My mother wasted her coin on having bones prepared for a matchmaking reading. Because it doesn’t matter what she thinks my future holds—there’s no way I’ll ever fall in love with Bram Wilberg.
Norah leads us through Ivory Hall’s enormous arched entrance. The moment I step inside, it’s as if the pressure in the air changes. My stomach plunges and a buzz grows in my ears. The room seems to spin. I hold out a hand to steady myself, but the moment I touch the wall, the chatter of the other apprentices vanishes and I’m engulfed in a silence so complete, it feels like sound.
And then a hum, a noise soft enough that I doubt I hear it at all, though I feel it there surrounding me. As if I’ve walked into a whisper.
Firm hands pull me away from the wall and the hum disappears. Norah guides me forward and helps me sink into a chair. “You must be a Bone Charmer,” she says.
I can’t manage more than a nod.
“Sit here a moment. It will pass.”
I open my mouth to ask what’s happening, but then another wave of dizziness washes over me and I can’t get the question out. Norah pats my hand. “Ivory Hall is made entirely of bone, so you’re going to be uncomfortable for a little while. It’s always hardest on the Charmers, but you’ll adjust. Until then, I suggest you touch as little as possible.”
A tremble goes through me. I can’t even fathom the number of bones it would take to build something this vast. And what happened when I touched the walls? Was that bone reading? Are these human bones? The hair on my arms stands on end.
When I was small, I used to have nightmares and wake up so frightened, I could scarcely breathe. My father would show up at my bedside, take my face in his hands, and gently press his forehead against mine. “Deep breath, bluebird,” he would say, inhaling right along with me. “Now blow it out. In again. And out.” We would sit like that, forehead to forehead, breathing in harmony until peace found me again, until it wrapped around me like sunlight.
His voice is in my mind now as I pull air into my lungs and force it out again. Slowly, the dizziness subsides, and I can finally take in the grand foyer—the two staircases on opposite sides of the room that curve elegantly toward the upper floors, the chandeliers dripping with crystal, the gleaming white floors that look like marble but must be bone.
I turn my focus to Norah, who has launched into a speech about the rules we need to follow while living at Ivory Hall. I try to focus—something about two apprentices to a room, and meals in the dining hall, and a schedule of lessons, some of which will be one-on-one with our Masters and others taught together as a group—but I’m still not feeling like myself, and most of it escapes me.
Mercifully, she doesn’t talk long before she announces that the staff will show us to our rooms. I make the mistake of touching one of the banisters on the way up the stairs and nearly lose my balance, but a hand reaches for my elbow to steady me.
Bram.
He lets go as soon as I regain my footing, and walks silently beside me. For a moment I think I can hear the sound of his blood sluicing through his veins. But then I realize it’s only the whisper of the walls.
When we reach the point where the corridors split—the men’s dormitory to the left, and the women’s to the right—he walks away without looking back.
I wake the next morning to someone perched on the edge of my bed. A girl my own age with large brown eyes and curly hair that reaches nearly to her waist. She’s dressed in a white nightgown and she’s studying me intently, as if she’s been there for hours, watching me sleep.
I let out a startled yelp.
“Oh,” she says, “sorry to scare you.”
What did she think was going to happen when she sat on my bed? I scrub at my eyes with a fist. “Who are you?”
“I’m Tessa,” she says.
I blink up at her.
She frowns. “Your roommate?”
“I’m sorry … I …”
“Are you feeling better? Because you were in really bad shape last night.”
I search my memory for the events of the previous evening, but it’s like trying to gather broken glass. Things come back only in bits and pieces. I vaguely remember walking toward the dormitories, a voice chattering in my ear, the sensation that the floor was disappearing beneath me, and then collapsing onto the bed. I look down. I’m still in the same clothes I wore yesterday.
And Tessa is still talking. “If we’d started our lessons already, I might have been able to do more to help you, but since we haven’t even been bound to our magics yet, what could I do? I thought about finding a real Healer”—she laughs—“one with some actual training, but you didn’t seem to want me to do that, so I hope you don’t mind that I just left you alone.”
“I don’t mind,” I say.
She lets out a relieved sigh. “Oh, good. I’d hate to get off on the wrong foot.” A collection of white star-shaped tattoos curve around the back of her ear, and her right arm is covered in indigo whorls.
“I’m Saskia,” I tell her, scooting into a sitting position. The room spins gently and my stomach rolls over.
“Yes,” she says, “you told me last night. Right before you pushed me out of the way and fell face-first onto your bed.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t quite myself.” I loosen my braids and run my fingers through my hair. My scalp is so tender, it makes me wince, and I wish I’d at least had the presence of mind to take out the pins before falling asleep.
Tessa gives me a sympathetic frown. “Is it the walls? I read they make Charmers feel especially unwell.”
I attempt a nod that makes my head swim. “I didn’t realize Ivory Hall was made from bone until I got here. It doesn’t affect you?”
“It does,” Tessa says. “Just nothing serious enough to make me ill.”
“What do you feel?”
She tilts her head and stares at the ceiling as if trying to find the right words. “I feel … unsettled. I can sense the injuries in the bones—the ailments that killed their owners.”
“So they are human?”
“Definitely,” she says. “I think a lot of them were soldiers. Probably Kastelians who died in the Transdroimian Wars. Their bones are particularly potent. But other people must have died of natural causes and chosen this as their final resting place, because their bones feel … quieter to me.”
I swallow. “You discerned all of that and you don’t even have a headache?”
The tips of her ears turn pink. “What’s it like for you? Other than being ill, I mean.”
What’s it like for me? For a moment I’m tempted to tell her the truth—that I’m terrified of bone magic. Since the kenning I’ve felt like I’m standing at the summit of a steep mountain, about to be pushed from behind. I’m in danger of careening downward, out of control. Destroying everything in my path. I hoped once I arrived at Ivory Hall, I might feel more empowered, more connected to the magic. Instead I was rendered incapacitated the moment I set foot inside the building.
But my secrets burn shamefully inside me, so I find a different way to explain: “It feels like the walls are whispering.”