22 — Isabelle Rosaline Valmont

The ceremony was tomorrow.

Of course it was.

The Kingdom had insisted on a third attempt. The Council had insisted on a third attempt. Everyone had insisted on a third attempt, because the first one ended in a massacre, the second one ended in a bigger massacre, and the only reasonable response to two massacres was apparently a third one.

I had stopped trying to understand politics.

Anyway, we spent the whole morning preparing.

Lily was in charge of the seating arrangement. Myra was in charge of the offerings. I was in charge of standing in the corner and trying not to think about the fact that the woman who killed my parents was going to be standing fifteen feet away from me for three hours.

I did not succeed.

"You're doing it again," Lily said.

"Doing what?"

"That thing. Where you stare at the wall and your face goes blank."

"I'm thinking."

"You're spiraling."

"Same thing."

She didn't argue. She just handed me another stack of papers and told me to sort them.

I sorted them.

I didn't read any of them. I just moved them from one pile to another pile and pretended that was the same as being useful.

Myra sat on the windowsill and watched the courtyard. She had been quiet since the council room. Quieter than usual. She still remembered Felice's hands. She still remembered the sadness. She hadn't remembered anything else, but I could tell it was bothering her. The not-knowing was bothering her. The knowing-something-was-wrong was bothering her.

I wanted to tell her it was fine. I wanted to tell her we would figure it out.

But I had been telling people that for a week and we hadn't figured out anything.

So I just kept sorting papers.

The ceremony started at five.

The academy gathered in the main courtyard, which had been rebuilt since the last disaster. New stones. New banners. New stage. The same old speeches. The Council had decided that the theme this year was resilience, which I assumed was their way of saying please don't riot.

Lily and I stood at the back. Myra was with the other student council members near the stage. Arthur was somewhere in the crowd.

I hadn't seen him since the infirmary.

I wasn't sure I wanted to.

The headmistress gave the opening address.

Celine. Standing at the podium in her formal robes. Looking old. Looking kindly. Looking exactly like a woman who had not admitted to covering up a massacre three days ago.

Grey hair pulled back in a neat bun. Wire-rimmed spectacles. A face lined with the kind of wrinkles that made students instinctively lower their voices around her. She looked like someone's grandmother. She sounded like someone's grandmother. She smiled the way grandmothers smile when their grandchildren do something mildly embarrassing and they've decided to be gracious about it.

I had seen her real face three days ago.

Young. Green hair. Yellow eyes.

The same smile, but without the wrinkles.

This was the mask. This was what the students saw. This was what I had seen for a year before I knew any better.

She talked about unity. She talked about the future. She talked about the Kingdom and the academy and the strength of the next generation. She did not talk about the man who died on the stage. She did not talk about the woman in the sky. She did not talk about the fact that the entire courtyard had been rebuilt because the old one was soaked in blood.

That was the Kingdom's way.

Bury it. Rebuild it. Pretend.

I was getting very tired of pretending.

And then, midway through the ceremony, the doors opened.

A woman walked in.

She was not dressed like anyone at the academy. Long grey coat over a black suit. Hair pinned back in a way that suggested she had done it in a hurry. A leather satchel that looked like it had been through three wars.

She walked down the aisle like she owned it.

The ceremony stopped.

Celine stopped.

Everyone stopped.

The old woman at the podium looked down at the newcomer with the patient, unbothered expression of someone who had been headmistress for a very long time and had seen far stranger things than an unannounced researcher.

But I knew what to look for now.

And I saw it.

Something behind the eyes shifted. Something young. Something that had nothing to do with the grey hair or the wrinkles.

Recognition.

"My name is Isabelle Rosaline Valmont," the woman said. Her voice carried across the entire courtyard without any apparent effort. "I am the Head Researcher of the International Magic Association. I am here to investigate the incidents of the past two weeks."

The crowd went silent.

"Of course," Celine said, in that same grandmotherly voice. "We welcome the Association's assistance."

"I'm sure you do," Isabelle said.

She did not sound like she meant it.

I didn't approach her.

I wanted to. I had been waiting for a week for someone to show up who had answers. Someone who wasn't the Kingdom. Someone who wasn't the Church. Someone who wasn't Celine.

But I couldn't.

The ceremony was still going. The crowd was still there. And if I walked up to the Head Researcher of the International Magic Association in front of the entire academy, everyone would see.

So I waited.

The ceremony ended at seven. The crowd dispersed. The council members started cleaning up. Lily went to help with the chairs. Myra went to help with the offerings.

I went to the back of the courtyard, where the shadows were deepest and the crowd was thinnest, and I waited.

She found me.

I don't know how. I hadn't told anyone where I was going. But she walked around the corner like she had known exactly where I would be, and she stopped three feet away from me, and she looked at me.

Not at my uniform. Not at my glasses. Not at the council pin on my collar.

At me.

"You're the one," she said.

I didn't answer.

"You're the one who was at the center of both incidents. You're the one who froze during the tournament last year. You're the one who lost her magic."

My throat tightened.

"How do you know about that?"

"I'm a researcher, Miss Inania. It's my job to know things."

She sat down on a bench. Not the way adults sit down when they're about to have a serious conversation. The way someone sits down when they're tired and they've been walking for a long time and they just want to rest for a minute.

"I've been studying the Sleepwalker for twenty years," she said. "I know the patterns. I know the signs. I know the way the power behaves when it's awake, and I know the way it behaves when it's sleeping, and I know the way it behaves when someone tries to suppress it."

I sat down on the bench next to her.

Not because I wanted to.

Because my legs had stopped working.

"You know what I am," I said.

"Yes."

"You know why I lost my magic."

"Yes."

"You know how to fix it."

"No."

I stared at her.

"I know how to understand it," she said. "Understanding is not the same as fixing. But understanding is where it starts."

She opened her satchel and took out a notebook. It was old. The pages were yellowed. The handwriting on the cover was faded and cramped.

"This is the only complete record of the Silent Spell in existence," she said. "I found it in a Lutetia archive twelve years ago. It was misfiled. Someone had tried to hide it."

"Who?"

"I don't know. But I have my suspicions."

She handed me the notebook.

I took it.

"The Silent Spell is not a spell," she said. "Not the way you think of spells. It's not something you cast. It's something you are. It works through the unconscious mind. It works through dreams. It works through the part of you that keeps functioning even when you're not paying attention."

I opened the notebook.

The pages were covered in diagrams. Circles within circles. Symbols I didn't recognize. Notes in the margins in three different languages. One of them was Lutetian. I recognized the script from my father's books.

"The Sleepwalker," she said, "is a single soul that has existed since before the Kingdom. It cycles through bodies. It always has. The bodies change. The soul doesn't. You are the current body."

"I don't feel like a soul that's been around since before the Kingdom."

"No. You wouldn't. The soul doesn't remember. The soul just is. The memories belong to the body, not the soul. That's why you don't remember your past lives. That's why you feel like Clara, and only Clara."

She paused.

"But the power belongs to the soul. And the soul is yours. Whether you want it or not."

I closed the notebook.

"Why did I lose it?"

"You didn't lose it. You locked it away."

"Why?"

"Because it scared you."

I didn't answer.

"The first time you used it — the tournament last year — you weren't just casting a spell. You were projecting your consciousness into the world. That's what the Sleepwalker does. That's what the power is. And when you did it, you almost killed someone."

My blood went cold.

"Who?"

"You don't remember?"

"No."

"Good."

She stood up.

"That's the first thing you need to fix. Not the magic. The memory. The memory is what's holding you back. You locked the power away because you don't want to remember what you did. And until you remember, you won't be able to open the lock."

"How do I remember?"

"You sleep."

I stared at her.

"That's it?"

"That's it. Sleep. Dream. Let the unconscious do what the conscious won't. The power lives in your dreams, Miss Inania. It always has. It's waiting for you to come back to it."

She walked toward the courtyard.

"One more thing."

I looked up.

"The Ancient Demon Priestess is here. She's been here for ten years. She knows what you are, and she's been watching you the entire time. If you're going to do this — if you're going to unlock the Sleepwalker — you need to do it before she decides you're a threat."

"She already knows I'm a threat."

"No. She knows you're a mystery. There's a difference."

She disappeared around the corner.

I sat on the bench for a long time.

The notebook was still in my hands.

The moon was rising. The courtyard was empty. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Lily calling my name.

I didn't answer.

I was too busy thinking about what Isabelle had said.

You almost killed someone.

You don't remember.

Good.