie said, before she could stop herself.

Margaux’s hand paused. She turned, finally, and looked at Élodie with an expression that was half-pity and half-curiosity. “Oh. That’s… niche.”

“It’s obsolete,” Élodie said flatly. She’d heard it enough times to beat people to the punch. “I know.”

“No, no, that’s not—” Margaux winced. “I mean, it was the first thing taught, right? Before the modern schools. My grandmother used to say memory mages were the librarians of the soul.” She shrugged. “She also used to say the Church killed them all. So. Mixed reviews.”

Élodie almost laughed. Almost. But the memory was still there, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t just an artifact of her haphazard magic. It was a piece of something bigger. A warning.

“Have you seen the Restricted Wing?” she asked.

Margaux blinked. “The what?”

“The library. Fourth floor.”

“Oh, that.” Margaux turned back to her mirror. “Nobody goes there. The spatial anomaly freaked everyone out a few years back. Weird storms, books flying off shelves. They blocked it off.” She glanced at Élodie’s reflection. “Why?”

“No reason.”

But it wasn’t no reason. It was the opposite of no reason. It was a corridor lined with chained books and a man with a scarred jaw and a professor with a knife-blade gaze who knew Élodie had seen something she shouldn’t.

Élodie sat on her narrow bed and pressed her palms against her eyes. She had been in Montpellier for three hours, and already she had witnessed a secret she didn’t understand, attracted the personal attention of the most powerful professor in the room, and made a roommate who thought her discipline was a historical curiosity.

Her mother had told her, when she’d won the scholarship, that Montpellier was a place where she could become anyone. Élodie hadn’t wanted to become anyone. She’d wanted to become a memory mage—someone who mattered, someone whose gift wasn’t a punchline.

But the memory of that handshake had felt like a warning. And if there was one thing her grandmother had taught her about memory magic, it was this: warnings were not accidents.

Outside, the fountain burbled. Margaux hummed as she applied eyeliner with a wand of light. The window fogged up of its own accord, breath misting the glass, and Élodie watched her reflection stare back at her—a scholarship girl from Lyon with a gift that no one wanted and a secret she shouldn’t have.

Tomorrow, her first Memory Magic class. She had a tutor, someone named Dr. Camille Roux who was supposed to teach her the outdated arts. Élodie didn’t know what she’d find there.

But she knew one thing for certain: whatever was chained in the Restricted Wing, whoever was guarding it, and whatever Professor Delacroix was hiding—Élodie Marchand was going to find out.

She pulled out a notebook that had belonged to her grandmother, its pages worn soft with decades of touches. On the first blank page, she wrote in ink that shimmered faintly with traces of her memory magic:

*The register. The man with the scar. Delacroix knew.*

*What are they afraid of?*

Then she closed the notebook, and the ink faded, as if the page itself had swallowed the words whole.