I filled my channels with mana gathered from Le Journal De La Voisin. My capacity had risen since my last attempt to break into the library. Despite that, I knew I'd be using every scrap I could manage.
The most recent students who had attempted Lion Hall's challenge to steal books from the restricted section had all been torn to bloody ribbons by the sentinels. By all accounts, my break in with Sylas had resulted in the place's security going up several notches for the rest of the semester. Probably something about "giving students the chance to survive an encounter with rising adversity and further evolve as mages" or other such noble nonsense, if I had to guess.
It didn't really matter.
I needed to know more about the Goblin Market. I'd flipped through my demonology textbook and found only passing references to faeries, none of which had been terribly helpful. And I knew the library should have texts with more details about the market, like if there were any known fey who actively entered bargains with humans and, ideally, how to find them. Logically, I should have gone on my little errand during the day, but I was afraid of running into Mason and the rest during a study session. So a reckless late night break-in was what I decided on.
I began weaving a Working around me.
Soundless. Sightless. Eyes see no evil. Ears hear no mischief—
The Working built around me, swirling with a growing momentum. Then it shattered as another Working pushed against it.
I shall see. I shall hear.
I whirled around furiously, ready to blow a hole in someone's head. Sylas caught my wrist in his hand and looked at me in concern.
"What are you doing?"
I pulled my hand away from him and glared at him. "Going out," I snapped.
"Going out," he repeated. "With a glamour on to keep people from noticing you."
I said nothing to that, and Sylas sighed.
"Look, I know you dropped out of pre-rush, but you don't need to break into the library again just to get readmitted," he said. "I talked to Cecil, and he said you're free to come back whenever you'd like, no penalty or anything."
"You've talked to Cecil," I repeated.
"Yes, look, I know he can be a bit… much," Sylas had the nerve to say that with a straight face. "But he's really not all that bad, all things considered."
"All things considered? All things considered?" I wanted to slap Sylas across the face. "Considering what, exactly? That he sells infants to faeries for perfect hair or teeth or magic or whatever the fuck it was you were so bloody interested in getting?"
My voice had risen to a shout and Sylas had taken a step back in surprise, his eyes going wide.
"Yes, I fucking saw how interested you got with Cecil Fucking Baldwin started going on and on about null breeding and selling their children off to be eaten or kept as pets," I almost yelled. "Is that what you mean by all things considered? Or are you talking about me?" The air in the room chilled several degrees, and I felt the mana spun itself out of my channels in rivers of necromancy.
"Have you told him about your little necromancer roommate yet, Sylas? Or are you afraid that if he knew I spent my evenings digging around in graves for conduits, he'd find it too distasteful to keep me around?"
I was rambling.
God's wounds I knew I was rambling, but I couldn't stop myself.
"Is that why you haven't told anyone about me yet? Afraid Mason and the rest wouldn't keep you around if they knew we were a necromancer and his roommate? They might worry I'd cut their throats in their sleep and would already write you off as a lost cause."
I breathed heavily and looked at Sylas, only to see him looking at me with a tired expression.
"Are you done?" he asked.
I said nothing and looked away from him.
A silence stretched in between us before Sylas broke it. "Look," he said. "I don't… feel as strongly as you do about nulls. Apparently. I grew up hearing stories about how they used to burn people like us at the stake. But I can understand where you're coming from, a bit."
Sylas sounded like he was picking his words carefully. "I don't personally agree with a lot of what the Baldwins and people like them do with nulls in their keeping."
Nulls in their keeping. God, I wanted to vomit.
"But," Sylas continued. "I wasn't interested in what he was saying because I wanted to trade babies to the faeries or anything like that for power or jollies or things like that. I… I needed to know if they were approachable. Creatures who would be open to bargaining."
I looked back at Sylas sharply. "Bargaining for what?"
Sylas looked at me with those brown eyes of his, and there was such a sadness there I immediately regretted asking. My heart seemed to pause briefly.
"You don't have a monopoly on suffering," Sylas said quietly. "I don't know what your life was like before I met you, or what it's like to be a necromancer in a culture that does not think highly of them, but you are not the only person in this world who has suffered."
I turned back around fully to face Sylas and remembered that feeling I got around him sometimes. The hints of Narrative that would bleed through when he'd use mana. I had felt it in the labyrinth when the Alke had held me captive and Sylas was fighting to rescue me.
Seven arrows in her quiver.
"What do you mean?" I asked softly, before I could help myself.
Sylas stared at me for a long time before answering. "I think I told you my mother is from the theocracy," he said. "The first day we met. It's why I—" he gestured vaguely to himself, his hair and skin a shade or so darker than the norm among most of Angitia's students. "I don't remember her that well. Bits and pieces mostly, but she left me with something to remember her by. A blessing." He swallowed. "Well, more of a curse, really."
"Seven arrows," I said, softly.
"You've heard it then?"
I nodded slowly.
Sylas sat down on his bed and looked at his hands.
"I kill things," he said in a low voice and I remembered that night in the labyrinth, how quickly and cleanly he'd set to work slicing up the giant spiders. "I can't help it. It's just how my mana wants to… needs to flow sometimes. Almost like a Narrative I can't find my way out of. Is it like that with you, too?"
"Yes," I said, thinking of all the times I'd woken up to find my bed surrounded by ghosts. "It can be."
It was until I found the grimoire. Before I started gaining the vaguest of notions about how the bullshit magic of mine actually worked.
"They tell me I killed my mother," Sylas said. "I don't remember it. I almost wonder if my grandmother made me forget as some sort of kindness. She'd do something like that."
I sat down next to Sylas on his bed. He looked at me, such misery written on his face.
"Then again, I remember little when it really takes me," Sylas didn't meet my eyes. "A few years ago, I woke up after having ripped the throats out of an entire flock of chickens. All I could remember was the blood and feathers and the way they tasted in my mouth."
I felt sick.
Comparatively, having spent the last two years being awoken by ghosts giving cryptic nonsense warnings was not such a terrible thing, I supposed.
"So, I know what it's like to have a power that you can't manage," Sylas said. "What it's like to be part of a story that's not fully your own."
I laid a hand on Sylas's shoulder, because I wasn't sure what else to do or say.
"You want to be cured of this curse?" I said. "And you think the faeries can do it for you?"
"Cure or manage it better, yes," Sylas said. "There's a seal on the Narratives, but… It's become less effective recently. I don't… I don't think the faeries can help me, though. From what Cecil says, their prices seem higher than I'm willing to pay at the moment."
"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it. I was sorry for Sylas, because whoever and whatever else he was, he had been kind to me at Angitia. Even if he didn't know who I really was. He almost did, in a way. He knew I was someone who had power they'd never asked for. Power he wanted to give away.
We were very similar in a way.
But we weren't the same. And we never would be.
Because, despite everything else, I was a null at heart.
And unlike Sylas, there wasn't a price I wouldn't pay to be rid of my own curse.
I should have left. I should have gotten right up off Sylas Thorne's bed and returned to the business of breaking into the library. After all, I needed more information on the Goblin Market. I needed to know if there were any confirmed fairies who made bargains with mortals that basically amounted to wishes. And I needed to make sure that the plan would work.
I needed to go home.
But I couldn't make myself get off Sylas's bed. I couldn't stop feeling oddly touched that Sylas had confided in me a secret of his that'd probably been haunting him for a lifetime. I couldn't help but want to shake him until he stopped looking so bloody miserable, like he expected me to get up and walk away from him since I knew he had some sort of magical affliction he was slowly losing too.
"Hey," I said finally. "Come on, I want to show you something."
***
The stars were out that night.
You could see them clearly, even if you weren't on the roof of the mausoleum like we were.
Sylas had frowned when I'd lead him there, part of him probably wondering if it was the bit where I'd wake all the dead bodies and start some new mad attempt to break into the library since he'd foiled my attempts at stealth.
He grew even more confused when I led him up the stairs hidden away on one side of the building and climbed up them. I didn't wait for him to follow, but he did, and soon the two of us were on the roof, looking up at the sky uninterrupted.
Part of me was a tad worried about Sgaile being angry I'd brought someone uninvited to the mausoleum. But if the Church Grim knew we were there, he certainly didn't make an appearance.
I laid on my back and stared up at the sky.
Sylas came into view and frowned down at me. "What're you doing?" he asked.
I patted the place next to me. "Come on, lie down."
The frown didn't leave Sylas's face, but he complied, and soon the two of us were both lying on the roof of the mausoleum.
"Okay," Sylas said. "I'm sorry, but what are we doing?"
"Well, I'm looking at the stars," I said. "I find it relaxing. It—it reminds me of my Da. He used to show us all the constellations when I was little."
"Oh," Sylas said.
There was silence between us.
"What was he like?" Sylas asked finally. "Your father?"
I'd never known Albert Crowley, who was the father listed in my admission forms. He was just another name I'd been told to memorize, with a string of facts alongside it. He was from Ireland, served abroad in the Americas, and died alongside his wife during an altercation with a group of null dissidents.
But I knew my da. He'd told me stories when I couldn't sleep at night. He'd shown me how to mind the sheep so they wouldn't wander off too far afield. And he'd taught me about the stars.
"He was a good man," I said truthfully. "Better than I deserved."
Sylas was silent. He'd never talked much about his own da, and I wasn't sure if it was right for me to ask, but Sylas took that choice away from me.
"I don't really even know my father," Sylas said quietly. "I think I've only ever seen the man a dozen times in my life. Grandfather… he and Grandmother always say he's busy, but I don't know. Part of me thinks Father must hate me for… what happened to my mother."
"I'm sure he doesn't," I said, because I wasn't really sure if there was anything else I could.
Sylas sighed, seeming to pick up on the uncertainty in my voice. "Maybe, but… it's why I have to be a Knight. Why I must join Lion Hall. Why I have to be rid of this curse. Maybe… maybe then he'll actually want to be around me?"
There was a question in Sylas's voice that I just didn't know how to answer. So, of course, I tried to change the subject in the most graceless way possible.
"Hey you see those three stars right there?" I asked. "That's Orion's Belt. Orion's a poor bloke who tried to court a goddess, and it went poorly."
There was a pause, and I assumed Sylas was considering calling me out for changing the subject so tactlessly. "I don't think that's totally right," Sylas said. "I've always heard it told differently."
"Really?" I said in my best impression of Professor Ogg. "What is the right story, then, Mr. Thorne?"
Sylas chuckled, and I couldn't help but love the sound. His laugh seemed more real than anything else in the world at that moment.
"Orion was the greatest hunter in the ancient world," Sylas said. "Able to track down and slay even the greatest of beasts with his bow and arrows. Stories of his exploits reached even the ears of the goddess of hunters, Artemis, and the two of them became the greatest of friends, or maybe even more than that."
Sylas paused and tilted his head over to see if I was still listening or had fallen asleep. I looked over and couldn't help but smile. Sylas smiled back, then turned his face back to the stars. "The only thing, though, was that Artemis had sworn to be a virgin for all of time, to love no man and to hunt for all eternity. She'd done so on her father's knee, and her own brother Apollo had sworn to help her keep that promise."
"Her brother swore to make sure she stayed a virgin for the rest of time?" I asked. "That's a bit much."
"Yes," Sylas said. "Well, Apollo was enraged when he discovered a mortal man was in love with his sister. So he cursed Orion to go insane and hunt without ceasing."
"Bit dramatic these gods," I muttered, but Sylas only chuckled again and continued.
"Orion hunted and killed many animals; he threatened to wipe all life off the planet, and no matter how much he wanted to, Orion simply couldn't stop. Artemis was grief-stricken and horrified by what Orion had become and so she was forced to kill him."
"She killed him?" I repeated. "Her brother made the poor bastard go insane and all she could do was kill him? She couldn't have healed him or something? Make it so he wasn't about to kill every blasted living thing in the world?"
"Theo, you've heard Professor Ogg talk about how utterly looney the Narratives of divine entities are," Sylas said. "It's all basically nonsense. Insane nonsense."
Sylas was in one of those Narratives. Seven arrows. The words rang in my head and I clear my throat. "So then, if Orion's dead, then how is he a bunch of stars now?"
"It was Artemis's last gift to him," Sylas whispered. "After Orion lay slain before her, Artemis lifted him up and placed him in the sky. So he could hunt among the stars forever. So no one would ever forget him and his story."
I fought the urge to reach over and touch Sylas's hand beside me. "It sounds to me," I said, my throat thick. "That she must have really been in love with him then. Why else would she make it so he'd be remembered forever?"
"Maybe," Sylas said. "But I don't think anyone will ever know for sure. It's not like either of them ever came out and said how they really felt."
We spent the rest of the night like that, going through the constellations and telling their different stories. I was better at picking them out of the sky than Sylas was, but he was better at remembering their different stories than me.
My eyes continued to stray to Orion's Belt. It must be a rather sad thing, I decided, to love someone but never be able to say it aloud.