We stopped when the clock rang, calling us to afternoon classes.
~
At dinner, I saw the flame-haired student sitting with Lucien and his crew.
Awesome. They had a spy.
~
“You ought to stay away from my brother,” Lucien said later while we worked in the Cistern. I was once again clearing the moss, having found myself uncertain about playing music with Lucien around. I’d made tremendous progress now that I knew the trick to it.
“Why?” I shot back, startled that he was speaking to me and angry that he was daring to try to make such outrageous demands. “Because he’s an elite and I’m just a middling?”
I thought he would deny it, but the dark fae prince said simply, “Yes.”
Something inside me snapped with anger. “I don’t have to listen to this. Go away.”
“He’s dangerous,” Lucien said, turning his head away from mine. I could see his lips and chin in profile, lit by the fading sunset. “His world is dangerous. Powerful. Full of politics and trickery. It isn’t like your mortal realm.”
“And what do you know of my mortal realm, prince?” I said. “Do you think I know nothing of danger? Of risk? You know nothing about me. You may have had a cruel father, but I had no father at all. I grew in an place where most people had bars over their windows to keep thieves out. Where you could get robbed at gunpoint while checking your mail. I know a little bit about danger.”
I saw his throat move as he swallowed. He didn’t answer.
I turned back to the moss. Dozens of retorts filled my head, but I ground my teeth together to hold them in.
“Guns, yeah?” Lucien said after a pause.
“Yes. Guns. You know what that is?”
“I know what that is.”
We worked a little more in silence.
“Did you ever go to a library?” he asked.
I glanced up in surprise. “What?”
“A library. A place with books—”
“I know what it is.” I pulled a few mushrooms before answering. “The library by our house didn’t have a lot of books, and people were always smashing the windows.”
“Oh.”
“But,” I added. “There was the city library. I liked to go there after school and read on one of the couches until my mom got off work, or do school projects. I was there before—”
Before the accident.
I stopped talking.
“Before what?” Lucien asked. His voice was carefully neutral, but I knew he was curious. He had a hungry expression on his face.
“I was in an accident before I came here,” I said. “I almost died.”
We looked at each other. I felt strangely close to Lucien. Almost close enough to confide in him. I brushed my fingers across the place on my wrist where the mark had been, and Lucien’s eyes dropped to it.
Before I could say anything, I heard something. A scraping sound like branches against a grave. The hairs on my arms prickled in alarm, and I turned and fell silent at what I saw.
Something had come out of the forest.
It was a dog. No, not a dog, a tree twisted in to a canine shape, with branches for a body and roots for legs. The head was a mass of writhing vines that curled and grasped blindly forward like the reaching tentacles of an octopus, if that octopus was made of rotting wood.
It looked like something out of a nightmare.
Lucien leaped up as the creature paced toward us.
His shovel and hoe were on the ground a few yards away, out of reach. The creature was between him and them.
The creature growled, and the sound was like rotting wood breaking over stones. It didn’t have eyes, but it had a mouthful of teeth. I didn’t understand what it was, but I knew it was bad.
The thing growled again, and this time the pitch of the sound changed like it was about to attack.
I moved instinctively. I grabbed my shovel and hoe and stepped toward the fae prince and the creature stalking him.
“Lucien,” I shouted.
He didn’t turn to look at me. He kept his attention fixed on the creature. “Get out of here, Kyra,” he said. “Run.”
I didn’t run. I moved closer. It was impossible to hold the shovel like a proper weapon with the hoe in my hands too, and Lucian wasn’t looking at me, so I dropped the hoe at my feet in order to better brandish the shovel. The clattering sound rang across the Cistern, echoing over the curved stones, and the creature’s attention snapped to me. The roots and bark along its back bristled. It had no eyes, but I felt its stare somehow anyway.
“Kyra!” Lucien snapped, and he sounded more frightened than angry. “Go!”
In response, I kicked the hoe in his direction. It slid across the moss-cleared stone and bumped into his leg. Lucien reached down and snatched it up as the creature decided not to bother with me. It lunged at him, and he jammed the hoe against its neck.
It wasn’t enough to stop the creature.
I had to do something.
“Run!” Lucien shouted again, but I didn’t listen. I stepped forward, planted my feet, and swung the shovel at the creature’s neck with every ounce of strength I had.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE SHOVEL SLAMMED into the creature’s chest with the full force of my rage, and the creature wilted before my eyes into a pile of sticks and roots.
Lucien dropped his hoe. He stared down at the sticks on the ground.
“What was that?” I asked, my voice shaky now that it was all over.
“A fragmyr,” Lucien said, sounding as breathless as I felt. He poked the sticks with the toe of his shoe. “It’s just kindling summoned by a spell, but it won’t stop until it’s destroyed or the person it was sent after is dead. Where did you learn to hit them like that?”
“Jor-Ass’s Danger and Defense for Mostly Mortal Minds and Bodies,” I said. “And what do you mean, it won’t stop until the person is dead? Someone is trying to kill you?”
Lucien gazed at the trees with a distant expression in his eyes. “Probably not. It wasn’t a very big fragmyr.”
“Was it sent from the dark court?”
He frowned. “No. At this size, it wouldn’t have been able to come from far away. It was probably created here, in the west woods.”
I rubbed my arms and looked down at the creature. “Who would send something like this after you?”
“You may not have noticed,” he said with a hint of sarcasm, “but I’m not well-liked here.”
“You seem to have plenty of friends.”
“Plenty of enemies too.”
I thought of the glimpse of his battered face that I’d seen beneath his glamor in Headmaster Windswallow’s office. “Was it the person you got into that fight with?”
“My brother wouldn’t do this,” Lucien said dismissively.
Griffin? What had he been fighting with Griffin about?
I must have appeared skeptical, for Lucien added, “He couldn’t, anyway, and he wouldn’t hire someone else to. If he wanted me dead, he’d want to kill me himself. And he doesn’t—he wants me alive and suffering.”
Lucien paused, and his expression changed. He looked as if he felt he’d said too much. He picked up one of the sticks and put it in his pocket, avoiding my eyes. “A fragmyr this small is a poor excuse for an attack. No more dangerous than a dog. Probably a prank. Someone trying to get me to cast a spell and get punished further, maybe.”
“Dogs can be pretty deadly,” I said. Anger was gathering in me now. A prank like this could be lethal.
“Kyra,” he said, startling me. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that he knew what my name was. “Take a deep breath.”
He actually sounded worried. I sucked in a lungful of air, and realized I’d been getting lightheaded.
“Look at me,” Lucien commanded, and my eyes snapped to his, which were sparkling with green-gold fire. He lifted his hand and placed his fingers gentle on the side of my face, steadying me. A pulse of some
thing hot shot through my veins and swept over my skin.
“More deep breaths,” he said. “You’re turning pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said, not sure it was true, not wanting to be weak, not daring to move with him touching me like this.
A wind blew across the Cistern, making Lucien’s hair dance across his forehead and the tips of his antlers.
Goose bumps rose on my arms.
“I’ve seen fragmyrs that were taller than the North Tower,” he said grimly. “It could’ve been worse.”
“Should I tell Headmaster Windswallow?” I asked, feeling shaken. “Should I go now?”
“I’ll do it,” Lucien said. He lifted his head toward the horizon. “It’s dusk anyway. We should go now.”
We walked back to the school slowly. We didn’t speak, but Lucien matched his pace with mine instead of disappearing as usual. His stance was wary, almost protective.
When we reached the gravel path that led to the North Tower, I glanced at him, wondering if he was going to say anything. Wondering at the sudden lack of animosity I felt toward him.
He looked at me, but didn’t speak. The darkness felt heavy and intimate around us, and I felt warm and shivery at the same time.
Then Lucien’s expression shifted. He stepped back, put his hands in his pockets, and strode without a word down the path.
Flustered and confused, I fumbled for the door to the tower.
When I reached my room on the top floor, I’d already come up with ten reasons why I was being an idiot. Of course, he didn’t like me. Of course, I was imagining things.
Hannah lifted her head from a pile of open books when I came through the door.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.
“A fragmyr, actually,” I said wearily. “And I thought Tearly told us nobody does the reading?”
“Oh, just, well I thought I might anyway,” Hannah said, and then she added, with a note of frustration in her voice, “The only advantage I have in this place is caring to know everything when nobody else does. I’m as human as they come. If I ever want to get into Flameforge, or have any advantages at all, I have to be smart. Smarter than everyone else.”
I nodded. I understood how she felt.
“Wait,” she said, eyes widening. “Did you say you saw a fragmyr?”
I told her what had happened in the Cistern. She listened, fingers pressed to her lips, the books lying forgotten around her.
“You could have been killed!” she gasped.
“Lucien didn’t seem to think there was much danger,” I said, although inside I felt nearly as shaken as she looked. I felt a flush cover my ears saying his name. My pulse thudded as I thought of his burning gaze, his ridiculously sensuous lips.
Had Hannah noticed my blush?
“You saved his life,” Hannah argued. “Maybe he will be less of an ass now.”
“Maybe,” I managed, my stomach knotting with unexpected and undefined emotions. I busied myself changing for bed, brushing my teeth, and readying my clothes for the next day.
“Don’t say anything about the fragmyr,” I said to Hannah when I’d had time to mull it over. “I don’t want Lyrica or Tearly to get worried about me. They’re already protective enough as it is.”
Truthfully, I didn’t want to field more comments about Lucien. I wanted to think about this.
A knock came at the door, and then, without waiting for an answer, Tearly barreled inside.
“Have you seen—” She began, eyes on Hannah, and then she caught a glimpse of me in the bathroom. “Oh, there you are.” She seemed frazzled, and relief flashed across her features at the sight of me.
“Is everything okay?” I asked in alarm.
“Oh. Yes. Everything is fine,” Tearly said, clearly not fine. She dropped onto the bed beside Hannah and threw up her hands in despair. “No, it isn’t. I’ve been drafted to Dewdrop’s recruitment planning committee!”
“Is that all?” Hannah said. She picked up her book again.
“Excuse me,” Tearly cried. “But this is a disaster. This means I have to go to meetings every day until Society Night. I have to help design the cupcakes, which is harder than it sounds because our committee is headed by the most indecisive fae-person you’ve ever—are you doing the reading?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, glaring at her as if daring her to say anything else.
Tearly took the hint. She turned back to me. “What am I going to do? As the hardened rulebreaker among us, tell me—do I dare refuse? Just not show up to any of the meetings? Will I be sentenced to scrape moss from the Cistern with you and the dark prince? Will the prince of scowls strangle me? You’ve survived his epic glowering, but that’s no guarantee that I will!”
“How hard is it to design some cupcakes?” I asked, deflecting from questions about Lucien. “They have frosting…?”
“Oh no,” Tearly said. “These are enchanted cupcakes. Last year, they each had a tiny forest on top made of spun sugar that had been enchanted to grow and change from spring, to summer, to fall, to winter. Remember, spells are allowed for Society Night and for holidays and galas. The committee wants me to come up with the idea for this year’s cupcakes, and they want it to be better than last year.”
“You can do it,” I said half-heartedly. I was suddenly immeasurably tired. I cast a glance toward my bed. “Do you have any ideas?”
“All I can think of is the exact same thing they did last year,” she exclaimed. “I need to brainstorm.”
Hannah pushed a book toward her. “What about this?” she suggested, pointing to a drawing on one of the pages of the history books. “A castle?”
Tearly bent over the picture, examining it closely. “Hmm. That’s an idea. Little castles.”
~
For the next few days, every time I crossed Lucien’s path, he seemed to be watching me. And I was watching him. Something had shifted between us, but I wasn’t sure what. Had it been the attack by the fragmyr, or his rare vulnerability afterward? Had I done something, said something that upset him?
I was flummoxed and annoyed about my emotions.
In the evenings, in the Cistern, we migrated closer together as we cleared the moss. The mushrooms sang their strange, hypnotic songs, and Lucien ignored me, but with a casual friendliness that bordered on comradery at times. The evenings were strangely soothing—I had something to focus on, no matter how much my stomach tied itself into knots beforehand—but the rest of the days were far less so.
Finally, one evening weeks after we’d been working in the Cistern together, Lucien struck up a conversation.
“Do you like books?” he asked.
I raised my head and stared at him. His face was half-turned toward me, as if he hardly cared about my answer, but I could see by the stillness of his shoulders that he was waiting for my reply.
“Yes,” I said. “I like books.”
Lucien smiled, a flick of his mouth and a twitch of his eyes, and then he resumed work on the moss.
“Do you know what I like to read best?” he said after another pause.
I was expecting him to say he liked horror, or perhaps political strategy. What did fae princes usually read? The idea of them reading anything seemed incomprehensible, like a sea monster enjoying mall walking.
“Romances,” he said, the confession accompanied by a flicker of vulnerable shyness that was almost instantly replaced with a kind of stubborn defiance bordering on boredom.
“Romances,” I repeated.
Not what I’d been expecting.
“Mortals are so honest in their love stories. So certain about their affections. Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby—”
“The Great Gatsby isn’t a romance,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” He stretched with the lazy grace of a panther. His wavy hair had grown longer and nearly hid his antlers, making him look completely human for a moment.
“They make children read it in schools.”
He tilted
his head thoughtfully. “Fae children don’t read anything. They play in the forest and climb trees and make flowers grow.”
“So, I’ve been told,” I said.
We fell silent. I wondered if I dared ask what I wanted to.
“You read all the time. Where did you learn, if not in school as a child?”
I left the question unasked but hanging in the silence between us.
“My grandmother was mortal. She taught me. She gave me most of my books, helped me hide them so my father wouldn’t burn them. She’d bring me trunks full of them when she returned from visiting the mortal realm.”
“Mortals are proud when their children like to read,” I said. “It’s considered a sign of intelligence.”
He tipped his head back. “My father says it’s my mortal blood corrupting me.”
The sky grew indigo as we talked, and the stars appeared one by one. Our time was up.
Instead of heading back toward the school, Lucien drifted in the direction of the forest perimeter. I paused from gathering up my tools and watched him warily.
“What are you doing?”
Lucien glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’ve got something I need to check.” He put his hands on the mossy rim of the Cistern and hoisted himself up onto the stone lip that formed the edge between us and the forest beyond.
I drifted closer. Alarm prickled faintly in my chest.
“We aren’t supposed to go into the woods alone.”
Lucien pulled his legs up and rose in a half-crouch. He looked at the forest and then at me. He reached out a hand.
Spellwood Academy Page 10
