Page 71 of The Teras Trials

“Don’t,” he says, voice low.

“Let go of me,” she whispers. Her voice buckles with emotion. “Bellamy. Bellamy.”

He’s holding her, and holding her tight, I realise. Enough that the way she’s straining against his grip has got to be leaving a mark. I flinch—I feel ill.

“Let her go,” I say—plainly, because I’m surprised at him, surprised that he isn’t listening to a woman he claims to love.

Bellamy’s eyes flit over to me and he blinks rapidly. His grip softens and Victoria stumbles back against me. I put a hand on her shoulder. She’s staring at him, and she’s shivering, and God, have I missed something? I can feel her trembling.

“Victoria,” I whisper, but she spins away, brown hair half over her face. She crosses the threshold before I can ask her what’s happening.

Fred has her arms crossed, and she’s looking at Bellamy very differently, now: with a kind of reproving, dark scrutiny he very much deserves. She crosses after Victoria and her brother follows at her heels.

“What was that?” I hiss at Bellamy, but he ignores me like I’m his conscience; without looking my way, he storms after the others.

Which leaves me in the cold afternoon, Varro volume clutched in my arm, and what else can I do but step over the threshold?

A warbling crowds my ears. Pressure pops, like my head is under water, and I’m forced to blink rapidly as my eyes adjust to a sudden shift in the lighting.

My body shivers involuntarily—not from the cold but from an abrupt and overpowering nausea. The dark room I expect to find is lit up: golden glow of a hundred candles, saturated light, tapestries on the walls. It’s a circular stone room small enough like it’s sitting at the base of a stone tower. I spot a sitting chair and a straight-backed wooden one at a messy desk. Papers, a quill, ink, and an open compass sit on it. A bottle of laudanum, too. Directly opposite the door we’ve entered from is another, plainly wooden exit. Positioned in the centre of the room, on a round handwoven rug, is some metal contraption I have no name for. Its bottom half is a tripod, but then it explodes into an array of brass appendages like an orrery, but instead of solar objects, vials of blood are suspended and moving in relation to one another. Each vial is labelled, and of course I recognise them. Every one of us put our blood in one of these as we crossed that other threshold, onto the University grounds.

My eye stays on the blood orrery, where some vials jerk and move, and others remain stationary. I can’t be sure what it’s for—whether the blood needs to stay moving, or if it's something worse, like a tracker, or a map—but it at once disturbs and compels me.

The only other thing that gets my attention is the presence of the doorkeeper.

He is a Blood Hunter—the same Blood Hunter I saw the night of the first trial, meeting his partner beneath the willow to hunt a runaway. The gruff northern accent aligns with my memory, but he doesn’t look how I imagined. His lips are sunken and thin, and his skin is pockmarked: first from acne, many years ago, but again from old scars, running thin and knife-like across his cheeks. He looks to be in his forties, but is probably younger—at least bodily. He has one of those faces where exhaustion flavours him with deep-set, hollow eyes, a haunting thousand-yard stare, an expression devoid of any joy and life. He is old in spirit. His soul seems practically haunted.

From the other door, I hear commotion. Or not commotion, but noise. And I’m shocked to hear it—shocked when I realise that I haven’t heard the bustle and ambience of a city since coming onto campus. I’m hearing now the muffled signs of life. The indistinct sounds of the thing this campus has been missing all along.

Students.

I don’t know what comes over me. All my fear calcifies into exhausted bravery: I storm forward and wrench the door open. There is, again, a great darkness like a sheet separating this room from the rest of this building. But I can see formless shadows moving, and I can hear more clearly their conversations. As if said entirely for my benefit, the words: “Should see one of the Artificers” pierces the veil with a stark clarity. Without thinking, I go to step over the threshold.

A rough grip hauls me back. I stumble, and the Blood Hunter ungently slams the door closed. He stands between me and it, and grimaces.

“Stupid,” he says.

“There are students in there,” I say, dumbly.

“Yes, well done,” the Blood Hunter snorts. “But you’re no student.”

We stare at each other. Over his shoulder, I see Leo shift, frowning at the orrery whirring in the centre of the room.

I go to tug the door open again and the Blood Hunter grabs my wrist. He’s big, I realise—the bulk of him is drowning in the black Mackintosh, but he certainly has size. I grunt and reluctantly let go of the handle.

“But can you take us all on?” I say with a confidence I don’t feel.

He snorts, and then lets out a full-bellied laugh. “Oh, Lord. You’re Thaddeus’ brother, aren’t you? Yeah. Same unfortunate nose.” (I flinch. I like my nose.) The Blood Hunter flicks his finger across it and shakes his head. Then he wrenches the door open. Leo makes to step forward and the Hunter tuts, hand raised.

“I wouldn’t,” he says. He sniffs and hacks and moves toward a tall wooden wardrobe, but when he opens it there are just hundreds of little wooden drawers from floor to ceiling, with golden letters imprinted onto the wood. He moves immediately to ‘J’, plucks out a vial, and pulls a pipet from his coat. Uncapping the vial—my vial—he draws up a few drops of blood and moves back to the open door and its foggy visage.

“You watching?” he clarifies, knowing full well all of us are staring. Then he squeezes the blood free.

It spontaneously combusts.

There’s no other way to describe it. The blood hits the barrier and is instantly engulfed in a fire so bright I step back.

“What the fuck,” Bellamy whispers. I glance at him; he’s open-mouthed and staring. Victoria has her arms crossed still, and she frowns at me when we lock eyes.

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