Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order) (19 page)

“What about you, Manoj? Are you brave enough to stand against this?”

He tipped his head down in a lukewarm bow of sorts. “My apologies. The others are correct.”

“I suppose you will all abandon your duty to this Academy. You will willingly turn away an opportunity to create something together, and in the process humiliate us all when our automatons fall on their faces. For what?” I scolded. “Well, you can keep your foolish pride.” I glared at the sparse group. There at the edge stood Peter.

He smiled at me hopefully. I stood dumb, not knowing what to say. He was the only person I counted as a friend in the whole of the Academy, and the one person I’d been practically ordered not to trust. The room began to slowly clear as apprentices left in small groups.

“I’ll help you,” he said, as if it were a foregone conclusion.

My throat tightened up, and as he stepped closer to the automaton, I held my hand out. He paused, my fingertips only inches from his chest.

“I’m . . .” For the life of me, I didn’t know what to say.

His gaze lowered as I watched the hurt and disappointment throw shadows over his sweet face. “You don’t want my help, do you?”

By God, he thought I had no faith in him. The crushed look in his eyes broke my heart. “Peter, it’s not that I don’t want the help. It’s just that . . .” What was I supposed to say?

He scowled, his expression turning from hurt to anger. “Yes, well, I’ll save you the embarrassment. Forget that I ever suggested it.” And with that he turned away and followed the other apprentices up the steps and out of the hall, leaving me alone in the cavernous room.

I clenched my fists.

“Dammit,” I muttered.

I marched directly to the automaton and looked her in the blank face, seeing my own fury reflected back at me. “Damn. It.” I kicked the machine in the bloody shin.

And immediately crumpled in pain as fire shot through my boot straight up my leg. I could have sworn I felt it in my fingertips as I hopped to one of the gallery benches and collapsed there.

What was I going to do?

Nursing my foot, I tried to weigh my options through the pain of my injury and my defeat. This was too much. I couldn’t do this entirely on my own. I wasn’t
meant
to do this on my own. This was supposed to be a group effort, and I had no help. I was forced to reject the aid of the only person who seemed to be on my side.

I held back a choice curse, biting on it like a sour thing in my mouth. The other apprentices were never going to willingly help, and it simply wasn’t fair to expect me to try to do this by myself.

I couldn’t do it.

Lifting my foot, I tried to nurse it, but my skirts impeded me. Resting my foot on the step, I stared at my empty hands lying in my lap.

I had to try.

Simon Pricket’s notes could only take me so far. I needed a way to figure things out on my own and the mettle to do it.

It left me only one choice.

I had to speak with the headmaster and ask him for permission to study some of the drawings in the archives. We weren’t allowed to handle them without permission, since many were very old and crumbling. Still, if I laid out a tick sack and lived with the dusty tomes, perhaps divine inspiration would strike and I would discover a means out of this catastrophe.

As I walked down the empty halls, the heels of my boots clicked on the hard stone like the steady
tock
,
tock
,
tock
of my time at the Academy running out. But as I approached the headmaster’s office, another sound reached me.

Voices.

Angry voices.

I slowed, not wanting to listen. It wasn’t my business, really.

I heard something smash, then clatter to the floor, and I stiffened. Unable to move, I found myself bound to the spot by warring indecision—between my desire to investigate and my overpowering urge to flee.

“She is only in the position she’s in because you favor her!” I knew that voice. Unfortunately, I knew the sentiment as well. It was Samuel. I immediately turned on my heel.

“No, she’s in the position she’s in because she has outmatched you on every single exam and has proven her capability both with her designs and with her ingenuity,” Headmaster Lawrence answered. “Perhaps if you stopped relying on David’s work as a crutch for your own, you could produce something of worth.”

“I wouldn’t have to rely on David if I felt I could rely on you,” Samuel snapped back. “It’s not fair. Everyone else has a father invested in his success. The only thing you ever do is criticize.”

“With good reason!” I took a step back. I’d never heard the headmaster shout. I knew I shouldn’t keep standing there, but I couldn’t seem to move my feet. It felt as if my legs were made of lead. “I can’t begin to express my disappointment when I took Miss Whitlock’s plans from you. For one moment I had thought you had drawn them and actually produced something of worth, but that’s too much to hope for.”

The words seemed to hang in the air of the empty corridor. The sunlight slanting through the ancient window dimmed as a cloud passed over, marking the lengthy silence. The look of disgust when the headmaster had looked at my plan had had nothing to do with me at all.

“I don’t know what you want of me,” Samuel said. I had never heard such a tone in his voice, and the pain that resounded there almost made me forgive a portion of his former nastiness. Almost.

“I want a son who actually deserves the legacy I’m passing on to him,” the headmaster answered, and I felt the blow of the words in my own chest.

It was awful, and I was well past the point where I should have left.

As I turned on my heel to leave, the door flew open. As fast as I could, I tucked myself behind it. I held my breath as I prayed to become invisible. The door slowly swung away from me, and I stood frozen and exposed.

Thankfully, the headmaster had turned the opposite way and was already rounding the corner and disappearing from sight.

I let out a slow breath. That had been too close.

I was gathering my skirts when a sound coming from inside the office stopped me.

Sobs—heavy, heartbreaking sobs. I peeked into the headmaster’s office through the crack where the door hinges met the frame. Samuel sat in his father’s chair with his face in his hands, his soul bleeding out onto the enormous desk.

I fought my urge to go in and offer him comfort. I was the last person he’d wish to witness such a heartbreak.

To be honest, I wished I hadn’t. I wanted to hate Samuel. I really did, but seeing him so broken, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I took a quick breath and hurried down the corridor back toward the main hall, trying my hardest to refrain from breaking into a run.

The skin on the back of my neck and arms tingled with the sensation that someone was following me.

Now, I may be counted as a hasty sort, but nothing has ever driven me to move so quickly. I admit, I skipped the last few steps to the assembly hall and shut the door firmly behind me.

The
boom
echoed through the cavernous chamber of the hall, adding a low accompaniment to the frantic beating of my heart. I felt as unsteady as a newborn foal as I stumbled over to the top seats of the gallery and perched on the bench.

Whatever lurked between father and son went much deeper than scores on exams, and it was no business of mine.

Needing a steadying breath, I tapped my foot anxiously to alleviate some of the wobbly feeling in my knees. I certainly didn’t wish to speak with the headmaster when he was already in such a foul mood and clearly disappointed in his son.

I got to my feet, descended the steps, and stood before my automaton, thinking. There had to be a way.

A door closed and a set of footsteps descended the stairs, only to stop behind me. I turned around, unsure of whether to feel fear or hope.

It was Peter.

Holding my hands steady before me, I dropped my gaze to my boots.

Peter turned his hat over in his hands. “Tell me why.” His grip crushed the brim. “When have I failed you?”

I took his hat to keep him from ruining it. “You haven’t failed me. You’ve been my only friend.” My doubt came to the fore. I wanted to trust him so badly, it hurt inside. “I want for you to help me, but I can’t let you, and I can’t say why.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” He seemed genuinely perplexed.

This was madness. Peter was not the saboteur. The thought of it was preposterous. He had absolutely no reason to be. I trusted him, the headmaster’s suspicions be damned.

A door shut at the top of the gallery. I ignored it. It wasn’t more important than what I was about to say.

“I’m sorry, Peter. You’re right. I have no reason not to trust you,” I began.

I heard a cruel laugh behind me, and I felt a stab of fear. I turned and looked up at the walkway along the top of the seats. Samuel stood there.

“How precious.” Samuel clasped his hands beneath his chin and pitched his voice high. “ ‘Oh, Peter, I trust you so!’ You don’t even know his name.”

“What?” I turned to Peter. “What is he talking about?”

Peter didn’t answer.

“Why won’t you tell her, Peter?” Samuel crossed his arms, and I found myself looking back and forth between them, searching their faces for answers. Peter looked stricken . . . and
guilty
. Samuel flashed a cruel smile as he continued. “Or should I call you Rathford?”

PETER WAS RATHFORD’S HEIR. DEAR
Lord, Peter was Rathford’s heir. After the fire, Rathford had taken me in under the guise of hiring me as a maid. In truth, he’d been trying to force me to use my grandfather’s key to help him gain access to the time machine he had invented and hidden in the ruins of an old castle in Yorkshire. All he had wanted was to go back and prevent a terrible tragedy, but he hadn’t been considering the impact his time travel would have had on the world as we knew it. My grandfather and a handful of others locked away the time machine so only my grandfather’s key could reveal it.

I had had to stop Rathford by any means possible.

It was my hand that had shattered the heart of the time machine. I’d played no small part in Lord Rathford’s destruction.

I was responsible for the death of a member of Peter’s family, and worse—I knew Rathford had been given the Black Mark even though it was Lord Strompton who had truly deserved it. I didn’t understand. By rights, Peter shouldn’t have been part of the Order.

This was what the headmaster had meant when he’d said that Peter had a motive for sabotage.

Revenge.

I was hardly aware of movement. I couldn’t even look at Peter, too overcome by my shock and horror.

“Leave, Samuel,” Peter demanded, his boots sounding heavy as he ascended the stairs along the gallery benches. I couldn’t help watching the confrontation from my position at the center of the hall.

“Why should I?” Samuel pulled a timepiece out of his waistcoat and wound it with casual disinterest. “I have as much a right to be here as any.” He tucked the watch back into his pocket and crossed his arms.

“Because if you don’t leave now, I cannot guarantee you’ll pass through that door with all your teeth,” Peter responded.

Even from my vantage at the bottom of the stair, Peter seemed larger, more powerful than I’d ever seen him. Samuel still towered over him by half a head. He sized Peter up, then straightened his cuffs as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Enjoy your evening,” he said as he bowed his head at me in a condescending way.

With that, he left, going along the walkway behind the top row of gallery seats and heading toward the corridor that led to the courtyard.

Peter looked pale as he descended once more to the floor of the gallery. “Meg,” he began, but I didn’t wish to hear it.

“You lied to me.” I looked him dead in the eye. It was true. I couldn’t trust him.

Peter recoiled. “I did no such thing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were Rathford’s heir?” My voice sounded breathy. I tried to pull myself together.

“Our names aren’t supposed to matter.” He shifted.

I looked at him in disbelief. “We had an entire conversation that first day about who you were, and where you came from, and you didn’t see fit to tell me you were Rathford’s heir?” My voice echoed off the high ceiling, and I bit my tongue. After a hasty breath I continued. “How can you say it doesn’t matter?”

A dreadful feeling clawed at me.

He has something to hide. . . .

Peter’s eyes narrowed as his normally sweet face hardened. I recognized the look in his eyes. I’d seen it before, a dark and calculating desperation. “My name changes nothing.” Peter flexed his hand, the one that had been injured.

“Doesn’t it?” My dark thoughts led me down a twisted path full of shadow and doubt.

Peter had reached out to befriend me within minutes of my climbing the ramp that first day. He was the one who’d sought me out to comfort me and offer me his friendship when no one else had.

I’d thought he was as outcast and alone as I.

I was a fool.

He’d needed to get close to me.

Peter rubbed his brow, as if his thoughts pained him. “Meg, listen to me,” he insisted. “It has never mattered to me.”

“It matters to the Order.” I took a step, this time closing the distance to my automaton. I couldn’t let him touch it. “I exposed your family to scandal. Your family prospects hang upon a thread because of me. How can that not matter to you?”

“Because I am your friend.” He looked up at the ceiling, then back down, holding his hands out to his sides. “This is precisely why I kept silent about all this. There are some secrets that aren’t worth the bother of telling.”

I fisted my hands at my sides. “You truly are Rathford’s heir. He liked secrets as well.”

“I barely knew my father’s cousin!” Peter shouted, his face turning red. “He ruined us. We had an honorable name until he did what he did. Now we are nothing.” He seemed to choke on his words as he dropped his head. He rounded on me again. “Our only hope for redemption lies in me and my reputation here at the Academy.”