Thanks, but no thanks. I heaved out a sigh. “Are you bespelled to keep you from telling me?”
The greatest mystery at the Academy surrounded the sixth family. A mystery mostly because everyone was bespelled to prevent them from talking about what happened. But I’d found a book in the library that shared a few details. A hundred years ago, after feuding with the third family, the surviving matriarch of the sixth—Minerva—had been banished.
And here she was. Her ghost, that is.
Her lips curved down. “Bespelled? Never!” She paced back and forth across the room. Sorta. She floated back and forth in an agitated manner. “Cursed Bespeller. Never again will I allow—”
I held up my hand. “Sorry. Won’t mention that word again.” Leave it to me to remind her that her consort had gone wild and bespelled other wizards out of spite. While he’d been put to death for his actions, she’d been banished.
Coming to an abrupt halt beside the bed, lines deepened around Minerva’s eyes and a tic appeared in her temple. “What’s past is past and cannot be changed. Only the future remains for us to reveal.”
“You just said there were many paths I could take.” Some leading to my early death, but no need to bring that up again.
“All contain one key element.”
Eagerness rose inside me like a tea kettle about to boil over. “What is it?”
She howled and yanked on her long, gray hair. “Too late!”
Around me, the world wavered as if I’d been sucked down into a deep dark sea.
“Wait.” Floundering, I gripped the mattress, struggling to remain in the room with Minerva. Something—someone—hauled on the core inside me, dragging me away. She grew blurry and darkness crept through the room. “Tell me what you mean!”
“Seek me, Fleur.” Urgency spiked her words. “Release me and…”
Someone touched my forehead. “Fleur. Come back to us. Please!”
Plunged into ice water, I woke up, my body one big, rumbling earthquake.
“Minerva,” I shouted, sitting bolt upright. The beige blanket covering me flopped onto my lap as I stared around at the stark white walls of the clinic.
My favorite teacher, Cloven, plus my friends, Patty and Tria, clustered on either side of my stretcher.
When I cried Minerva again, Tria and Patty blinked as if I’d announced I could shift into a centaur. Cloven’s brows drew together, and his gaze darted from mine.
I latched onto the front of his robes and yanked him near. “Minerva. I saw her. Talked with her!”
“Minerva?” he sputtered and loosened my fingers enough he could turn partly away. “She’s dead. What are you talking about?” But he still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Serum, when absorbed through the skin, can cause hallucinations. That’s what this is.” All it can be, he whispered.
I’d met her. Talked with her. And she told me to find her. “It wasn’t a hallucination.” Was it? Maybe my conversation had been a dream, generated by some sort of chemical working through my system.
I wanted to cry as my excitement fizzled inside me like a deflated balloon.
“It must’ve been.” His attention flew to Tria and Patty standing opposite him. “We can discuss this later.”
Was he afraid to talk about Minerva in front of them?
Okay, I could wait, but I wouldn’t give up, because he was hiding something.
I swung my legs over the edge of the stretcher, wincing when using my arm sent pain lancing through me.
“Not so fast,” Tria said, gently nudged me back down onto the mattress. “You’re not going anywhere without healer permission.” She lifted the blanket up to my chin and tucked it around my shoulders.
“Yes, lie still,” Cloven said, relief coming through in his voice. “Rest. You’re still recovering. Everything will seem clearer once you’ve fully awoken and the dregs of the chemical have worn off.”
“I was so scared, Fleur,” Patty said, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Professor Grim flitted you here right away and the healers have done a fantastic job, but you’ve been unconscious for hours. The lardlet…”
My hand! I wrenched it from beneath the blanket, worried I’d pull out nothing but a stump. Pristine bandages had been wrapped around it, but I counted five fingers.
“What happened?” I asked. “All I remember was losing the beatleycarne and then holding up the lardlet.”
“The lardlet released Seeker Serum,” Patty said. “No one knows how that happened. Usually, you tap the lardlet in the greenhouse lab with a scalpel. And we wear gloves when we do it. Tapping releases raw Serum, which is nearly harmless.”
Scalpel? I shuddered.
“You wear gloves for a good reason. Even raw Serum can burn the skin,” Tria said, her fingers biting into my upper arm deep enough to make me wince. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that.” Fingers loosened, she rubbed to ease the sting. “In my Seeker class, I dilute it and add a neutralizer to keep it inactive until it’s ready for refinement.” Her gaze drifted to my hand.
“Wait,” I said. “You said the lardlet released Seeker Serum, not the raw stuff?” The color… Grim had been horrified it was changing a different color. I couldn’t remember much after that.
“Let’s not go into that right now,” Cloven said. “The healers will explain soon.”
Ominous. “It was burned, right? Whenever someone has been hurt, the Healer is able to completely cure them. Usually within a few minutes.” I held up my hand. “Patty, you said I’ve been out for hours. Why isn’t my hand healed?”
As if she’d overheard my voice while walking past in the hall, a healer poked her head inside the half-open doorway. “Oh! You’re awake.” She bustled inside, the hem of her white robe swishing around her ankles. “Perfect.” Her solemn gaze took in Cloven, Patty, and Tria. “I imagine you’d like to get out of here, and I don’t believe we’ll need to hold you for the entire night, even after the procedure.”
Procedure? I started to sit up again, but Tria shook her head. “My hand…”
“I’m afraid that’s going to be a problem,” the healer said. “But we’ll go through that in a moment.”
“What about my flitting?”
Her shoulders relaxed. “I see no reason you can’t flit once everything’s settled. Your procedure won’t hold you back for long. And there are wonderful—”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I haven’t been able to flit for weeks.”
“What?” Cloven and Tria shouted in unison. “You can’t flit?”
By the fae. Twinsies? I shook my head at their matching horrified expressions.
“I haven’t been able to flit since…” I frowned at Cloven. “Just before I joined you and the Seekers in the upper pasture to fight off the nightlace.” After I’d run into Ashton, Eben, and Vik in the hall outside the library. Three creeps who’d tried to mean-prank me with nightlace vines they’d stolen from the greenhouse lab a few days before.
Cloven turned to the healer. “Could the nightlace battle have caused interference with her elemental magic?”
Leaning her shoulder against the doorframe, the healer tapped her chin. “I don’t believe I’ve seen anything like that before, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“As I was leaving the library…” I frowned. “I felt something. A tingle down my spine. I ran into Eben, Ashton, and Vik in the hall and…” I growled. “They were being their usual nasty selves. I planned to flit to my Coven room to drop off my things but, for some reason, I could no longer flit.” A dawning horror spread through me. “Alys was in the library. Do you think she…?” It wasn’t possible, was it? “Is she secretly a Bespeller?”
Cloven shook his head. “Alys isn’t a Bespeller. She’s been tested, and her only skapti is diplomacy.”
There were only two known Bespellers, the Court Bespeller who was far from here with Donovan’s older brother, King Niles, and Katya. Could the creepy spider sorceress be involved in this?
Otherwise, we n
eeded to hunt down an unknown, rogue Bespeller.
“Bespelling would explain why your elemental magic has gone haywire,” the healer said, bumping off the doorframe and strolling toward me. “But let me check you out first. I’ll be able to tell by my examination if you’ve been bespelled. Do realize there are many other, simpler reasons why elemental magic might not work. Perhaps you caught a magical virus.”
Magical viruses existed? If so, how could I avoid them forever?
With her eyes closed, she ran her fingertips along my forehead. Her uneven hum shimmered through the air as she trailed her fingers down my temples, my cheeks, and around to the back of my neck. Eyes opening, she released me and stepped back. “Hmm.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Just that. Hmm.” Her gaze darted to Cloven. “Very unusual. Let me get my supervisor. She can explain what comes next and verify my assessment.”
“Verify what?” Patty asked, panic lifting her voice. Her gaze fell on me. “What’s happening to Fleur?”
Good question.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tria said, watching the healer hurry from the room. “Must be a glitch. They’ll straighten you out.” Her chin tightened. “If they can’t fix this virus and you’re unable to flit for even a day more, you ping me and I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
I appreciated the offer, but I wanted to flit myself.
The healer returned with a tall, slender, gray-haired woman. The older healer crossed the room and, after nodding pertly to Cloven, turned to me. “Let’s take a look, shall we?” She repeated the process the other woman had used, including the humming, before stepping backward, a frown deepening the creases on her weathered face. Her gaze cut to Cloven again. “My associate is correct in her assessment, but she missed something else.”
Things appeared to be stacking up against me, and I had a feeling this was bigger than me being unable to flit. What now?
“This mark.” She tapped the top of my chest where my shirt had parted.
When had I picked up a diamond tattoo? I licked my finger and rubbed, assuming it had to be dirt, though the color—pale blue—wasn’t like any dirt I’d seen before in my life.
But…hello. Magical world. Why not blue dirt?
The diamond didn’t rub off.
“It won’t go away that easily,” the healer said. “You’ve attracted the attention of a prankster.”
Cloven sat forward, clutching the rail. “The beatleycarne has latched onto Fleur?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He rubbed my arm. “We’ll put a Seeker on it immediately. They’ll locate and destroy it.”
“What’s a prankster?” As if I needed to ask. Patty had already told me we had to rebury our beatleycarnes or they’d go gremlin and attack us.
Awesome. Just what I needed at this point in my life.
“The prankster is only one of your worries,” the healer said.
A sense of doom filled me. I wanted to cover my ears, go back to sleep…No, I wanted to start all over again on my first day at the Academy.
Sympathy brimmed in the healer’s eyes when they met mine. “I’m afraid your flitting capabilities are gone for the foreseeable future. You’re the victim of a bespelling. And your hand.” She pinned my shoulder to the mattress as if she was concerned I’d leap from the stretcher and escape. “We’re going to have to cut it off.”
Chapter 3
I wasn’t just bespelled and unable to flit, I was going to die.
Not the everyone will die someday thing, but the you’re gonna die in less than two weeks, thing.
Unless they amputated my hand.
“No way!” I yelled, tucking the bandaged limb into my left armpit. “You’re not cutting it off.”
Patty had backed against the wall. Trembling, she pressed her fingers against her lips. Tears tumbled down her face.
Tria leaped between me and the senior healer, holding up her hands. “Hold on a second, here. No one’s chopping anything off Fleur.”
“As an apprentice Seeker, you know this form of Serum is toxic,” the older healer said patiently. Easy to be patient when she was the one doing the cutting. Stepping around Tria, she advanced on me. “The moment you arrived, we removed as much as possible, but it was already too late. Some had sunk into your skin and it continues to eat your flesh. Soon, you’ll have nothing left but bone.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Patty shouted. “Fleur, no.”
“How is this even possible?” I said. “I was exposed to raw serum, not the refined stuff. Raw Serum’s basically harmless, isn’t it?” That’s what I’d learned in my textbook.
Her hand braced on the stretcher railing, the healer’s gaze flicked to Cloven.
“See, that’s what we don’t understand,” he said, scooting his chair closer. “Normally, Seeker technicians refine the raw Serum extracted from lardlets, using a secret method passed down for generations. The key is the next part of the process. It ferments for a year and then it’s able to be used for—”
“Only a few Seekers have the skapti to turn it into the form used for…interrogation,” Tria added, shoving herself between me and the healer again. “Even I don’t know how they do it.”
“A lardlet has never released refined Serum before,” Cloven said. “It’s impossible.”
“Yet it happened,” the healer said, thrusting Tria aside and bracing her hand on my shoulder, pinning me in place. “All we can do now is deal with the end result.”
I gulped and struggled to get free but the healer had the strength of three centaurs. “I’m not going to let you cut off my hand!”
“Be reasonable,” she said.
“Reasonable?” I shrieked, yanking her hand off my shoulder and scooting closer to Cloven. “Don’t let them do it,” I said to him. “Please.”
“Professor Grim captured the lardlet and brought it to the greenhouse lab,” Tria said. “Seekers are taking that baby apart. They’ll find out what happened.”
Like that would do me any good now?
“There must be a cure,” I said, grabbing Cloven’s arm. “Someone, sometime, must’ve spilled Serum on their skin. They found a way to survive.”
Sadness crinkling the healer’s face, she shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Others who were exposed to the undiluted variety…”
Saliva pooled in my mouth. I wanted to hurl. “They’re dead.”
She nodded. “This is why students only tap lardlets for raw extract. A Level Five Lab Technician is the only one qualified to perform the final refining process.”
“Would you like me to prepare the operating suite?” the other healer asked. “Then we can get on with the procedure.” Without waiting for a reply, she slunk out the door.
I imagined she wanted to escape. So did I, but my curse would come with me.
“It’s not happening,” I said. There had to be a way out of this. “Grim does just fine with skeletal fingers. I can, too.” If it grossed everyone out, I could wear a glove.
“You are not a reaper,” the head healer said with a huff. She linked her arms across her chest and tapped her foot on the floor.
“And you are not cutting off my hand.”
“If we don’t remove it, Serum rot will set in and the bones—”
“Then I choose to die.”
Tria growled. “You can’t…” Whirling on the healer, she stormed up into her face with her fists raised. Would she hit the healer? “Fleur is not going to die. There must be something you can do, and I want you to do it now.”
Everyone’s faces showed varying degrees of amazement. Cloven stood and laid his arm across me as if in protection. The healer stumbled backward, her hands lifted in defense. And Patty stopped crying and tumbled into a chair.
Grateful to have a champion in Tria, I fist-pumped the air.
“Tria is correct,” Cloven said. “Dying is not an option. How much time do we have?” Cloven asked the healer.
I loved how he used
“we,” but really, it was just “me”.
Patty jumped to her feet and crossed the room. She stood beside Tria, staring down at me. Her expression suggested she wanted to climb onto the stretcher and hug me. Needing a thousand hugs, I held out my arms.
“We’re here for you,” she whispered in my hair, her arms around my shoulders. “And we’ll find a way out of this.” Easing back, she leaned against the bed.
“She has a week at best,” the healer said grimly. “After that, it’ll be too late to perform the amputation. Too late to do anything. She’ll die within days after that.”
Then I was doomed. Sweat trickled down my brow, and my skin itched as if tiny spiders crawled all over me. “Was the lardlet bespelled? Is that why it released Seeker Serum?”
“The Seekers believe so,” Tria barked. The anger in her gaze when her eyes met mine… She wanted to kill someone.
I did, too, though killing whoever had bespelled the beatleycarne wouldn’t change my fate.
The arm Cloven had laid across me tightened, as if he expected me to bolt.
Awesome idea.
Scrambling down to the bottom of the stretcher, I leaped off the end.
“Wait. Fleur,” Patty cried.
My coat, hat, and mittens lay on a chair beside the door, and I snatched them up.
A quick glance showed Cloven nodding. Did he approve of me fleeing?
Tria wrangled with the healer, keeping her from coming after me.
Having no interest in hanging around until they pulled out the saws, I wrenched open the door.
“You can’t leave,” the healer shouted, unable to break free of Tria’s hold. She glared at Tria. “Girl. Let. Me. Go!”
Can’t leave? Just watch me. My lungs on fire, I exploded out into the hall, where I bumped into the other healer. When she tried to latch onto my arm, I lurched back, stumbling into the wall and jarring my shoulder.
“This won’t take long at all,” she said cheerfully. “Truly. A quick trip to the operating suite and you’ll be out of here and back with your friends in no time. Tomorrow, you’ll be able to attend classes again and—”
“You’re not chopping off my hand!” Spinning, I raced down the hall. I turned right at the intersection and spied the exit ahead. With my heart surging up into my throat, I flew in that direction. I burst through the door and out into the inner courtyard.
Crystal Wing Academy- The Complete Series Page 50
