by S. W. Clarke
“Detritus, now.” Aidan shoved his way through the room, cutting a path to the other side. “Some of this stuff is over a hundred years old. They just forgot about it.”
“How did you know it was here?”
He shrugged. “When you’re a new student ambassador, you take your responsibilities seriously.”
“By which you mean, you poked and prodded everywhere you could.”
“Something like that.” He shouldered up against the wall, pushing against it. “Ugh, this one’s always sticky.”
“Aidan, you’re just pushing a wall.”
He ignored me. With a grunt, he shoved all his weight into it—and the wall opened. When he disappeared inside, I just stood there with the flame in my hand.
“All right,” I said. “You were doing more than poking and prodding.”
“Come on,” his voice called from the darkness. “Bring the light with you.”
I came forward, found myself in a room smelling of earth and roots and must—a strange combination.
Aidan’s hand took my wrist, and he guided my flame up. A moment later, it took in a light fixture hanging from the ceiling—a magical lantern in the shape of one of those round IKEA shades, casting its soft light over every surface.
Before me stood a circular table, chairs at odd angles like whoever had been seated in them had risen and left abruptly. The walls had been adorned with strange, carved graffiti I couldn’t really read.
Someone had carved ELISE 1853 in large letters on the far wall.
I bent, uprighted a fallen chair. It was covered in must. “This is weird.”
“It’s the only safe place I could think of.” Aidan used his cloak to swipe at the table’s surface. “Everywhere else is…unsecret.”
The storage door opened, and we met eyes. Turned toward the partly-ajar door to the secret room.
A thud. A high, breathy voice cursed.
“Eva?” I called, stepping to the door.
“It’s me,” she called back. “I’ve got Loki and Jericho. I can’t see anything.”
I emerged into the doorway with the flame in my hand. “Back here.”
When all five of us were in the room, Aidan shut the door, his back to it. Eva dropped Loki to the floor, and he proceeded to lick himself clean. Meanwhile, Jericho ran a hand over his head.
“This is new,” he said.
“Apparently it’s old.” I pointed to the carving on the opposite wall. “Really old.”
“So old it’s new,” Eva said, eyes on Aidan. “What’s this about?”
Aidan came forward, nodded at me. “We needed to have a congress.”
“Do you mean a meeting?” Jericho asked.
“It’s Aidan,” I said. “We don’t question his nomenclature.”
Aidan shrugged. “A meeting, then, about Clementine. The five of us are the only ones who know about her and the prophecy. I assume all five of us are willing to help her see it through?”
I kept my eyes strictly on Aidan. This was suddenly awkward in the way you felt during kickball in P.E. and you were waiting to be picked for a team. I didn’t have teams; I wasn’t picked.
And yet, almost immediately, Eva was nodding. “Absolutely.”
“She knows as much,” Jericho said.
Loki paused in his licking. He glanced up at me. “Oh, all right.”
“I’ll take that as a yes from your familiar,” Aidan said.
I quenched the flame in my hand. “It’s a begrudging yes, but you couldn’t expect anything else.”
Aidan clapped his hands together, rubbed them. “So we’re committed, all of us. Both to helping her, and to keeping the prophecy between ourselves.”
Eva nodded, as solemn as I’d ever seen her.
Jericho leaned against the wall with folded arms. “Where do we start?”
“Glad you asked.” Aidan flipped open his satchel, lifted out a pair of books, set them on the table. “I thought we’d share everything we know. About the Shade, about the Battle of the Ages, about the guardian trials. Jericho, you’ve got a monopoly on the last.”
Eva came forward, pulling a notebook out of her bag. “I’ll be scribe. We have to document, or we’ll forget things.”
Aidan nodded, leaning over the table. “We’ll need different buckets. Historical facts, theories, tactics for the trials. A whiteboard! We need a whiteboard.”
“I thought I saw a chalkboard in the storage room,” Eva said.
“She’ll need training,” Jericho said, pressing away from the wall. “To even get past the second trial, she’ll need to fight a guardian. I can help with that.”
I stood at a distance as they planned, strategized, organized. This already felt like a well-oiled machine of mages. And I? I was just a human a year and a half ago.
Eventually Loki approached me, and instead of words, he just sat down and meowed up at me.
This caught Aidan’s attention. He straightened, turned. “Clem?”
This was a moment, I realized. It was a moment when I could be on the periphery of my own life, or I could be at the center of it. I’d already committed myself to this prophecy. I’d already decided I needed to enter the trials.
And yet the old loner was pulling at my arm, willing me into a corner. She had cold fingers. She wanted the safety of the darkness, but I’d come to recognize there wasn’t real safety in such spaces.
I stepped forward, came to the table’s edge. Met eyes with Aidan, Eva, Jericho. “I’m here.”
I was here for it all.
And so, as the days grew shorter and the nights colder, I trained. Aidan and I met at the library to research everything we could on the Shade and her weapon, and Jericho came sometimes, provided what knowledge he had of the labyrinth. We were assembling a whole notebook of information. Eva and I ran longer and longer circuits of the meadow. Jericho and I sparred in the common room.
Farrow was teaching me the basics of fire riding, though it all felt like Latin to me. She was talking about envisioning roads and paths of fire like it was some sort of religion, and every day she made me meditate on it. I still didn’t know what “fire riding” actually was.
In Goodbarrel’s class, I had almost gotten my baggie big enough to fit the robe hanger inside. My stitches were cleaner, tighter. I had to believe it mattered to my survival as a mage, this skill.
But Rathmore’s class? Callum Rathmore would be the end of me.
He’d found my triggers. Over the months, he’d learned exactly how to roast me—and I don’t just mean literally. The challenge still stood: I needed to hit him, and I couldn’t.
And god, I’d tried.
So it was, one day two weeks before winter recess, he finally said the thing that made the Spitfire emerge so large and wild I wasn’t even sure if I’d ever regain control of it until I incinerated him or burnt myself out.
It was just one sentence. One simple line. And it infuriated me.
“Cole,” he’d whispered, “you might have to accept that your mom and sister are dead.”
Dead. Not missing. Not disappeared. Not abducted.
Dead.
Never to return. Never to be found.
I hated him. I hated Callum Rathmore.
The retribution came quickly. A swath of fire engulfed me, and in one elegant, unconscious motion, I lashed out.
When I split Callum Rathmore’s lip with a flexible blade of flame, he wiped at the blood, gazed at it. “Finally.”
My entire body was enkindled, the flames sluicing over my body like water over skin. I wanted to do more than split his lip. The Spitfire wanted me to separate him into two identical halves. “How dare you.”
“I wasn’t sure what it would take.” He sloughed off his robes for the first time. Beneath, he wore simple black pants and a shirt. The light from my body danced off his form; he was no willow. Hard muscle tensed as he curled his fingers, flames appearing at each hand. “But you’ve finally touched on the true power inside you.”
&
nbsp; “What true power?” I snarled, lip curling. But I knew. Of course I knew.
“Most fire mages don’t have a Spitfire. Most of them aren’t capable of what you just did. A fire witch is.” He evaluated me with those coal-black eyes, my fire dancing in his pupils. “Though I didn’t expect I’d have to root around so much to bring it out.”
“Root around?” The flames burned higher around me, bonfiring until they licked at the common room ceiling. “If you ever talk about my mom and sister again, I’ll kill you.”
Would I kill him?
The Spitfire promised it. Rational Clem didn’t have the reins; she couldn’t contribute.
A bead of blood slipped down his chin. “That’s it speaking.”
“It’s me,” I spat back, knowing he was right and arguing all the same. It felt good. It felt damned justified.
“It’s your unhindered anger. Your bufferless, rudderless fury. It’s what corrupted every fire witch before you.”
Corruption? I didn’t care.
I’d take corruption if it meant the power to scald him with my eyes.
I lunged at him. I wasn’t even obeying form or rules; my knuckles just needed to grace his cheek. Just once.
He rebuffed me with one flaming hand, stepping sidelong. As I passed, he blasted me in the side. It didn’t hurt—it just threw me off balance.
I staggered, turned. Anger roiled in me until I felt dizzy. “Why?”
His thick eyebrow rose. “Why what? Be precise, Cole.”
The flames burned hotter. “Why do this to me?” I managed through clamped teeth.
His mouth curved a degree, and for a moment I saw a flash of the armored demon in the darkness. Lucian. “How else will you learn to control your power?”
I’ll show you control, the Spitfire hissed.
When I swung around, my boot surged out, catching him in the gut. Even as he staggered, I came forward, tackling him to the floor. Before Rational Clem knew what was happening, I’d straddled him, one hand encircling his throat while the other rose high, high, the fist enflamed.
Rathmore stared up at me, his split lip bloodying his chin. And I felt nothing except hatred, except unbridled rage and a desire to be the reason his existence ended here, in this room.
My fist shook, poised, ready. But I couldn’t make it strike.
Don’t.
It was Rational Clem.
I blinked, stars appearing in my vision. Only a young man lay before me. Callum Rathmore, the bane of my magical existence. “Remember yourself, Cole.”
I hissed, ready to lash him with my tongue. I would tell him all the hateful things I’d amassed in my inventory ever since my first foster father, all the terrible words I’d wanted to say but couldn’t.
Except my tongue wouldn’t work. My vision blurred as my eyes closed. A second later, my world blanked out.
When I woke, it felt like only a moment had passed in an endless void. I was sitting against the wall of the common room, lathered in sweat. Rathmore crouched before me, his black hair a veil blocking the light. I could have sworn I saw concern on his face, but when my eyes focused, it was gone.
“I fell over,” I said, all my anger guttered out. I was Rational Clem again, and I saw only the brooding, difficult man. The one I knew didn’t like attention. The one whose lip still bled from my fire.
He seemed amused or relieved—maybe both. “You fainted. Lucky you didn’t concuss yourself on the floor.”
My senses were starting to return. “I’ve never done that before.”
“In more ways than one.” He stood, offered his hand without further explanation. “You controlled it.”
I stared at the open hand. “What’s this for?”
“Getting off the floor.”
I snorted, but I took his hand. His grip was warm, strong, pulled me up with firm pressure. When I was standing, I faced off with him. “Never do that again.”
“What, exactly?”
“Talk about my mom and sister.”
“Cole—”
“Never. I don’t care what you have to do to bring out the Spitfire, but it won’t be that. If you ever talk about them again, I’ll never come back to your class. They can kick me out of the academy.”
I turned to grab my bag, but he called out my name again. When I paused, he said, “I’m sorry.”
I slowly turned back to him.
He regarded me with a steady firmness, but the mask of sullen intensity had slipped away. He pressed his eyes shut, one hand going up to rub the ridge of his nose. “I overstepped.”
This was the first time I’d seen any conflict in him. “You think?”
He opened his eyes. “The methods I was trained in can be…arcane.”
“And brutish. And cruel.”
“Those, too.” He paused, a flash of indecision on his face as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t. Finally, he settled for a sigh through the nose.
For once, he wasn’t standoffish and argumentative. I almost felt bad about the bloody lip I’d given him. Almost. Not yet, mostly because I didn’t trust him or his apology.
I still didn’t know what had changed. It seemed to happen when I fainted. And I didn’t have the patience or wherewithal to figure it out. After the Spitfire took me, I needed time alone to recenter. I grabbed my bag. “See you tomorrow.”
“Clementine,” he said as I got to the door.
“What?”
“Bring your familiar next time.”
I glanced back. “Loki?”
He was pulling his robes back on; I kept my eyes firmly on his face. “Yes, the cat.”
“Why?”
He didn’t look at me as he went to pick up his own bag. “You want to grow stronger, don’t you?”
With a sigh, I pushed my way out of the common room. It wasn’t worth trying to figure out what he meant—it would be more painful than pulling a wisdom tooth.
As I came out into daylight, my hand went to the side of my head, feeling for a tender spot where my head should have hit. But I didn’t feel anything. And in a flash, it came to me:
My head didn’t hurt.
Rathmore had caught me before I’d hit the floor.
When I got back to our dorm, I didn’t have time to shower. I didn’t have time to compose myself.
Eva shoved a dress into my hands. “Try this on.”
I stood in the doorway, satchel still swinging from my shoulder. Rubbed a thumb over the green silk. “This?”
“This.”
I didn’t move. “I just want you to know I’m very sweaty. Pools of sweat under my shirt. Pools.”
She began shoving me toward the bathroom. “Shower quickly, then. Go on.”
Ten minutes later, I came out of our bathroom, eyes firmly fixed on the wall. I didn’t want to see Eva’s reaction. On my bed, Loki snorted.
“Oh my gods.” The fae leapt from her bed. “It’s divine.”
When Eva had handed me the silk dress, I hadn’t been able to tell her I didn’t wear things like this. Not with a plunging neck and a deeper backline. Not with shoulder straps so thin I could snip them between my fingernails.
The dress was elegant, held my body like a kiss, and matched my eyes. It couldn’t have paired with the moonstone around my neck more precisely. She’d even sewn in a pocket for the key, at the base of my spine where the silk pulled together into a ruffle.
It was perfect. I knew it the moment I’d put it on.
I swept a hand down my body. The dress was cinched at my waist, swept down almost to the floor. And still I felt naked. “Really? I feel like I’m not wearing anything at all.”
“Oh, but you are.” Eva came to me, fluffed my hair back over my shoulders. She wound it up into a half-ponytail, allowing a few tendrils to remain by my cheeks. “Earrings will finish the look. Why do you have two holes in each ear?”
I shrugged. “Why don’t you?”
“Teardrop earrings,” she went on, peeking at me with a hand on my shoulder. �
��How do you feel about that?”
I hesitated, lips parting.
She came around. “Tell me what it is. I want you to enjoy the dance.”
“It’s winter,” I said, deciding on the simplest logistical issue. “I might get cold.”
She flashed me a half-smile. “You’ve already seen the robe I made to go with the dress. Besides, the ballroom will be heated. Whatever your objection is, it’s not about the cold.”
“You got me.” I glanced at Loki, who slow-blinked at me from my bed. It was weird talking about this in front of my cat. “Thing is, I’m more of a kick-your-ass sexy than a sultry, demure sexy.”
Her head tilted. “Are you sure about that?” She turned me around to her full-length mirror. “Or is that who you think you have to be?”
In front of me stood a twenty-year-old who looked like me, but she was softer. More vulnerable. She had a layer of lean muscle over both shoulders, down her arms. Her green eyes weren’t the eyes I imagined I gave strangers on the street back in my old life.
These eyes weren’t narrowed, but wide.
This mouth wasn’t pursed, but soft.
This was a Clementine my hard shell had never allowed me to be.
As I’d grown up, my combat boots had become armor. My leather jacket. My hair, wild and large around my head. Nobody could hurt me if they couldn’t get to me.
But I’d had to give all that up when I came to the academy. And I could have pestered Umbra to give me back my old clothes—she claimed she had them in storage—but I found I hadn’t wanted any of them.
Nothing except my mother’s pendant, which I already had around my neck.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll wear the dress.”
“Good.” Eva clapped her hands; on my bed, Loki jumped with the noise. “Because I didn’t have time to tailor another one before tomorrow.”
I shot her a narrow-eyed glance. “So this was always the dress.”
She winked. “The consequences of being my friend are occasionally letting me dress you.”
“And jogging with you in the meadow every day.”
She waved a hand down the length of my body. “Are you regretting it now?”
“Fair enough.”
