Chapter 38 Fault Lines
The academy above us goes loud.
Muffled through the stone but unmistakeable, voices and running footsteps and the particular quality of noise that a building full of supernatural teenagers makes when something unexpected happens all at once, and Bram is moving back up the passage before the echoes settle.
"Stay here," he says without looking back.
Rhydan looks at me.
I look at him.
We follow Bram.
The staircase takes us up fast and we emerge through the archive wall into the main corridor and the difference between the quiet of the chamber below and the chaos of the corridor above is physical, hitting like cold water, students everywhere, Wolves in partial shift along the east wing, two wind ability students with their craft running uncontrolled sending papers and loose objects spiralling through the air, and in the middle of all of it is Professor Elara standing with both hands raised and her ability blazing outward in waves of gold suppression craft, keeping the panic from escalating into something worse.
"What happened?" Rhydan demands of the nearest Wolf, a second year named Torben whose eyes are fully gold and whose hands have shifted halfway to claws.
"Wards," Torben manages, pulling himself back with visible effort. "The outer wards. All of them dropped simultaneously."
Rhydan goes still.
"All of them?"
"Every outer ward on the academy perimeter," Torben says. "Gone. Like something cut them."
Rhydan turns to me and his expression is doing the controlled furious thing, both natures surging, and I put my hand on his forearm without thinking and feel them settle immediately, automatic and reliable, and his jaw loosens slightly.
"The Drevari," I say quietly. "They didn't just send two people..."
"They sent two people to trigger the seal," he says, low and tight. "And while we were underground dealing with the dragon, someone else took down the perimeter wards."
"They're inside the grounds," I say.
"They've been inside the grounds," he corrects. "Long enough to map every ward anchor on the perimeter and cut them cleanly." He looks down the corridor. "That takes time. That takes access."
Someone on the inside.
Again.
Cassian appears from the east corridor at a run, slightly breathless, eyes sharp. "The hockey locker room. Someone went through it. My locker specifically." He holds up his phone. "My training calendar. The one with your solo sessions on it, Rhydan. It's gone."
The someone on the team theory calcifies into something colder.
Not someone on the team...
Someone with access to Cassian specifically.
I watch Rhydan's face as he arrives at the same conclusion and the grief of it is brief and real and he covers it fast but not before I feel it through the bond, a sharp stab that has nothing to do with anger.
Someone he trusted.
"Who has access to your locker, Cass?" I ask carefully.
Cassian's jaw works. "Me. The coaches." He stops. "And anyone I've given the combination to."
"Have you given it to anyone?" Rhydan asks quietly.
A pause that lasts too long.
"Cass," Rhydan says.
"Sera asked me for it three weeks ago," Cassian says, and he looks like the words cost him physically. "She said she left something in the wrong locker and needed to retrieve it before practice and I was across campus and I just..." He stops. "I just gave it to her."
The corridor noise continues around us, students and professors managing the ward crisis, completely unaware of what is being said in this particular corner of it.
Rhydan doesn't respond immediately.
He looks at the wall.
His hand, at his side, closes into a fist and opens again slowly, the only visible sign of what is moving through him.
"She's been planning this since before the forest," I say quietly. "Since before the council filing. Since before any of it."
"She knew the Drevari were active," Rhydan says, very low. "She knew because my grandfather knew and she's been working with him. And either she fed our information to the Drevari directly or she fed it to my grandfather and he did."
"Or," I say carefully, "your grandfather and the Drevari are not separate threats."
Silence.
Cassian stares at me. "You think Elder Valecrest is working with the Drevari?"
"I think," I say slowly, "that a man who filed a council report about Drevari reactivation and simultaneously arranged for his grandson's nature to be bound has two possible motivations." I look at Rhydan. "Protecting you from the Drevari. Or controlling what the Drevari want before they can get it themselves."
Rhydan's expression is very still.
"If my grandfather controls my dual nature through binding," he says carefully, "then the Drevari can't use me as a weapon."
"But neither can you use yourself as one," I add. "Against him."
The implication sits between all three of us.
Elder Valecrest is not afraid of the Drevari weaponising his grandson...
He is afraid of his grandson, fully expressed, fully bonded, fully anchored to an ancient dragon, and not under anyone's control.
Including his.
From the east end of the corridor, Professor Elara's voice carries above the noise. "All students to their houses. Now. This is not optional."
Students begin moving, the chaos organising itself into streams, and in the movement and the noise, Rhydan turns to me and he is very close and his eyes are silver at the edges and both his natures are pressing hard against the surface, not with anger, with something more complicated than anger.
"If we anchor the dragon," he says quietly, just for me, "we take away every weapon they have. My grandfather's plan. The Drevari's plan. Both of them."
"Yes," I reply.
"And we become the thing everyone is most afraid of instead," he says.
"Exactly."
He looks at me for a long moment, this boy who called me nobody in a coffee shop five weeks ago, who went back the next morning and found me gone, who put my name on a trial board and stood in a forest and let me see the most frightening and beautiful parts of himself, who held my hand in a dark chamber while something ancient pressed against our awareness from below.
"Are you afraid?" he asks.
"Terrified," I reply honestly.
Something real and warm moves through his expression.
"Me too," he says.
Cassian clears his throat. "Touching. Genuinely. Can we survive the immediate crisis first?"
I almost laugh.
Rhydan almost smiles.
Almost.