Chapter 174: The Right Hand

Chapter 174: Chapter 174: The Right Hand

Theon swung his legs off the bed and fixed his eyes on the Headmaster. "Who is it?"

The Headmaster drew a long breath and straightened his robes. For a moment he did not answer, and the silence told Theon more than words could. When he finally spoke, his voice was heavy.

"It is just as I predicted. It is my right hand man."

Theon did not flinch. the headmaster had suspected it for days, and still the confirmation landed in his stomach like a stone. The man had stood at the Headmaster’s side through every crisis the academy had faced, trusted with its deepest secrets. Theon swallowed the bitterness rising in his throat. "Where is he right now?"

"In his lab. I managed to seal him inside before he understood what was happening." The Headmaster’s jaw tightened. "But I do not know how long the seal will hold. He is a master of artifact craft. A seal like mine is a puzzle to him, not a wall."

Theon stood up fast. He snatched his coat from the hook beside the door and shoved his arms into the sleeves.

Lyra was out of bed in the same breath, hair tangled, bare feet slapping the floorboards. "I’m coming with you."

Theon stopped with one hand on his collar. The words hit him wrong, and a memory rose behind them without being called, the premonition of her death, as clear and merciless as the day he first saw it. He had carried it ever since, folded small and buried deep, but it never left him. If he took her into danger, that death could find her at any moment. In a dark passage or in the middle of a fight. In one careless second.

"No," he said. "Stay here, Lyra. It is safer."

"I’m coming." She planted herself in front of the door with her fists clenched. "You always leave me behind."

"Lyra... i don’t"

She did not move. Theon looked at her stubborn face and the fear hiding behind her anger, and doubt crept in from the other side. What if leaving her was the very thing that doomed her? What if whatever was meant to kill her came for the Imperial dormitory the moment he left, while she sat alone in this room with no one to stand between her and it? Staying behind would not make her safe. It would only make her a easy target.

He closed his eyes, let out a breath, and made his choice.

"All right. You can come." Before she could cheer, he rested a hand on her shoulder and held her gaze. "But I need you to give in to the Primordial Flame Empress."

Lyra blinked. "Why?"

"Because I do not want anything to happen to you," Theon said quietly. "That is the only reason. She can protect you in ways I cannot."

Lyra studied his face for a long moment. Then she nodded, slowly, and closed her eyes.

Fire answered her. It rose from the floor and wrapped her small body in a crimson spiral, so hot that the Headmaster took a step back and the curtains began to smoke. The flames climbed higher and burned brighter, and when they folded in on themselves and vanished, it was not Lyra standing in the room. A tall woman stood there instead, wrapped in a cloak of living flame, her gaze already sweeping the room as if she were searching for something she had missed.

It found Theon. The Primordial Flame Empress crossed the floor in a single step, and before he could brace himself, she threw her arms around him and pulled him tight against her.

"Theon! My Theon, I have missed you so much."

"Oh, come on," Theon mumbled, his voice muffled, patting her arm. "Stop this already. We do not have time for it."

"Fine, fine." She released him with a sigh and smoothed his collar like a sulking mother. "All right. Let us get going."

Theon paused, and a suspicion crawled up his spine. "Wait. You could hear us? Everything we were talking about just now?"

"Of course I can, silly." She flicked his forehead with one finger. "Just because I am sleeping inside her does not mean I am not conscious."

"Oh." Heat crept into Theon’s ears. "All right. Then let us go."

They left the room together, the Headmaster in front, Theon and the Flame Empress close behind, and descended through the Imperial dormitory. The Headmaster did not slow his pace for a moment. At every landing he raised his voice and ordered the corridors cleared, and doors banged open as students stumbled out and hurried away with wide, worried faces. By the time they reached the courtyard, the whole academy had become a river of people flowing toward the gates.

Carriages crowded the main road, their horses stamping and tossing their heads. Servants dragged trunks across the cobblestones. Nobles in fine coats stood among the chaos, shouting orders and pulling their children by the wrists toward the open doors of their carriages. Some of the children cried. Some of them looked back over their shoulders, confused, at the friends they were being taken from.

Theon watched them with a frown. "Why are the nobles taking their children away? Hasn’t the academy proved that it is capable of protecting them?"

"It has," the Headmaster said without turning his head. "The ones taking their children away are cowards who do not believe in the power of this academy. Let them go. I would rather have an empty hall than a hall full of weaklings."

Theon looked forward again, and his heart gave a small jump. Celestia stood beside one of the carriages near the gate. The moment she saw him, her whole face lit up. She raised her hand to wave, took two quick steps toward him, and then a hand closed around her arm. Two attendants caught her by the shoulders and half carried, half dragged her backward. She twisted and called out his name, but the door of the carriage had already swung open, and they pushed her inside. The door slammed. The driver cracked his whip, and the carriage rolled out through the gates and disappeared into the dust.

Theon stood rooted to the spot. "Where is Celestia going?"

The Headmaster’s face did not change, but his voice dropped. "Her father sent word to me. She is to return home at once."

"I am guessing it is because of what has been happening at the academy."

"Yes."

That was all the Headmaster said, and Theon did not press him. There was a tired kind of grief in the way the man walked, the grief of someone who had watched people he loved make choices he could not stop.

They walked on through the long halls of the main building. The noise of the courtyard faded behind them until only their footsteps remained. As they passed a side corridor, Theon caught sight of a familiar figure walking alone with his head bowed. Leon. He moved quietly, as he always did, and did not look up.

Theon slowed. The words of the Undead Emperor came back to him, the strange way the ancient being had spoken about Leon, as though the boy were a locked door that only a few people in the world knew how to open. Theon had turned those words over many times since then and had never found their meaning. What hidden mystery lay behind Leon’s existence?

He watched the boy a moment longer. Then he looked forward again and let the question go. There was a traitor to catch, and it could not wait.

The Primordial Flame Empress had not let go of him once. She walked pressed against his arm, her fingers wrapped around his sleeve, murmuring in his ear about how much she loved him, how strong he had grown, how handsome he looked when he frowned, and how she would burn the whole world down for him if he asked. Theon kept his eyes fixed on the back of the Headmaster’s robes and tried to pretend that his ears were not burning.

At last they reached the Headmaster’s chamber. The Headmaster crossed the room to the far wall and pressed his palm against a section of stone. A deep rumble shook the floor, and a hidden passage opened beneath them, a stairway that sank into the dark. Torches flared to life along the walls as they descended, throwing their shadows long and wavering behind them. The air grew cold and damp and smelled of old metal.

At the bottom stood a heavy iron door, its surface crawling with glowing runes. The seal, Theon realized. He could feel it humming faintly against his skin, like a swarm of bees trapped in a jar.

The Headmaster laid his hand on the lock. "Stay behind me."

The moment the lock clicked open, fire blasted through the gap. It roared out of the doorway in a solid wall, and the Headmaster threw up an arm and was driven back a step. Something small and fast shot out of the flames and passed between them in a blur.

The Primordial Flame Empress moved faster than Theon could follow. Her hand lashed out and closed around the thing’s neck, and she pulled it into the torchlight. It was a man, thin and wiry, in a long coat lined with pockets and heavy bracelets etched with runes. The culprit. His face was pale and slick with sweat, and his eyes were wild.

"Got you," the Flame Empress said, almost cheerfully.

The man twisted. His wrist rolled in a way that no wrist should, and one of his bracelets clicked open against her hand. A thick cloud of poisonous green smoke burst out in her face. She recoiled with a hiss, and the force of it threw her backward. She crashed into Theon, and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs and flowing fire, with Theon flat on his back on the stone.

The Flame Empress pushed herself up on her elbows and looked down at him with a lustful glint in her eyes. "Oh, Theon. What exactly are you doing to my body? it feels good"

"What exactly do you mean?" Theon sputtered, trying to wriggle out from under her. "Get up! I need to chase him!"

She laughed and rolled to her feet, and with a wave of her hand the green smoke burned away. Theon scrambled up and ran. The culprit was already racing up the stairway, his coat flapping behind him. Theon pounded up after him, with the Headmaster and the Flame Empress close at his heels.

They burst into the Headmaster’s chamber just in time to see the man skid to a halt before the tall window at the far end of the room. He spun around. The only door stood behind Theon and the others, and the window opened onto a drop of a hundred feet or more. He had nowhere left to run.

Theon raised both hands and slowed to a walk. "Calm down. Please. We only want to know why you did it."

The man’s chest heaved. He laughed, a thin and cracked sound. "Even if you catch me, I will not survive. I need to leave. I need to get as far away as I can."

"What are you running from?" Theon asked. "What exactly are you so afraid of? Come with us. We will not hurt you. All we need is information."

The man looked at him, and for the briefest moment something like pity softened his face. "You do not know what you are dealing with, kid. I advise you to withdraw from this matter before it kills everyone you love."

A cold weight dropped into Theon’s chest. "What do you mean by that?"

"Do not worry," the man said. "You’ll see."

He stepped backward onto the windowsill and threw himself out.

Theon lunged forward, and he saw the man spread his arms as he fell. Light flared from the runes on his bracelets, and a pair of wings unfolded from his back, thin and shimmering and humming with power, like a glider cut from glass. They caught the air with a sharp snap. The man swooped upward in a wide arc and climbed into the sky, growing smaller with every heartbeat.

"I have to follow him!" Theon grabbed the sill and tensed to leap.

A strong hand closed around his shoulder and hauled him back. "Wait."

"But he is getting away!"

"I know." The Headmaster’s eyes were fixed on the dwindling speck in the sky, and there was a hard glint in them. "I placed a tracking spell on him before he ever reached that window. Let him run. He will lead us straight to his master, whoever that is."

Theon let out a shaky breath and stared at the empty sky where the man had disappeared. The wind swept through the window and stirred his hair. Behind him, the Primordial Flame Empress rested a warm hand on his back, and for once she did not say a word.

*You’ll see,* the man had said and it made theon wonder what exactly he meant by that?