by N. M. Howell
“No one’s going to accuse you of being shy,” Andie said, grinning.
“I could be subtle, but then who’d be here to make you smile?”
Andie just grinned and nodded. She couldn’t help it, he was magnetic.
“But, seriously, I hope you enjoyed your first day. I know the city’s not the kindest place, especially not this city, so I hope it was on its best behavior.”
“Well... no. But I guess it could’ve been worse. At least I finally made it here in one piece.”
“Ah, got lost in University Park, huh? Don’t feel bad, the streets in this part of the city can do some weird things. Trust me, you’ll be weaving your way around like a native in no time. You must be excited to start at the Academy.”
“Yeah. I think. It’s a complicated thing with me.”
“That only makes me want to know more, but I can take a hint. I’ve always wanted that. Magic. I guess it’s just not for some people. My cousin got it though. He’s in his second year.”
“I thought your dad said your family was nomag?”
“Most of us are. My dad’s side of the family is completely non-magic. No one ever married anyone with magic until he married my mother. Couldn’t help himself, I guess. And even on my mother’s side it’s hit and miss. That side is like a lot of other families these days. You just never know who’s gonna get magic and who won’t since the bloodlines are so diluted and mixed. But my cousin on my mother’s side was a hit. So, I know what’s up. Just wish I hadn’t been a miss. I guess moms aren’t as quick to pass their genes down.”
He was quiet for a few moments after that. Andie watched him and she could see the sadness there, but also the immense warmth. Even though he wasn’t living the life he wanted, he was still living life. It was admirable. But what he’d said about mothers had struck home. She needed to move.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Which way is the restroom?”
“Right in that corner back there.”
She moved quickly through the tables and through the swinging doors that led to the hallway where the men’s restroom was on one side and the women’s on the other. Inside the restroom, she locked the door and turned to the mirror. There they were, eyes and nose and mouth and cheeks and hair and the barely noticeable soft dusting of freckles. All passed right down from her mother as reminders. Andie could see in all the old pictures how much they looked alike. Looking in the mirror was like looking at the face of the woman who was getting harder to remember with each passing day. Andie turned from the mirror. She took off her jacket and rolled up her sleeve.
On the underside of her forearm, a pattern was emerging, slowly but surely, more and more palpable with every week. The pattern was in tiny heptagon shapes and now a few hundred were visible there. The skin still felt the same, though she suspected that would change, too, with time. The pattern had begun to turn iridescent, not quite shining, but mesmerizingly colorful. And it was as terrifying as it was beautiful.
She quickly pulled her sleeve down to cover the evidence that could easily have her killed. She held her hand firmly over her sleeve, wondering just what she was thinking, risking her life by moving to the most dangerous place in the world for her kind.
Raesh was wrong. Mothers could pass on genes just fine.
Chapter Two
Raesh followed her up the stairs, bringing up a plate of extra food that he and his father insisted she have. It was unnecessary, of course, because she’d eaten so much of the cloudcakes in an effort to finish them that she didn’t think she’d be hungry until this time the next night. He was still trying to change her mind.
“My dad meant what he said. You don’t need to pay to live here. The room is yours. Take advantage of the hospitality.”
“That’s incredibly kind of both of you, but I can’t do that. I insist on having a job around here, it doesn’t matter what.”
“Your dad sent you here because he knew my dad would be able to help you.”
“You’re probably right,” she said, stopping and turning to face him. “But my dad should’ve told me who he was sending me to, that way I could have insisted Marvo give me a job before I even came in to settle down. Besides, the landlady didn’t seem like she’d be okay with anyone freeloading.”
“Fine, but if you change your mind, the offer stands.”
They reached the apartment and Andie unlocked the door. The repairman was gone, but he’d left some things in the corner, which meant he’d probably be back. Andie took the food from Raesh and placed it inside the fridge. She walked over to the window, back to that great view, and sat on the windowsill. Raesh came over.
“I don’t remember inviting you in,” she said, smirking.
“Well, I know you needed help bringing in the heavy plate. Plus, I’m not a vampire.”
“Oh, can you even imagine living with vampires?”
“Absolutely not, I bet it was terrifying. I’m so glad they got wiped out. I don’t know which was worse: the mind controlling or the flying.”
“I vote mind control.”
“Yeah, but you know what? I’d have fun with that one.”
Andie laughed, glad of having made at least one friend. Nothing could ever truly take her mind off her father or the task ahead of her, and she definitely couldn’t be distracted from the danger, but Raesh was just the person she needed to meet on the first night. He was kind, friendly, welcoming, and in a way, he reminded her of home. There was something about him that was patient, deliberate. She knew he liked her and he wasn’t shy at showing it, but he wasn’t pushing himself on her. He was sweet.
“You know, even after the vampires, our parents’ generation faced terrible times,” he said, his smile fading into a grave expression. “They were all brave. They had to be.”
“You mean the terrorist attacks in Taline?”
“And the other thing. The Quelling.”
For a moment, Andie stopped breathing.
Not this. Any subject in the world but this. Something in her chest constricted, tightened beyond belief at the thought of what she’d lost and what her father had suffered. Even after eighteen years, it still hurt. There were a lot of things about her family before the Quelling that she had forgotten, but she could never forget the night itself. Never.
“I… I don’t even know how to ask this,” Raesh began. “I don’t even know if I should, but looking at you now, I think I have to. I’ve heard stories about your father my entire life. Are the rumors true? Was it really a spell that went wrong?”
“I really don’t want to talk about that, Raesh,” she snapped.
Raesh looked away, embarrassed or ashamed, she didn’t know which. She instantly regretted what she’d said and how she’d said it. After all, there was no way he could’ve understood the emotional pain that she had to endure ever since the accident. Even she could barely understand it, and it was her own pain.
“Look. I’m sorry. I’m just really tired. All the trains I’ve been on today, I guess. Can we please just continue this conversation later?”
“Ah, the old ‘later’ ploy, right? How original.” He laughed. She laughed, too. Neither of them meant it.
Raesh turned and headed to the door, and Andie watched and wished there was something she could say to make up for the mood she’d ruined. He really had been great to her, and after the dizzying reception she’d gotten when first arriving in the city, she really needed Raesh’s comforting presence that night. He turned back at the door.
“We don’t need to continue this,” he said. “I can see on your face how much it hurts. We can talk about whatever you want. We don’t ever need to discuss this again.”
He turned to leave and was almost out of the door when she stopped him.
“Raesh. Thank you for sharing with me earlier. About your family and how much you want magic. That was really nice.”
He smiled that warm smile of his and left. Andie sighed and leaned back against the wall. She was alone again wit
h her thoughts. Always alone with her thoughts.
Andie sat in bed and prepared to lay down as she watched the reflection of the setting sun bounce off the shining glass walls of the building across the street. She’d gotten everything ready for the next day, and there was nothing left except to be anxious and to implant her icon. She wasn’t in a hurry to have the university monitor every move and magical use, but there was no way around it. If she was going to commit to her studies at the University, she had to conform to their rules.
“Here goes my freedom,” she said to herself.
She held the icon in the palm of her hand and took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I, Andie Rogers, of sound mind and spirit, do take the oath of the Academy and accept my duties, responsibilities, and limitations as a student of this great body.”
As the final syllable passed her lips, the icon rolled over in her hand and vanished under her skin in a soft flash of golden light. At first, she didn’t feel anything, even after turning her hand over and making a few fists, but then the cold set in. Then the heat. Together, the impossible sensation of hot and cold flowed through her veins and to her heart, and from there, it was sent through her entire body. She opened her mouth in a silent scream as a violent convulsion made its way from head to toe. The feeling only lasted a moment, though, and it faded with every beat of her heart until she felt perfectly like herself again. She laid back in bed and kicked herself under the covers.
Sleep didn’t come easy, but that was unsurprising, and tonight she had even more on her mind. She tried to suppress the memories of what happened to her mother and her father’s accident. She tried to trust Mirth, the healer who was staying with her father back home. Of course, there was also her new life in the city to consider. This city that didn’t seem as welcoming or as promising as she had hoped. She’d given up trying to see the silver lining in Arvall City after she’d picked up the rest of her books earlier. Thinking of the books made her remember.
She rolled over and reached under the bed to retrieve the bag she’d hidden there earlier. She opened it and then uncovered the secret compartment in the bottom of it. She dropped the bag and opened the book on her lap. It was dusty. From Dragons to Men. A history of dragon-blooded people and their magic. She wanted so badly to flip through it with relish, as she did almost every night, but she had enough on her mind. She closed it and locked it away in the cabinet of the nightstand, and slid the key into her pocket.
She laid down again, trying to block out the blackness of her thoughts. But she couldn’t suppress them and she knew there was only one way that she would be able to get to sleep. She let it all in, all the worry and pain and memories, and once they rooted themselves deep in her mind, she accepted that everything was her fault. After that, the guilt crushed her into sleep.
She dreamed again. She’d been dreaming the same dream for years and only the way she saw it changed.
It always began the same.
She stared out in front of her, through an odd and exciting haze. Somewhere in the haze, there is a mirror that isn’t clear. She can’t tell if it was because of the haze or if the mirror itself was somehow… wrong. All she knew was that the mirror was really a window—a sight into some other world or other life—and that she must see through somehow. She has to know what’s there to see.
And then a sound. Slight, soft, hardly a sound at all, almost as if it were only made of the most delicate of sounds for certain ears to hear. It was the smallest of echoes.
Over the years, the haze lightened and lifted until finally it subsided. Eventually, she could see a field and a woman standing in the middle of it. Beautiful, majestic, and covered in blood, the woman reached out, maybe to Andie, maybe to the universe, and then fire fell from the sky in terrifying waves of light and flames and brilliant destruction.
The sound cleared as well and revealed itself to be the woman’s voice. Louder and louder it grew. She was screaming. The woman in the field who was drenched in blood, who seemed to be destroying the earth, was screaming for help.
Andie woke violently, sweating and breathing as if she’d just finished a race. She was shivering, from fear or sweat it didn’t matter. The iridescent pattern on her left arm burned as it always did after the dream. She was thankful that she only had the trace in one spot on her body. For now.
Something compelled her to move, to run, to escape the bed and the room and the apartment. A dark energy that shrouded her mind and made her desperate to clear her head. She jumped out of bed and pulled on her favorite pair of jeans and a faded t-shirt that she had left piled on the floor in her late-night exhaustion, and hurried through her room and into the hallway, slipping on a pair of flats and grabbing a crumpled sweatshirt on her way out. She stopped for a quick breath, a moment to clear her mind and realize that the dream was over. That she was safe.
She didn’t know what made her run from her room. It could’ve been fear, but she was never one to show herself to be a coward. It had to be something more, and maybe she’d never know until she understood the dream itself. She turned and headed down the stairs. Maybe Marvo was up and could make her some coffee at the restaurant. At the bottom of the stairs she halted, shocked by the sight.
The restaurant was completely full; people were everywhere, eating, drinking, or waiting for their order. There weren’t even any open chairs. She wondered what they were all doing there so early in the morning, until she looked to the front of the place, where the giant panes of glass that made the storefront showed that it was late morning. The sun was already halfway across the sky. Then she heard laughter. She turned and saw Raesh, posted in the corner with a steaming cup, taking a break or slacking off. He was watching her.
“I was just getting ready to come up and wake you. You’re gonna be late.”
Andie’s eyes widened with the realization that she had slept through the night. Without so much of a glance at her watch, she ran out the door into the warm late-morning light and raced down the cobbled street towards the direction of the University.
Her arm burned and with a mad panic, she realized the iridescent glow on her arm was visible. She desperately pulled on her sweatshirt and tugged down the sleeves to cover the evidence, panting from the exertion of her sudden and unexpected sprint. She couldn’t let anyone see.
She contemplated turning back to get her backpack when she realized she had left it behind, but her legs propelled her ever forward down the long and winding roads of Arvall City, towards the great walls of the University. She ran her hands down her jeans as she walked, and was relieved when she found her class schedule and University map folded in her back pocket. At least she would be able to find her way to class. She held it tightly in her hand as she trudged onward.
She couldn’t be late and risk expulsion. Not now. Not when she needed answers the most.
Chapter Three
Andie couldn’t miss another day. If she missed even one class today, she would blow her shot at learning to control her powers and discover her abilities forever. Nineteen is the oldest age the Academy accepted without a special letter of recommendation, which she had no way of getting, and the first eleven days are the most a student can miss before they forfeit the year. The Academy opens its door on the two hundredth day of each year, and today was the two hundredth and twelfth day. Crunch time.
She raced through the streets toward SKY 6. Without meaning to, her powers manifested in her haste and before she realized it, her magic was pushing people aside and creating a clear path for her. She stopped and checked the icon; it was glowing faintly, warning her against using her magic, but as long as she kept it to small things - and nothing too frequent - she would be okay. Realizing she would never make it in time at this pace, she tried hailing a cab, but not a single one stopped.
All at once, she felt everything: her tardiness, her new life, her anxiety, her hurry, the sights, the sounds, the hard and steady breath of Arvall City, and she felt overwhelmed with the energy and ac
tivity.
“So, this is what it’s like?” she wondered out loud.
As if in rude answer, someone snatched her folded map from her hand and waved it before her eyes. “What’s this, now?” a husky voice taunted her. “An antique, is it? Looks valuable.”
Andie glowered at the man. “Not valuable, but I do rather need it. Hand it back.”
The man smiled a toothy grin. “Nah, looks of value to me.” And with a final wink he turned on his heels and ran back the way Andie had just come.
Her mind was still floating in wonder, but luckily her body reacted on instinct. She turned and was chasing him down the street, across the intersection, around two corners, and finally into an alley. She needed that damn map to get to the University, and she wasn’t going to let some petty thief ruin her chances of getting there.
On and on they ran, rounding corners and racing down alleyways. The thief had been tiring steadily, but growing up in a rural area had bred Andie for this moment. She caught him and threw her weight on him. They both came crashing down, but Andie hit her head on the stone of the alley floor. For a moment, she was dazed and the world swam before her eyes while the thief scrambled to his feet and grabbed her map again.
When he saw that Andie had hit her head, he took a moment to catch his breath. He looked down at her and laughed. At least, until he saw the cut on her head begin to heal. He gasped, dropped the map, and took off running as if the great dragon Gordric himself were chasing him. He knew what everyone knew. Healing is a sign of dragon magic. Andie saw the fear on his face and suddenly only that look mattered to her.
“No, wait!” she screamed.
But he was already gone. She cursed herself—her lack of control and her dragon blood—and hoped he would be frightened enough to keep his mouth shut. She stood up and folded the now crumpled map, which was fortunately still in one piece. Why someone would want to steal a piece of paper, she had no idea. She slid it in her back pocket and looked around to regather her bearings.
