Read Chapter 20: The Aftermath of Loss

The sirens began before Élodie could catch her breath.

They were not the musical chimes that marked the hour or the soft bell that called students to supper. These were deep, mechanical howls that shook the plaster dust from the library ceiling and sent the candles guttering in their sconces. Élodie had never heard them before, but she knew what they meant. Every first-year was told on arrival: *If you ever hear the lockdown sirens, you do not run. You do not hide. You stand still and let the wardens find you.*

Margaux grabbed her arm. "We have to go. Now."

They slipped out of the forbidden archive through the gap in the iron gate—the gate that had been left unlocked, which Élodie now understood was not an oversight but an invitation. The corridor beyond was empty, but the air thrummed with urgency. Students poured from doorways like water from a cracked vessel, their faces pale, their voices overlapping in panicked questions.

"Someone's dead," a boy said as he rushed past. "In the library. They found her behind the stacks."

Élodie's stomach turned. *Not dead,* she wanted to say. *Worse than dead.* Camille had been drained, hollowed out like a gourd, left with nothing inside. Delacroix had done that. And now the university was locking down because of it.

The wardens found them in the east cloister, two stern-faced men in grey robes who took Élodie by the elbow and steered her toward the Dean's office without asking a single question. Margaux tried to follow, but another warden blocked her path.

"I'll find you," Margaux called over her shoulder. "Just tell them what you know. No more, no less."

Tell them what she knew. Élodie almost laughed. She knew so much that the telling might collapse the entire university around her ears.

---

The Dean's office was smaller than Élodie expected, and colder. The fire in the grate had burned down to orange embers, and the woman behind the desk looked as exhausted as the dying flames. Dean Moreau was a slender figure with silver hair pinned in a severe knot, and tonight her hands trembled as she folded them on the blotter before her.

"Sit," she said. Not an invitation.

Élodie sat. The chair was hard, uncompromising. Through the tall windows behind the Dean, she could see the searchlights sweeping across the quadrangle, cutting white arcs through the rain that had begun to fall.

"You were in the library tonight," the Dean said. It was not a question.

"Yes. I was studying."

The Dean's eyes—grey, glassy, familiar—held Élodie's gaze with an unnerving stillness. *She's been drained too,* Élodie remembered. *Not fully like Camille, but over years. She's a puppet dancing on Delacroix's strings.* But the glassiness she saw now was not vacancy. It was calculation.

"The student who was attacked—Camille Beaumont—she was found in the north reading room. A place you frequent." The Dean opened a drawer and withdrew a folded paper. "This is your library access record from tonight. It shows you entered the restricted stacks at half past eight. The attack occurred shortly after."

Élodie's throat tightened. "I didn't—I never went near the north reading room. I was in the stacks the whole time. You can check the archive seals."

"The seals on the forbidden archives show no entry."

Because the gate had been left unlocked. Because Lucien's key, brass and heavy in her pocket, had not been required to trip the ward. Someone had prepared that gap for her, knowing she would slip through it.

"I had permission," Élodie said carefully. "Dr. Roux gave me access. For my research."

At the mention of Roux's name, something flickered across the Dean's face—too fast for Élodie to read. Recognition? Fear? Or perhaps the faint stirring of a memory that someone else had locked away.

"Dr. Roux," the Dean repeated. "Yes. She has spoken highly of you." She set her hands flat on the desk. "But your access record shows no entry to the archives. And the seals show no breach. So either you are lying about where you were tonight, or you are lying about how you got there. Which is it, Mademoiselle Marchand?"

Élodie felt the trap closing around her. If she admitted to using Lucien's key, she would expose Dr. Roux. If she denied it, she would look guilty. Either way, the Dean—or whoever was pulling her strings—would have what they needed to move against her.

"I was in the stacks," Élodie said again, quieter now. "If the seals don't show it, then someone removed the record. Someone who wanted me to look guilty."

The Dean's lips pressed into a thin line. For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then the Dean reached into her drawer again and withdrew a small glass sphere, cloudy and cracked, and set it on the desk between them.

"This was found outside your dormitory room tonight," she said. "The wardens believe it was left as a threat. Can you tell me who might have wanted to threaten you?"

Élodie stared at the sphere. It was the same one she had found in the archives—the fractured warning with the photograph inside. But she had left it on the shelf where she found it. She had not touched it, not moved it, not—

*Someone else took it,* she realized. *Someone who wanted it found outside my door.*

"I don't know," she said. Her voice sounded hollow in her own ears.

The Dean nodded slowly, as if expecting nothing else. "You may go. But do not leave the grounds. And Mademoiselle Marchand—if you remember anything about this evening, I expect you to come to me directly. Not to Dr. Roux. Not to your friends. To me."

Élodie rose on unsteady legs and walked to the door. Her hand was on the handle when the Dean spoke again.

"Your mother," the Dean said, and Élodie froze. "She studied here. Did you know that?"

Élodie turned. The Dean's face was unreadable again, the glassy calm back in place.

"She kept her maiden name," the Dean continued. "I remember her. Bright. Brilliant, even. She left before finishing her degree. No one ever knew why."

The words hung in the air like the last notes of a dying song. Élodie's mother had never spoken of her time at the university. Had never spoken of magic at all, beyond the basic lessons she insisted Élodie learn.

"I didn't know that," Élodie managed.

The Dean smiled, and it did not reach her eyes. "Perhaps you should ask her about it. If you survive the term, that is."

---

Margaux was waiting for her outside, pressed against the cold stone of the cloister wall, her arms wrapped around herself against the rain.

"Well?" she demanded.

"She thinks I did it," Élodie said. "Or someone wants her to think I did it. She had a sphere—the one from the archive. Someone moved it to my door."

Margaux's face went pale. "That's a message. Whoever took the ritual sphere wants you to know they can reach you anywhere."

"I know." Élodie's mind was racing. "But we still have the memory—the reconstruction. If we can get it to the student newspaper, publish it before dawn, then it doesn't matter what the Order says. The whole university will see what Delacroix did. What the Dean allowed."

Margaux was already nodding. "The *Lanterne* office is in the basement of the journalism annex. I know the editor—Colette something. She's been looking for a story that could break the old families for months."

They moved through the darkened corridors, keeping to the shadows where the searchlights couldn't reach. The university was eerily quiet now, the lockdown sirens having faded into a tense hush. Doors were barred. Windows were shuttered. But the rain continued to fall, washing the cobblestones clean.

The journalism annex was a squat stone building wedged between the chapel and the alchemy labs. Margaux produced a key from her pocket—one of the many privileges of growing up with a family name that opened doors—and they slipped inside.

The basement office smelled of ink and damp paper. Colette was there, a sharp-faced young woman with ink-stained fingers and a perpetually skeptical expression. She looked up when they entered, and her eyes narrowed.

"Lockdown's on. You shouldn't be here."

"We have something you need to see," Margaux said.

Élodie reached into her pocket—and stopped.

The pocket was empty.

She patted her coat, her trousers, the inner lining where she had placed the reconstructed memory sphere after leaving the archive. Nothing. Panic clawed at her throat.

"It's gone," she whispered. "The sphere. I had it. I put it in my pocket before we even left the archive. I—"

She looked at Margaux, whose face had gone ashen.

"Did you drop it?" Margaux's voice was too loud in the quiet room. "In the corridor? In the Dean's office?"

No. She remembered the weight of it in her pocket as they ran. She remembered the press of the warden's hand on her elbow as they steered her toward the Dean's office. She remembered—

*The warden.* The way the man had lingered, his hand on her elbow a beat too long. The way his eyes had flicked down to her pocket when she stumbled on the steps.

"One of the wardens took it," Élodie said, her voice flat. "The one who brought me to the Dean. He reached into my pocket when he was helping me up the stairs. I felt it. I thought it was just the pressure of his hand."

Margaux sank into a chair, her head dropping into her hands. "Then they have it. Everything. The ritual. The memory. The evidence."

Élodie stood in the center of the room, the rain drumming against the window above her, and felt the full weight of her failure settle onto her shoulders.

*There are only two people who knew you had that sphere,* a small voice whispered in her mind. *You and Margaux.*

But that wasn't true. There was another.

Dr. Roux. The only person they had told about the reconstruction. The only one who had known what they were carrying when they left the archive.

Élodie heard the door close behind Margaux and Colette, heard their voices fade into the corridor, and stood alone in the near-darkness, the scent of ink and damp filling her lungs.

The rain kept falling.

And somewhere above her, in the locked room of the Dean's office, the cracked sphere sat on the desk like a memorial stone—waiting, patient, inexorable.

Tomorrow, Élodie would have to find out who had truly betrayed her.

Tonight, she let the grief wash over her.