Healer Sorin’s expression upon seeing Rose lead the group of injured students into the medical hall suggested that seeing her again ranked just below “finding cold stew leaking from his ceiling” on his list of personal horrors.

  “Did I not explicitly say, not weeks, nay, DAYS ago, that you were never to come back here again. And look! You’ve managed to blacken the other eye! Lovely!”

  “Technically, he was the one to do that,” Rose muttered under her breath as Sorin showed them each to a separate cot in the hall. Caro supported Jules on the way in, and Rob helped the leg-less Victor to hobble along behind him, which had left Rose with the indignation of piggybacking Valentin.

  Sorin utterly ignored her disgruntlement.

  “And you’ve brought friends! We’ll just make it a jolly old party in here, won’t we. Now’s the part where you tell me they’re just drunk and not concussed…”

  The healer waited for a contradiction from any of them.

  “Sure, sure,” he groaned, managing to whack Rob in the forehead with his clipboard as he turned, waving it in the air. “I’ll just fix the mental injuries too, while I’m at it. Why not? And if it’s anything to go by, you need them nice and functional for a detention that’s not my fault. Lucky me.”

  Despite his complaints, Sorin was fantastic at his job.

  The healing potion that Rose needed the first time wasn’t even brought to the table. In a matter of minutes, he’d smeared a series of awful-smelling poultices all over the bruised patients. A mix of scents, salves, and one tiny explosion later, Sorin pronounced the last one of them—herself—completely fine, and instructed the group to “get out and never come back.”

  “I'd say it’s been a pleasure, but that would make me both a liar and a masochist,” Sorin grumped, waving the clipboard at them in a way that suggested they’d all be getting new injuries if they stayed much longer.

  Fortunately, not one of them was of a mind to stick around. Rob had left the moment he was no longer needed. Victor, without so much as a word of thanks, and a furtive glance Rose’s direction, hobbled away on borrowed crutches. Rose was going the same way as Jules, Caro, and Valentin, but she wasn’t eager to walk back with them, and so took every detour she could back to Glassenveil. Rob’s legs had definitely outpaced her by several minutes by the time she finally got back to the first-year tower.

  “I swear if Valrose gives one more lecture on the vitality of face wash when we come in at night, I’m going to stuff his pillow with 85% down instead of 98%.” Rob was saying when she slipped back through the door.

  “That’s a bit harsh, doncha think?” Fred sighed. “The poor princess won’t sleep for weeks. Better just have his caviar served with plain crackers and do him in quick.”

  “I dunno why you’re complaining about Valrose when Cross hits us in the delicate hours of morning with lines like—” Sean placed a hand on his chest, doing a fairly perfect rendition of Valentin’s voice. “Remember bedhead is for barn animals, and the punishment therefore is to be treated like one.”

  Rob faux-gasped. “What, fed oats three times a day?”

  Fred rolled his eyes. “Brushed and told we’re pretty?”

  “Sold. As. Livestock,” Sean hissed.

  Rose started to giggle, and smothered it immediately.

  The guys’ attention snapped up to her as she approached.

  “He returns!” Rob motioned her in, and she took a seat next to them on Sean’s bed with a small smile.

  “Hey, guys. Rob. I didn’t say it earlier: thanks for keeping me from getting killed,” she said, half-joking, half-serious.

  “It’s not like I liked them either.” Rob shrugged it off, but she could tell he enjoyed the attention from Sean and Fred.

  “Yeah, you got into a fight with Valentin. And Caro and Jules. And you’re not dead. How’s that?” Fred demanded immediately. “Rob here won’t say anything.”

  “Because I don’t know anything,” Rob insisted, for what sounded like the several-th time.

  “Valentin was rude…and then I left for a bit and saw him kicking the legs out from under another student three-to-one. I hit him, and then Rob kept the rest from smashing my skull in,” Rose summed up.

  “Didn’t he talk to you before the showers?” Fred pointed out.

  “What did Cross want?” Rob asked, more directly.

  “He wanted to invite me into his inner circle.”

  Sean’s jaw dropped. “Why?”

  “Hang on, hang on!” Fred stopped them. “What did you say? Are we about to be reported?”

  “I told him that as much as I’d love to, I’m afraid that whatever he has could be contagious.”

  The boys howled.

  “You didn’t,” said Rob.

  Rose sighed. “I may as well have.”

  “That’s why you stepped in with Victor,” Rob groaned. “I bet he was running hot after being told ‘no,’ by one of his own first-years.”

  “Well, if you go missing under mysterious circumstances, we’ll look for the start of the blood trail in his quarters,” said Sean.

  “He gets quarters?” she gasped.

  “And a private bathroom,” Fred added.

  “Do you think Valrose will count me knocking him out as a proper challenge?” she asked, a little too eagerly. No need to sell her dreams on the black goblin market if she had a bathroom right here.

  Sean and Fred both shook their heads sadly.

  “As much as I’d love to see him down a peg, official challenges can’t be surprise attacks.”

  “Well, I’ve beaten him once…”

  “If you think you can dodge his illusions and his fire magic, then be my guest,” said Fred. “Why do you think anyone else hasn’t done it?”

  She threw herself down on her bare bed. “He has fire. Of course he has fire. He even looks a little burnt…”

  The boys snickered.

  “Speaking of which, whoever he was going after, he must not have been serious if he wasn’t using magic,” Rob pointed out.

  “Nah, using magic gets you in a lot more trouble than a good old fist fight,” Sean dismissed tossing himself back onto the pillowless mattress. “He was probably just playing it safe.”

  “Three to one,” Rob repeated, disgusted.

  “I…really am sorry, though.” Rose shifted uncomfortably on her end of Sean’s bed. “I got you detention. In the second week.”

  Rob looked away, the tips of his ears pink. “No, I got me detention. You got you detention. Valentin’s responsible for the rest.”

  “What’re they having you do?” Sean asked, curiosity painted all over his freckled face.

  “No idea.” Rose made a confused gesture. “Meeting Talus at the entrance to the labyrinth, and then…. Who knows.”

  Sean and Fred both choked.

  Fred scooted away from Rose, as though she might have some catching disease. “They’re letting you go into the labyrinth? Alone?”

  “Well, they didn’t say anything about going in there,” Rose said defensively, but she was starting to get a bad feeling about this, as Sean and Fred shared a ‘look.’

  “Sure, sure, just meeting there. Within a few feet of it. Where normal students aren’t allowed to go.”

  “Detention isn’t a death sentence,” Rob said hotly, glaring at them both.

  “Right,” Sean nodded smoothly. “Death toll’s really down in past decades. You should be fine.”

  Rose had had enough. “If they’re making us do this at night, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get some sleep now. I don’t know what’s in the labyrinth, but I’m definitely not dealing with Valentin and his buddies again tired.”

  *

  Rob and Rose slept as late as possible before leaving. Unfortunately, that meant that they had to find the entrance to the labyrinth by themselves.

  Tucked in a shroud of ominous mist and hidden at the base of the looming college spires, the entrance was nearly impossible to spot until you were right on it. Fortunately, it was easier to spot once there were other people around. Valentin had gotten there first, of course, with Caro and Jules flanking him like inconvenient bookends. Their boots were too clean for the moors and their smirks too sharp for detention or the defeat they’d had earlier that day.

  It gave Rose as bad a feeling as the labyrinth’s opening.

  The entrance to the labyrinth gaped like a yawn in stone—wide, echoing, and reeking faintly of mildew and expired spells. Flickering glyphs lined the arch, warning in the universal dialect of crypt-scrawl that entry was “ill-advised,” “borderline criminal,” and “non-refundable.”

  “Well,” Valentin drawled once he saw their approach, “I suppose we should all thank you for the scenic stroll through this rat-infested swamp.”

  Caro laughed. Jules picked something out of his teeth and flicked it at a runestone.

  “Oh good,” she said flatly. “I love team-building exercises.”

  Rob shifted next to her, brushing away a weed that had ended up in his hair. “‘Bout as much as I love folks who can’t own up to being cowards.”

  “Wanna say that a little louder?” Caro taunted.

  Before either of them could reply, a rhythmic thump announced Victor’s arrival. He limped down the path with a deliberate struggle, legs hidden by his pants, but Rose could tell that whatever he’d replaced his leg with, it wasn’t meant to be used on terrain like this. He only glanced at Rose, jaw tight. Not a glare, not quite thanks either—just the expression of a man who’d been kicked unconscious by the person now sharing his punishment.

  At last, a taller figure materialized in the mist, but it wasn’t coach Talus.

  Rose made a small sound of unease when the shadows parted to reveal Professor Baron wearing his usual expression: someone who had eaten a lemon, identified its family tree, and hated every ancestor.

  “Coach Talus had the good sense to suffer an urgent scheduling conflict,” Baron said dryly once he was close enough to have their attention, brushing a leaf off his immaculate cloak. “So tonight, you’re all mine.”

  He looked at each of them in turn. When his eyes landed on Rose, his lips compressed.

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  “Some of you have decided to test the boundaries of the curriculum,” he said, voice oily with disdain. “And others are simply disappointing.”

  Rose raised a brow. To her knowledge, she was here for the same reason as everyone else unless…unless he was implying he thought she was cheating.

  “You will all descend into the labyrinth,” he continued, producing a set of canvas sacks from “Your task is simple. Gather skulls. Human, goblin, inter-blended, anything so long as they are not empty. Do not bring me a bag of dusty old bones. Only those with residual memory are worth archiving.”

  Rob looked vaguely horrified. “Uh, how do we tell which ones are—?”

  “Use your brain,” Baron snapped. “Assuming any of you brought one. That is the point of this exercise.”

  His eyes slid to Rose again. “Though some of you may find the task… enlightening. Or not.”

  Mental magic. Of course. And here she was with no magical signal, no reception, no bars.

  Baron smiled thinly. “As I said, the task is simple. Cible, you’re with Sethlans and Cross.”

  Valentin scowled, slow and venomous on his pretty face. Victor made a noise like a chair being dragged across stone.

  “And Henhill, you’re with the Hazier brothers,” Baron clipped.

  Rose blinked—Jules and Caro were brothers?

  There wasn’t time, however, to speculate on any similarities between the two. Baron dismissed them into the labyrinth’s mouth, evidently with no intention of following.

  Another excellent sign.

  Rose watched with apprehension as Rob, Caro and Jules divided from their group, speeding ahead. For herself, Victor, and Valentin, progress was slower. By lanternlight, single file, one squeaky prosthetic click giving rhythm to the slosh of damp stone beneath their boots as they descended, Valentin barely giving them time to keep up.

  The air shifted the moment they crossed the threshold—colder, thicker. Like something was breathing just out of sight. The deeper they went into the twisting stone walls, the less it felt like architecture and more like anatomy. The walls sweated mineral tears, and somewhere in the dark, water dripped with theatrical malice.

  Valentin, naturally, made himself at home.

  “Skull-diving. How scenic,” he said, brushing his gloves against a slime-damp wall as he led the way, though how he knew where they were going in the winding, whistling tunnels was anyone’s guess. “Let’s hope we don’t find anyone we know.”

  Victor muttered behind her, “We’re more likely to find something that wants to know us.”

  Rose, who was very much trying not to think about that, clutched her sack and tried to look purposeful. When they’d been walking at least a half an hour, they reached the first chamber—a long, arched alcove with bones strewn like badly filed paperwork. The skulls lay in clusters, jawbones yawning or snapped off completely, some still etched with arcane sigils, others disturbingly clean. It was obvious, even to Rose, that this room had been searched before, but as Valentin made to move on, Victor crouched and placed two fingers against the temple of the nearest skull. His prosthetic leg hissed as he balanced, but his touch was precise.

  After a moment, the skull’s eyes flared with a faint silvery gleam—memory traces, still intact.

  “This one’s good,” he said, and slipped it into the sack.

  Valentin took a different approach. He kicked a skull. When it didn’t glow, he said, “Empty. Like the rest,” and wandered off humming.

  Rose knelt awkwardly beside a pile and picked up a small, empty skull. She held it like a grapefruit, stared at it, and willed herself to feel something.

  Nothing. No flicker. No hum. No mental static or spark of intuition. Just a very old skull, looking smug in its opacity.

  Victor turned toward her, frowning faintly. “You’re not going to check it?”

  Rose knew that she was going to have to take a risk.

  “I can’t do this,” she said in a whisper, teeth gritted. “I can’t tell them apart.”

  Victor hesitated—just long enough for her to notice. Then, quietly, he stepped forward and tapped the skull in her hand. A faint shimmer pulsed through it, and he handed it to Rose. This time, she didn’t just see something, she heard the skull’s voice…well, sort of.

  “Not the face, not the face!” the skull shrieked in her hands.

  Rose dropped it in shock. When Victor gave her an odd look, she scooped it up quickly, just in time to hear it say:

  “—you think these cheekbones grow on trees? I should be preserved! Placed on a pedestal of elegance and refinement—”

  “I think I know why this one hasn’t been collected,” Rose muttered to Victor, setting the skull gingerly back on the ground. No need to upset the fellow further.

  “Try this one,” he grunted, tossing her another.

  This one was loud enough for them both to hear.

  “I see into your soul,” the skull groaned in a spooky, dusty voice.

  “Ah. One of those,” Victor muttered.

  “You will know pain. You will know regret. You will—hold on, is that lemon soap?” The skull, despite having no nose to speak of, rattled somewhat in her palm.

  “…Yes?” said Rose.

  “Well, well, well. If I had a heart, it would be palpitating,” the skull chatted. “I had a lemon grove once. Best place in the world for, well, lemons.”

  Rose made to hand the skull off to Victor, when the skull continued, waggling its nonexistent eyebrows at her:

  “So. What brings a vision like you into the catacombs? Broken hearts to bury? Looking for a bone to pick?”

  Victor swiped it from her, a look of disgust across his face as he tossed it against a wall.

  “Try that again, and I’m using you as a soup bowl.”

  It seemed, unfortunately, that the skulls in this room were all on a theme. The next one Victor handed her to vet spoke in a low and rich voice, its words crisp and practiced like it had been waiting centuries to make its get-me-out-of-here pitch.

  “Ahhh, finally,” it crooned happily. “The touch of a gentle hand! Are you an angel, a banshee, or just devastatingly single?”

  “I’m a student. In detention. In a sewer,” Rose responded blandly, turning the skull over in her hands to observe the green glow in its hollow eyes. From the corner of the room came a clatter as Valentin sifted through his skulls at a far quicker pace. Ironically, his hurry only encouraged Rose to let the skull make its plea.

  “Mmm. Strong, witty, covered in dust. Just my type. You know, love, I’ve always had a thing for intellectuals covered in grime.”

  “Your type is ‘whoever dusts you off,’ isn’t it,” Victor grunted again, plucking another skull from the wall—one that didn’t say anything.

  The skull in her hand was unperturbed. “I once seduced a duchess, a dryad, and an animated broom. You have the same… dangerous aura.”

  “I smell like mold,” she said in the same dry tone.

  “Sultry mold.”

  Victor raised a brow when she added that one to the sack as well.

  “Baron likes stories,” she said by way of explanation, knowing full-well the annoyance having to deal with skull #2 would cause the professor. “And here… the least I can do if you’re helping me is carry your sack.”

  Victor didn’t even argue. The weight he was putting on his leg was obviously painful, and he was slow. So, after making the hand-off, they made their way through the stacks.

  The next skull was whimsical.

  “You and I are not so different,” it sighed dreamily at her.

  “I have skin,” she retorted.

  “Ah yes. Skin. That was a good century.”

  She didn’t keep it.

  “Roses are red, violets are blue— My head is detached, but my heart’s still for you—”

  “Throw it,” Victor advised.

  “Kinky,” the skull managed to comment, before clunking against the wall.

  The next tunnel of skulls they investigated had more…shady means of begging them to take them away.

  “Hey. Hey, kid. You look like you’ve got taste. Class. Moral flexibility. I’ll give you three ancient curses, a minor haunting, and a recipe for soup that kills kings. Just get me out of here.”

  “Does the soup work on professors?” Victor mumbled, tossing that one in the sack.

  “I was a king once. A warlord. A seducer of queens. I still have loyal spirits who would kill for me!” another skull threatened.

  Rose poked at it thoughtfully. “Do they know you’re just a talking paperweight now?”

  “They’re busy, all right?” the skull huffed.

  Every skull had similar pleas to make, each wilder than the next:

  “I was used as a decorative pillow for three centuries by a duchess with chronic migraines. My memory foam is unrivaled!”

  “I was the Hamlet of my age! Listen: ‘Alas, poor me, I knew myself well—’”

  “I think I was a knight. Or a squire. Or someone who once touched a sword? Honestly, everything after the goat incident is a blur.”

  “I saw everything in the eastern hall. Everything.The librarian and that cat. Oh, and the seal breaking, obviously—”

  Victor’s attention turned sharply to that one. “That one’s just a liar. Throw it away.”

  “Wait, wait! I really did—”

  Rose placed it back on the wall into the design from which they’d pulled it, and selected another, this one’s eyes glowing much brighter than the rest. She thought it was promising, until she heard what it shouted.

  “Blank slate! Blank slate! I haven’t seen one of you in centuries. How do you walk around without screaming?”

  Victor turned from where he was combing the walls for any skulls with light left in them.

  “What did you just call her?” he asked, leaning over Rose’s shoulder.

  “Oh! Oh, no, wait—I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud, was I? Nothing to see here, folks! And you, newcomer! Aren’t you a spell and a half. What’s your blood type, sweetness? Asking for an enchantment circle.”

  “I will turn you into gravel,” Victor promised it.

  “Oh, but she will protect me! Such a familiar face. And the name… it’s on the tip of my dusted tongue…”

  “Victor, this one’s creeping me out.”

  “Good. Now you know how I feel,” Victor muttered, and thankfully, he hobbled back to his task, not taking the skull any more seriously than the last few.

  “Congratulations. You're a paperweight now,” Rose muttered, shoving it back into the wall. That was one skull she absolutely did NOT need making its way back to Baron.

  They moved deeper, chamber by chamber, bone pile by bone pile. Rose kept up the charade, gesturing, murmuring, sometimes shaking the skull next to her ear like a seashell. Victor, without fanfare or mockery, passed her the correct ones. It was impossible to tell how time moved in the musty tunnels, but after a painfully long wandering through the deeper tunnels the sack was nearly full.

  “Well, that was certainly fun,” Valentin announced after another few tunnels, brandishing his overflowing sack at them, “but as I am finished, and you two are only….half done? My-my. I’ll be heading back without you.”

  “You can’t head back and leave us without a guide, Valentin,” Victor argued immediately, glaring at the second-year.

  “Oh, but I can, particularly when I bear no responsibility for being here in the first place.” He shrugged, hoisted the sack on his back, and turned to go.

  Rose immediately moved to block him.

  “You started that fight!” she snapped.

  He sneered down at her. “Pity the rules didn’t agree.”

  “If you two keep barking, we’ll scare off the skulls. Give us a few minutes and we’ll all head back,” Victor said, keeping to the middle of the road.

  “Oh, right, let’s not disrupt the delicate ambiance. Wouldn’t want the memory skulls to get stage fright. Of course, I could be persuaded to stay if either of you are willing to issue a proper apology. Possibly some recompense—”

  The lantern Valentin carried—their only lantern—guttered and flickered in his hand, as though in response to his foul mood. Farther down the labyrinth where the path narrowed the light expunged, no longer showing as far. The musty air was starting to feel like a presence. Rose was tired of it. As ready to leave as Valentin—but they couldn’t do it without that lantern.

  “You don’t have to be vile, you know. It’s not a requirement,” she gritted out. “I’m terribly sorry we are down here. Please stay.”

  “Oh, no.” Valentin brushed away her apology like it was soot on his uniform. “No, I want to hear it. What’s the excuse? Weak magic? Thoughtlessness? Or just no clue what you’re doing, Cible?”

  “Do you ever shut up?” Victor, it seemed, was done taking the high ground.

  “Only when I’m unconscious—which, thanks to you, I experienced quite recently. And here I am, still being asked to help you both. Honestly, if idiocy was contagious, I’d be foaming.”

  “If I’d kicked harder, I wouldn’t have to hear this,” Rose said icily, seriously debating taking a swing at his head with her sack. “The reason you’re here is because you picked a fight you couldn’t win. So, if you want to get back so bad, either help, or wait.”

  “I’d rather walk blind than pretend you’re worth following,” Valentin snapped, slamming the lantern to the ground in front of them so hard that one of the panes shattered. “Here! One for your pathetic piles!”

  He snatched a random skull from the wall, and threw it at them. Rose was about to hand it to Victor to activate it, when the thing started speaking on its own.

  “It will fall. It will rise,” it groaned, empty and hollow. The blue lights she’d come to expect in its hollow sockets were missing, replaced instead by an eerie green.

  Great, another dud, she sighed, ready to throw it away, when Valentin’s sack began to shudder.

  Apparently, that wasn’t normal, because Valentin dropped the sack and sprung away as though the skulls rolling out of it had suddenly turned to live rats.

  “It will fall. It will rise,” the skulls in his sack said in unison, rolling on the floor to direct their green glowing gaze to Victor—ALL of them, to Victor, who was stumbling back as well.

  “What’s happening?” Rose asked, unable to process their reactions. After all, they’d been talking to skulls all evening, and they’d been saying much stranger things than this.

  “I’m leaving,” Valentin snapped, evidently trying not to let his shakiness show. He snatched up his sack, and made to go back the way they’d come.

  “Valentin, wait!” Rose cried, but no longer because she wanted him to stay.

  He didn’t listen, plodding as fast as he could toward the entry tunnel, but the little ball of fire he’d summoned in front of his face had apparently blinded him to the further reaches of the tunnel.

  “Valentin!” she hissed, quieter.

  Because something was moving in the shadows of the next chamber. Something slithering. Seeping.