Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Archive

"What does it mean?" I said.

I held the scale up between two fingers.

Morvran sat up slowly in my bed. The casts scraped the headboard.

"It means it's morning," he said. "Come back to bed."

"It was black yesterday."

"Scales change."

"Morvran."

He looked at the window instead of at me.

"I promised you everything after the Trials," he said. "I meant it. I still mean it."

"That was before this turned white in my drawer."

"I know."

"Then tell me now."

He didn't.

He got up, found his shirt on the floor, and put it on over the casts with his back to me.

"After the Trials," he said again, quietly, and went out to light the fire.

I stood there in my shift with a white scale in my hand.

Last night he had told me everything I wanted to hear.

This morning he wouldn't tell me one true thing.

Kerensa came back from her mother's at noon with a basket of bread and a look on her face.

"Well?" she said.

"Not now."

She took one look at me and put the basket down.

"Oh no," she said. "What did he do?"

I showed her the scale.

I told her all of it.

The black scale in my fist on Waking morning, and the white band at his temple.

The white I'd seen spread over his throat while I died.

I'd never told anyone I'd died before.

She listened with her mouth open and a bread roll forgotten in her hand.

When I was done, she was quiet for a long moment.

"Right," she said. "So you've been reborn, and you didn't tell me."

"Would you have believed me?"

"No. I'd have dosed you with valerian and put you to bed." She bit the roll. "Then I'd have believed you. What do you need?"

"The restricted archive."

She chewed. "Tonight?"

"Tonight."

"Good. The archivist's terrier had worms in our second year. I cured it. He gave me his spare key so I could check on it while he was at his sister's." She pulled a ring from her apron pocket. "He never asked for it back."

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