An Elegy For The Soul

Chapter Twenty Seven

Blood and Teeth

River wasn't allowed to observe the autopsy. None of the medical students were. Extenuating circumstances prevented the teaching moment—the dead person being a student, after all. A murdered student, even if the faculty wouldn't speak the truth.

A body void entirely of blood, the official statement read in the report, a detail that would remain etched on its pages, forever hidden away from the public.

Late at night, River had snuck into the Anatomy lab and picked the lock on the cabinet where the autopsy paperwork was filed away. Normally, Burnell wouldn't have overseen the medical aspects of Nerissa's investigation, but due to their resources and location, it was deemed more practical for a faculty member to conduct the procedures.

Nerissa, who was once a person, now lay in the cool basement as a cadaver—torn apart and thoroughly inspected. Her ghost, a pile of unfaded memories, bled into the Academy's ethos. How long until she became nothing more than a whispered legend, a tale passed among new students? How long before time erased her truth, until, like all things forgotten, no one could answer the lingering curiosity?

River studied the propagation set on Aven's windowsill. Green leaves cascaded over the glass rim, their crestfallen stems a mirror of his own exhaustion. For days, Aven had wept in his arms, her tears soaking into his chest, saturating his shirt with the warmth of her sorrow. And as his body absorbed her salt, River hoped, so too, would it absorb her pain.

As far as River knew, the two women weren't particularly close, but had Aven found a complete stranger buried in a shallow grave, he assumed her reaction would be much the same. Death had a propensity of disturbing those who encountered it.

He wanted to know why she had been so far into the forest, but she wasn't being the most forthcoming with her answers. Something frightened me, was all she had choked out between bouts of guttural sobs. And when River asked about the something, all Aven could do was contort her face into a portrait of agony, shaking her head until her white hair snared against her wet cheeks.

River was well aware of the ruins in the forest, but more importantly, he knew the one person who frequented them. This individual would rise well before the morning sun and set off into the forest, wandering through the trees when answers eluded or worries suffocated him. River never accompanied him, at least not when this person was aware of the company. But sometimes, when gray eyes swam with a lost boy's heartbreak, River would follow behind, keeping a considerable distance, and wonder about all the different paths they could have taken in life had others not bound them to their current destiny.

He didn't need to dwell on it too deeply; he was certain about the man he would have become. Lucan was his glimpse down the road not taken.

He stepped quietly into Aven's room, noting the red patches blotching her fair cheeks, and her eyes, puffy impressions of their former selves. Sickly breaths rattled in her chest from all the tears she had inhaled. River pulled his coat on, then gently pressed a hand against her forehead, checking for fever. She stirred in her sleep.

"You're leaving?" The muttered question escaped from her distant dream. Aven's eyes remained closed; she was still asleep.

River's thumb swept across her skin. "I'll be back. Sleep."

The hour straddled the line between morning and night, too early to be one, too late to be the other. But for Lucan, it didn't matter; as long as darkness reigned, he would be awake.

He was always awake in the dark.

Snow dusted campus grounds. The winter solstice had not yet arrived, and already, frigid temperatures swept through the lands, promising brutality with every dropping degree. River's meager layers hardly retained enough heat to starve off the cold. There wasn't enough warmth in this world to reach the piercing chill that would never shake loose from his bones.