THE NINTH SEAT

Two

I don't sleep.

I lie on top of the covers fully dressed, Lydia's journal open on my chest, and stare at the ceiling until the storm outside dies to a drizzle and the chapel clock strikes two. Then three. Then four.

*The ninth is never empty for long.*

I've read that line twenty times. Each time it lands differently. First like a warning. Then like a threat. Now like a countdown.

By five-thirty I give up on sleep entirely, pull on my uniform, and do the thing I always do when grief turns into something sharper: I start mapping.

I tear a blank page from my notebook and sketch what I know. Ravenswood layout from the map Hargrove gave me. Library wing east side, old building, separate from the main block. Tower marked on the map as *disused, access restricted.* The quad between them. And somewhere underneath all of it, if Lydia's notes mean anything, a chapel.

I circle the library. Theo told me to stay away from it. Which means that's exactly where I'm going.

Not tonight. Tonight I need to be invisible. But tomorrow, after assembly, while everyone is still buzzing from whatever announcement the headmaster makes that's my window.

I fold the map. Tuck it inside the journal. Slide both under the loose floorboard I found when I dropped my key earlier old buildings always have one if you look.

The corridor outside my door is silent when I c***k it open. Grey pre-dawn light through the far window. Sconces off. Just cold stone and shadow.

I almost go back inside.

Then I hear it.

Voices. Low. Coming from the stairwell at the end of the hall.

I ease the door shut behind me and move toward them, back flat to the wall, breathing slow. The voices sharpen as I get closer two, maybe three people, male, taut with something that sounds like argument.

" moving too fast. The girl just arrived "

"The binding doesn't care about your timeline, Rowan. It's fraying. You felt it at supper same as the rest of us."

"There has to be another way "

"There isn't. There never was."

Silence. Then footsteps ascending, away from me.

I press into the shadow of the alcove beside the stairwell door. Three seconds later it swings open and someone steps out.

Theo.

He's still in yesterday's clothes, dark circles under his eyes, hair dishevelled. He stops dead when he sees me.

For a long moment neither of us moves.

"You heard that," he says. Not a question.

"Who was Rowan talking to?"

His jaw tightens. "Go back to your room."

"You keep saying that." I step out of the alcove. "It keeps not working."

Something shifts in his expression not quite anger, not quite admiration. He looks away first. Runs a hand through his hair.

"Seat Two," he says finally, voice so low I have to lean in to catch it. "Marcus Hale. He's the one pushing for early nomination. He's been pushing since September."

"Why?"

"Because the echoes are getting worse and he's terrified." Theo glances toward the stairwell. "And because he thinks filling the ninth seat will fix everything."

"Will it?"

His eyes come back to mine. Flat. Certain. "It will fix it for them. Not for whoever sits in it."

The corridor feels colder suddenly. I cross my arms. "Lydia's journal says the curse isn't ancient. She wrote that the elders feed it. That the ninth seat isn't sacrifice it's fuel."

Theo goes very still.

"She figured it out," I press. "Didn't she. That's why they took her."

A muscle works in his jaw. He looks like a man standing at the edge of something he's been avoiding for years.

"Yes," he says quietly. "She figured it out."

It hits me harder than I expect not the confirmation, but the flatness of it. Like he's been carrying that yes for seven years and it's worn smooth from handling.

"Then help me prove it," I say. "Not warnings. Not deflections. Actually help me."

He looks at me for a long moment. In the grey dawn light I can see how young he looks under the composure how much of the untouchable Council president is performance and how much is just a boy who watched something terrible and couldn't unknow it.

"Assembly is at nine," he says. "After don't go to the greenhouse. I know Rowan told you to meet him there." A pause. "Come to the library instead. East wing, second floor, restricted section. Door at the end of the stacks. I'll leave it open."

"Why the library? You told me to stay away from it."

"I know what I told you." He holds my gaze. "I was wrong."

He moves past me down the corridor. I turn to watch him go.

"Theo."

He stops. Doesn't turn around.

"Why are you helping me?"

A beat of silence. Long enough that I think he won't answer.

"Because Lydia deserved better than silence," he says. "And so do you."

He rounds the corner. Gone.

I stand in the empty corridor, heartbeat loud in the quiet. The cold has settled in my wrist not burning. Just present. Like something reminding me it's still there.

I look down.

The 9 is faint but visible in the grey light. And below it, new three words in Lydia's handwriting, unmistakably hers:

*He's telling the truth.*

I stare at it for a long time.

Then I pull my sleeve down, go back to my room, and start preparing for assembly.