A bird that I hadn’t noticed until that moment fluttered forward from where it had been perched on the windowsill, a curl of paper clutched in its beak.
I heard Lucien hesitate in the doorway.
Headmaster Windswallow took the paper from the bird, unfurled it, and read the message. She lifted her head and fixed her gaze on me. Her frown made me want to shrivel.
“Turned another student into a toad for taunting you, did you? Charms and spells are not allowed on campus, Kyra, and the punishment for employing them against a fellow student is severe.”
“I actually didn’t—” I tried to say, but she silenced me with a look.
“As you are a new student, and there was no actual harm done, I will be gracious this time. You will join Lucien in clearing the Cistern. Every night for six weeks. After the dinner meal until the twilight hour. And no charms, Kyra.”
“I—”
“You are dismissed,” she said.
Lucien was already gone by the time I reached the door.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I WAS MOROSE at dinner in anticipation of my first round of punishment. Hannah, Lyrica, and Tearly, who’d joined us for the meal, all tried to bolster my spirits, but I felt like I was preparing to go to my execution as I picked at my food and tried not to look in the direction of Lucien and his cruel friends.
“How big is the Cistern?” I asked. “Is it… I mean, will we have to spend much time near each other?”
“The Cistern is an amphitheater,” Tearly said. “Shaped like, well, a cistern. It’s made from chiseled stone, and its nearly as ancient as the rocks its carved from.”
“What are earthnyms?” I asked, desperate to distract myself in the last few moments before my punishment commenced.
“They’re funny little things,” Tearly said. “They look like the mortal idea of fairies—little things with wings—but they don’t speak or have much comprehension of anything. They like to dance all night long, and they make toadstools and moss grow where their feet have touched the ground. My aunt had a nym infestation once. It was a dreadful problem.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered.
“But easily fixed!” Tearly hastened to say as she realized this wasn’t helping.
When I could delay no longer, for most of the room had cleared, I rose to my feet and looked toward the exit.
“I suppose I should get to it,” I said grimly.
The others walked me to the Cistern. The amphitheater lay on the far east side of the grounds, set in a hill like a giant’s soup bowl that had been set down after dinner and forgotten. Stone levels descended toward a flat stage, the levels serving both as steps and seating. The stones were green with moss.
I groaned aloud at the sight of it.
This would take months to clear.
There was no sign of Lucien. I wondered if he was even going to bother to show up, and my spirits lifted slightly at the thought of being spared his glowering presence, even if it meant doing all the work myself.
A man, slightly stooped, approached us. I hadn’t even noticed him standing there. He had green eyes, greenish lips, and green hair with tendrils of vines growing out from among his curls. He looked young and ancient at the same time.
“I’m Gallis,” he said. “The groundskeeper. Here are your instruments for clearing the moss.”
I was expecting something magical, something distinctly fae, like a tree branch magically twisted into some fantastic shape, but Gallis merely handed me a shovel and a hoe.
There was still no sign of Lucien. Had he decided to skip the punishment altogether?
Anger licked at my core despite my earlier relief at the thought of not having to see him. Did he think he was immune to the rules? How dare he flaunt his elite status? How dare he shrug off punishment?
Well, regardless of what Lucien was doing, I was here and this was my punishment. I heaved a sigh and used the shovel to scrape at the moss, but it clung as stubbornly to the rock beneath as if it were glued in place. I pried at a clump with the tip of the shovel, and the moss lifted slightly, root tendrils stretching from where they had melded with the stone ground beneath. I leaned hard on the shovel and heard a loud popping sound, and the moss came free and smacked me in the face.
I heard a snort of what might have been laughter. I turned and saw Lucien, his back to me, a hoe in hand. He appeared to be clearing the moss with no problem. He must be using magic despite Headmaster Windswallow’s rules on the matter.
I scowled and redoubled my efforts. I would not let a spoiled fae prince show me up. I was strong. I could do this.
Sweat beaded on my forehead and trickled into my eyes as I worked, and a fine dusting of grit and bits of moss coated my arms before long. I fell into an exhausted rhythm—wedge the shovel tip beneath the moss, fill my lungs with the deepest breath I could inhale, throw my entire body weight onto the shovel’s handle and strain to wrench the roots away from the rocks, and dodge the clumps of moss as they flew upward from the force of my efforts. Wedge, strain, dodge. Over and over until my shoulders, back, and arms ached and trembled, and I was soaked in perspiration and covered in dirt.
Every time I glanced over my shoulder at Lucien, he was ignoring me entirely. A blessing, I supposed. It was better than being taunted or glared at.
Still, his utter lack of acknowledgment rankled me. We were co-laborers in punishment, even though he deserved his sentence and I did not deserve mine. It could have given us something in common, perhaps. A moment of solidarity between middling and elite.
But Lucien acted as though I didn’t exist.
The hours crawled past.
Finally, the sun sank below the tree line, and the first stars appeared in the purple twilight. Lucien laid down his tools and set off for the path toward the school without a backward glance.
Gallis appeared from the fragrant green shadows and held out his hand for my shovel. His nails, I noticed, were rough and brown, like bark.
I put it in his hands and turned to pick up the hoe. At least I’d cleared a good swath of—
I froze, staring in dismay.
Almost the entire patch of cleared stone was now covered in moss again, newly grown. Was this some cruel fae trickery?
Tears prickled my eyes. I was exhausted. I’d been working for hours. And now, it had all come undone. Was this part of the punishment?
If Gallis noticed my failure, he didn’t say anything. He took the hoe and turned to walk back into the shadows.
I dragged myself back to the North Tower. The climb up the stairs seemed insurmountable after that backbreaking labor. I thought furiously of Selene and her smirk, and Lucien and his coldness. I loathed all of them. The whole cruel, snobby, elitist bunch.
When I reached my room, Lyrica and Hannah weren’t there. I went straight to the tub and let the water fill around me as I lay in a fetal position and sobbed.
I’d only been here for a few days, and already I wanted to give up.
The hot water filled the tub to the brim, and I turned it off and let my throbbing muscles soak as the water turned muddy around me.
Finally, after the mud had settled to the bottom and the water turned cold, I grabbed a towel and climbed out.
When I returned to the main room, something lying on the ground caught my eye.
A letter.
I snatched it up and saw my name written in Grandmother Azalea’s handwriting. I tore open the envelope and hungrily devoured the words.
My mom and grandmother were fine. They missed me. They were still trying to determine why I was in danger and who’d tried to hurt me. The green beans in the backyard were ripening. A stray kitten had shown up on the front porch and refused to leave, so they’d adopted it.
I read the letter over and over, soaking in every line. I let myself cry a little, and then I folded the letter, put it under my pillow, and got dressed.
I was going to be the best student Spellwood Academy had ever seen. I was going to make them proud
. I’d hold my head high, study hard, and pry up that damned moss until my punishment was finished. And then I’d join Flameforge and Tearly would teach me to become a master at archery.
Okay, at this point I was daydreaming.
And most importantly, I wasn’t going to let Lucien and his band of cruel friends see me cry.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THAT NIGHT, I dreamed half a dozen strange nightmares, all of them haunted by visions of boys with antlers in their dark hair and girls with eyes like black river stones. In the end of every dream, someone tried to strangle me in darkness, but I was saved by a hand in mine and a voice humming a strange, mournful song. The last dream went on and on, with golden-tongued fairies singing overhead as I joined Flameforge, which for some reason was made up entirely of centaurs. I looked down, and I was a centaur too. Then hands closed around my throat, and the lights went out, and I couldn’t breathe. Pain filled my chest, and I struggled and fought, determined to live. Thunder crackled overhead, and I was lying on the road again, my bike a ruin of tangled metal beside me, and a doctor with bright eyes leaned over me and whispered that I was going to die if I wasn’t careful.
I woke up with my pulse still pounding and adrenaline jolting through my veins. I lay still as the dream subsided, staring at the ceiling, and when morning came, I was resolute.
I was here to stay safe. I was here because someone had tried to kill me. I needed to remember that. I needed to be sensible. I would be a perfect student. I wouldn’t do anything else to get me in trouble with the headmaster. I would make Grandmother Azalea and my mom proud.
But despite my resolution, the dark tang of my dreams lingered all through the morning.
~
I had six courses that semester, all of them shared with Hannah. Histories of the Folk, Basic Courtly Manners, Introduction to Small Magic, Survey of Political Histories and Genealogies (otherwise known as Genealogies), Practical Stratagems for Mortals Among the Fae (otherwise just known as Practical Stratagems), and a once-a-week evening class called Danger and Defense for Mostly Mortal Minds and Bodies. I hadn’t yet attended that one.
It was a relief to have Hannah’s familiar face with me as I walked into my Survey of Political Histories and Genealogies the next morning. I tried my best not to catch the eye of any angry-looking fae students this time, lest I inadvertently get myself into more trouble. I was still smarting from the injustice of my situation. I didn’t want to bring more censure upon my head.
Professor Annita taught the class. She had ram-like horns sprouting from the sides of her head, and scarlet-red hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her smile was sharp as a razor.
“How many of you have heard of the seelie and unseelie courts?” she asked during one of our early lectures.
Half the class put up their hands. I wasn’t sure if I should or not—I’d heard the term, but I didn’t know what it meant.
Professor Annita sighed and shook her head.
“Every year,” she said, “the mortal world’s knowledge of the fae grows weaker. Fifty years ago, when I first began teaching this class, every single one of you would’ve had your hand in the air.”
Fifty years ago? I was shocked. She didn’t look older than thirty.
“Seelie,” Professor Annita continued, “refers to the fae who draw their power from the light, sometimes seen as the more favorable to mortals, the kinder fae. Unseelie refers to the fae who draw power from the night, from the dark, who are said to be dangerous to mortals. Of the seven fae courts within the kingdom, four are considered Seelie—the spring court, summer court, autumnal court, and sun court. Three are considered Unseelie—the winter court, water court, and, of course, the dark court, which is ofttimes called the dark court.”
She surveyed the room. “Most of the students at Spellwood—including almost everyone in this room—is descended from the seelie courts. We simply do not get very many students from the unseelie, for they do not often mingle their blood with mortals. While the notion that they are cruel to mortals as a whole is a fabrication of mortal imagination, it is true that the winter, water, and dark courts have less dealings with mortals. In fact, we have only one student at Spellwood from the dark court.”
“Lucien,” Hannah whispered to me.
She tapped a map on the wall behind her that showed the fae kingdom. The paper shimmered, the lines of the courts ebbing and flowing like a tide. “Over the years, the divisions between the courts have often flowed along these Seelie and Unseelie lines. And for understandable reasons, at times. A thousand years ago, the sun and dark court were at war, and they used their natural means of magic to poison and destroy each other.”
Annita paused dramatically. “Light devours the dark. And dark seeks to extinguish the light. For centuries, the powers and alliances between the courts were divided along these lines. Light and dark. And understandably so, for the power of a sun fae can prove lethal for a night fae, and vice versa. The famed queen of the long night herself, Queen Roia, is said to have disguised herself as a mortal and poisoned King Bruthalas of the sun court with a single kiss, so great was her power.”
One of the students raised his hand. Professor Annita nodded to him, and the student exclaimed, “But I’m from the spring court. My boyfriend is from the winter court. Will I poison him if I kiss him…and things?”
The professor shook her head. “No. The only danger is between descendants of the sun and dark court, and even then, the threat of death is only a concern for those with strong royal blood.”
I thought of Lucien again. Maybe that was why he seemed in such a foul mood all the time. Perhaps he was in love with someone from the sun court. Could it be one of Griffin’s friends? One of the triplets, maybe?
The lesson continued, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lucien.
~
“You look distracted,” Tearly said at lunch, drawing me out of my thoughts as I tried to avoid looking at Lucien’s handsome, troubled face bent over the book in his lap.
I lowered my voice. “I have a question.”
“Yes?” she leaned forward to hear me better. “If it’s about that siren who claims I kissed them in the observatory—”
“What? No. It’s about, ah, the dark and sun courts.”
Tearly waited for me to continue, and Lyrica and Hannah scooted closer to listen.
“If people from the dark court can’t, you know, touch people from the sun court without getting poisoned,” I asked, “then how does Lucien even exist?”
“It’s complicated,” Tearly said. “The dark and sun court stuff, I mean. They can touch some, but it’s dangerous, especially depending on the level of power of the fae in question and the nature of the touching. I don’t know how it works. Nobody here does. As for Lucien—I heard his mom died having him, and that the dark and sun courts both consider him a freak of nature. How he exists at all, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
I certainly wasn’t going to ask the guy who hated me how his parents had been able to have sex. The mere thought made my ears burn. “No thanks.”
“How were your classes?” Tearly asked, taking a bit of her food with a mischievous look.
“Compared to the previous day, almost boring. A lot of lectures, a lot of assigned reading, a lot of maps,” I sighed.
“No one does the assigned reading,” Tearly said in a confidential tone.
Hannah raised an eyebrow, skeptical of this statement. “Then why assign it?”
“Oh, you know how teachers are,” she said with a wave of her hand. “They live to assign things. But really, no one does it. We’re here mostly to keep us safely out of the way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. I hadn’t told anyone else about my need for safety within Spellwood’s grounds.
“We’re all somewhat mortal,” Tearly said. “Think about it. Most of the elites are bastards. I mean,” she clarified with a grin, “not only are they irritating jerks, but the
y are also illegitimate. Products of untimely affairs or doomed romances. This school was created by a few sympathetic and powerful mixed bloods so the important fae would have somewhere to send their inconvenient offspring. And at some point, I don’t know when or why exactly, they decided to let in the riffraff too. The middlings. Us.”
“You’d probably know why if you did the reading,” Hannah pointed out.
“The point is,” Tearly finished, ignoring Hannah, “we’re not here to get top marks in the History of Mortal-Fae Relations. Nobody really cares. The mortal realm doesn’t know about this school and they won’t be requesting transcripts—and if they do, you can make up whatever you like—and the fae certainly don’t give a puff about grades. They barely educate their own children as it is. They just let them run around the forest hunting unicorns and catching starflies.”
“Is that true?” I asked, astonished. I couldn’t always tell with Tearly.
“It’s sort of true,” Tearly said.
Lyrica shrugged in agreement. “Fae children don’t spend much time with books or teachers.”
“Then why have classes and grades at all?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the mortal realm influence,” Tearly said. “And lots of us grew up in the mortal realm, or at least spent our summers there. It isn’t so foreign to us. And it is a bit of a challenge—and learning experience—for the more fae among us. Thus, true harmony. Or something like that.”
“Well,” Hannah said, “if nobody gives ah, er, a fig about the reading assignments, then what do they do instead?”
“You have to show up to classes, and you can’t act too cavalier about it, or you’ll be put on probation,” Tearly explained. “And there’s riding, and sword fighting, and archery.”
“Sword fighting?” Lyrica said. “Archery? Who does those things?”
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