She led me across the marble floor, smoothed by the passage of thousands of feet, to a wooden window in the far wall. An ancient woman stared down at us with a hawk-like gaze. She appeared human to my eyes until she reached out a hand for my letter of acceptance, and I saw that she had webbed fingers and nails like claws.
“I’ll need your tears and a sample of laughter,” she said as she took the letter from me and glanced it over. “And we will be collecting a drop of blood, a lock of hair, and a cutting of fingernail.” She pushed a pair of ornate silver scissors and a sharpened knife across the table at me. “Do you require assistance?”
I took the knife and scissors gingerly. “I, ah, no thank you.”
I snipped a piece of hair from the base of my neck and clipped my pinkie fingernail. The drop of blood frightened me most, but I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of this severe fae woman, so I held my breath and pressed the tip of the knife to my finger as if I had been doing it all my life. A single, quivering bead of ruby red appeared on my skin, and the woman captured it with a tiny glass jar.
“What are these things for?” I dared to ask.
“Protection spells,” the woman said, whisking them away. “Identification spells. Tracking spells.”
She returned with a furled piece of paper and an ornate metal key. “Here is your room key, a map of the campus, and a list of your classes. You will find your uniforms and other essentials already in your room.”
“I don’t get to choose my own classes?” I said, surprised and a little disappointed.
“First-year middlings take the basic courses appropriate for their track,” she said, and turned away.
I looked at Tearly. “Middlings?”
“Don’t be offended,” she whispered. “It means, well, average. But most of us are in the middling track.”
I must have looked even more confused at that explanation, for she went on to say, “There are two tracks at Spellwood—the middling track and the elite track. Those who have exceptional powers or noble blood take the elite track, with its special courses on diplomacy and high magic. The rest of us mixed-bloods are in the middling track. We learn about fae culture and history, and how to resist glamours and charms, and basically how to stay safe and integrate well into fairy courts, should we choose to go that route.”
Tearly received her room key and schedule, and then she joined me once more. She glanced at my paper.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re in North like me. Come on. I’ll show you the way.”
It turned out that Spellwood had four dormitories for its students—the North Tower, the East Wing, the Westerly Addition, and the Southern Wing. The East and South Wing branched off the main building where the classes were held, and the Westerly Addition was located across another jewel-green lawn, in a beautiful stone building with a dome for a roof. The North Tower was situated amid a vast, manicured garden. They were, Tearly explained, informally known as North, East, Westerly, and Southern.
“I like North best,” Tearly confided as she led me down a flight of steps and outside once more. “I think it has the most picturesque setting, although it is farthest from the dining hall. Southern is best for food access, East is best for a quick walk to classes, and Westerly is best for, well, not getting caught sneaking out at night. It has a whole wall of windows that overlook the West Woods, and there’s a window in the attic that doesn’t lock.”
“What is North best for?” I asked.
“Peace and quiet,” she said with a grin. “It’s nice and peaceful at the top of the tower. But if you like parties, someone is always having a get-together down in the gardens below. You can look out and see what everyone’s doing, and decide if you want to join in. Quite handy. Besides that, it’s the prettiest dorm.”
We walked along a stretch of gravel that led straight as an arrow toward a spiraling stone tower. Moss-covered statues lined the walk on either side. Some of the statues depicted men and women posed in fighting stances, others were centaurs, dragons, and satyrs. A hedge ran behind the statues, creating a kind of natural wall, and the scent of roses filled the air.
“We’re near the Briar—that’s one of the snobby societies—house,” Tearly explained. “All the societies have a place where they meet. Unfortunately, that means we’ll see more than our fair share of Briar girls on this path. On the upside, though, Toadcurdle boys tend to avoid it because they don’t want to run into Briars.”
A few students strolled along the grounds, but for the most part, the school was still empty.
“A lot of students don’t come back until tonight,” Tearly told me as we passed a clump of giggling girls with short green hair and pointed ears, who otherwise looked perfectly human. “There’s a school superstition about having good luck in the coming year if you arrive by moonlight, and besides, nothing starts until tomorrow anyway. Everything is decorated, and they put out lanterns. It’s fun.”
“Why didn’t you come at night, then?”
Tearly shrugged. “Luck never seems to stick to me anyway, and I like to get here before it’s crowded. Nice to have free run of the place before it’s full to the brim with giddy first years—no offense—and snobby elites.”
The high green hedges on either side of the path formed walls for outdoor rooms within the garden, and I caught glimpses of some of them as we passed. One had a lily pad-choked, square pond in the center, complete with a fountain with a statue of a winged boy pouring water from a basin. Another was filled with sundials of various heights and sizes.
A group of students emerged from one of the hedge-lined garden paths that intersected with ours. I caught a glimpse of a hulking male student as big as a bookshelf, a dark-skinned girl as beautiful as a supermodel, and a massive gray dog that looked like a wolf. I knew without Tearly’s explanation that these were all elites. They exuded power and privilege.
“Students aren’t allowed to bring pets,” Tearly was saying in disapproval, but I barely heard her, because I was looking at the last student to step onto the path.
A boy.
He was lean and muscled like a panther, and he moved with the grace of one too. His face was angular, full of sharp lines along his jaw and cheekbones, and his hair was tousled midnight. He wore a blue cloak and clothing that looked as if it’d come from a renaissance faire—an open-necked shirt and loose trousers tucked into boots. He had a book under his arm, and he looked human except for what I realized with a start was curving horns sprouting from his temples, curling down around his forehead like a crown. No, not horns. Antlers. Small ones, so unobtrusive that I hadn’t noticed them at first. They looked like a circlet of thorns almost. He was handsome in a dangerous, almost cruel way.
His eyes, green threaded with gold, landed on mine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE ANTLERED BOY’S bold stare pinned me to the ground. The wind blew suddenly, brushing his dark hair across his eyes, but he didn’t move to brush it away. He seemed turned to stone at the sight of me.
My stomach twisted into a knot, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Something about that look tugged at me in a dark, compelling way. For a moment that seemed to last for hours, I was stuck, unable to breathe, unable to tear my attention away.
“Kyra?” Tearly asked, breaking into my thoughts, and the rest of the world rushed in with color and sound.
The dark-haired, antlered boy was still staring at me. A scowl had twisted across his handsome face, and then the dog bumped his hand with its muzzle, and he snapped his gaze from mine. I breathed out, feeling as if I’d been released from knifepoint.
“Who are they?” I breathed, still unable to move away.
“That’s Lucien and his friends,” Tearly said. “The stunningly beautiful one is Selene. The big guy is Declan. They’re friends with Isadora too.”
Selene leaned over and whispered something in Lucien’s ear, and he turned to look at us again. A scornful smirk crossed his lips, but when he looked at me, it faded, and his eyeb
rows drew together with obvious displeasure.
“The tower’s this way,” Tearly said, gesturing down another path through the hedges.
“Is there a reason why he’s looking at me like I just pissed on his breakfast?” I muttered to Tearly.
“Come on,” she said. “They’re just… like that. They don’t like anybody but themselves. Their coldness isn’t your fault. Now, come on.”
She drew me past the group of elites at a brisk walk, and I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at them. I could feel Lucien’s burning stare on my back all the rest of the way to the tower, and I felt woefully self-conscious. Had he looked at me and wondered what a human-looking student like me was doing here?
I frowned, a spurt of anger shooting through me. I had as much right as he did to attend the school, even if I didn’t have webbed hands or pointed ears. I was still fae.
But a flicker of an insidious worry wormed its way through my stomach, and I couldn’t get that piercing, scornful gaze out of my head.
What if whatever I was, wasn’t enough for this place?
~
My room was located at the highest point of the North Tower.
“It’s usually a first year’s room,” Tearly puffed as we climbed the spiraling staircase up and up and up. “And it’s always a middling’s. Sorry. It’s a steep climb, as you can see, ha, so nobody elite wants it.” She paused at a little landing where a stain glass window looked out over the gardens. “Most first years want to be in Westerly because of the aforementioned sneaking out stuff, and second years just want to be on the ground floor most of the time. Third and fourth years just want to be in Southerly near the food. The elites get the biggest rooms in the best places, and most of them request to be in East so they can sleep in later before class. There aren’t many elites in any of the other dormitories.”
The mention of elites made me think of Lucien and his stare, and a nervous flutter went through my stomach. I shook my head, trying to banish the sensation.
What some snobby, handsome elite thought didn’t matter to me. We’d probably never so much as speak to each other.
Tearly and I reached the top of the stairs, where we found a round landing and two doors set in the walls on opposite sides of the staircase. One had my room number on it. The other, only a symbol I didn’t understand.
Tearly glanced at it and shrugged. “Supply closet, maybe.”
I pulled out my room key and inserted it into the lock. The door swung open beneath my fingertips, revealing the room beyond.
I gasped.
A gabled room with a pale blue ceiling and smooth stone floors waited beyond. Three windows looked over the gardens in different directions, each window nestled in an arched recess. There was a soot-covered fireplace, and bookshelves covering the entirety of the wall that the door opened out of. The two of the other three walls had a bed—one a single and the other bunk beds. The walls were painted a pale, warm yellow.
“It’s a bit small for three people,” Tearly was saying apologetically. “But first years don’t get the first choice—”
“I love it,” I whispered, afraid to break the spell of this beautiful, homey, comfortable room.
A lump on the top bunk stirred, causing us both to jump in surprise. The blanket convulsed, and then a girl poked her head out from beneath it.
“Hello,” she said, blinking at us. “Are you my new roommates?”
“Roommate,” Tearly said, gesturing at me, and I waved.
“I’m Kyra,” I said. “I’m a first-year student,” I felt it necessary to add, lest she think me an idiot for not knowing anything at all.
“My name is Lyrica,” my new roommate replied. “I’m a first year too.” She slid out from beneath the blanket and jumped off the top of the bunk, and I tried my best not to stare, because she had wings.
Tiny, flimsy little wings. They were slightly furry, like moth wings, and they were a pale, mint green color. They protruded just beyond the tips of her shoulders, and they buzzed a little as she smiled nervously at me. Lyrica had sleek black hair and feathery-soft eyelashes. Her skin had the faintest sheen to it, as if she’d once been covered in glitter, and her skin still bore the phantom memory of it.
“I’m from the spring court,” she said, looking me over curiously. “What about you? From where do you hail?”
“The, ah, summer court,” I said, and instantly felt embarrassed. I felt like an imposter. I’d never even been to the summer court. It was hardly mine. “At least,” I added, “that’s where my father was from.”
“Do you mean you… you grew up with mortals?” Lyrica asked with a gasp.
“Ah, yes. Sort of. My mom and grandmother are part-fae like me—”
But Lyrica was staring at me with wide eyes, as if I’d just admitted to being raised by zebras. “I’ve never met my father,” she said. “I know his name was Gregory Choi, and I have this picture.” She fumbled with a locket at her chest, opening it to a picture of a handsome Korean-American man with perfectly sculpted cheekbones. “But that’s all. I’ve never been to the mortal world. I only have my mother’s stories of it.” She paused. “Is it true that you light cakes on fire to celebrate the day of your birth?”
“Um, well, sort of,” I said. “We use candles.”
“Oh,” Lyrica said. She looked mildly disappointed. “Candles.”
I looked at the other two beds. I could take the single bed by the window, or the bottom bunk beneath Lyrica.
I picked the single bed and set my leather bag on the mattress, and Lyrica perked up at the thought of something else.
“Is it true that you are carried everywhere in metal automatons that leak smoke into the air? Does it make it hard to breathe?” Lyrica asked, following me. “Does the air smell terrible? I should think it would make me feel faint to have vapors everywhere like that.”
“Oh, well,” I began uncertainly. I moved past her to peek through a door on the other end of the room. “We have cars. And pollution.”
Lyrica followed me. “Pollution,” she repeated. “Is that a type of spell?”
The door opened into a bathroom tiled in jade-green stones, with a giant, claw-footed tub and a sink and toilet that looked like they’d come from the 1920s. Sunlight spilled in through a round skylight overhead.
“And is it true that nobody has any tails or wings?” Lyrica added from the doorway, glancing me over as I turned to face her. “Do they all look like you?”
“Well,” I stammered, thrown off-kilter by her relentless inquisitiveness. “People can look all kinds of ways. But no, no tails or wings.”
Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed the hour, the sound echoing.
“Fell’s horses,” Lyrica exclaimed. “What is that?”
“The bell,” Tearly said. “I think this is where I make my exit. It’s going to be dark soon, and I want to get the best bed before the rest of my roommates arrive. I’ll see you around, Kyra. My room is on the first floor, the one right next to the stairs. Visit any time. And Lyrica?”
“Hmm?” Lyrica said, still studying me with hungry interest.
“Don’t ask her too many questions. And answer some of hers too. She’s never been to any of the fae courts.”
Tearly disappeared, shutting the door behind her, and I was left alone with Lyrica, who gaped at me.
“Never?” she asked in astonishment.
“Never,” I admitted. “And I’ve never met my father either.”
She smiled at me in warm solidarity, looking at me less like I was a curiosity now, and more like I was a person in the same boat as her. I relaxed a little, returning her smile.
Maybe I was going to be okay here.
Lyrica continued to pepper me with questions while I found my uniforms hanging in the closet behind the door. The formal clothes were all maroon-colored robes that looked as if they’d come from the eleventh century, with drooping, bell-shaped sleeves and a belt of twisted gold. The after-hours clothing was simil
ar, although they came in different shades of maroon. Slender, asymmetrical tunics, some sleeveless, some with flowing sleeves, and clinging, soft pants that felt more like leggings.
“I look terrible in the first-year colors,” Lyrica muttered from where she’d climbed back into her bed. “My best color is silver. I can’t wait to be a fourth year.”
“Do the different years wear different colors?” I asked, still examining the clothing. Everything was my exact size.
“First years wear that fellish red,” Lyrica said, blinking her feathery lashes at me. “Seconds wear brown. Third years are dark blue, and fourth years wear silver. If you stay on a fifth year or apprentice to become a teacher here, you wear yellow. Teachers wear black.”
I looked back at my clothes. “What about what we wear to sleep?”
“Underthings and night clothes are in the drawers,” Lyrica said with a wave of her hand. “I prefer to sleep naked, but…” She looked at me. “Would you prefer I didn’t? I’ve heard mortals are less fond of nudity.”
“Well,” I said. “Er. At least not in common areas. If it isn’t too much trouble?”
“I can act like a mortal,” Lyrica said with a grin. “It feels so delightfully authentic.”
I spotted trunks sitting beneath the beds. I found one with my name on it and looked inside. Plain, sturdy underwear, nightgowns, and more soft legging-pants, all in the various shades of maroon. There were two bras, but they looked a bit more like soft corsets, the kind of thing someone from the nineteenth century might wear. I examined them curiously.
“We do get to wear whatever we want to the balls and on holidays, at least,” Lyrica said then. “That’s nice. I’m planning on wearing a silver and violet gown to the Summertide celebration. What are you going to wear?”
Before I could answer, the door opened, and our third roommate stepped into the room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Spellwood Academy Page 4
