Where the Drowned Girls Go(Wayward Children #7)(28)

Only Emily, whose seat was at a slight angle compared to the rest of the room, noticed the way Cora’s fingers twitched, like they wanted to form fists, like they wanted to be ready to swing. She continued looking blandly forward, not betraying what she knew. This plan, haphazard and dangerous as it was, depended on every one of them playing their part. Even Rowena, who put her hand up as soon as Cora stood, waiting to be acknowledged.

“Yes, Miss Crest?” said the matron, after a moment had passed without Rowena rethinking her actions.

Rowena lowered her hand. “Will we be giving Cora time to return before we finish today’s lesson? She’s been absent from class for the better part of the week, and I’d prefer not to spend more of my leisure time than necessary helping her catch up. I have essays to write for my other classes.”

“A reasonable question,” said the headmaster, hand still resting on Cora’s shoulder. “Miss Lennox, you have permission to take your class on a nature walk. Something brisk and educational. I’ll have Miss Miller back by the time you return.”

It took most of the class a moment to realize that “Miss Lennox” was the matron. She had been teaching them periodically for months, slipping in and out of the classroom according to whatever private schedule controlled the school staff, and none of them had ever heard her name before. The matron herself looked faintly alarmed, glancing at the headmaster. He didn’t appear to notice. His attention was back on the silently, patiently waiting Cora.

“Shall we go, Miss Miller?” he asked.

Cora tilted her head, offering him a pleasant, perfectly bland smile that was rendered somehow complicated by the way her rainbow-painted hair framed her face. She looked like she was becoming someone else.

“Of course, Headmaster,” she said, and her voice was hers and wasn’t hers at the same time, steady and calm and serene.

The headmaster nodded one more time to the matron—to Miss Lennox, and knowing her name was a kind of heady, breathtaking power that most of the students hadn’t tasted in so, so long—before he turned, pulling Cora along with him, and stepped out of the room.

The hall was empty, as it always was when classes were in session, and their footsteps echoed ahead of them, like tiny sonic bursts mapping their environment. Cora kept her eyes forward, not looking at anything in particular, allowing herself to be led. The headmaster was less sanguine. He kept stealing glances at her, like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, like he wanted to somehow change it. Like he thought he knew how.

When they reached his office, he led her inside, gestured her toward a seat, and moved to settle in his own chair, behind his sturdy oak desk. It was an imposing thing, that chair, all black leather and polished metal. It was a chair for a powerful person, for someone who made important decisions for everyone around them. It was a chair for a headmaster.

Cora was unable to fully control the small curl of her lip when she looked at it. It was a chair that would have looked lovely at the center of a bonfire. It would probably smell like bacon when it burned, and the castors in the wheels would pop and shimmer in the firelight. Cora’s expression smoothed back into pleasant neutrality at the thought. Everything could burn, if she was willing to put the effort in.

“It’s good to see you doing so well,” said the headmaster, studying Cora as he sat. If he’d seen the brief wrinkle in her serenity, he didn’t say anything. “I admit, I was concerned about you after your most recent readjustment. There was some question of whether we’d been moving too quickly with you.”

“I’ve realized that you can only help me so far before I have to help myself,” said Cora. She held up one hand, showing its complete lack of rainbows. “I’ve faced down some of my demons at last, and I’ll be ready to rejoin the world outside very soon.”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m not as eager to believe that as some of the matrons.”

“You’ve seen many students come and go,” said Cora. “You have reason to be suspicious when a problem child turns themselves around too quickly. I understand why you’re not going to be immediately convinced of my motivations.”

“You say all the right things,” said the headmaster. “It’s odd, for a traveler to give up on their door so quickly. Many of our students stay here until they age out of the program, and return home unsuited for normal society. Their parents are very disappointed in them.”

“My parents have always supported me,” said Cora neutrally.

“Your admission papers say that they thought you had committed suicide when you first disappeared. Do you have much experience with death, Miss Miller?”

Cora looked at him levelly. “More than I would like.” Sailors whose ships had sailed into the wrong waters, gasping out their last breath in her arms. The deep cold waters of the Moors, where the Drowned Gods had seized her fast and pulled her down, down into the depths, the unforgiving depths, where nothing was forgotten or forgiven.

The sailors had been heroes in their own stories, and the mermaids had been the monsters. But it didn’t matter who wore which label. When monsters met heroes, there were always casualties.

The headmaster might have been a hero, once. He was a monster now. There was going to be a casualty, even if he didn’t kill bodies. The only question left was which one of them was walking away.

“I’ll be frank, Miss Miller: I think you’re trying to trick me. I think your little friend from Miss West’s school came on some sort of ill-conceived rescue mission, and you think you’re going to walk away. I would like to state, in so many words, that it’s not going to happen. You will remain here until you turn eighteen, and at that point, you can choose to drop out, or you can choose to do the sensible thing for your own future, or you can choose to leave. I think you’ll find that it won’t matter if this was a trick: the door you so eagerly seek will be closed to you.”