Nightborne Academy

by Jessica Morris

  I try to ignore it and open the first book he tossed down. Herbology for Idiots.

  My jaw clenches and I barely hold back from throwing the book at his head. Annoyed, but determined to prove myself, I read the first few pages and find it to be more interesting than the title suggests.

  I begin sketching the plants I see, taking detailed notes as I go.

  “Wow, that’s an excellent reproduction.” Grayson leans over my shoulder.

  I sit up and grin at him, rubbing my shoulder. Sitting too long was making my body hurt. With a full stretch, I realize that I’m not as sore as I was before I got here. Doctor Reese’s soups must be the reason. I really need to get those recipes from him.

  “Start with this one instead.” He takes away my herbology book and shoves another one in my hands.

  “Hey, I was reading that.”

  “Yes, but you can study it on your own without my help. This is something only I can show you.”

  He was being cocky. That made me curious. I open it to find page after page of detailed symbols and explanations. Incantations and runes I can’t read. It’s not a textbook so much as a personal journal of notes.

  “This notebook contains every seal, emblem, and barrier spell I’ve ever come across. The notes at the bottom tell you the location, date, and time I saw them.”

  I flip through page after page and see perfectly symmetrical circles with detailed notes and symbology. Grayson’s neat handwriting is a combination of upper and lowercase caps in neat perfect rows.

  There is one for summoning an elemental sprite. Another for sealing a potion that’s meant for disposal. There was no rhyme or reason to the order.

  “It must have taken you a long time to draw these.”

  “Not at all.” He sits in the chair beside me and taps his head. “I have perfect recall. I only have to see it once to memorize it. It’s why I can help you here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you tell me something you don’t understand, I can cross reference a book and page number for you, to help you look it up and learn more. The same with these symbols and seals. I can draw them even if I don’t understand them.”

  “That must make tests super easy.”

  “Nope. The teachers make up new questions for every semester exam. Perfect recall doesn’t always help when you’re trying to cross reference new material. If I had an unlimited testing time, I’d score exceptionally high, but I’m limited to two hours per written test. In practicals, I’m the only one who scores higher than you.”

  My sister, he means. We don’t have privacy enabled, so I can’t let it slip. “Why do you want me to look at this first?”

  “To see if you recognize any of them.” He takes the book from my hand and flips to the back. “Recognize this one?”

  I stare at the image. “The amulet Cutter gave me.” I run my finger over the description. “Power increase?”

  “I can’t make out most of it, but this symbol is used for amplification.” He points to a northern rune. “And this one is for increasing your magic reserves. I can’t figure out the others. Anyway, keep turning the pages. You may find another one you recognize.” He pushes the book back to me.

  “Why would I?” He doesn’t answer, and I stare at the pages. I flip through each symbol until I get to one I recognize. My heart slams in my chest and a cold sweat covers my body.

  “You found something.” His voice is tense with excitement. I glance up and see his gaze dark and his aura excitedly roiling around him.

  I look back at the book. A symbol drawn by the girl from my vision. The first murder from seventy years ago. The details of the symbol are missing and so is the location.

  “Where did you see this?”

  “Ah.” He sits back and stares at it, hesitating. His earlier excitement dampened.

  “It’s very important.”

  He rubs the back of his neck. “What if I told you I saw it in a dream?”

  “A dream with a girl in a long plaid skirt?”

  “With black hair?” he asks.

  “Yes.” I ignore the fact that we dreamt about the same person. “Where was this in your dream?”

  “Next to her corpse. She was dead in my dream.”

  “She died right after she drew it in mine. I don’t know if she was able to get a cast off or not.” The spell overpowered her resistance bands just like Lacey.

  “Who was she?”

  “The first. As far as I know, she was the first sacrifice.” I tap the page. “She was drawing this with her blood as she was dying. By the time she finished, the overflow of magic and backlash caused her death.”

  “How you know this?”

  “We’ve met. I don’t even know her name.” I sit back in the chair. “Do you have any idea what this symbol means?”

  “No.” He reaches over and runs his finger on the outer ring. “This is a spell of binding. So it’s probably a seal. But this is something I don’t recognize. I mean, it has all seven primary elements of magic in it. Life, death, earth, fire, wind, water, lightning.”

  “Lightning is its own element? Life and death, too?”

  “You really need to open these books.”

  “We need to know what this is. They used her blood and my sister’s to try to finish a ritual. How many times have you seen her in your dreams?”

  “Just once.”

  “What happened before the dream?”

  “I was sparring against a powerful opponent.”

  He doesn’t want me to know who he was fighting.

  “I lost. He left me there and I fell asleep on the ground, frustrated. Then I had the dream and saw the seal and woke up. I drew it like all the others and never really thought about it again.”

  “You were at the cemetery. Weren’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “That’s where she died. Around seventy years ago, if her sense of time is accurate. There was no building there. And no graves.” At least I didn’t remember any. I close my eyes and try to remember the original vision. No graves, just a small green clearing.

  “So they used what to kill both women?”

  I sigh. “I don’t know enough about channeling magic, but power flooded through both of them from an external source. Too much at once. They tried to complete the ritual before the backlash, but never got there in time.”

  “How do you know this?”

  I hold up my wrist and pull the bracelet down. “Sometimes, when I touch the recently dead, I see the last moments of their life. And get the wounds they suffered.” My eyes grew hot with tears and I glance away from him to the wall to try and keep my calm.

  “You mean. When you touched her— I’m sorry.” He captures my hand and covers my wrist, warming it up. Since the transfer of damage, it has always been cold. “No one should ever see something like that.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand.”

  “Just one thing?” His amusement is back and a grin touches my lips in a fleeting moment before disappearing.

  “Okay, many things. Just one that’s really bothered me. If they were both part of the same ritual, why did they stab my sister so many times?”

  “Stab her?”

  “In the vision I had, she had the burns and the overpowered magic, but no cuts. I didn’t get any transference either. Yet, when she showed up later, she was covered in stab wounds.”

  “Later?”

  I stiffen and try to pull my hand out of his. He tightens his hold and a spark of fear shot through me.

  “What do you mean when she showed up later?”

  “Let’s forget I said that.” I plead with my eyes, but his iron stare isn’t compromising.

  “No. This is important.” He taps the page. “She is important to this. I’ve been trying for years to get back into the vision with her to study the symbol.”

  “Is that why you wanted to train with me there?”

  “Yes. I was hoping the fight would trig
ger another one. But it didn’t happen.”

  Should I tell him that I got the vision because he made me bleed all over the place? No, then he’d probably do something stupid, right?

  “Why is it so important for you to know more about it?”

  “I can’t find anything about this seal anywhere. On campus, in old textbooks, the archives, nowhere. Most seals only use five elements. Life and death are forbidden or only used in extreme cases with permission from the highest authorities. And a committee of very important Nightborne have to approve it.”

  “So how was a student of this school able to draw this?”

  “Probably passed down from her family. This may be a closely guarded secret. A bloodline spell. Those are hoarded like treasures. No one else can get them without killing an awful lot of people. And even then, the spells will be destroyed by the family before it gets loose.”

  I run my finger over the circle and remember the order of her drawing. The drip of blood onto her hand. Her desperation to finish it before she died.

  “Lets go back to how you saw your sister later.”

  “Fine, but you can’t tell anyone. Swear on that blood oath thing we did in the gazebo.”

  “It’s that serious?”

  “You have no idea how serious.”

  His aura steadies and he considers my choice. “I will do it.” For a split second, his aura floods toward me along his arm, wrapping around my wrist. Then it floods back. “It’s done.”

  “I don’t feel any different.”

  “The spell isn’t yours. It’s mine. Don’t worry, I can definitely feel it.”

  I wanted to ask more, but I really did see his aura move and it seems different around him, a thin line of red in the otherwise black smoke.

  “I see ghosts around me all the time. I can’t turn it off, and the night my sister died, she came to me covered in stab wounds with burns on her wrists and throat. The woman in the vision came to me twice. I relived her last moments. They had her trapped on the ground with an immense, crushing weight on her chest. Not anything physical, so it didn’t actually break her bones or anything, but a—”

  “It’s a life chain spell. They wrap around the body, locking you in place. They’re used to imprison fallen Nightborne.”

  “Fallen?”

  “People who can no longer benefit our society who are also a danger to the mundane world.”

  “So you think she was a fallen?”

  “Not sure. It’s may not even be that. It’s just the only spell I know that causes crushing pain to the chest and restricts your movement.”

  “Anyway, she drew the circle while bleeding to death. The spell circle she was laying on was flooding her body with too much power. The burns caused her blood to flow and she used that to draw the circle. And she did it without looking at it.”

  “How desperate would you have to be, how meticulously did she memorize this seal for her to do it without seeing?”

  His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist as he stares at the seal. My pulse flutters and I carefully pull free. He either pretends not to notice or is completely wrapped up in his thoughts.

  “Don’t forget that she also did it while dying.”

  “Even more impressive.” With a groan of frustration, he thrusts back in his chair, rocking it back on two legs. He balances it for a while and then brings the chair back down. “Did she use this against the people who cast the spell or against the circle—” He stares at me. “Wait a second, what kind of circle was she on? Do you remember what it looks like?”

  “It’s under the gazebo. Can’t we just rip up the boards and see it?”

  He clicks his tongue in irritation. “No. Those circles only activate visually under certain conditions. It’s been used for generations by death mages, so I doubt it’s an obvious spell formation.”

  “So you think it activates under certain conditions, as well.”

  “Yes. Maybe.” He runs a hand through his hair. “We can figure this out later. Right now, I’m supposed to be tutoring you.”

  “But this is important.”

  “So is my freedom. I’m supposed to tutor you. I said I was bored when I first got assigned to you, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what happens when I’m bored?”

  “No.”

  “I end up in this dorm on lockdown more often than not. I cause endless amounts of trouble for the headmistress. Do you really want to be responsible for me single-handedly causing her nervous breakdown?”

  “You’re responsible for your own actions.” I sniff in disdain.

  He slides his arms across the table, fingers interlocked and index fingers pointing at me. “We’re in this together. How will you keep investigating your sister’s murder if you aren’t allowed to step foot on campus anymore?”

  He’s implying this will take a long time. “But I have the entire semester to catch up.”

  “And I’ve been trying to figure this out for six years. You think you’ll crack it overnight?”

  My excitement crumples. Yes, I thought exactly that.

  “Let’s hit the books. You’ve got a lot to learn. Besides, you never know when new information might hit you.”

  “Okay.” I’m definitely less excited than before.

  He sighs. “Look, if you’re really adamant about learning more, you have access to the one person I could never get information from.”

  “Who?”

  “Courtney. She’s the descendant of one of the greatest seal casting bloodlines of our generation. Their family is constantly called to handle extremely difficult cases.”

  Courtney. Ugh. I put my face down on the table and let the cool top soothe my heated cheek. I stare at him in annoyance. “You’re being serious?”

  “Absolutely.” His amusement is grating.

  I drag myself back up and open the book on magic systems. “Teach me, oh great one.”

  “You’re not going to talk to Courtney?”

  “I have to see her for dinner. I can talk to her then.”

  He nods and rifles through the books. “When you do see her, ask her to teach you this.”

  I open the cover to see the title page. Seals and Spells of Restriction, a Primer. “What’s this?”

  “You need a seal tutor and I’m not your guy. While you’re with her, ask about ours. But don’t show it to her.”

  “Why?”

  “If this is a bloodline spell, and her family finds out we have it, it will be stolen before we can blink. Or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “If it’s their spell, they’ll be within their rights to eliminate us using the Nightborne Bounty system.”

  “Yet another weird organization or rule that you’re being vague about.”

  “It means—”

  “Arghhh.” I interrupt him and smack the table. “Too much information on rules and regulations today. Just teach me about magic. I’ll talk to Courtney later and see if she’ll deign to compromise.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “I’ll go to the headmistress.”

  He stares at me, looking amazed and a little shocked.

  “What now?”

  “I’m just wondering if you have a death wish. It’s either that, or you’re definitely the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

  I snort. “I’m not brave.”

  “And endlessly curious.”

  I didn’t argue with that. “Most of the time. Even I get information overload now and then.”

  “Let’s push your limits then.”

  20

  With the tray of food balancing precariously on one arm—a good waitress I’ll never be—I knock on Courtney’s door.

  She jerks it open and glares at me with contempt. “Here to gloat?”

  “No. Here to bring you dinner.”

  “I don’t need it.” She tries to slam the door shut, but I swing my backpack in between the door and the latch, crushing my books and whatever el
se I had in there.

  The door bounces open and I shoulder my way inside, knocking her back. “I’m here because the headmistress made me come. You’re the only person who can tutor me in sealing magic, so I have no choice.” I set the tray down on a small table and look around. Her room is nice, but not as large as mine. The differences are more extreme than I imagined.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “I knew you would come. Aren’t you here to make fun of me for getting AR?”

  AR? Oh, absolute restriction. “No. What kind of person do you think I am? It’s my fault you’re here in the first place.”

  “You look like shit. If anyone saw you like this, Lacey’s reputation would be destroyed. Wear some makeup and hide the bruises.”

  Embarrassment and anger are bitter to swallow, but I try my best. “Thanks. I feel amazing, though. Must be the doc’s skills.” I gesture to the tray. “I bribed the kitchen into telling me your favorite foods. And even snuck in some chocolate.” And it was my first time in the cafeteria, so it took forever to figure out how to order.

  “Why?”

  “Because I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’ve made a lot of mistakes since I got here. Spending more time in the infirmary or passed out than I have actually living in my dorm room, and I’m in way over my head.”

  She crosses her arms and glances away. I know that a lot of my complications are triggered by her, but it doesn’t matter. Right now, I need her help.

  “And also…” I trail off and she glances at me. “You’re the person who knew my sister the best. I can’t even talk about her with anyone else.” That may be true, but Courtney has a way of twisting the events of my sister’s life in a horrible light. Of course, it might be to make my life difficult, but I don’t know her well enough.

  “Fine. Sit at the desk.” She storms over to her bookshelf and snatches a black-spined volume among a dozen of them.

  “How do you know which book you need? They all look the same.”

  She smirks and strolls back to my side. “They’re sealed so that only the owner of the books can let others see them.” She hands me the book. “See?”