Page 104 of Salem’s Rise

Can we talk? Come by my room. 9:00.

Another beep a moment later.

Please.

I read the message twice, then a third time, lingering on the final word. I can’t imagine Silas saying please unless something really matters. He isn’t in the habit of ever having to ask for anything.

Maybe he wants to talk about us?

Our conversation by the harbor before the Third Trial didn’t exactly go how I’d wanted. Maybe he regretted it too.

I’m smiling as I leave the library, though the bitter cold wipes it from my face almost immediately. Silas warned me not to walk alone after dark, but the usual route to the dorms is well lit and busy with students studying late for finals. Unfortunately, it also adds ten minutes to my walk, and I’m freezing my ass off and eager to see him.

I decide to cut behind one of the old academic buildings instead, taking the service path that will get me there faster. The walkway is deserted, the sounds of campus disappearing almost immediately. Just the wind rattling bare branches overhead and my footsteps echoing in the silence. A prickle crawls up my neck, and I quicken my pace.

I’ve made it halfway along the back of the building when a muscular arm locks around my chest and a hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream. Something sharp and cold presses beneath my jaw.

“Don’t,” Van whispers against my ear. “Not unless you want me to open your pretty throat.”

My boots skid across the frozen ground as I claw at his arm, twisting and kicking as he drags me through a half-open chain-link gate toward a weathered groundskeeping shed. Panic surges when I realize where he’s taking me. I dig in my heels, but he kicks open the door and shoves me inside, past a jumble of rusted tools and an overflowing dumpster, before slamming me against the wall.

He pulls the blade from my throat and brings it between us. My breath catches on the curved blade. The ornate hilt. I’ve seen ones like it before.

A Veil ritual knife.

Fear hollows out my stomach. “What are you doing?” I yell. “Let go of me!”

A slow, hungry smile curls across his mouth, like a predator that’s finally cornered its prey.

“You actually went to see him,” he says. “How sweet.”

The suspicion arrives slowly, then all at once.

Georgina at the library, and then Silas’s text asking me to come to his room. All week, I’d been so careful not to be alone, especially at night, and the one time I take a deserted shortcut, somehow Van is waiting for me at the right place and the right moment to abduct me?

How did he know?

Van watches the question form in my face and smiles wider. “I know Silas told you about my parents,” he says, pressing the knife into my belly until it stings. “They’re dead because of your sanctimonious fucking father. My family was destroyed because a Mercer couldn’t keep his hands off power that never belonged to him. Your House was always weak. It should’ve stayed buried.”

“My father didn’t⁠—”

“Your father was filth,” he spits, working himself into a frenzy with every new word. “And you’re even worse, crawling out of whatever gutter the Fourth House died in and thinking you could ever belong here. You’ll never be one of us.”

His gaze moves over me with disgust.

“Blackhollow has you completely fooled,” he continues, shifting the blade, tracing the edge along my skin without cutting, teasing it. “Leading the Veil is all he’s ever wanted. He’s been setting you up from the very beginning.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“He knows I’ve been trying to kill you. He knew in the tunnels. He knew when I nearly sent you off that bridge.” Van’s eyes shine with sadistic pleasure. “You think those locks just happened to fail underwater in the harbor?”

My stomach drops.

“You—”

“You just won’t fucking die.” A breathless laugh escapes him. “So now I’m here to finish the job.” He brings the knife back to my throat again. “Silas knows that too. He supports it, even.”

“Shut up!” I wrench against his grip, the knife biting shallowly into my throat. “You’re lying!”