Page 87 of The Teras Trials

I could ask him. I could watch him lie to me. But I don’t want to ruin whatever it is we have. What little comfort I can get from him.

And in truth, I don’t really want to know.

“Victoria. . . has asked to be moved to a different room,” he tells me. My stomach drops, but it’s with an inevitable sadness. I expected something like this. It still hurts. When I don’t respond to that, he goes on. “The dean—” Leo begins, then pauses. “Never mind. We’ll talk about him later.”

“Tell me,” I whisper.

Leo shifts and moves back to sit properly on the ground, shuffling so his back is against the wall beneath the window. “He’s commissioned an Artificer on your behalf, for a prosthetic. Something about your extraordinary bravery and quick thinking.” Leo flashes me a half smile.

A compliment like that from the dean would have once made me ecstatic. And now it feels premeditated and hollow: I want that man to burn in hell.

“Why did they do it?” I whisper. “Why kill so many of us like that?”

Leo’s smile fades. He shifts uncomfortably and looks down at his hands, which he holds gently between his legs. “I asked him.”

“And?”

Stiffly, Leo regurgitates the dean’s reply. “The other trials operated with us knowing they were coming. Even if we didn’t know what they were, we knew to expect something.”

“We’re not meant to feel safe,” I say. “Not ever.”

“No.”

I gnaw at my lip. “How long do we have? To the next trial?”

Leo shakes his head. “He didn’t say. But I suspect a few days. He said he wanted. . . as many survivors as possible to have a chance.” He glances up at me, then. “It’s the last one, Cass. One more. One more, and we’re in.”

And I know I’m meant to feel relief or joy, but I just feel so goddamned tired that I start laughing. Because after that, it’s the University, and if the trials were like this, then what will the real thing be? What will the rest of our lives look like?

“I know,” Leo whispers, though I’m not sure he does. “But it’s better than the outside. I promise you, Cass,” he says, like I don’t remember that fear. “We’ll have a purpose here. And more safety than we could hope for out there.”

He keeps speaking like that and after a moment it’s practically a lullaby, something soothing he’s whispering to himself, to keep his own mind from panicking.

I must fall asleep after that. I have only a fuzzy memory; Leo standing over my head, Leo kissing my forehead.

I don’t know how I feel.

Amore et melle et felle es fecundissimus.

* * *

“It will come out of your pay, should you ever graduate. Think of it as an advance. And don’t worry, Mr Jones. Not a single graduate leaves the University without being cowled by debt.”

Dean Drearton is upsettingly cheery this afternoon. I smile at him, and thank him, but inside I am rotting.

I really want this man to go to hell.

I still have not moved from this bed. The dean and the Artificer have come to me, which probably should feel nice, but is probably a favour I will have to repay tenfold. Propped up in bed with the pillows at my back, the remains of my right arm are resting on the bedside table, which has been dragged to the opposite side of the bed and layered with more pillows stolen from the sitting room. This allows the Artificer, a wiry man with brown skin, perhaps five years older than me, to take all his measurements with ease. He wears a tight suit and spectacles, and makes a point of not looking me in the eye. I feel disconnected from everything: this room, my body, reality as a whole. I let him flitter about me, measuring, pressing and prodding, ignoring every time I hiss and groan. The dean watches all this impassively. His eyes are blank and calculating, but his face is twisted in a placid smile. It unnerves me. I try not to look his way.

At some point it becomes easier to close my eyes, and then I’m drifting in and out of sleep for an expanse of time. It’s only when the Artificer moves to peel off the bandage that I’m jolted awake by the pain.

The smell is horrible. The salve is bitter and acrid, and mixed with the blood of the arm it smells like rot. But when the Artificer wipes some of it away he says, “Good.”

I risk a look down. The flesh has stitched itself together. It’s a puckered mess, gnarly and knotted and in a way it resembles a burl on a tree. Bone emerges from the knot, the remains of my ulna and radius, like blunt pincers.

I think I should vomit, but perhaps that’s just how I expect to feel. I look at this and it doesn’t feel like my body. I can still feel my hand. I feel it twitching, I feel an itch on my palm I cannot scratch. This: this broken arm is not mine. I can’t feel badly about something that isn’t mine. I can’t feel anything at all about it.

I realise stupidly there must be magic involved. Real magic. The wound has been healed in three days, sucked closed around the bone with unnatural speed. I recall vaguely my brother seeing the teras in the dark at Watford, Hunter eyes, and I guess I always thought it was pure training that allowed him that. But there is another world at the University, a divide in realities where real students work, and us trial-takers suffer. I should have realised it sooner.

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