Chapter Five: What the Bell Called
Zeus perched on the bell tower's narrow ledge two hundred feet above the courtyard, wings he hadn't grown yet held out for a balance he didn't have, and Talia's whole body went cold at the sight of him swaying against the wind with nothing beneath him but a very long, very final drop. Somewhere behind her, she could hear Simon's breath catch, and Alexander's low, urgent voice already calculating angles and distances out loud.
"Don't move," she called up, voice cracking with an effort to stay calm that convinced absolutely no one, least of all herself. "Please, Zeus, whatever you're doing up there, just don't move."
That was almost an hour later. First, there was the empty loft, and the decision to break every promise she'd made about keeping this secret to exactly two people.
She had burst into the common room still half convinced she could search alone, find him quietly, undo the damage before anyone else noticed anything was wrong, and had made it exactly as far as Simon's startled face looking up from his homework before that plan collapsed entirely. The common room had been nearly empty at that hour, just a handful of second-years hunched over late assignments, and Talia had thanked whatever luck remained to her that none of them looked up as she crossed the room half at a run.
"Talia, you look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong."
"I need help finding something, and I need you to not ask questions until after we've found it." The words came out faster than she'd planned, raw with a panic she no longer had the energy to disguise. "Please, Simon. I'll explain everything. I promise. Just come with me right now."
Simon was on his feet before she finished the sentence, homework forgotten, years of friendship apparently worth more to him than a reasonable person's instinct to demand answers first.
He's not even asking what we're looking for, Talia thought, half running toward the courtyard with Simon close behind her. He's just coming. That's what Simon does. I should have told him days ago.
They found Alexander already outside, drawn by some instinct or simple bad luck, standing at the edge of the courtyard staring up at the bell tower with an expression that told Talia he'd already worked out exactly what had gone wrong.
"He climbed," Alexander said grimly, before she could even ask. "I heard something scrabbling against stone twenty minutes ago and assumed it was a stray cat. I should have investigated sooner."
"You couldn't have known," Talia said, though the words came out thin against the sight of Zeus's small silhouette swaying against the bell tower's dark stone, drawn, she realized with a lurch, by the same curfew bell that had tolled the night he hatched, some instinct in him answering that particular sound the way he answered almost nothing else in his short, strange life. The bell had gone quiet again by now, its single tolling note long since faded, but Zeus remained fixed at the ledge as though still listening for an echo only he could hear.
"What is that," Simon said, very quietly, staring up at the shape on the ledge with the specific stillness of someone recalibrating everything they thought they knew about the night in front of them.
Now or never, Talia thought, and told him. Fast, stripped down to its barest facts, the egg and the bell and the sixteen years her mother had apparently known something about her that Talia herself had learned only an hour ago. Simon listened without interrupting once, his face moving through shock and disbelief and, finally, something that looked almost like awe, the homework he'd abandoned still open on the table behind them, forgotten entirely.
"That's a Tyrant," he said, when she finished. "An actual, extinct-for-a-hundred-years Tyrant. And you've been hiding him in the linen loft."
"Yes."
"For four days. Alone. While also apparently getting summoned to the headmaster's study and discovering long-lost family heirlooms." Simon shook his head slowly, something between disbelief and genuine hurt flickering across his face. "You could have told me any of that at any point in the last four days, you know. I'd have helped from the very first night."
"I know. I was scared of what it would cost you if I got caught."
"That was never your decision to make alone, Tal." He said it without real anger, more resigned than accusing, and the nickname, one he hadn't used since they were small enough to share that same crib in the orphan wing, landed harder than any actual scolding could have.
He's right, Talia thought, guilt settling heavy alongside the fear already crowding her chest. I've spent four days protecting him from a risk he'd have chosen to take anyway, if I'd just given him the choice.
"And he's currently two hundred feet up a bell tower because he apparently likes the sound of curfew."
"Also yes."
Simon exhaled slowly, and something in his expression settled into a kind of fierce, protective resolve that Talia recognized from every smaller crisis they'd weathered together since they were both small enough to share a crib. "Okay. What do we do."
Alexander was already moving toward the tower's base, scanning the old stonework with the practiced eye of someone who had spent years studying the physical architecture of bond-creature behavior. "There's a maintenance ladder on the north face, original to the original bell mechanism. It's not meant for climbing in the dark, and it's definitely not meant for whatever you're about to attempt, but it's the fastest way up."
"How do you even know that ladder exists."
"My family funded half the academy's structural renovations two generations back. I grew up memorizing blueprints the way other children memorize bedtime stories." Alexander said it without any of his usual practiced modesty, already moving, and something in the plain, useful honesty of it struck Talia harder than any of his more careful words had all week.
"I'm going," Talia said immediately.
"I know." Alexander's voice had none of its usual composed distance left in it at all. "I'm coming with you. Simon, if anyone comes through that courtyard, you need to give us warning before they look up and see exactly what we're seeing right now."
Simon saluted with a shaky, determined hand. "Understood. Distraction and warning duty. I have never been more qualified for anything in my entire academic career." He paused, glancing once more up at the impossible silhouette on the ledge above them, and added, quieter now, "For what it's worth, Tal, whatever happens tonight, I'm glad you finally told me. Even if the timing could use some work."
The climb up the north face took longer than Talia's racing heart could easily forgive, ancient iron rungs slick with night damp, the wind picking up the higher they climbed until it tugged insistently at her sleeves like something trying to pull her back down to safety. Alexander climbed just below her, close enough to catch her if her grip slipped, saying nothing, conserving breath for the climb itself. Somewhere below, she could hear Simon's voice carrying up faintly, already deep in an animated, entirely fabricated conversation with a passing proctor about a supposed sighting of contraband fireworks near the training yards, buying them precious minutes neither of them could afford to waste.
Almost there, Talia told herself, feeling the old iron groan under her weight. Almost there, and then I just have to convince a four-day-old apex predator to climb back down a bell tower in the dark. Simple. Completely simple.
She reached the ledge breathless, wind whipping her hair loose from its braid, and found Zeus exactly where he'd been from the ground, wings spread uselessly for a balance his body wasn't yet built to manage, his amber eyes wide and frightened in a way she'd never once seen from him before, not even the night he hatched.
"Hey," she said softly, easing herself onto the ledge with agonizing care, ignoring the two-hundred-foot drop screaming at the edges of her attention. "Hey, it's me. I've got you. You don't have to balance up here anymore. I've got you."
Zeus's head swung toward her voice, recognition flooding his frightened expression, and he took one unsteady, overeager step toward her that nearly sent them both over the edge in the exact same instant.
Talia grabbed him, hauling his trembling weight against her chest with strength she didn't know she had, feeling his small heart hammering in time with her own, and for one long, suspended moment neither of them moved at all, balanced together on a ledge two hundred feet above solid ground.
"Got you," she breathed, into his scaled neck, feeling him press closer, some of the frightened rigidity finally draining out of his small body. "I've got you. We're going down now. Together."
Below them, the courtyard lights looked impossibly small and far away, and for one dizzying second Talia let herself feel the full, terrifying scale of what she'd just climbed toward without thinking twice. She pushed the thought aside. There would be time to be frightened properly once they were both back on solid ground.
The climb down was slower, Alexander guiding her hands to each rung with quiet, careful instructions while Zeus clung to her front like something half his actual weight, his small claws finding purchase in the fabric of her jacket with an instinct that felt older than his four days of life should have allowed. Twice her foot slipped on damp stone, and twice Alexander's hand found her elbow before she'd even fully registered the danger, steady and sure in a way that told her he'd been watching every single one of her movements the entire way down.
Twice her foot slipped on damp stone, and twice Alexander's hand found her elbow before she'd even fully registered the danger, steady and sure in a way that told her he'd been watching every single one of her movements the entire way down.
By the time her boots finally touched solid courtyard stone again, Talia's arms were shaking too hard to fully trust, and she sank gratefully onto the low fountain wall, Zeus still pressed tight against her chest, refusing to let go even now that the danger had passed.
Simon met them at the base, relief written plainly across his whole face, already reaching to help steady her.
"You did it," he said, half laughing with the specific giddy relief of someone who'd spent the last twenty minutes genuinely afraid of how this might have ended. "You actually did it."
It was the sound of a slow, deliberate clap from the shadowed edge of the courtyard that stopped all three of them cold.
"How touching," Isolde Crane said, stepping out from behind the old fountain with an expression that had already moved past shock and settled into something far more calculating. "I came out for air after curfew and found something considerably more interesting instead. Care to explain what, exactly, I just watched three students risk their necks to rescue?"
Nobody answered right away. Zeus, sensing the sudden tension crackling through the small group, pressed himself flatter against Talia's chest and let out a low, warning chuff that carried farther across the quiet courtyard than any of them would have liked.
Isolde's gaze dropped to the creature in Talia's arms properly for the first time, and Talia watched, with a sinking, helpless certainty, the exact moment recognition bloomed behind her rival's eyes, replacing calculation with something far more dangerous.
"That's not possible," Isolde said, very quietly, all the earlier mockery draining out of her voice entirely. "That's not remotely possible."
Say something, Talia told herself, feeling three sets of eyes, Simon's frightened, Alexander's wary, Isolde's calculating, all waiting on whatever came out of her mouth next. Whatever you say in the next ten seconds decides how the rest of this year goes.