House of Bone

Chapter 5

I wake up and Tia is buzzing with excitement.

"What's with you?" I ask brushing her shoulder.

"Today's the day." She smiles at me "We're going to be early to Languages. And hopefully beat Mistress Hollia there."

I laugh, of course, that's what she's excited about.

"Hey!" She smacks my arm in a friendly way "She's going to be so annoyed!" she cackles and I can't help but join in.

"Told you it was contagious." Shade chirps in from their room, and Tia flips them off but they've closed the door.

"Stupid door-closing shadows." She murmurs under her breath, and I just smile at their interaction. Those two are real friends, even if Shade won't admit it. I just wish I had that sort of friendship growing up. Ora's a good friend, my best friend. But we've had interactions limited to formal meetings, and times no longer than a couple hours to catch up.

Lettering and Laws pass with blur, and I pay attention to as much as I can.

Then the awaited hour arrives and as soon as Laws is over, Tia grabs mine and Shade's arms and practically jumps out the door. Master Thacrel gives her a look and I try not to laugh.

"Sorry." Shade apologises, although I'm not sure if he heard them as we're already halfway down the hall.

"Tia, I didn't know you were so fast." I gasp, trying to catch my breath.

She smiles at me "Had athletics training at home. I was the fastest of my year. Until I left I held the record for eight years." She looks into the distance, as if remembering something, "I hope Vi's taken my place with pride in her step." Tia adds wistfully.

We walk in silence for a little, Tia still holding onto our sleeves.

"You can let go now." Shade points out to Tia, who just rolls her eyes but lets go of our arms.

We arrive at the hallway outside Languages a couple of minutes early, Tia leading the way. She opens the door loudly and Mistress Hollia comes over with a stern look on her face.

"Tia, it's bad enough that you're late, you don't need to be dramatic about it too." She starts but Tia's smile cuts her off. "Why are you smiling like that young lady?" She demands

"If you had thought to check the time before telling us off, you'd find that we are five minutes and thirty-six seconds early." Tia replies smugly "I also happen to remember a certain bet that stated that if we were to arrive early, we were to get half the lesson off."

So that's why Tia was so excited, she gets to slack off in her least favourite class.

Mistress Hollia sniffs, looking at the time to see that Tia is indeed right, "Well, Lady Tia. I also happen to recall that I said you needed proof that I said that. Not just your... child-sized memory."

Where I would've gotten mad at her, Tia just smirks and pulls an old wrinkled piece of paper out of her pocket.

"Here you go, madam." Tia mock bows while handing Mistress Hollia the paper.

She quickly reads over it, and her nostrils flare.

"Fine." She snaps "But at half past–on the dot–I will expect you to be calmly seated and doing your work. If not, from now on, every minute you're late I will have an extra page of assignments. Understood?"

We all nod.

"Go," She waves her hand and turns, muttering something that sounds a lot like "Adolescents these days." under her breath.

Tia lets out a breath I didn't realise she was holding.

"I totally thought she was going to pull an 'it's expired' trick on me."

"Is it?" I ask, wondering if Tia just played our teacher.

She laughs, "I hope not. I don't think she said it could expire when she gave that to me. When was it?" She furrows her brows, trying to remember.

"Second week we were here." Shade says "You kept that thing for over a year? I'd thought you'd lost it."

Tia nods "I was counting that she would too. Who knows what she would've done to make us late otherwise."

I crack a smile, "Seems like there's history between you two."

Tia crinkles her nose "She was one of the mentors back home before I came here. She disappeared one day and I thought she'd finally gotten fired. She hated–and still hates–my guts. Imagine my surprise when I found out that she would be my teacher here too." She sighs, "The only good thing about it was that she had an even worse reaction than I did."

Shade nods "I had one of those mentors too. He... refused to use they/them pronouns, and insisted that one of the Lord's sons–yes he said sons, not children–was a proper human being, not one of those non-binary things. I stopped attending that class shortly after."

I looked at them with new eyes, it wasn't often that Shade talked, let alone about something personal to them. I felt like I had to share something now.

"One of my teachers, when she was teaching group sessions with all of the children, would purposefully leave me out in some activities, insisting that it was for Bone House children only, even though technically I outranked them, being Lady Bone's adopted daughter, her only daughter. Lady Bone wasn't aware of the problem, and nothing was done about it for a long time until I finally got the courage to talk to her. She still teaches that class."

Tia nods sympathetically, and Mistress Hollia calls out, telling us our time is up.

The rest of the lesson passes, and as I step out the door I remember what we have next.

"Well, we better head off to testing." Shade says distastefully, spitting the word like it was some disgusting bug.

We walk around the maze of corridors of the Institute heading to the testing rooms. As we get closer I get more nervous and more nervous.

"Ummm..." I say to finally break the silence "Is there anything I can ask about testing?"

"I know how you feel." Tia says "But we really can't, there's the rule and it's awkward to explain."

I look up and see an ominous-looking door.

"We're here." Shade remarks disdainfully.