Page 15 of House of Ydril

She stops to throw me a grin. “And I’m sure we have much more important things to talk about,” she adds as she motions at the poster on the wall to her right.

They’re everywhere, not just in the cafeteria, and they’re showing silhouettes of a woman and a man dancing. And when I say dancing, I mean actually dancing. Apparently, they cast spells on their posters here, just to make things a bit more interesting, I guess. And the bottom of the poster says, in large block letters, Winter Solstice Ball.

“What if I don’t want to go?” I ask.

“I think you’d be the first,” she laughs dryly. “And why wouldn’t you want to? I mean, people will be fighting to take you.”

I scoff. “Yeah, I can already see them lining up. Oh, wait, nope, still ignoring me,” I finish with a laugh.

But Nuala is shaking her head. “There’s an order to these things. First there’s the Showing of the Chosen,” she says as she starts counting on her fingers. “Although we generally just call it Showing. That’s tomorrow. Then on the night of the Blood Moon, which is sometime in November, there’s the Favorday, when other students ask the Chosen to the Winter Solstice and Grand Balls. And believe me, you’ll have a hard time fighting them off.”

I laugh. “I’m sure that will be true for the rest of the Chosen.” As I say it, an image pops into my mind, of Faust being surrounded by fawning girls. “But I’ll still be an outcast.”

Nuala just looks at me for a second and then lets out a laugh. “It’s not about popularity. It’s a power grab really.”

“A power grab? How come?”

“The Trials,” she starts in a more serious voice, “they used to be a much bigger thing because people believed the Chosen, especially the Champion, received blessings from the Divine. But even these days, if you come out a winner, people know you’re going somewhere. And there’s a lot of media pomp, so even being the date of the Chosen comes with a lot of prestige.”

“Holy shit,” I blurt out, grabbing my forehead with my hand. “That’s the last thing I need, people asking me out with media pomp on their mind.”

“It’ll be fun, trust me.”

She says it with such a sad face that my heart breaks a little. “Can’t I just pick you as my date and be done with it?” I ask with a grin.

At least that makes her laugh. “No, someone has to askyou,” she replies, still laughing. “Not the other way around.”

It’s only later, when I climb up to my room, that I remember my mission. I’m reminded of it as soon as I fling the door open and find that same bunch of books waiting for me there.

At least this whole thing with the Trials has made me forget for two whole days about the fact I still don’t know who left them to me.

But it also makes me pissed at myself. For being so absorbed in the books that I didn’t take enough time to explore the Academy or to get myself more familiar with the way things work here, including the Trials. And I’d say I was also pissed at myself for not taking the time to meet more people, but I wouldn’t even if I tried, considering how suspicious everyone’s being of the ‘human-bred girl’.

Still, I’m pissed enough to decide to just stop with the whole madness. I need to fucking move on and I’m fucking tired of having to hop over piles of books every time I need to go to the bathroom. And I know I have at leastsomestorage space in this room.

So I get to work. I start picking them up and shoving them into drawers and closets I haven’t even had time to inspect until now.

As I work, I find a few things leftover by the previous tenants. Scrunchies. Candy wrappers. Cheat sheets for everything from History to Runes.

And one really old-looking diary. Leather bound, with metal scales around the edges. I pick it up, meaning to open it and find who it belongs to.

But as soon as I touch it, it sends shivers down my spine.

And not just that. It implants in my mind the image of some girl I’m sure I’ve never seen in my life. I think that, by now, I can tell when someone is fae-blooded.Shecertainly is.

And by the looks of her, she’s no ordinary fae. She has a rich green robe with a lighter shade shawl thrown over her shoulder. Her hair is dark brown, almost raven, and she has the most elaborate hairstyle I’ve ever seen, all braids and expensive-looking hair jewelry. She looks like she may as well be some fae queen from days past.

I scratch my head, wondering how a figment of my imagination can be so full of detail.

Intrigued, I crack open the diary. But before I can read a single word, I hear a female voice drawl, “Excuse me.”

I drop the diary, its weight almost crushing my foot as my head snaps in the direction of the voice. There she is, the woman I just saw in my head, standing a few feet away and throwing me a funny look.

“I’d appreciate it if you kept your nose out of myprivatediary,” she says, not giving a single fuck about the way my mouth drops open.

Chapter nine

“I’msorry,”Iblurtout as I pick up the diary, my mind having trouble making peace with the fact I’m apologizing to what seems to be an apparition.

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