by S. W. Clarke
He didn’t smile. “Every day, until we know.”
That had been our agreement over the summer: back at the academy, we would research in the library every day until we knew exactly where to find the third piece of the weapon.
I extended a hand. “Let’s meet in the mornings. You bring the tea and biscotti, I’ll bring a night owl’s grumpiness.”
He accepted it. “Deal.”
When we came into the empty common room, I had a moment. I’d expected to see Callum Rathmore standing against the sofa, dark eyes staring back at me.
This was where he had brought the Spitfire out. This was where he had taught me to control it.
It had taken a year, and I thought I’d hated him for most of that year. In truth, I hadn’t hated him at all; sometimes during the summer I brought out the page he’d ripped from Jane Eyre and given to me, stared at the underlined sentence.
I am not an angel, and I will not be one till I die. I will be myself.
I hadn’t seen him since the night of the first guardian trial in May. The last time we’d spoken, his hand had been on my wrist. He had told me he had to leave, that he’d taught me all I needed to know, and one other thing.
I shouldn’t trust Professor Ora Frostwish.
That wouldn’t be a problem; she was an air fae, Eva’s professor. I’d barely seen her in two years except in passing.
When Aidan set his bag down, he pulled out two pieces of paper. Handed one to me. “Oh, here’s your schedule.”
“We don’t get these until tomorrow.”
He raised one shoulder. “We’re early, and when I saw Umbra she thought we’d like to have them early. I certainly do.”
The paper in my hand listed three classes:
MOUNTED COMBAT II
ADVANCED FIRE MAGIC
HEXES
“Huh.” Aidan tapped his own sheet. “I’m in advanced fire magic. Apparently Umbra’s not worried about me everflaming the academy to the ground.”
My eyes had fixed on the last class. Hexes. That was a word I hadn’t heard used here.
I dragged my attention to Aidan. “You can quench the everflame when you want.”
“Yeah”—his mouth worked—”unless I can’t.”
He’d never gotten over what had happened at Farina North’s home. The day he’d lost control.
I forked my fingers, directed them between my eyes and his. “I’m in that class, and I’ll be watching.”
He made a face. “Was that supposed to be comforting?”
“Yeah, but you’re talking to a fire witch.” I shrugged off my cloak, set my schedule aside. “You want comforting, you go to Eva. You want threats and dark looks? You come to me.”
He shook his head with a small smile, removed his own cloak and we both stepped toward the center of the common room, our hands lighting with fire.
We dueled for the next half hour. I bested him three times, and he got me once. Generally we finished when our hands were too slick from sweat to gain any purchase on the floor, which didn’t take long—everflame burned hot. At least Umbra’s enchantment over the academy was strong enough to keep it from scalding me.
We both slumped to a seat against opposite walls, breathing hard. After a time, Aidan asked, “What are your other classes?”
“The usual. Except for one.”
His sweaty forehead wrinkled, eyebrows rising.
I tapped the schedule next to me. “Ever heard of a class called ‘Hexes?’”
Aidan’s tired face shifted to full intrigue. He crossed his legs, sitting forward. “You’re joking.”
I extended the sheet to him. “Look for yourself.”
He did. Then he shook his head. “Gods, Umbra’s going to have you learn hexes.”
“Care to share the obviously negative implications with the rest of the class, North?”
He raised a finger, began chewing on the nail in what seemed like an anxious childhood habit. “I don’t see how it’s possible, though. You’re a fire witch.”
“How what’s possible?”
He went to lean against the sofa’s back, stared down at the sheet. Looked up at me. “Didn’t you read about hexes in The Witching World?”
“No. Because the book didn’t talk about hexes. It did talk about curses.”
His eyes went wide, and the chewing on his nail continued. “That must have been before…”
I sighed through my nose. “You’re worse than the opening credits to an old movie.”
He stopped chewing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re taking too long to get to the good part.”
He stood. “You’re learning curses, Clementine.”
Now I stood, too. My brain sifted back through two years to recall everything Raven Murkwood had written about curses.
Sensing this, Aidan said, “Back when witches still lived—well, more of them than just you—they could curse people. You know, like in children’s stories.”
The chapter was coming back to me now. “But Murkwood always talked about curses in theory. They weren’t actually a thing.”
“Well, they became a thing. Except I’d always thought it was an art belonging to air witches. You know, because they had to speak hexes.”
I nodded slowly. “And speaking uses air.”
“Right.”
Now I had the strange inclination to chew on my nail. “But all the air witches are gone. There’s none left to teach me hexes.”
“I suppose you’ll find out the answer to that puzzle tomorrow.” He handed the paper over to me. “When you show up for class.”
He wasn’t wrong.
A buzzing started in Aidan’s bag, and he pulled his phone out. “Eva’s here. She says she bears gifts.”
I tucked the sheet into my pocket, my brain unwilling to shift into the social gear. But as we came out of the common room and toward the clearing, I realized as she flew toward me that I’d missed that girlish, ecstatic way she had of throwing her arms around you with a cry. As a teenager, I’d always been derisive and envious of girls who did that.
Yes, I’d missed it all. Her sense of organization. Her anxiousness. Her grace.
She hugged me tight, pressed me away to meet eyes with her hands seated on my shoulders. Her fluttering wings blew her lavender hair into a constant state of floating over her shoulders. “Clementine, you’re doused in sweat.”
I jerked a thumb at Aidan. “Blame the everflame.”
With a half-smile, she twirled a finger, sent a small vortex of air between the two of us like the spout of air at the end of a car wash.
“Thanks,” Aidan said. “Now I’m covered in dried sweat.”
“You bet.” She eyed him. “Does that mean you’re using your magic now, Aidan?”
“Every day,” I said. “Unwillingly for the first month, and then only a little argumentative in the last two.”
“Excellent. Oh!” Eva drew her small backpack around, unclipped it. “I’ve got loads of gifts from my parents.”
By the time she’d finished handing me gifts, I must have had a whole new wardrobe in my arms. And on the top she set a primly folded dress. “This,” she said, “is for your initiation tomorrow. Mama wore it when she became a guardian, and she tangibly manipulated it to your size. And then I manipulated it to accommodate the orichalcum.”
It was too much. “But Eva, this should be for you.”
“Of course it is.” She tapped the dress. “When I become a guardian, I’ll tangibly manipulate it to my size.”
No one had ever been more thoughtful toward me. I just stood there under my pile of clothes. “You know I’m not good at things like this.”
“I know.” She winked. “Which is why you don’t have to thank me.”
Chapter Four
Tomorrow, my world would change again.
Classes would start, and in the evening I would be initiated as a guardian. It had to happen quickly, of course; the Shade’s army didn’t
wait for pomp and circumstance and bureaucracy.
Everything was happening faster now. I was already a third-year and in possession of one half of a weapon that had once been used to dominate the world. And here I was, feeling like the same nineteen-year-old who’d walked barefoot onto the grounds in her pajamas.
I could only think of one solution to the issue of time: I convinced Eva to take a long walk around the meadow with me. Whenever we took our long walks, time slowed.
We each talked about our summer—mine near London, hers in Reykjavik. The whole time, she gushed with pinked cheeks.
Torsten’s family had predictably loved Eva from the moment she’d floated across the threshold of their home. The couple had driven the ring road around Iceland more than once. She’d flown down the length of a waterfall when no one was looking.
“Oh, and the ponies.” She squeezed my arm, linked with hers. “Gods, you’d have died for those ponies.”
“There’s only one horse I’d die for, and he’s no pony.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You’d lay down in the middle of a road if it meant saving an Icelandic pony.”
I hip-checked her. “I don’t want to hear about ponies. Tell me what happened under the waterfall.”
“You’re terrible.” She shook her head, staring out into the trees. “Like I said, it was a magical summer…”
That trailing off sounded ominous. “And?”
She kept her eyes averted. “And at the end, Torsten and I realized we didn’t work together.”
I stopped us. “You ended it?”
“We did. We both decided.”
“Hey.” I stepped around to see her eyes.
Her head swiveled toward me, strangely mechanical. Her mouth puckered into a facsimile of a smile. That wasn’t the face of a woman who’d made a decision she was entirely happy with.
“Why?” I asked. “You said it was magical.”
She shrugged in a simple, helpless way. “I wasn’t lying. But the magic was around us, not between us.”
I sighed, hugged her. “Ain’t that a bitch.”
She laughed into my shoulder, that amused and surprised noise she always made when I said something crass. “You sound like you’ve experienced it.”
“Have I.” I pulled back with a wry smile. “I’ve been there more than once. It sucked every time.”
She wiped at a tear at the outer corner of her eye, like a tiny diamond. “Anyway, I need to focus this year. I’m not going to let you go three years as a guardian without me.”
We resumed walking. “You would have made it last May,” I said, “if you hadn’t thrown yourself at Frostwish during the first trial. Still feel bad about that one, by the way.”
I could still hear the sounds of the two fae crashing into one another, their limbs like slender tree branches. All so that I could pass.
“I forbid you to feel bad.” She flew up to the low branch of a tree, plucked an untouched leaf. When she landed beside me, she twirled it between her fingers. “I made my choices with open eyes, Clem.”
That made me wonder how many choices I’d made in life with my eyes closed.
Lots, really.
“We’re going to need to tangibly manipulate all your clothes,” she said. “Unless you want to explain to everyone why you’re carrying an orichalcum rod everywhere.”
“I was thinking I’d just wear my cloak all the time.”
“Totally inconspicuous.” She waved her leaf in an arc through the blue sky. “Especially in August.”
I elbowed her. “Leave some good points for the rest of us.” Then, “You know what this means though, don’t you?”
She turned curious eyes on me. “I hope you aren’t going to make me do all the manipulations. That’ll take months.”
“No, Eva. I’m talking about the trials.” I circled my finger around the meadow. “We’ll start with lots and lots of jogging. And what if you fight me in the second trial? Gotta be prepared for a fire witch.”
She gasped, one hand touching her open mouth. “Gods, I never thought of that. Oh, I don’t mind you. It’s Liara who scares me.”
I set a hand over my heart. “In the words of every millennial when dissed: ouch.”
Her familiar smile appeared. “Of everyone, I know you best of all. I’m not scared of fighting you, Clementine. On the contrary.”
I shook my head, bending over. “Excuse me while I pluck my reputation from the grass.”
She laughed. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”When I straightened, my eyes caught on her wings. And a thought occurred to me. “Eva, you know Professor Frostwish.”
“Of course. She’s a marvel at air magic.”
“How long has she been at the academy?”
Her head tilted. “I suppose she started the same year as us.” She paused. “Why?”
Curious. A coincidence, maybe, that she’d started at the same time? And yet I couldn’t stop seeing Rathmore’s face when he’d told me not to trust her. He’d been as grave as I’d ever seen him.
We kept walking. I was veering us toward the pond, the place where Mariella the guardian had taught me to fight water mages. The place where I had taken Noir during the first trial.
It was a secluded place. Safe. We’d be unobserved.
“She’s my professor,” I said.
“Really? But she only teaches air magic.”
“She’s teaching me air magic. Ever heard of hexes?”
Eva stopped hard, dropping her leaf. “Of course. Hexes are a large part of why witches were killed off.”
Now I stopped, turned. Waited for her to go on.
“A hex is a curse on someone, Clementine.” Her eyes were unswerving on mine, like I might curse her right there. “It hurts them. That’s all it does—it debilitates your enemy. And that’s why the formalists declared it a forbidden art.”
A forbidden art.
I won’t pretend my heart didn’t spike with anxiety. But I also won’t pretend a thread of anticipation didn’t wind itself in there, too.
When you’re a fire witch, you’ve got enemies aplenty.
That night, Eva and I did a bang-up job manipulating the skirt of my uniform to hold the deceiver’s rod. It wasn’t clean, but it would do the trick—and it only took us eight hours. Which meant we got about three hours of sleep, the two of us.
When we woke, we got ourselves up and dressed with lidded eyes, staggered to the dining hall while Loki slept on.
Inside the hall, the world seemed to exist in technicolor, and in unique decibels of sound. Over a hundred students had come for breakfast, a whole cluster of them at the food table, others mustering laughter that sounded to my sleep-addled brain like cackling.
The new crop of first-years must have been larger this year. Or—as I glanced at the clock—I realized we’d hit the dining hall at the worst hour.
Eight o’clock. It was always a traffic jam in here at that hour.
Eva went for a plate and started filling it up. I struck for a coffee carafe, poured myself a straight black brew.
I was one of those worst-case coffee drinkers. By which I mean, I only went for it when I was in the worst possible way. But at least my rod hadn’t fallen out of my skirt yet. If I’d mentioned that to Loki, he would have snickered.
I idled in front of the carafe, unable to move before caffeinating. This was going to be a very long day—three classes, and capped off with a certain initiation with everyone’s favorite headmistress.
“Hello, Clementine.”
I turned with a splash of coffee. She stood before me as regal as ever, her staff in one hand. “Headmistress.”
Her head tilted, eyes straying to the spilled coffee and then up to me. “You look dire.”
New goal: become as blunt as Umbra by the time I reached her age. “I was up late.”
“Hm. I suppose you aren’t a guardian yet.” She moved around me to pour her own cup from the carafe.
I turned with her. “Wha
t’s that mean?”
“You’ll learn all this evening.” She straightened with her cup. “No need to say now what I’ll tell you and Liara later.”
Fair enough.
“Headmistress,” I began.
Her eyebrows rose as she waited.
“You enrolled me in hexes.”
“Yes, I did.”
I shrugged. “Eva told me it’s a forbidden art. That it’s dark. Not that I mind a little darkness here and there, but...”
“It is forbidden by the formalists. But we aren’t formalists here, are we?” She paused. “And as to its darkness, I suppose that depends on the moral fiber of the witch herself.”
I straightened like my posture had some bearing on my character. “That magic belongs to air witches, doesn’t it?”
Another student appeared at Umbra’s side—a redhead, her green eyes wide with wonder. “Excuse me, Headmistress.”
A first-year, most likely.
Umbra set a hand on the fae’s shoulder, kept her eyes fixed on me as she said, “Professor Frostwish will tell you all. She’s studied the art with some keenness.”
A non-witch had studied a dead, dark art. That didn’t exactly add any weight to the “Trust Frostwish” side of the scale.
When Umbra turned to the redhead, the girl went on to introduce herself with twinkling eyes, her hands clasped at her chest.
I left Umbra with her starry-eyed first-year, lifted a blueberry muffin off a platter and found Eva seated with a group of other unfamiliar, new faces. Somehow she’d rallied and looked as awake as ever. Such was the social grace of my roommate.
I sensed eyes on me. Across the room, Liara Youngblood sat with two Whisper friends—hair like a black abyss down her back, eyes flinty. When I focused on her, she averted her attention to them.
After our time in the Boundless Labyrinth, something had changed between us. It was possible she no longer hated me.
And maybe there was a small possibility she and I could be friends. I’m a cat person; we’re most compelled by creatures whose trust isn’t so easy to earn.
When I dropped to a seat at Liara’s table, all three fae turned dinner-plate eyes on me. I knew I’d violated a rule of requesting to sit before actually sitting, but I didn’t care. I plucked a blueberry from my muffin, popped it into my mouth. “What’s happening, girls?”
