Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

There’s quite a line when we get to the infirmary; apparently Kratos’ first year witch class was given weapons before they were ready.

“Hepatitis!” An adult healer yells, straightening from the patient she was leaning over. But the kid’s got an open wound in his leg, not a virus. To my surprise, a young woman goes rushing past me, answering the call. She makes some quick notes, nodding all the while.

An orderly rushes past us, knocking into Cassie and not excusing himself as a roll of bandages falls from his hands, leaving a white path on the floor.

“Um, they’re like super busy,” I say. “Do you want to just—”

But the healer, hands on her hips, pushes us into a room, kicking the door closed behind her.

“What do you need?” she asks brusquely. “You’d better be dying.”

“Nice bedside manner,” I tell her, and she shrugs.

“You’re well enough to stand up. I repeat, what do you need?”

I pull my hand away to show her my cut, and Cassie explains her hydra bite. Hepatitis turns suddenly calm and kind as she looks at our injuries, then angry again when she meets our eyes.

“You’ll need waxroot for the hydra bite. I don’t have any fresh and don’t have time to go cut it.” She pulls a small, silver blade from her belt, handing it to Cassie.

“Do you know where the Wall of Weeping is?”

“Yes,” Cassie says, eyeing the knife dubiously.

“Waxroot grows there, in between the stones. Go get some, come back and I’ll tend to you.”

“Hold up,” I say, as she’s about to turn away. “Is your name really Hepatitis?”

“Yes,” she says. “My mother was a healer with a weird sense of humor.”

“Um…I was also wondering if we could maybe visit Fern while we’re here.”

“Fern is in isolation. Her burns are serious and she needs twenty-four seven uninterrupted healing.”

“So that’s a no, then?”

She crosses her arms and stares me down. “I’m too busy for this s**t, and I’m perfectly capable of slipping you some poison rather than healing you, if you keep pushing.”

I put both hands in the air, in fake—I think—surrender and Cassie leads me to the Wall of Weeping, which cannot be a great place to hang. Not with a horrible name like that.

As we walk Cassie thankfully chatters about her own love life instead of mine. She still hasn’t found a chance to tell Darcy about her prophecy about his death and is debating over exactly when and how to do it. “I was thinking of leaving an anonymous note. That way he won’t be mad at me.”

“Yeah, but you’re the only seer on campus…so he might figure out it’s from you,” I can’t help but point out.

Cassie is disappointed. “Oh, shoot. I didn’t think of that. Maybe if I word it just right…” She tugs my arm, leading me toward a more rugged pathway. “The Wall of Weeping is this way.”

“Why’s it called that?” I ask Cassie, as we head to a different part of campus. This section is older, the foundations of the building giving out a little, the corners not so square. Most of the healing classes are taught on this part of campus, and I realize now that must be because the older buildings harbor plants in their crevices that they harvest. Maybe wild plants are better than the ones they grow in the school greenhouse?

“The Wall of Weeping?” Cassie asks, as she pulls open a door, ushering me inside. The building smells musty, and old.

“It’s right next to the Hall of the Dead,” she explains. “Used to be there was an enforced mourning period whenever a student died. They’d put their picture up in the Hall of the Dead and make pairs take shifts sitting at a wall in the courtyard, crying and sharing stories of the person who died. It was supposed to be a way to heal some of the rifts between the different students. You know, like make a shifter mourn for vampire, and vice versa. Kind of force everyone to all be on the same team.”

“But?” I ask, sensing that there’s one coming.

“But a werewolf lost her temper one night while she was supposed to be mourning with a vamp, after another vampire died. She ended up tearing him to pieces.”

“Oh,” I say. “So they stopped doing it?”

“Yep, nobody really comes here now,” Cassie says, pointing upwards as we enter a long hall. Carved in stone above the entrance it says “Hall of the Dead.”

“Super,” I say, rubbing my arms for warmth.

“It’s alright,” Cassie says, taking a torch from the wall. “It’s a short hallway. The practice didn’t last long.”

Still, I’m a little spooked as we enter, the fire from Cassie’s torch only reaching a few feet on either side of us. The light bounces off of framed pictures, showing werewolves in full shifted mode, mermaids with sparkling tails, and vampires looking extremely arrogant and terribly sexy at the same time.

“I mean, why they thought it was a good idea to put a werewolf with a vampire in the first place…” Cassie says.

She stops, her chatter suddenly, eerily silent.

“Cassie?” I ask, and turn to find her staring over my shoulder. I hope she’s not about to launch into another death prophecy; I’m not entirely over the one she dropped the other night. But no, her eyes aren’t whited out. It’s worse—she’s staring at something behind me.

“Edie,” she says quietly. “I think you should turn around.”

I feel heat rising in my chest and it’s comforting because it’s not fear. I know I can breathe fire right now if I want to. I turn, and the heat is gone, replaced by cold, icy amazement. Staring down at me from the wall is a picture of…me.

“Adrianna Aspostolos,” Cassie says, bringing her torch closer to the nameplate under the picture. “Okay, like, not to be rude or anything, but you should be glad your dad took you and you’re an Evans. Aspostolos is a mouthful, and I don’t even think—”

“Cassie!” I hiss at her. “Could you please…just…be…quiet?”

She does, immediately, and I take a moment to stare at the picture. She looks exactly like me; blonde hair, darker eyebrows, a little hint of an attitude around the mouth. Then I note the subtle differences. My face is more round, my nose smaller, my chin more delicate.

I take in the photo of the woman who is undoubtedly my mother. Girl, actually. The student in the picture couldn’t have been much older than eighteen when she died. Eventually, I start to notice other things—like the fact that her picture frame is clean. I take the torch from Cassie, going from one portrait to the next, confirming my suspicions.

“You were wrong, Cassie,” I tell her, handing back the torch. “Someone still comes here, and they’re still mourning. Look—her picture has been cleaned recently. All the others have a film of dirt over them.”

“What’s this?” Cassie leans in closer to the painting, rubs her sleeve across the nameplate to reveal some smaller etchings underneath.

“What’s it say?” I ask, leaning in.

“Don’t know,” Cassie shrugs. “It’s in Greek. And that’s all Greek to me!”

I don’t even pretend to laugh at her joke. Instead I hang the torch in a wall sconce and physically turn Cassie around, digging through her backpack until I find a pen. I hold my arm out and make her painstakingly copy the characters from under Adrianna’s portrait onto the inside of my arm.

We’re quiet at the Wall of Weeping, Cassie cutting away the waxroot she needs without a word, clutching it in her hands as we pass back through the Hall of the Dead. I try not to look at Adrianna as we pass her, but it’s hard not to.

Hepatitis spots us when we return to the infirmary. She immediately chews the waxroot Cassie hands her and presses it against her hydra bites, instructing her to keep the pressure steady.

“Now you,” she says, and I hold my hair out of my eyes so she can see the cut on my forehead.

“What is this?” she snaps, grabbing my wrist.

“I got hurt flying—”

“No”—she squeezes my wrist tighter, grinding my bones— “this!” She stabs a finger at the writing on my arm.

“Can you read it?” I ask her.

“Of course I can read it,” she says. “All healers are trained in Greek. Wait—do you not know what this says?”

“No,” Cassie and I eye each other as Hepatitis pours some water onto the edge of her apron and starts rubbing out the letters.

“Hey!” I jerk back. “I need to know what that says.”

She grabs my arm and pulls it against her again, trapping my elbow in her armpit while she wipes the pen marks away.

“You can’t let anyone see it,” she says, rubbing so hard that it hurts. “Students used to think that just writing words like this onto someone’s skin could be used as a curse. Like if you write it, it will come true. I don’t think it actually works, but we don’t want people getting ideas, the way things are going right now.”

“No,” I agree, pulling my arm back and wincing when I see how raw and red it is. “Now, tell me. What did that say?”

Hepatitis looks around her, and lowers her voice. “It said, died in childbirth.”