by Lan Chan
When she finally called it quits, I couldn’t move. Charles and Luther made sad faces at me before they left.
I told the other boys I’d meet them for dinner. In reality, I was just going to lie here all night if I didn’t die from my wounds. Giselle’s eyes became unfocused when Kai approached me and attempted to ease my hurt by healing me. Despite his threat, she latched on to his wrist and flung it aside.
“You think you’re helping by being soft on her?” she asked. That was so not the way I would have described Kai’s method of training. “You think that girl is going to pull her punches in the arena?” She wedged her boot under my back and wriggled her foot. I got the message and pushed myself up.
“Any power you have is tied to your name,” Giselle spat. “It’s that name that will be the death of her. So unless you get someone to pick off that Nephilim bitch before the games, you better start thinking about toughening this one up.”
She threw her towel on the mat and walked away. Matilda pumped her brows at me before she followed Giselle out.
I lowered myself back onto the mat. Kai crouched in front of me. “She has a point,” I said. He didn’t speak. “I know you feel bad for her, but you didn’t see the look on her face today after the compulsion.”
Even though her methods were psychotic, Giselle was right. If I was going to beat Chanelle, I had to get a whole lot tougher. That was all well and good except I already felt like I was dying.
16
Dinner was an effort in ignoring the prying eyes and not crying when I tried to move my arm to lift the fork to my mouth. My only consolation was that Sophie wasn’t upset with me over the Max vision.
Astrid pointed at the bruise on my right forearm. “She didn’t hold back then?”
“Did you think she would?”
“I hoped she would tone it down a little considering she’s still technically a felon.”
“I don’t think she cares,” Sophie said.
“She’s right about one thing,” Diana said. “How on earth are you going to even stay alive in the trials if you don’t lift your game?”
I groaned and gave up on eating. I’d been asking myself the same thing. Then something occurred to me. “Are we allowed to use our powers during the games?”
Astrid nodded. “Technically, yes. But I wouldn’t bet on you being able to keep them for long. Most of the others will be trying to find ways to nullify each other’s powers right from the beginning.”
I almost blanched. Without magic, they were still super strong and fast. I was…dead meat.
Astrid leaned forward. “You don’t have to win,” she reminded me. “All you have to do is survive longer than Chanelle.”
I glanced down at my aching body. “There’s still a couple of months,” Sophie reassured me.
That was little comfort to me when I couldn’t sleep. Before bed, Sophie made me drink a vile-tasting potion that she swore would help me heal faster. Now I lay awake going over all the ways I would probably end up dying. The most obvious was that Chanelle would kill me.
When I finally fell asleep, I was too tired to even dream. Small mercies, I guess.
In the morning, my bruising had almost gone but I still felt achy. I lay there breathing quietly until I could get motivated enough to get out of bed.
Dawn’s light was only just piercing the sky but there were way too many people walking around outside. When I saw two pairs of red eyes and nothing else hovering towards me, I shuddered. The bats flapped their wings and swooped to land on the gargoyle statues on the roof of the Academy.
I wasn’t technically allowed to bring Phoenix into the Academy, but someone was allowed to breed bats. They were just rats with wings. Unlike what popular culture would have you believe, vampires could not turn themselves into bats. They had no ability to shift. But they were able to compel the bats the same way they could mortals.
Everywhere I turned there were vamps. At Bloodline I had gotten used to seeing one or two of them. Now they were strolling about the school as though it was the middle of the day. Past the quad, a streak of gold up ahead caught my eye. It was followed not long after by a silvery shape hovering over the billabong. Adam waved at me as I sauntered past. During first semester, if I had been caught outside my dorm, there would have been all kinds of questions asked. Now the guards knew to look out for me on my walk to the Grove.
“What are you doing up so early?” I asked him.
He eyed the group of vamps who were loitering close to the edge of the billabong. I made a face at Adam who pointed at the demon blade strapped to my back. It didn’t escape me that he was being mute. Vampires had supersonic hearing.
A rustle in the low border drew my attention. When I was living on the streets, that kind of ground disturbance used to mean either a stray cat, or a rodent.
I couldn’t help the involuntary prick of apprehension that lifted the hairs on my arms. It turned out to just be Phoenix scrambling through the saltbush plants with a couple of his yowie friends. He yelped when he saw me.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked him. The yowies rolled along the ground. I couldn’t help laughing. When the one on the left lifted its belly to the moonlight, I frowned. The hairs on one side of its body were singed.
I crouched down and brushed my hand over the area. It lay still, allowing me to inspect the damage. Up closer I scented something strange about the burns. It was an acrid sweetness. I sighed heavily.
“Have you been trying to get Arcana fruit again?”
Phoenix barked once as though answering the question. The yowie made a grabby motion. I found the whole situation off. The nymphs were all kinds of protective about the Arcana fruit but going so far as to set the yowies on fire was new. The yowies rolled to their feet and grabbed my sleeves.
I was already headed to the Grove, but they seemed in a hurry to show me something. A hundred metres away, I felt the first ward brush up against my skin. And then the sickening scrape of unknown magic pressed over it. Ten metres from the first circle of trees, a group of Fae and other magic users were testing the strength of the wards. I didn’t recognise any of them. Our Fae wouldn’t dare infiltrate the Grove like this. They were probably Pantheon students.
“What the hell?” I said.
The yowies placed their hands in the air and made a pushing motion. When I frowned, the one on my left took a running charge. It struck something invisible mid-air and was thrown back. A spark ignited in its hair. It rolled around on the ground. Phoenix licked at where it was blowing at its palms. Concerned, I held my hand out. The second my fingers touched the barrier, electricity ran up my arms. It was like the previous wards around the fence only ten times stronger.
I gritted my teeth as I fought not to topple over. It was only through sheer force of will that I didn’t cry out. Over to my left the Fae were attempting the same thing. Where I was just trying to test the magic present, they were actually trying to attack it. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything about this? I suspected there was a reason why they were doing this in the middle of the night.
I blinked and dropped into the Ley dimension. My aura almost saturated the landscape. I tried to drag it back so I could see the Grove. It became bathed in green mixed with warm overtones of brown and orange. I felt the rightness of it settle over me. As much as the nymphs loved to torture me, this was the place I felt most comfortable in the Academy. This and the kitchen garden. The nymphs had erected an arcane circle around the Grove. It shimmered in all the colours of the spectrum, imitating their own personalities. With the added sight of the Ley lights, I watched the circle of protection being worn away where the Fae were battering it with their magic. Inside the new circle, the red that denoted my blood protection was still active.
The Fae laughed as they tore away a small section of circle. The barrier scrambled to compensate by patching up the hole. It made the rest of the circle stretch thinner. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one of the Fae called.
In their quest to gain access, they didn’t even notice that I was standing nearby. I doubted they would have even cared. Syncing my magic with that of the barrier, I stepped through. The sudden whip of pain that sparked in every cell in my body made me wince. But it was momentary.
“Go back to the billabong,” I told Phoenix and the yowies. Of course they just sat there watching me. I left them to their spying and jumped over the fence. One of these days I would just use the gate. At this point, it was a ritual.
I found the nymphs clustered near the oak tree. They had always kept up appearances for me. This time they dispensed with their glamour. Gone were the stunning creatures of mythology. In their place were heathens. Their claws were three inches long. Their faces had elongated to the point of gruesome. The lights that flickered around them were no longer in bright, sunny colours but were murky brown and black.
The one closest to me screeched in my face. I recognised the cadence of her speech. When she tried to fly at my face, I flicked my hand. “Why didn’t you say something to Jacqueline when they first arrived?” I snapped at the unravelled purple nymph.
Her voice was just barely audible it was so high-pitched. Being half in the Ley dimension, I could just about understand her.
“Can’t do anything,” she said. “Grove belongs to the Fae realm.” They let out a unified cry of such deep hated, I almost wanted to turn around and run. In that moment, I understood the source of their anguish. Once upon a time, they had been ruled by the Fae. As a result, the Fae had residual rights to the Grove even if the nymphs no longer recognised their sovereignty. Even Jacqueline couldn’t overrule the millennia-long connections that tied these two races.
“Hell with that.” Stomping through the Grove, I walked to the clearing and sat down on the grass. The demon blade made it awkward to sit, but I unclipped the scabbard and tossed it on the ground. The nymphs followed me. They flew in agitated circles around my head. I unsheathed the demon blade and used the tip to slice open my thumb. No matter how many times I did this, I would never get used to the flare of pain. Still, I gritted my teeth and pressed the sides of the cut together until a bead of blood gathered on my skin. I drew a circle in the grass.
Through the Ley dimension, I saw the red of my current protection circle pulse brighter. I had laid that trap there for the Sisterhood. It wouldn’t bode well to set a protective circle against the supernaturals because that would preclude the students from using the Grove for their lessons. I scoffed at the idea of a one-size-fits-all spell.
“Purple,” I said. She stopped her vicious hissing and dropped down in front of me. I held the demon blade out to her. A second ticked by where her face went absolutely still. Before my eyes she morphed back into the beautiful creature I was used to. For the first time there was a sliver of fear in her eyes.
“It’s not that bad,” I said. She glanced at the demon blade and back to me. Something shimmered over her perfect features. Reaching out, she pressed her whole palm to the demon blade. It hissed in satisfaction.
I wanted to smash it against the ground. No matter how much I tried, the stupid blade was demonic. It enjoyed the taste of supernatural blood. She flinched and pulled her hand away. Her whole palm was bleeding.
I bit my lip and pressed my thumb to it.
A soft breeze whipped through the Grove. It howled as it reached the clearing. I closed my eyes once more and concentrated on the circle. With her added strength, the red glowed so bright it bathed the surrounding area in crimson.
“Make the pact,” I told her. She began to speak high-pitched words that would seal her will to that of the circle. It would give her control over who stepped through the circle’s protection. While she did that, I concentrated on transforming the circle from a simple barrier into something that would make the Fae think twice before they messed with it again.
As a hedge witch, my mind naturally turned to nature. Vines of blue and black began to twine around the red circle. It lashed into thick ropes that expanded past the barrier the nymphs had erected. I hit something on the far side of the Grove. With the new positioning of the Academy, the Grove was located right next to Nightblood’s library. I felt the magic that fused the Academies together.
That shouldn’t matter in this instance, so I chose to ignore it. The second the Fae made their next assault the new blood-magic barrier snapped back at them.
My mouth dropped open as magical thorns the size of my arm whipped out from the circle like thrown knives. They burrowed into the Fae who had dared to attack. I heard a high-pitched whine as the Fae fell over clutching at his arm. Uh oh. I was going to get in trouble for that one. It was hard to muster any guilt. The rest of the Fae’s friends lifted him up and carried him away.
The nymphs chortled. The purple nymph ceased her chanting at the same time I peeled my eyes open. As the colours of the Ley dimension dimmed, I found myself completely exhausted. I fell over onto my side like a limp noodle. The nymphs danced around me.
“The least you can do is give me an Arcana fruit,” I croaked. No such luck. What they did instead was spray water from the pool in my face to revive me. It didn’t help at all. I just lay there while dawn began to crawl across the sky.
When I got a bit of my strength back, I dragged myself up and started my chores. All of yesterday’s aches and pains came back. The nymphs were all back to their usual beautiful selves. They flew about as I worked. I suspected my additional protections were seen as me doing my duty. I wanted to point out that they were being very Fae-like, but I knew it was pointless.
When I strapped the demon blade back on and prepared to leave for class, they stopped me. The purple and red nymphs flew up to me. They were dragging a talisman threaded through with something so thin and transparent I only saw it because of the angle of the sun.
“What’s this?” I asked. They dropped the talisman onto my open palm. It was in the shape of a gourd. One of those ones that looked like a figure eight with one circle much smaller than the other.
The purple nymph pressed her hand to her abdomen. She imitated smoothing her palm over a mound on her belly. I froze as it dawned on me. The damned thing was a fertility talisman. Every single one of them grinned at me. I dropped the talisman and bolted out of there to the sound of their uproarious laughter. That settled it. The next time they were in trouble, I was just going to let the Fae imprison them again.
17
I was not in a cheerful mood when Kai found me just as I was stuffing a bagel in my mouth and trying to make a move to my first class. “Blue!” he called out. I pointedly ignored him. The nymph’s laughter was still ringing in my ears.
“Hang on a second.” He easily caught up with me. I pretended to be occupied with chewing. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m really late.”
He knew me well enough now to be able to decipher my speech even when I was chewing. “One of the Pantheon Fae is complaining that there’s a hex on the Grove,” he said. “Do you know anything about that? I tried to get in just now and there’s a blood barrier so thick I could barely see through it.”
I shrugged and swallowed. “They shouldn’t start fights they can’t finish.”
His left brow twitched. He tried to reach out for my hand, but I stepped back. “Am I in trouble or not?” I asked.
“Will you dismantle the hex if you are?”
“No.”
“Then I think you’ll probably be in trouble.”
“Fine.” For some reason, my hand lifted up and grabbed the hilt of the demon blade. He rolled his eyes at me.
“You can’t just go around upturning centuries of tradition,” he said.
I snorted. “Oh, and you can? Just because you’re Malachi Pendragon?”
“It’s different.”
“How? The only difference between us is that you’re their golden boy and I’m just a human. I shouldn’t have this much power. Is that what this is about?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything!” He
took a step towards me. I held my ground. Anyone who glanced at us would see a six-foot-something Nephilim towering over a puny human. Something about that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
He scraped his hand through his hair. “That pissy Fae is going to kick up a stink. What am I supposed to do about this?”
I could literally feel my blood boiling. “You can tell the Pantheon Fae that if they want to go into the Grove, they can ask the nymphs instead of treating it like their personal playground.”
“The Grove belongs to the Fae,” he said.
I made a buzzer noise. “Guess again. Their dimension is gone. There are new rules now. I’ve busted my ass looking after that Arcana tree. If some snotty Fae prince wants to have a go at it, he’s going to have to go through me.”
He grabbed my arm. I willed myself not to react. With his head bent, half of his face was cast in shadow. It made the chiselled plane over his jaw even sharper. “If you antagonise them, they’re going to reciprocate,” he said. The vein above his brow jumped menacingly. “I’m stretched thin with classes and my other duties. What if something happens and I can’t get to you in time?”
“Well then, I suppose I’ll just roll over and die,” I snarled.
He wrenched me forward until there was only a sliver of space between us. Green light vibrated from him in such frantic waves I felt it skidding across my skin. It backlit his eyes so that they were saturated in colour.
“Can you for one minute think about preserving your own safety so I don’t go out of my mind with worry?” he bit out. The retort was on my tongue before I could even think but he shook me. And then his mouth blanketed mine and I couldn’t think at all. Searing heat scraped over the skin on my arms as his palm grazed my elbow and down to my hip. His tongue brushed up against my lip. They parted and he deepened the kiss. Alarmingly, I thought of the fertility pendant. My heart stuttered in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was because Kai was biting my lip or because of my reaction to having the future so tactlessly thrown in my face.
