59

You explain your meeting with Letha and Princess Despina, dwelling on Letha's inconsideration, her lack of foresight, and how much you hate the way she does her hair now.

Alvis rolls his eyes. "I know this is a show, Jun, and it's not a good one. You've never cared this much about anything in your life. Are you really on her side, right when she's managed to make an impossibly bad situation even worse?"

For a moment, you think Alvis is going to continue, but instead he just removes his spectacles entirely, sets them down on the nearest bookshelf, and presses his palms into his eyes. "First the prophecy's back, now this idiocy," he groans. "I can't…lose this place, Jun. Not now. Not after everything. Do you know what the archives here are like? I bought every book on magic I could, growing up, but there are whole rooms of books here you can't buy anywhere else, because the Academy won't allow them to be copied."

"I've seen the archives," you say. "They're very nice."

Alvis raises his head, even paler than usual. "If the chancellors find out the prophecy was a fake, I have to rob the archives," he says. "It's the only way."

Alvis laughs as he reaches for his glasses. "Depends on what else they do if they find out the truth. Your talents may be needed elsewhere."

With the way the Academy has always fascinated you, you can't imagine gaining entrance and then being forced to give it up. If the rest of the prophecy really does come back, guarding your secrets will become much, much harder. Either you'll have to protect them with your life, or start impressing people like the chancellors with the truth, if you want to keep the advantages you've all gained.

Brushing his hair back from his face, Alvis stands. "You have good timing, anyway. I wanted to examine the Book of Prophecy—that's the most accurate record of the words of past oracles. But they limit access to it, even for me, and Zaman had it all through yesterday, so I wasn't able to get an appointment until this morning. That ought to be our first step, and then we can figure out what we need to do next and you can make your reports to Letha and the princess." Alvis takes a breath to steady himself.

Next

By the time you're outside of Alvis's rooms, he's a different person. You pass a few students on the way down the tower stairs and he greets them by name, inquires after their research, airy and animated and abruptly at ease. You're not unused to his sudden transformations to whatever he feels best fits the circumstances, but you've never seen him quite as distressed as he was upstairs.

Once you've left the chattering group behind, Alvis smiles at you, as though nothing in the world has ever been wrong.