by Lan Chan
Taking in a calming breath, I went to find a spare space close to Sasha. It wasn’t until we were all separated within our spaces that I glanced around me and noticed that I was surrounded on all sides by my friends. Well, and Isla in front of me. It was hard to consider her a friend. Sasha was on my left, Dev at my back, and Kieran on my right.
“Cut it out, guys,” I said. “I already have a bodyguard.” One who stood silently in the back of the room next to Anastasia and hadn’t opened his mouth the entire time. I hoped she was feeling awkward as hell.
Nobody responded. But nobody moved, either.
Tyler was in front of us once more, while Professor Eldridge took to leaning on the desk that she had picked up with one hand and pushed against the side of the room. “We all know that the malachim were once lower beings of angelic nature,” he said. “They are susceptible to angel and demon blades just like the seraphim and Nephilim. Sadly, we’re not all walking around with easy access to those blades. Nor are many of us able to withstand their mental coercion or open up portals in order to escape. Sometimes portals might not even work depending on whether the malachim have determined the intent of your location. One of the few things that might buy us some time is this.”
He raised his hands in the air and a spark of orange light ignited around them. With the light, he drew a single word in a language that had the air sucking out of the room: Angelical. Sasha swore. Beads of sweat gathered around Tyler’s brow. Lines creased his lips with the effort of just writing the words.
Tyler continued. “Now we all know how dangerous this Heavenly language can be. It’s fortunate that we are not able to access its raw potential. That doesn’t mean that the same rules don’t apply to using them as wards.”
Orla raised her hand. It was shaking slightly. “Are we sure it’s not going to have any detrimental effects? I mean, I’m all for power, but I don’t really want to also die because of it.”
Tyler shook his head. “The strongest mages and sorceresses amongst us have utilised these words and there has been no ramifications. But I understand your hesitation.”
“Remember that this is war,” Professor Eldridge said. “We no longer have the luxury of placing caution above all else.”
In other words, write or die.
“We will start off with something basic today,” Tyler went on. “A simple repelling word.”
He went around the room making the symbol in the air so that everyone was able to see it. When he was done with his lap of the room, he had to rest on a seat but gave the green light for us to try. “Those of you who are comfortable, feel free to use the blood.”
My head turned down. I inspected the bundle in my hands. Sure enough, folded within the purple velvet cloth was a small vial of blood. Thankfully, it seemed to have been extracted some time ago, because I couldn’t feel any residual emotions from it. What I felt was a biting sense of apprehension as all around me, everyone unscrewed the top of the blood vials and began to use them to write the Angelical words.
My heart ached. Once, this kind of thing would have been considered highly unethical. And now they were all scrambling to master a field in a semester that usually took high mages decades to perfect.
Sitting rigid, I tried not to shudder as the first of the Angelical words were completed by those around me. Sasha slapped his hand down on the word in front of him and it glowed to life in a pale red that reflected off his face. And then, one by one, all around me, others did the same until the room was a throb of red dots. A field of protection wrought by fear.
“What’s wrong?” Anastasia’s voice cut through my contemplation. “A little too close to home?”
While I’d been focusing on watching the others, I hadn’t realised that the instructors were roaming about the room, checking work and giving assistance.
“I’m not ready for this,” I said plainly.
She gave a humourless laugh. “What’s a harmless little word compared to everything else you’ve already done? Don’t pretend to be all meek now.”
Who gave her permission to step into my space anyway? Isla craned her neck around. There was a smudge of red on her cheek. Her fingers were stained too. She raised a brow at me.
“Thanks,” I told Anastasia, “I’ll keep it in mind.”
I wasn’t naive enough to think that she might lose interest and move on. Crouching in front of me, she placed a hand down on the cement floor. As I watched, soft hairs appeared as they made the fluid transition between hand and paw. Her claws pricked out and dug into the cement, breaking its surface with barely any pressure. All of the hairs on my body stood up. Inside my head, a centuries-old instinct screamed at me to make myself small so she wouldn’t think I was worth it. At the same time, something within the pool of my alchemy snapped its jaws, wanting to lash out and wipe the smug from her face.
Ice. I was an iceberg. I might melt at the sides a little, but my core was frozen solid.
“There’s no point being here if you’re not going to try,” she said with her mouth. Her eyes said that the moment I proved myself to be a threat, those claws would sink into my neck and I would be gone.
The high road was long and treacherous. I’d taken it so often that I knew every pebble that rolled in front of me. That still didn’t mean that I had to like it.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try harder.”
The slow grin that dragged the corners of her mouth up did nothing to light up her too-blue eyes. Against the navy long-sleeved T-shirt she wore, they were mesmerising. As bitter as it was to admit, she was freaking stunning.
“You can keep pretending to be harmless,” she said. “I don’t buy it for a second. And when you finally slip, I’ll be there.” Her hatred of me refused to allow her to see the paradox in her assessment of me. I was both weak and evil, depending on how she wanted to rationalise it.
“You might have to get in line behind Noah.” Her gaze flicked over my head and her jaw clamped like she’d forgotten he was there. I only allowed myself to breathe when she was halfway across the room.
Behind me, Dev let out a breath. “Man, she’s really got it in for you.”
I snorted. “Really? What gave you that impression?”
“Have you thought about knocking her on her ass instead of burrowing into your shell?”
“Has she thought about not being a bitch and hating me for something that isn’t my fault?”
“Touché.”
I spent the rest of the class just staring at the Angelical still hanging suspended in the air above me, trying not to allow my heart to fill with hatred that these words that were meant to save us now had taken away my best friend in the first place.
With only one class for the day, I decided to stop by Jacqueline’s office to see if I could somehow convince her that I could help out in the infirmary. Noah had regressed to following behind me again.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked, my voice raised, “if Anastasia were to attack me, what’s the protocol for you?”
He was quiet for a while. Probably contemplating it. And then, “There is no conflict. During this kind of mating ritual, there’s always some blood spilled between candidates.”
In other words, if I got my face ripped off, he wouldn’t do a thing about it. Nice.
Thankfully, we reached the building where Jacqueline’s office stood. Alex wasn’t at his desk today, either. If I hadn’t seen him the day before, I would have started to get concerned. Raised voices filtered out from Jacqueline’s office. What made me pause was that it wasn’t a feminine voice. It was the low baritone of a male shifter.
“What’s Charles doing in there?” I asked. I had wondered where he’d gone. He was supposed to have been in my last class. And then I heard the whine of another voice that had me stepping up to the door.
“I don’t want her to see me!” Cassie snapped.
“I don’t know if you shoul–” Noah started to say. Of course. His heightened hearing would have allowed him to make
out what they were saying and not just the general timbre of their voice. Shoving the door open, I took a single step and paused.
Charles and Luther were huddled around Cassie on the guest chairs in front of Jacqueline’s desk. The headmistress herself was leaning on the table, an unreadable expression on her face.
They turned towards me in unison. I met Cassie’s bleak eyes, and she must have seen something besides the delight in mine, because suddenly, she burst into tears.
18
She almost ripped my arm out of its socket when I tried to stop her as she bolted from the room. Ironically, it was Noah who caught her and held her. At least for a second. She pushed at his chest, the unexpected move unbalancing him.
If I did that, he wouldn’t have budged an inch. But Cassie was half Amazon, and he went flying into the wall.
“Get off me!” A glow of buttercup yellow beat off her skin in increasing intensity.
“Cassandra!” Jacqueline screamed. “Get a hold of yourself right now, young lady!”
Cassie’s whole body went rigid. Her back arched and the muscles on her shoulders bunched as she took heaving breaths.
Unsure what was happening but unable to stand seeing her so heartbroken, I stepped towards her. “Don’t, Sophie!” Jacqueline called out.
Pushing the urgency in Jacqueline’s voice aside, I kept walking until I was right next to the teen. I wasn’t stupid, though. The protection circle closed around me just as I raised a hand and held onto Cassie’s wrist.
“Cass,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
She turned her head away, her body wracked with sobs. The last time I’d seen her was during Kai and Chanelle’s bonding ceremony. She’d been a fireball of anger and hurt all night. Kai was unflappable, the Angelical Lex used on him making him a shell that didn’t understand the pain his bonding would cause.
“Cass?”
She shuddered. “Please go away.”
Hell no. I didn’t care about everyone else despising me, but not her. The throb of this new magic inside her grew more insistent. When it brushed up against me, it felt like a thousand little needles jabbing my skin. I yelped, and it made Charles begin to growl. Inside, the mating link quivered as though trying to determine if this thing was a threat of some kind. When it stilled, I pressed forward.
“Sophie,” Charles said, his voice threatening. “You have to come back here.”
“I don’t have to do anything!” I snapped, not sure why I was suddenly annoyed. “Cassie!” I grabbed her arm for real this time and turned her around to face me. “I’m having a really hard time at the moment with all this change. The shifters hate me because of something I had to do to save my best friend. Everyone else is scared of me. And that’s all fine. I get that. But I can’t stand the thought of you not wanting to be around me too.”
In my head, the other words spilled out. I’m sorry. It’s my fault Kai is gone. It’s my fault I’m too chicken to tell anyone because the truth was that I don’t want them to hate me even more. And in the furthest depths of the mating link, I knew there was a part of me that couldn’t fathom the way Max’s opinion of me might change when he found out it was my fault Kai was gone.
Her baby-blue eyes widened. They filled with tears as her face crumpled. “Hate you?” she said with confusion.
Tentatively, she looked down at where I was touching her. I felt a suction sensation and heard the howl of a phantom wind before the light around her died to a muted shade. Cassie’s legs buckled under her. Charles caught her before she hit the floor even though I was a hair away from her and hadn’t even realised what was happening. She buried her head in his shoulder and bawled.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, even though they could all hear me clearly.
Charles just shook his head. “Cass,” he said, his tone gentler than I’d ever heard it.
She shook against him. “I was so awful to her...” she wailed.
It took me a moment before I realised why she was so upset. Kneeing down beside them, I rubbed her lower back.
“She understood,” I said. “Everything that happened before she disappeared, she knew it wasn’t real.” Cassie’s sobbing grew louder. “Deep down she knows you love her.”
Still shaking uncontrollably, she managed to ease away from Charles. Her head bowed. “I told her that I was angry at her. I made her feel bad about it when she was going to die for us. And now she’s–”
Her head dropped into her hands as she choked not so silently on her anguish. For a time, I just sat there petting her shoulder. Charles was like a boulder beside her. The heat at my back was Luther crouching low, unsure how to fix things, even though he somehow thought it was his cross to bear.
Lex would hate this. She’d hate knowing that she was leaving the kids behind broken and hurting. And yet she had done it anyway. For them. For all of us. Just like that, I fisted my hand on her shoulder and tapped it once.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s about enough of that.”
Over her head, Charles grimaced at me. Cassie sniffed grotesquely. Man, she was an ugly crier. For someone so pretty, she made a face like a gargoyle when she was upset.
“Come on,” I said, tugging at her arm. “Get up and splash some water on your face. No more crying and feeling sorry for yourself.”
Now Charles was making cut-it-out gestures at me. Cassie swiped at her face. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself.”
I kept my tone neutral. “Of course you are. You feel terrible because you made a mistake. Believe me, I know all about that. But she’s not dead. And when she comes back, do you want her to feel like her sacrifice has been for nothing? Even if she had died, she would want us to go on. She’d want to know that she gave us a chance and we took it. So, come on.” I held out my hand to her. For a second, bleary eyes passed over the pink of my palm like a scanner and then she reached out and took it.
Standing, she was at least a head taller than me now. So very different to the shy little girl who had once not been able to stand up for herself. “What was that light?” I asked.
Cassie scrubbed at her face. Her shoulders curled again, but this time, she managed to keep herself from dissolving. “It’s nothing.”
“Right. Because you always give off a blinding glow.”
She shook her head, and I dropped the subject. One thing at a time.
She sniffled and swiped her sleeve across her nose. Eyeing all three of them, I asked, “Were you avoiding me?”
Cassie chewed the inside of her cheek. “I just… I was worried you’d hate me too.”
“Nobody hates you, Cassie. But no more of this.”
She nodded, even though her bottom lip still quivered.
As I said the words, I realised what “this” was. A punishment. All three of them had come away from the incident shouldering pain that was never meant to be their burden to bear. Love was a twisted thing that could destroy us. But when I looked into their faces, I realised that it could make us stronger too.
“How do you guys feel about coming over tonight?” I found myself asking. “It’s a bit weird to be back and not eating with a whole bunch of people in the dining hall.”
“Gran?” Cassie asked.
Jacqueline leaned against the wall. “Tell you what,” she said. “If you start going back to classes again, you can sleep anywhere you want.”
Luther had absolutely no trouble convincing his parents to let him stay over. When he made the mirror call, they used the words, “Maybe someone can knock some sense into you. Or knock you out.”
After the kids left, I floated the idea of working in the infirmary to Jacqueline. She tugged on her earlobe. “Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t hesitate. But right now, I’m not sure how comfortable the population are going to be with you helping to make potions for them.” She too scrubbed at her face as though frustration was now a familiar feeling. “On the other hand, people are starting to be desperate enough that they’ll do anything. If Doctor Thorne doesn
’t see any issue with it, then it’s fine with me.”
When I arrived to the chaos that was the infirmary, Doctor Thorne didn’t even hesitate. “Never mind potions for now,” he said, shoving a piece of paper in my face. “I need you to help Sandra with patient rounds.
I balked. “Are you sure?” I said. “Most people don’t really like me right now.”
“They’ll like you better than a hole in the head.”
I only understood what he was talking about when Sandra dragged me around the patient beds. My chest ached at the sight of the para-humans with their skin torn in big scrapes that were weeping green blood. They did their best to grit their sharpened teeth as Sandra taught me to clean their wounds. Some of them flinched or scowled when they saw it was me, but Sandra browbeat them into submission. “You either let Sophie help you or you sit here for another few hours until someone else can get around to it.”
Pain really was a universal language. One of the girls wasn’t much older than me. She was a draki, one of the smaller dragonian species with scaly, membranous wings that didn’t disappear like those of the Nephilim. You could tell it was a burden in battle because a huge section of her left wing had been ripped off by something sharp. She bit down on her own arm as Sandra and I set about removing the black spines from her shoulder juncture. Halfway through, she fainted. I staggered when I caught her, surprised by how heavy she was.
As we passed down the line of beds, it hit me that this was no longer just an Academy infirmary. We’d become a field medical unit for the less-critical patients. “Where are they all coming from?” I asked Sandra.
Her auburn hair had been shaved off too. The determination in her eyes said that she was comfortable giving up appearances for the sake of practicality. Still, it must have rankled. The dwarves took great pride in the length of their hair. It signified something akin to battle honour. “Most of these are just from scrapes with the malachim. They’re chewing through our resources like twigs.” She brushed her hand over her beaded brow, and it left a thick green sludge. “Without Raphael, our ability to heal as quickly has been dampened.” She handed me a cloth soaked in the iridescent glow of Fae blood. Looking down at it, my vision swam. This is all your fault, Sophie, the voice in my head said. You know how to fix it.
