Page 3 of Rejected Hollow

At first I thought it was wax, but when I picked up the envelope and turned it toward the light in the hall, I realized the seal was iron. It was a round disc no bigger than a coin, stamped with two creatures twisted around each other: a wolf and a dragon. The wolf had its jaws clamped around the dragon’s throat, while the dragon’s tail curled tightly around the wolf’s ribs. I stared at it for a few seconds.

“Junk mail’s getting fancy,” I muttered to the empty hall.

The front of the envelope was completely blank.

I ran my thumb over the seal and immediately noticed that the iron was warm.

That was the first thing that felt wrong.

It was a particularly cold September night. The hall was freezing, and the car heater had spent the entire drive home wheezing out air that was barely lukewarm. My hands were so cold that my fingers had gone stiff, yet the little disc of iron felt as though someone had been holding it only moments before.

As I rubbed my thumb over it, the metal grew warmer.

Within seconds, it became painfully hot. I yelped and nearly dropped the envelope, instinctively trying to jerk my hand away, but my thumb wouldn’t move. For some reason, I couldn’t let go. Instead, my fingers tightened around the envelope as though they had decided to hold on without consulting me.

Then letters began to appear across the blank front.

They formed slowly, one stroke at a time, as though an invisible pen were writing in silver ink. The handwriting was elegant and old-fashioned, full of long loops and careful flourishes.

Wren Hale.

As soon as the final letter appeared, the heat in the seal faded. My thumb came free, and I pulled my hand back so quickly that the envelope nearly slipped from my fingers.

A small red mark had appeared on the pad of my thumb, a perfect little circle where the iron had touched my skin. When I looked closer, I could see the lines of my fingerprint pressed into the surface of the metal.

It looked as though the seal had read me.

I stood in Marion’s hallway at six thirty in the morning, holding the envelope for what felt like a full minute without quite remembering to breathe.

I was frightened. There was no point pretending otherwise.

But underneath the fear was something smaller and much more embarrassing: hope.

The envelope had known my name. Somehow, that made the whole impossible thing feel personal. For once, whatever strange thing was happening might actually be happening to me.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I broke the seal.

There was only one sheet inside, made from the same heavy black paper and covered in the same silver ink.

To Wren Hale, of this house.

By the authority of the Council of Iron, and under the Accord of 1702, you are hereby summoned to present yourself at Ironmoor for assessment and instruction.

Transport will collect you at dawn tomorrow. Bring nothing you cannot carry. Speak of this to no one who does not already know.

Refusal is not permitted.

O. Brannock, Headmistress

I read the letter three times.

The first two times, refusal is not permitted sounded like official language, the sort of phrase people used when they wanted to discourage questions before anyone had the chance to ask them.

The third time, it sounded like a threat.

I turned the page over and searched for the catch. A website. A phone number. Fine print. The part where they asked for my bank information or told me I had forty-eight hours to claim some enormous inheritance from a distant relative I had never heard of.

There was nothing.