Shadow Trials

by Isla Frost

  But no matter which side individuals aligned with, they still traipsed obediently from class to class.

  What else could we do? There was nowhere to run except the lethal forest. The only escape offered there was death. And none of us had missed what Cricklewood had done to Jayden. They could force us to obey them if we didn’t cooperate.

  Besides, as confounding and dangerous as our new lives were, the academy was better than most of the scenarios we’d had seventeen years to dream up.

  But it didn’t seem to matter that every one of us—no matter how we felt about the academy or the walkers—were stuck in the same boat. Battle lines were being drawn. Cliques were being formed. Our human classmates were dividing themselves between hatred and infatuation.

  My roommates and I landed somewhere in the middle. Ameline pointed out over lunch that if the walker students were as young as they looked, they’d had no more involvement in the invasion than we had. Bryn bristled, not over their past actions but the fact they possessed all this incredible magic and yet the best thing they’d found to do with it was “sit around and look tragically bored.”

  As for me, I hid my own feelings deep inside. But my decision to seat myself in the gap between walkers and humans in the classrooms had been noted by both extremes.

  The haters called me a walker lover. The infatuated sized me up like I was the competition.

  I ignored both groups.

  Part of me was aware that at seventeen, navigating teenage politics and young love should have been my biggest concerns. I’d read plenty of books from the Before demonstrating that. But romance and popularity had never been high on my agenda. I had bigger concerns. And I didn’t resent it.

  Being raised as a sacrifice—being honored and grieved and cherished and isolated—knowing my path was not my own to choose, had given me a different perspective.

  The element I did have control over was what I would do on the path foreordained for me. I’d decided what that would be a long time ago. The only thing left now was to figure out the details.

  So I ignored my classmates’ fluttering eyelashes and drooling stares. The open glares and poisonous whispers.

  The walkers, for their part, showed an utter disregard for their human counterparts. We were beneath them. No more worthy of note than a flea on a mountain lion. Or so they believed.

  Good.

  It was better that I was underestimated. Overlooked. Ignored. For the most part anyway.

  I knew that eventually I’d need a way in. Need to somehow win the regard of a walker so they might spill their secrets to me. But I sensed they’d be far more intrigued if I went against their expectations.

  If I acted like they were nothing to me. If I walked among them without showing fear or hatred or attraction. And certainly without throwing myself at their feet. Which was lucky, because while I might be able to tuck away my anger nice and neat, I couldn’t imagine feigning love for one of the monsters.

  I used Dunraven’s map to navigate to my next class and soon discovered our Rudimentary Magic teacher’s attitude mirrored the walker students’.

  Professor Grimwort was tall and angular even by walker standards, the overhead lighting casting his cold blue eyes and the deep hollows of his cheeks in shadow. He stood with unnerving stillness as we filed in, managing to look both bored and utterly contemptuous at the same time.

  When everyone was seated and waiting attentively, he roused himself to speak.

  “Today I will be teaching the foundations of magic use. Hollows, feel free to pursue your own studies so long as you do it quietly. Humans, pay attention. I don’t like to repeat myself.”

  Hollows? I wondered.

  A kid who was earnest but not particularly perceptive since he’d sat in the front row put his hand up. “But, sir. How are we supposed to learn magic if we have none?”

  Grimwort lifted his hooded eyes heavenward. “Powers spare me the inquiring human mind. It’s like a blunt instrument hammering at the doors of enlightenment, not realizing the way is already open.”

  The kid shrank back in his seat, and no one so much as cleared their throat in the silence that followed Grimwort’s statement.

  At last he let out a deeply felt sigh and began to teach.

  “Magic is in all things, but for some the path to access it is like a thick veil, never removed, while for others it is like an open archway, inviting and unencumbered. For still others, it is like a river, flowing inexorably through them as naturally as breathing.”

  Grimwort’s gaze pierced the student unfortunate enough to question him.

  “Humankind”—he spoke the word like it evoked a bad taste in his mouth—“have always had at least some magic, although the vast majority of you have been unable to access it. But since the world walkers chose to reside here, your world has become more magical. Soaking up our abundance of life magic so that the earth, the trees, and even the humans are becoming more magical with each passing year and generation.”

  His tone turned scathing again. “Obviously, you have yet to learn how to harness it, but the academy is generously gifting each human student a thaumaturgy rod.”

  A what now?

  I wasn’t foolish enough to ask the question aloud.

  His prominent nose wrinkled. “Or—in accordance with your historic fantasy lore—you may think of it as a thaumaturgy wand if it makes it easier to wrap your uncomprehending heads around the concept.”

  Grimwort muttered something under his breath that sounded like “We might as well arm toddlers with tornadoes.” But he walked to the back wall of the classroom and touched his hand to the wallpaper.

  The wall rippled, a large section of the wallpaper disappeared, and in its place was a velvet-lined, glass-fronted case displaying row after row of ivory-colored rods about the length of my forearm. Empty sections of velvet indicated that some of the rods—or wands—had already been taken.

  Professor Grimwort slid the glass open and raised his voice so it carried across the classroom again.

  “Thaumaturgy rods are an aid, a crutch, to allow you to do that which you cannot do on your own. And luckily for you, their use requires little power and even less skill.”

  He stepped aside and regarded us. “So come and collect one, and take care to treat them with respect, for they are whittled from the bones of our people.”

  I halted halfway out of my seat. They were made from the bones of walkers?

  I wasn’t the only one who’d frozen at that pronouncement, and Grimwort glowered. “Don’t make me remind you that I dislike repeating myself.”

  We scrambled into action, curiosity as much as obedience spurring us forward.

  Upon closer inspection, the rods, or wands, or bones were carved into smooth cylinders and etched with runes or letters in a language I didn’t recognize. I’d planned to grab the nearest and dash back to my seat as fast as possible, but my hand was drawn to a different wand—four down and two across from the one I’d intended. When I released it from the velvet, it was both weightier and warmer than I’d expected. Like a length of steel that had been warmed by the fire rather than any bone I’d touched.

  I opted to count that as a blessing since I really didn’t want to think about some dead walker’s shinbone every time I held the darn thing.

  Grimwort waited for us to return to our seats before speaking again. Doubtless aware that we’d be too distracted to listen and, heaven forbid, he might have to repeat himself.

  “The process of using your thaumaturgy rods is simple. Imagine what you want to happen—magic you can clearly visualize is easier than something abstract. Gather your will to make it so, and direct the rod at the object you wish to affect. You will find candles in your desk that you are to practice lighting. But before anyone tries anything”—he placed emphasis on the last as students began rummaging through their desk contents to find the candle—“there are several warnings you must heed.”

  He held up a long finger.

 
; “One, while the rods allow you to access your magic, they do not provide a pool of magic to draw from. That comes from you. And when your power reservoir is depleted, the rod will draw on your own body’s life force.”

  He raised a second finger.

  “Two, that means you must pay strict attention to how you’re feeling to learn your own limits and that you must not cast anything ambitious or dramatic until you have a firm grasp on your own constraints. Let me be clear. The average human has only a small reservoir of magic, so even several minor enchantments or a single moderate one can deplete you.

  “Once your magic pool is empty, any spell you cast will take a physical toll. A little of that will not do any harm beyond what a good sleep can fix, and the body is wise and will try to knock you unconscious before allowing you to draw so much as to be dangerous. But if you attempt a powerful enough enchantment, the momentum of the casting will blow through your body’s safeguards and you will die.”

  Shocked murmurs ran around the classroom, and my fellow human students gripped their wands more loosely. Like they might decide to bite.

  Grimwort appeared bored. “Why don’t you all repeat this after me: I will not try to cast anything ambitious until I’ve learned my own limits, otherwise I will die.”

  In a messy chorus, we echoed the words back to him.

  A hint of amusement played across his sharp features.

  “Good. Now you may practice lighting your candles. Then snuff it out and do it again. Anyone with an ounce of magic can use the thaumaturgy rods, but the better focused your imagination and the stronger your force of will, the less magic you’ll waste in the process.

  “Each of you will also have an affinity in a certain area of magic. Within that area, casting will be easier and less costly for you. So strive to identify your affinity and become efficient in your magic use. Especially since you have so little to work with in the first place.”

  He returned to the front of the classroom and folded himself into the chair behind his desk, apparently done with teaching.

  “Oh, and remember to aim your rod at the candle. Millicent will not be pleased if you set the furniture or floor on fire.”

  Chapter 11

  By the time we’d completed our classes, it was all I could do to drag myself to the dining hall. Hours earlier, my right hand had started cramping so badly I’d switched to my left. The result being half a notebook of illegible scrawl I still had to study and get a handle on before lessons began all over again the next day.

  It felt impossible. But what choice was there? Ameline and I needed to pass the trial phase. Compared to that, sleep was optional.

  My fingers were cramping around my fork, my neck had a crick in it, and my legs were still tired from that morning’s workout. But my head was in the worst shape of all—so overwhelmed by the influx of information that I didn’t trust myself to form coherent sentences.

  We were eating dinner in the dining hall—dinner that was probably delicious but I was too tired to taste—when Cricklewood’s voice blasted throughout the manor.

  “All students to report to the front lawn in five minutes. Bring your wands. The first trial is about to begin.”

  The faces around me morphed from hazy exhaustion to horror. I wasn’t alone in completely forgetting about Cricklewood’s promise to see us again that evening.

  This evening.

  But really? Were they kidding? They expected us to take part in a trial now?

  As much as I wanted to believe it was some sort of joke, I rose with the other students and shuffled out to the lawn.

  The walkers, who’d essentially spent the day lounging around through lessons that were as basic to them as breathing, perked up for the first time.

  No need to lay bets on how this was going to go down.

  Dunraven and Cricklewood were waiting on the grass.

  At least Grimwort wasn’t there to add to our humiliation.

  Dunraven made a short, sweeping gesture, and a gateway opened into the forest. Unlike the permanent fixture of the runegate in Los Angeles, this one had no physical structure. It was visible only because we could see what was on the other side, as if Dunraven’s hand gesture had pulled aside the fabric of reality and created a window.

  The professor poked his head through it, a strange and unsettling view from where I was standing. Then his head reappeared and he waved us forward.

  Ameline, Bryn, and I stepped through together. There was a moment of skin-crawling darkness, and just like that, we were standing in the middle of the forest.

  The sentient, lethal forest.

  The thick layer of rotting leaves felt wrong beneath my feet—even more so than the grass we’d run on that morning.

  Fickle, slippery, untrustworthy…

  It was impossible for me to imagine the desert my grandmother insisted used to surround Los Angeles. Not that we were necessarily in that region anymore, but since I had no clue where the academy was, I’d figured I might as well pretend my family wasn’t far away. Maybe it would help with how much I missed them.

  Yeah right.

  Movement rustled around us, and unfamiliar noises made my arms break out in goose bumps. After Wilverness’s lesson today, I could imagine all too well the nightmares that might be waiting for us.

  Dunraven spoke again, raising his voice to carry to every student—and effectively alerting all the nearby monsters to our location.

  “The trials are an opportunity for you to use what you’ve learned at the academy in a real-world environment. Knowledge, after all, is only powerful when it’s applied.”

  Seriously? We’d been here a single day, and—based on the number of kids who’d pulled their wands from the provided belt-clip holders and were waving them around—I was pretty sure we’d learned just enough to get us into trouble.

  “Your trial today is simply to traverse the two miles of wild terrain and make it back to the academy alive. No gateway magic allowed, otherwise everything is acceptable. Speed will be rewarded, but points will also be assigned for interspecies aid. So help each other. Work together. And nobody needs to die.”

  None of the nervous gigglers chuckled this time. They did not doubt that this was real.

  The only good thing about the fear was that it sent adrenaline pumping through our systems, making us more alert, more able to push past the fatigue.

  Cricklewood, who was standing beside Dunraven like the wizened crone next to a fairy king, grinned in such a way that it showed every one of his teeth. I’d discovered he was a walker too, just a very old one.

  “The pathetic excuse for snail slime who drags themselves back to the manor grounds last will be rewarded with a swim around the frigid lake bright and early tomorrow. So go ahead and surprise me by not failing miserably, why don’t you?”

  Dunraven swept his gaze around the group. “We’ll see you all back at the academy.”

  Then he and Cricklewood stepped through the gateway. And the window to safety, to our soft beds and new lives, snapped shut.

  The walkers vanished immediately after the teachers, sprinting into the forest.

  So much for interspecies cooperation.

  I noted the direction they took. That was something at least.

  Unless they’d known we’d be watching and chosen to deceive.

  Ameline gripped my arm. “I don’t think we should be splitting up.”

  I switched my attention back to the students I could still see. A few groups were being formed, and a cluster of guys with more daring than sense were stepping into the trees.

  I raised my voice. It’s not like the monsters didn’t already know we were here.

  “We’ll be stronger if we all stick together.”

  The leader of the macho group scowled. “I’m not scared. And I’m not going to be the one swimming around that freezing lake.”

  I inhaled deeply and counted to three. “I didn’t say you were scared. I’m saying your skills might benefit the rest of the gr
oup.”

  He looked unconvinced, and in desperation, I gestured at Ameline. “Like maybe others are scared and would be really grateful if you stuck around to help.”

  I felt Ameline shrink at the unwanted attention and whispered an apology.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured. “They might be idiots, but they don’t deserve to die for it.”

  The macho guys were drifting back to the rest of us now, drawn in by the fantasy of rescuing pretty damsels in distress. It was a stereotype I was loath to propagate but one that came in handy right then.

  The other half-formed groups seemed to recognize the wisdom of safety in numbers and stayed put. Good.

  That was when I realized that not all the walkers had sprinted off.

  Two had stayed behind.

  As much as it galled me, I knew they were our best chance of making it back to the manor without casualties.

  So I swallowed my pride, approached the nearest one, and forced my hand forward. I almost managed to keep it from trembling. “I’m Nova. Who are you?”

  It was not the question I wanted to ask. Not even in the top ten.

  He frowned at my proffered hand for a second—just long enough for me to realize the custom might not transcend species—then extended his own.

  “Call me Theus.”

  His hand was warm and, to my surprise, callused. His grasp firm but with nothing to prove. If it hadn’t been for his momentary confusion and his too-perfect beauty, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the hand I’d just shaken was a walker’s.

  And boy was that beauty even more striking up close. His face was open and appealing, with clear-cut features, dark expressive eyebrows, and the faintest smattering of freckles. He was just a couple of inches taller than me, giving me a direct line of sight into his moss-green eyes—so like the forest that they drew me into their depths.

  I stepped back.

  “Slow runner, Theus?” I inquired casually.

  His perfect brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

  I waved a hand at the students, most of them huddled together like sheep waiting for the big bad wolf to come and get them.