In the wake of the scream, the academy was silent. Or perhaps it was only my head which was empty, my ears so full of cotton that I heard nothing but the rush of my blood. I stood cold in the doorway, having followed the echo deeper into the building. Death was there until he wasn't, and I knew then what had happened. And yet it seemed terribly impossible.

I stood there. Stood there. Then I opened the ancient, weeping door. My shadow stretched long across the floor like a specter rising from the grave to haunt me, and it fell upon the crumpled form of a girl.

Platinum hair was splayed around her head in a halo. Blood seeped into the wood beneath her, flowing fast and free from a merciless gash in her neck. Perfect. Precise. Intentional. She wore the sky blue vest of the beast tamer track.

I turned sharply, balancing myself against the frame of the door as the world rocked, and I retched. My knees hit the hard floor. Shivers wracked me, and I was again frozen.

Dead. She was dead. Again, I reminded myself, for we were all of us dead in this place.

I didn't even know her.

Who would do such a thing?

Was I supposed to tell someone?

"Death," I tried, a raspy, shaking whisper. A plea more than anything. I searched the room for his lithe dark shape, but there was nothing. Had he killed her? It didn't make any sense. Why would he kill someone he had already sent back?

Slippery and ragged, my breath came too short to steady me, but I turned slowly until I could observe the girl once more. Her face had gone slack, but her mouth was still open and her eyes only half-closed. One hand was clutched against her chest, and something beneath her fingers caught the light. Silver.

Hesitantly, I pulled myself toward her. I flinched, waiting for her to sit up again, but of course she didn't. Her stillness was somehow worse. I crawled closer until I grasped her still-warm hand and carefully peeled back her fingers. Once loose, the object clattered to the floor with a familiar ting.

My missing bell earring.

I didn't know how long I sat there transfixed, caught somewhere between horror and relief and absolute bewilderment, before I remembered myself and snatched up the trinket. I stuffed it hastily into my pocket just as footsteps began to pound down the hall—a whole herd of curious students and professors, no doubt. I scrambled to get away from the body, but as I stood I noticed something else.

Pinned to her shoulder were three copper ornaments, no larger than a coin, each bearing the sigil of Aetheria—the sickle and the crow.

I had no time to dwell on it before ten or so figures spilled into the room and I was grabbed firmly by both arms and shaken somewhat unkindly. Professor Larelle stared back at me, eyes wide as saucers. "Celestine? What happened?"

"Are you alright?" Another asked, a man this time. I didn't recognize him.

"Explain yourself, girl. What are you doing here?" A third accused—his face was meaner, and I thought he might have been a chair higher than the average professors. I'd never seen him. I'd have remembered the tattoo of the crow on his neck.

My foolish tongue had become heavy and stale. Somehow, my face was quite wet, no doubt streaked with tears and quite pitiful. Worse was that I could not breathe, and all the adults were yelling in my ears. My throat tightened. "I... I don't know. I heard a scream a-and so I thought I'd make sure everything was fine, but then she was... she was already..." I choked off my own words as my vision began to swim once more with tears. I was numb down to the tips of my toes without knowing why.

No, that wasn't true. It was fear—fear at the reminder of my own mortality despite everything. Fear that somehow I had caused this, and my bell was proof of that. How did she have it? Why did she have it? Was this a warning? Was I next?

The man with the tattoo scowled, unperturbed by my weeping. What a cold man. He marched closer until he was towering over me. I was eclipsed by his shadow entirely. "I asked you a question. What are you doing here?"

Any other time, I might have been able to steel myself and bite back. In the moment, however, I was a shell of that Celestine with no venom in my fangs and no strength left even to stand up straight.

To my surprise, Professor Larelle had found her own; she clicked her tongue at the man and pulled me back from him, shielding me from the body as she steered me out of the room. "There will be time for questions later. Can't you see how disturbed she is? These children face enough death as it is."

"And still they have no spine," he hissed, but he did not pursue us.

I certainly did still have one, for a chill went straight down it. Nonetheless, I was ushered out of that tomb and into the hall, where a cacophonous crowd of students had gathered, barely held back by a line of adults in various colorful garb from the tracks. The ones at the front clamored for an explanation, while those further back tried to cast spells to make it through the wall. Their efforts were quickly squelched by the handful of teachers with magic of their own, but still order would not be restored.

Professor Larelle steered me the other way, far from the hollow noise and the dead girl. If not for her arm around me, I would have collapsed into a puddle and not moved again. She seemed to know, as she traced soothing circles on my back and whispered softly to me that I was safe.

She took me to a small sitting room somewhere far from the chaos. It had only one sofa, an old, weathered, gray thing that had certainly seen better days. It was comfortable enough when I perched on its edge though. She wrapped me in an equally sad-looking blanket, scratchy and faded, but it kept me from drifting.

"Sit here for a moment," Larelle said gently. "I will send word to Captain Elias. I'm sure he will want to fetch you himself."

Elias. I started, jolting almost entirely out of the fog over my head. "Please don't—"

But Larelle was already gone, and my protest was swallowed once again. I fell back against the couch, utterly hollow.

It couldn't be a coincidence that this girl had been killed, and I was almost positive that the man with the crow tattoo wanted to blame me. If word reached Elias, he was sure to turn me in to the crown—to my callous uncle. They couldn't keep a murderer as a spy.

Something dreadful welled up inside me, and a sob crawled all the way up my throat like a living thing. The sound of it was inhuman, a grief not from me but something older. I curled my knees against my chest and kept myself small. My fingers were sticky; I hadn't noticed the blood on them. It must have seeped through my gloves. Was it from her hand? Did I kneel in it too? I'd thought only of my bell.

I tore off those bone-white gloves, tipped in red, and tossed them on the floor. It was like tearing off a second skin, and I suddenly felt colder.

Shifting, I struggled to pull the trinket from my pocket, only my fingers froze about halfway there as my gaze strayed to the stone flower at my waist. Ever since it had been given to me, it had been a deep sky-blue and quiet as a flower carved of stone should be. Now, it was crimson, dark and full and bloody. And there came a low whisper at the very back of my mind. A wordless drone, yet it pleaded for my attention.

My fingers curled as a fresh wave of terror pulled me back under and crushed me in the depths. "What do you want from me?"

Of course, it was only an ornament, void of the ability to answer me in anything more than a cryptic hiss. I sat there in my solitude, despising Death more as the time passed and my situation became clearer. I picked at a loose thread in the blanket, unraveling its seams. It had seen better days anyway.

Eventually, a visitor came to my little room, but he was neither a professor nor Elias. My stomach did a little flip. Bren entered the room, a tray held between his hands with a meager offering of a snack—two small rolls, diced apple, a cluster of grapes, and an unpeeled orange. His eyes were dark and haunted, but he somehow managed to pull together his friendly smile for me. "I come with an offering," he said. "You wouldn't believe what people will offer to buy silence."

I sniffed, realizing for the first time that I was still quite red and weepy. I wiped my face, ashamed. "Some fruit?" It hardly seemed like a worthwhile bribe; Mother always kept some around, valuing it as a daily snack. Then I thought more on it as I searched his face, and I began to realize I knew nothing about Bren—where he came from, what his family was like, what his life was like beyond school—and I bit my tongue.

As if he knew he had set off the alarms in my mind, he laughed lightly. "I jest. These are, ah... well, peace offerings I suppose. For you. From a select group."

"Peace offerings," I echoed, unsure of why he always chose to speak in riddles. I shifted over to one side of the sofa and patted the other for him to sit with me, and he did. Usually, his movements had this fighter's fluidity to him. This one, however, was uncertain and stilted. I had a feeling I knew the identity of this "other group," though I couldn't discern the meaning of the peace offering he was bringing me. The strife between us had long since faded.

Unless he believed I was a murderer and thought he might buy his life with fruit.

There was a small space between us on the cushion, and he wedged the tray there as a divider. He first offered me a cloth with which to clean my hands. I did so eagerly, desperate then for some soap and water with which to scrub the skin away entirely. I felt dirty down to my very being, the creature living within my sinew and bones. I couldn't do anything for that girl. She was dead before I even arrived. So why then was I so mesmerized by guilt?

When the blood was no longer so stark on my hands, I started to reach for a grape, but I could still see it under my nails. I froze, my hand awkwardly outstretched, and my breath once again caught.

Bren, ever observant, stood. "On second thought, let me walk you to a place where you can wash your hands." And thus he did, guiding me in silence. The two of us drifted down the ghost halls, the only sign of life around. Though the lamps were still lit and the sun still out, the school was now quiet and abandoned. There was a washroom not far from the little seating area, and it was there that I scrubbed my fingers in ice-cold water until they were raw and red. The bar of soap there was once of decent size. I left it significantly smaller.

If Bren noticed the tremor in my fingers as we walked back, he said nothing. If he noticed the stiff and haunted way in which I walked, he kept quiet about that too. I wondered if he blamed me. I wondered if he thought I was a monster.

Finally clean despite the voice in my head that said otherwise, I sat, took one of the red grapes, and popped it into my mouth. Before, I hadn't noticed how hungry I'd become wallowing in my thoughts. As I swallowed the juices of the grape, it became rather clear that my grief had ripped a hole through me, and now I had to fill it and regain my strength. So I took another two grapes for good measure, chewing them slowly.

"How did you know I was here?" I finally asked, running a self-conscious hand through my hair. My skin was itchy from the soap, still cold and stinging.

"I watched you head this way with Professor Larelle." Lifting his own gloves, he peeled them off and draped them across his lap before picking up the orange. He began to peel it expertly. Its outer skin began to come away in a perfect spiral. "Forgive me if I'm being presumptuous, but I thought this might be one instance where you would prefer not to be alone." He stopped midway through the peeling and looked at me somewhat guiltily. "If that isn't true, I'll leave."

"Stay," I blurted out, surprising both of us. It was a bit too quick of me. I cleared my throat and leaned back against the cushions, attempting to look a little more nonchalant. It was impossible, flustered and miserable as I was. "Please. I was just... sort of empty when I was alone. It was terrifying."

His gaze lingered a moment longer, searching mine, before he nodded and returned to his orange.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, fearing the question I sought to ask. It was better than the silence though, so I lowered my voice and forced myself to ask. "Did you know her?"

"No," he said in an equally soft voice. Then he paused. "Well, I had seen her around. She was one of the older students, on her way to graduation at the end of this school year. She had pins too. She would have gone straight to the court. I think her name was Anya. But I didn't know her personally, if that's what you mean."

"Pins?" A shudder went through me, recalling the sickle and crow pins on her vest.

"The professors award them to students with the potential to be in the top ten of their class—you know, the ones who leave with the cushy jobs set out for them."

"She had three I think."

He stopped, his eyes going a bit hazy. "Ah. No wonder she became a target."

I frowned. "What?"

"A spot in the top ten opened up with her death. The more pins you have, the more the students watch you. If you're desperate to get into the court..." He shrugged. "I suppose you'll pay any price. This probably means the faculty will be investigating students with one and two pins first, since they have the most to gain from her death."

"You speak as if this has happened before."

"If I were you, Celestine, I wouldn't bother earning pins. Keep your head down and get out of this place as quickly as you can." With that, he pulled away the last of the spiral of orange peel and dropped the completed creation on the tray, then he split the fruit and offered me a slice. Its juices had discolored his nails slightly, and it was the first imperfection I had ever seen on his person.

I took the orange slice from him, somewhat taken aback. Despite my prickly nature and my attempts to drive him away, he still continued to show kindness when I needed it. I thought of what Yvonne had told me—that things would be easier if I opened up to someone at least—but how was I to know that anything in this place was real? I was hardly even real, just a mask of a girl at this school. It hurt as I sat there, absorbing his gifts and warnings, basking in his attention.

It soured the moment I remembered the other student who deemed me worthy of much less welcome attention: Vesper. I turned away from Bren, still holding the little orange piece as he sucked on his own. I was too sick to eat.

"You saw me at the assembly, didn't you?" I asked. Already, my heart rate was beginning to increase, warning me away from what I had to ask.

"I did."

"Was there anyone with me? Anyone who was... well, a little too close for comfort?"

He leaned forward until I could almost see him in the corner of my eye. "Is there something troubling you?"

"Just answer the question," I snapped. My desperation was rising, and I was quickly losing control. "Did you or did you not see anyone with me?"

"No, I didn't see anyone. I mean, aside from the crowd, but no one seemed to be bothering you."

At first, I thought the world was shrinking until it was just me and the orange in my fingers, and that soon even that would be gone. I knew I wasn't so deluded that I would imagine being haunted and threatened by a guy I hated, but what else was I supposed to think if Bren hadn't seen him?

I set my jaw, clenching it until it hurt. I had to think rationally. Vesper was of the charm track, one which specialized in illusions and lies. While my skills in illusions were currently lackluster at best, perhaps his were far more polished. I knew what skilled illusionists could do, having been framed by one myself with a celestine as real as I was.

Many of us here died as criminals.

Wherever the train of thought would have led, it ended abruptly as Elias and Larelle entered the little room. Elias, ever stiff and uninviting, softened suddenly as he saw me, and I knew I really must have looked quite terrible to change his face so much. He held out a hand, and I was foolish enough to want to take it. I left my orange slice on the tray and my bloody gloves on the floor as I crossed the room. Elias bundled me wordlessly in his cloak, then together we left.

But I did look back once, and Bren was still there. He managed a smile, one that was warm and kind, promising things would somehow be fine. I knew it was not unusual for him to make such a promise. After all, I was certain he always did so to every girl who was lost in these halls.

I wasn't special, and if the death of the girl—Anya—meant anything, it was that I could not carelessly expose myself and my reliance on others. This place of the dead fostered more death. Perhaps it was this which my uncle so despised, but I doubted it. If the deaths of children bothered him, he would not have killed me in the first place.

If I wanted to tear this place down, brick by brick, I'd have to do it alone. With each day that passed, I was more certain that I would.

The bell was heavy in my pocket as Elias and I made the journey back home.

Beginning to think Bren haunts me too. He always finds a way to show up.