Chrysalis and requiem, p.1
Chrysalis and Requiem, page 1
CHRYSALIS AND REQUIEM
QUINTON LI
Copyright © 2023 by Quinton Li
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contact: www.quintonli.com
Cover Illustrations: Caleb Hosalla
Part and Chapter Backgrounds by Wenceslaus Hollar 1646
Five butterflies
A moth, three butterflies and two beetles
Three moths, two butterflies and a bumble bee
Three butterflies and a wasp
Five Butterflies, a moth and two beetles
ISBN paperback: 978-0-6456815-8-1
ISBN ebook: 978-0-6456815-9-8
To my characters who endured all their changes and went with the world that shifted around them.
To every queer and trans angel reading this.
To every girl who had a friendship that they suspected was a little more gay than they thought.
CONTENT WARNINGS
This book contains references and themes to alcohol/drug use, blood, confrontation to abuse, death, emotional abuse, escalating violence, gaslighting/manipulation, gore, lifechanging injury, murder, corpses, visions about traumatic events, panic attacks, paranormal/occult content, self-harm, sexual references, suicide ideation, and trauma.
Beware of typos. There may still be a few that made it into the final version. That could be owed to the author and ARC readers being human beings, and how we miss things sometimes. Have fun!
CONTENTS
Part I
1. Your Attention
2. My Intention
3. A Chase of Alternative Matters
4. Tychon Alastor Galacia
5. That Night
6. Destined to Stay
7. Izot Excava
8. A Match of Great Expectations
9. A Request of Horrid Proportions
10. Being in places you shouldn’t be
11. Friendship and Something More
12. The Adraredon Library
Part II
13. Diving from a peak high above
14. Elise Excava
15. Friends with benefits
16. Galacia Family
17. A test, or a promise
18. A warning
19. Grief (Love)
20. The Most Important Question
21. Excerpts Decoded
22. Sun and Moon
23. Selfishness
24. An Underground Desire
25. Be careful where you step
Part III
26. Winged Dreams
27. Poison and dirt
28. finally
29. Adair and Haiwrin Boudreau
30. A continuous search for beauty
31. Ritual
32. Harq Carrash
33. Considerations from a younger time
34. The Secrets of an Angel
35. Attunement
36. When the past meets the present
Part IV
37. So long as we’re together
38. Confessions of Life and Death
39. Dead at 18
40. An Interrogation
41. Overthinker
42. The last hour
43. Veaer Rosell
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
PART I
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History
CHAPTER 1
YOUR ATTENTION
Year 3, Semester 1, Week 8
Hanging from a window ledge five stories high was not how Veaer Rosell imagined to be spending her Friday afternoon.
At the same time, she knew it was only one of many intriguing things to come as the school year continued.
Even being up so high, old oak trees grew taller than her and a risky turn of her head revealed a view that inspired a feeling like sinking in an ocean. Far down below were stone pavements and shady grass patches, her fellow senior students scurrying like ants. Beckoning a dizzy spell were the worn buildings of Adraredon Academy surrounding—no, towering—over her.
Long pointed arches and spires touched the stars. Flying buttresses protruded off ornate walls. The institution orbited an intricate stone and marble art piece in the centre of the courtyard, the cardinal directions featuring a statue each—the four heroes of centuries ago and the founders of Adraredon Academy. They were surrounded by dragon saints, winged beings, and at the very top were Ter and Mian, creators of the universe.
Veaer’s sleeves tightened around her biceps as she shuffled her hands along the dusty windowsill above her head. The rolled-up fabric against her elbows did not help, but in this case, she’d pay any price to get the job done, even if she had to beg her sleeves to stay put as she shifted her weight left to right, brought her legs together and let her body swing in rhythm. She eyed the balcony that was almost beneath her—just too much to the right to drop straight down.
Her legs swayed in motion. A leather satchel wrapped across her chest bumped into her side with each swing. She gauged momentum, a gritted prayer to the dragon saint of time and season between her teeth, and finally let go of the ledge.
Her body fell to the right as intended; her destination calculated. With arms tucked in, she landed on the balcony with bent knees, arms out, and gratitude that cats weren’t the only ones that could land on their feet.
As she stood up and dusted off her white shirt and ironed skirt, she peered at the thick gold curtains drawing away what sunlight tried to make it into the room. Beyond these glass doors framed with wood was a world that she had technically seen before but, in another sense, never experienced in this way.
For the fourth floor of Miriam Manor was reserved for who were considered the royalty of Adraredon or, alternatively, those who had parents rich enough to pay for the upstairs rooms—not that they were much better than those downstairs, if anything they were almost the same!—but that the status and bragging rights were enough to create endless politics between families. Veaer didn’t get this courtesy as a scholarship student placed on the ground floor, which she always found strange. Were smarts not more valuable than money? But then she reconsidered who her audience was.
Besides, with her smarts came boredom, and it meant that her academics led a path of undesired cruising. Where she could sit at the back and zone out during class, staring out the window at the beautiful buildings like they were paintings, and still get in the top ten of her cohort on tests. Academics were only systems and patterns to understand and then execute, which she always had a knack for. Now she took initiative, for it was her last year at Adraredon, and she needed to make her own fun if she wanted to survive to university.
And where she was today wasn’t by mistake. No—she was ready for her next, and toughest, challenge. The next thing she could call her very own, that she could pick away at, turn inside out, hold so closely that no one else could know more about it than her. And it came with a name.
Elise Excava.
Princess of Adraredon Academy, if only for being the daughter of the headmaster.
Unlike her golden brother, Elise kept her circle small. She also didn’t exhibit her abilities in loud ways, such as her brother in fencing or student presidency. But she did have a motif: butterflies. In Veaer’s preliminary research, she observed every art piece Elise submitted, every sketch during class, scoured every essay placed on their teacher’s desk. She understood that Elise had a deep philosophy within her about transformation. About change, the Wheel of Fortune. How existence gives and takes. How every push is a pull, and every pull is a push. How caterpillars curled up in their cocoons and by the magic of nature itself, became a being of beauty and flight.
The way she spoke to her close ones in a hushed voice, always like something said too loud would escape her grasp, it ate away at Veaer. She needed to know more.
It was almost like Elise was a ghost, floating through the halls decorated with candles and portraits, an ill aura about her. Something followed her, not of this world. And not only that, but she was best friends with Tychon Alastor Galacia, renowned tarot reader and diviner, rumoured to have the ability to communicate with spirits. Two senti, people of the non-magical kind, with no distinctive physical features, yet somehow, deeply intertwined with the unknown.
And what really mattered was this question: what do they know that I don’t?
Because people like Elise Excava had something to hide.
And to answer her question, she would gain the attention of this princess who eluded her by doing what she did best—outsmarting her peers, and taking things she didn’t own.
See, while Veaer did live in Miriam Manor herself, she was never allowed upstairs without explicitly extended invitations, that included close supervision, as per academy rules. That, and faculty administered force fields that threw you back where you belonged just when you thought you had a chance. But in addition to that, she also figured out that the fifth floor belonged to Elise and her brother Izot, and that there were no barriers there because anyone who made it up to floor four would be aware of their place.
Her solution came to her through heritage and an undeniable determination. As a caemi—the magical counterpart of sentikind typically seen with brilliant colou
She opened the balcony door, and she slipped past the curtains into a room with brown couches and walls of books. She deliberately decided against a bedroom as they were more likely to house students during and between classes, and with floor plans replicated from the ground to the fourth floor, it was easy pickings.
She didn’t loiter for long, nothing new to keep her interest apart from the slow stream of euphoria flowing through her veins. Patrons above, it won’t be this easy, will it?
She gave herself a moment to shake the excitement from her arms, taking a long deep breath in and out. She quietly stepped out of the room and, to keep herself stimulated, sequenced her fingers to tap the inside of her thumb in succession, providing rhythm to her movements. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Murmurs and laughter crawled through the walls, not close enough that she could tell who they were, and not far enough that she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. She would need to avoid running into anyone before she made it upstairs, but that just made this even more invigorating.
Something caught her attention as she padded across the carpet, her gaze betraying her plan to keep straight ahead. She approached a wide doorway with sliding doors not dissimilar to the ones of her favourite art room in the learning centre. Within were a circle of canvases, half painted and left in a moment of time. The smell of oils and acrylic drew her in and she found herself in admiration and envy for a special studio just like this.
Goodness, strokes of paint on a stretched canvas could bring her to her knees if they really wanted to—and it was one of the only things that Veaer couldn’t make herself intellectualise.
The beauty of art was the mystery—the unknown against the known, bursts of colours, myriads of shapes, composition with a heartbeat, and it undid her in the way she hoped to undo Elise.
A voice snapped her away from the canvases, someone coming her way from another corridor. She flew to the doorframe and couldn’t help but listen to the mumbling, but it wasn’t what was said that caught her attention, but who it was.
Adair Boudreau was quietly saying something to herself, almost like trying to memorise phrases like she usually did for quotes before a literature exam. Her arms remained by her sides, as opposed to swinging like she usually enjoyed… something was bothering her. But she was meant to be in class right now, so what was she doing here?
Veaer didn’t desire to be spotted by anyone but Elise, making the experience even better to savour, something intimate enough to really call her attention—that if Elise told anyone about it, her hushed whispers wouldn’t be so fruitful. But again this was her vice; her need for knowledge won her over.
“Addie!” Veaer whisper-shouted while clinging to the wooden frame. Even if her friend knew she was here, no one else but Elise would.
But the caemi girl, orange hair like a fire burning Veaer’s vision, continued walking, as if the words she chanted covered her ears and took her somewhere else. If the academy didn’t have their means of restricting the unique appearance of caemi animal features, perhaps she would’ve had a better chance at gaining Adair’s attention through her cat caemi ears.
Veaer squeezed her hands into fists a few times, going back and forth on this moment of solace. Perhaps she could let her pass if the patrons above granted it so, but Adair wasn’t one to break rules, and she was always so adamant on Veaer making it to class. Hypocrisy—meaning questions that could be answered just for her.
She rushed forward in wide strides and grasped Adair’s arm, leaving just a moment to place her other hand against Adair’s mouth as Veaer backed her into the wall. No screams, no attention. None of her plans ruined for her foolish itch of curiosity.
Adair’s eyes widened, and it was like a spell broke as her gaze focused and she blinked a couple times. Veaer peered into them to draw out the questions. What just happened? Wait, it’s Veaer, what is Veaer doing here?! How did Veaer find me… will she find out what I’m hiding?
Yes, because whatever questions are asked, you will answer.
“Veaer?” was the only word muffled through Veaer’s palm before her free arm flew into action and grabbed Veaer’s wrist. “What in the name of Mian… you aren’t meant to be up here.”
“Technically neither are you. You’re supposed to be in class!” Veaer finally let go, her hands dropping to her side, but didn’t step back to keep Adair pinned. She couldn’t see anything suspicious in her expression or her uniform. Her gaze dropped to Adair’s hands and she noticed some markings peeking out from her blazer sleeve. “What is that?”
Adair shifted the incriminated arm so that she couldn’t see it anymore, which only caused her to look up and narrow her eyes. “Notes.”
“Notes for what?” Veaer placed a familiar touch on Adair’s hip, a slight squeeze with an urge for something more.
“I know you aren’t up here just to catch me revising for a test, Ve. Tell me, what’s going on? Trying to snipe something from my room this time?” That lopsided smile of hers appeared on Adair’s lips, successfully lowering Veaer’s guard and unlocking her from her position.
Veaer paced backwards, letting Adair close her eyes and breathe out. Just for a test… just as she assumed. She didn’t know whether to feel vindicated for figuring it out earlier based on Adair’s usual quirks, or if she was disappointed for nothing more.
“It’s unlike you to be revising during class time when you’re meant to be, you know, in class.” Veaer crossed her arms and offered her own smile to shift the subject. “What happened to ‘this is what your tuition pays for’, huh?”
“My tuition also pays for what I define success as. Nous sommes nos choix—we are our choices. I simply make the most of this time to study for the test rather than sit in class, uninspired.” Adair triumphantly placed a hand over her chest and began walking to her room again, to which Veaer quickly stopped her by the shoulder. She couldn’t walk and talk with Adair if she had to go the other way.
“What is that phrase you like to say… on ne change pas… you don’t change if you’re on the winning team? You were doing plenty fine. Anyway, I’m not here for your room, but your brother’s room on the other hand…” She flashed a devilish smile, to punctuate her point and for the gasp Adair let out.
“Great idea! Need me to come?”
Hope filtered through Adair’s eyes and it pained Veaer to say, “I’m sorry, this is a solo mission. Can’t measure my success if your wonderful tact is in the equation, yeah?” She tapped Adair on the nose and leaned in closer.
Adair scoffed and rubbed her nose with her palm, but the sideways glance she sent Veaer communicated otherwise. “Fine, got it. Good luck and don’t get caught. I don’t want to hear either my brother yelling or you falling down the stairs later.”
“You got it, lovely.” Veaer winked and waved Adair off as she went back to chanting her phrases.
With an exhale, Veaer let herself refocus. The sound through the walls hadn’t abruptly stopped, or gotten closer or louder, which meant she was still safe. She realigned her path, going back to the intersection of corridors and through to the quarter she needed. Her next stop: the rooms of Elise’s court. Fortunately, there weren’t many in her little group and the likelihood she could find the room she needed was high.
