Page 66 of The Teras Trials

Fred’s entire arm is wrapped tight in a bandage, and Silas is by the window with his legs up on a stool—though he immediately drops them and sits straight when I enter.

“Alright?” I mumble.

“Fine,” he says, rather stiffly. “How are you feeling?”

I shrug. Truly, I’m not too sure. Between Leo’s visit and my guts nearly tumbling out of me, I could certainly be better. “Standing,” I say eventually, “though I’m not sure for how much longer.”

“Sit, then, you fool.” Fred moves to clear away a pile of books from the seat beside Silas, and I amble over to it.

“Glad you’re alive,” Fred says with a small smile.

I smile back. “Where are the others?”

“On a fool’s errand, trying to find some clue for the next trial,” Silas mutters. “Though we’re not faring much better.”

Books are scattered around them. I give Silas a questioning look.

“Victoria thought we should look through them. Actually read them, you know? She said the University has done very little for the sake of doing it, that they don’t care too much about our intellectual capabilities unless we can apply them to killing teras, and that unless these books are here for decoration, that there might be a pattern to the ones selected for the tower.”

Well, Victoria has a point, doesn’t she.

“She’s with the others?” I clarify.

Fred makes a face. “She. . . she didn’t seem quite so. . .”

I frown. “What?”

“She’s a bit of a mess,” Silas says. Fred stands up and kicks his shin. “Ow, what—stop it. I’m right. She can’t handle these trials. The harpy barely scratched her, and she—”

“—is having a very normal experience to what is happening to us,” I cut him off. God, I hate righteous people. I hate it when empathy is frowned upon. Refusing to absorb any of Silas’ sulking, I gesture to the books. “What about the other rooms? Other students, I mean. Are their books the same?”

The siblings exchange a look. “Only a few.” Fred pushes them towards me: Metamorphoses, the Aeneid, Varro.

A short, bound manuscript I’ve never seen before.

I go for it immediately. “Have you read it?”

“It’s in Latin,” she says. “My knowledge is. . . rudimentary, at best.”

I nod and take it. It looks to be mediaeval in nature, complete with illuminated letters, drawings scrawled in the margins. It’s entirely handwritten—and the scale of it upsets me when I know that every other room on campus has one, too. But it is dated to only a few years ago.

From my brother’s trial year.

It’s also, notably, not Classical Latin. Dean Drearton’s name is signed beneath it.

I read aloud:

* * *

When I’m done, the siblings are staring at me. Fred collapses back into her hands with a half-muffled scream she then tries to play off by running her hands through her hair.

“Why would he write this down and hand it out to us?”

“To prove he’s not trying to trick us,” Silas whispers. He rocks forward, picking at something on his hand. Whatever book he’d been reading has since been discarded at his side.

I put the manuscript down. “It’s a test in its own right, isn’t it? There’s no way we could have known about the hemlock without my brother’s letter—unless we’d read this. The dean is ensuring we have all the necessary skills and resources to make it through to the end of this. To test that we’re not so scared that we’ll overlook information that can save us.”

“Fucking terrible,” Fred grunts.

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