by Mana Sol
“Come on,” I snapped as I veered off to the left. There were a few empty round tables to the back, small ones that only seated four, and only so long as they were fine eating on a cramped surface. Perfect for us. “No one’s going to want those tables, which means it’s fair game for us.”
“What! I want to be near the doors.”
I shot Addy a glare over my shoulder. Clearly, she had been part of the crowd accustomed to getting first pickings at her old school. Not so here. “We’re getting the leftover table,” I told her. “Don’t be a diva.”
“A diva -!”
“We’re at the bottom of the totem pole. When are you going to face facts?”
“Totem pole! I’m not going to roll over just because people think they’re better than me -”
“This one,” I interrupted as we all came to a stop by the small table. We had no view of the grounds outside in our dim corner, but that was just as well. All we would see through the windows were students on the way into the Academy with their luggage and haughty glares, anyway. It was better to go unseen where we could for now. “Look over there, see that?”
Genie was already sitting down while Addy continued to stand and fume, but they both twisted to look where I’d nodded. On the other side of the dining hall, younger students - First Form, obviously - were carrying platters of food to tables. Not their own tables, but that of their upperclassmen who lounged and waited as they talked amongst themselves. “Is someone getting our food, too?” Genie asked, head tilted in squinting confusion. “Are we going to wait here?”
I shook my head. “That’s something I heard about when I asked around. I don’t know anyone who attended here who’d bother talking to me, but I have a few friends who got into the other Arcane Institutes, and this is pretty standard for them. They have like -” I paused, trying to think of a graceful description, but none came. So I lowered my voice and gestured for them to lean in over the table in case any vampires wandered too close with their heightened hearing. “Seniority is everything, but besides that, there’s bottom scum who have to do everything everyone else says. I don’t know the exact way they do things here, but bringing food, cleaning rooms, carrying their books, they’re essentially servants.”
“What?” Addy stared. “They’re all high and mighty blue-bloods. You’re telling me some of them are worse than us?”
“No. We’re new fish. New meat. We’re the bottom of the bottom scum. The difference is that no one is going to order us to do anything because they don’t want to be besmirched by our kind of human filth. The most outcast of them is still higher on the food chain than we are.”
She snorted. “I’d rather be on my own and not have to lick their shoes, then. That’s fine with me.”
I rolled my eyes. That went without saying. It looked like Genie wasn’t interested enough to have an opinion on things one way or the other and had already lost interest as she began examining some students passing across the way with a smile, but so long as she was aware… I’d given her warning, at least, but I could already tell I was going to have to keep her head out of the clouds. Maybe not drag her down too roughly, though, either… “I’m telling you both because you have to be careful. Things are different for the upper echelon, but it’s still dog-eat-dog. Yeah, all of them would be at the top of the pyramid out there in the Citadel, but this is Jupiter Gate society, and in a nest full of the elite, you’re going to get those who rise and those who sink. Look again. Those underclassmen running around - and see? You saw that? The one sitting down tripped him. No one’s going to do a thing about it, either. They think it’s funny, and some of them are taking out their frustrations from when it happened to them before when they were the ones who were bottom scum. It’s vicious, ladies. Don’t go anywhere near them and be careful when you get your food. Which we’ll have to do ourselves, obviously.”
“Ha. So we don’t get our own little bootlicking servants, huh?” Addy grinned. “Good. I do things with my own hands, anyway. I’m not a helpless little kid gloves-wearing princess like the rest of these -”
“Indoor voice, please. We’re trying to not end up on pikes planted in the middle of the courtyard, okay? We should stay calm… Genie? Are you listening?” I reached over and tentatively tapped the girl’s shoulder after a strategic pause. She was staring back at the other students, a few of whom were staring back. Well, that wasn’t good. Being in their crosshairs already when we hadn’t even done anything -
“They’re looking at me. I think they’re talking about me.”
I froze. A sudden memory from earlier this morning flashed through my mind. ‘He was asking for it. He shouldn’t have looked at me like that.’ Oh, no. Not like this. Was that seriously going to trigger her outbursts, when people looked at her the wrong way? If that was the case, then how were we supposed to go a single day without her setting someone on fire? We wouldn’t even make it to our first classes tomorrow.
“Genie. Genie!” When I failed to get her attention after several hissing attempts, I resorted to shaking her shoulder so hard her head wobbled back and forth even though in hindsight, that could have proven my combustive end. Still she refused to turn away from them, and I looked up at Addy with an urgent, wide-eyed glare. She leaped into action, sliding in front of the smaller girl with all the grace of a ballerina and clamping her hands over Genie’s arms.
“Let’s get some food!” she announced. “Blair, ready to go?”
I breathed a sigh of relief when our very own dormant volcano finally stopped craning her neck to peer around Addy. “No, not me,” I said, suddenly exhausted. Was I sweating? I rubbed my arms down and crossed them over the smooth wooden surface of our table. “Someone needs to hold our table. Or at the very least stay sitting here to dissuade others from spontaneously decorating it with their trash or whatever.”
Addy raised an eyebrow. “You think they’re going to bother paying literally any attention to us?” she asked as she helped Genie up out of her seat with a hand under her elbow. “You’re the one who said they don’t want to have anything to do with, you know, lowly humans.”
I sighed. “It’s classic bullying techniques, hello. But seeing as you were queen bee wherever you came from, you wouldn’t know, I guess. Just know that they have lots of options to make our life hell, and with all their magic at their fingertips, it’s even easier to do that than it is at human schools.”
“And… you sitting here is going to change that? If they want to do something, they’ll do it whether you’re here or not. They’re not scared of you.”
At that, Genie’s gaze volleyed back and forth between us, and she planted herself in place so that Addy couldn’t keep pulling her away. It was only then that I noticed something strange about her normally hazel eyes - they looked almost orange now. Or maybe that was the lighting? Except our corner was dim… “They’re going to bother you?” she asked, and despite the chirping, high-pitched tone of her natural voice, there was something heavier and sharper there suddenly. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight. “I’ll take care of them,” she added. “I knew something was wrong. They were staring at me. They’re going to do something. I knew it -”
“It’s fine. I promise.” I waved my hand at her to calm her down. Was that smoke I was smelling? Damn it - “Genie! Calm down. It’s fine, nothing’s going to happen. I’m just staying here so no one takes our table. That’s all. Ignore everything else I said.”
A piss poor attempt at backtracking, but what else could I do in the next three seconds that didn’t involve tackling her to the ground if she so much as twitched her nose at the other students? But I was spared the effort and the risk when Genie reeled herself back in at last. She sniffed. “We’re nice,” she said. “We want to be friends with everyone. We don’t want to make any trouble. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”
… Okay. Sounded like she was reciting a chant, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince us or herself. That did nothing to make m
y goosebumps fade, but at least she was calm once more. “Great. Get some food from those bars over there and I’ll go when you two come back.”
She let Addy pull her away with one final glance back at me, and I thought I saw the orange tint of her eyes fade back to a pretty hazel. Hm. I didn’t know what to think about that, but I’d contemplate it later at a better time. For now, I folded my arms together on top of the table again and waited patiently as I stared down at the wood…
A rattling-sliding sound of multiple chair legs clattering on the floor made me look up, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from sucking in an alarmed gasp when I realized who had joined me. I hadn’t heard their footsteps at all: three students, all of them smiling at me in their sinister fae way…
9
Light? Dark? No, Light fae, like Ravonne earlier. The brimming, sparkling charm they wore was unmistakable, and this girl even looked a little like her. Her hair was dark green with light streaks of brown and her eyes a wild shade of yellow, but it was that green hue to her lips that felt so familiar. I couldn’t forget a toxic shade like that, or maybe it was the venom in the angles of her face that made me think so. Not that I had time to inspect her features any further now. I leaned back in my chair, casually sliding my arms off the table and hoping they mistook it as a nonchalant gesture instead of a wary one.
“Hey,” the lone girl in the middle said, and she traced her fingertip along her now-bright green bottom lip. Was it glowing? Firefly mouth. Cute. If I’d had any doubt she was Light fae before, it was gone now. “So how are you liking Jupiter Gate so far?”
I smiled. “It’s really nice. Everything is different from what I’m used to.”
“Bit challenging to get into the rhythm, huh?” She slouched over the table, her chest slinking over the surface as she stretched her arms across it toward me like a leisurely cat. Her long, slender fingers splayed apart before curling again, and she let out a contented sigh while keeping her yellow stare fixed on me. She looked feral. “So I hear one of you is a pyromancer, huh? That’s rare. You two friends?”
“We just met.” I knew they were talking about Genie. Who else? “She’s not here right now, though.”
“Oh, we saw her.” Her white teeth gleamed in a wide smile, and the boys who sat on either side of me shifted in their seats to face me squarely. “The other one, what does she do? They seemed pretty close, huh?”
I wondered if they would have approached our table if it had been anyone other than me staying behind. Would they have asked about me with such interest if it had been me who’d gone off with Genie while Addy lingered? Or had they only come here because I’d looked like an easy target to intimidate into spilling my guts? Certainly, Addy was far taller and impressively athletic, and Genie - well. She’d nearly burned a man alive. I, on the other hand, was a nobody, and the plainest looking one of all of us. The stiffest, too. Maybe they thought I wasn’t flexible enough to bend gracefully under pressure.
“You won’t get many answers from me,” I said mildly. “I’m not tuned in to the gossip, and we all just met. Names are all we know of each other.”
“You’re talking like you think we’re shaking you down,” the fae girl giggled. “We don’t care, really. We’re just curious about how long the three of you are going to last here. You must miss home already.”
“Do you want me to miss it?”
“Are you sassing me?” Her smile sharpened, razor-keen. “I came all the way here to be nice to you. You could say thank you for the generosity.”
“Thank you for the generosity.”
It was a bad idea to be my real self, my caustic self that had never made me beloved to anyone even before I came here, but I was fast losing patience with how much hostile confidence she oozed. Not just her, but all three of them, and when their expressions melted from superior glee to outright hostility, I couldn’t help but delight in it. I was making a mistake; I knew it - and I still couldn’t stop.
Coming after me, just me? I would have let it go. I didn’t care whether they tried to shove me into the closest janitor’s closet (did they have those here?) or into my own locker (hadn’t seen any of those yet, either). But they were trying to use me to get to the others.
No. Uh-uh. I didn’t think so. I knew how to pander and pander well even if Addy disagreed with my penchant for peace, but to use me as a tool to get to someone else? I would have let them knock me down however many times it took to appease their little children egos, but I wouldn’t let them walk all over me to get to the girls.
It was a bad idea to get attached to them so quickly, but it was too late. In my own way, I’d thrown down the gauntlet for Addy and Genie, and now I sat here smiling at three people who could make life for me at Jupiter Gate hell. There would be others joining in eventually, too, those who were part of their little clique. Or big clique, I corrected myself when I noticed two joined tables full of staring fae students out of the corner of my eye. But that was all right. At my old school, I’d run into my share of bullying… until I made it stop. And here? I smiled wider to match the fae girl’s growing glower. I was an old dog, aged and patient, but if they tugged on my tail just a little too hard even once…
“You’re kind of lippy,” she said finally. “That won’t do you any favors here.”
“What do you mean? You wanted me to thank you, I thanked you.” I tilted my head to the other side. “I can put my hands together and bow if you want. I just think that would make you uncomfortable. Should I anyway?” I planted my hands on top of the table, poised to rise and still smiling. “Say the word. I’m a grateful guest, and I’m glad you came all the way here to ask after us.”
“The bowing comes later, human. Come on.” She stood up, sending her chair rattling back. “Looks like she’s dumber than we thought. That’s fine, fresh meat.”
“It’s Blair Kaine. It was nice to meet you. Thanks for the hospitality.” I tapped my fingers on the table, scratching gently along the smooth wood. “If you’re ever in need of company, let me know.”
“Like we’d want to have anything to do with you.”
“You came to me. It wasn’t to get to know me better?”
She broke sooner than I thought she would. Maybe the fae were just more impatient than I knew, or maybe I’d underestimated how infuriating I could be. Either way, a heartbeat later something slammed the side of my face on the table and mashed it down. Two other pairs of hands pinned my wrists, and I had to wonder why they would bother. All three of them to hold me down? Maybe they were of one of the fae subspecies weaker than humans. That would be nice. But I couldn’t test that theory now. Fingers clamped around my skull while pointed nails scraped my scalp. The fae girl had a long reach: she’d leaned over the table and grabbed me by my hair, and her two friends had leaped to join her before I could react. Figured. A fae clan stuck together, and cliques were just practice clans. I’d been ready for it.
“I’m really confused,” she said loudly over my head. “Where do you get the nerve? You’re acting like someone’s going to come to your rescue. Do you see anyone coming? Your friends?”
She yanked me up only to turn my head and slam it back down on the table. That was going to bruise, but she’d gone and proven my suspicions of her lacking strength while she was at it. Not much punch to her if things came down to it, which meant she would never allow them to. If I got free, I could probably gift a few shiners to her friends too, assuming they were of a similar breed. Cousins and like-blooded traveled in packs, didn’t they?
Not that I needed to fight. Not like that, at least.
“Let me know when you’re done,” I said. “I wouldn’t want them to see me like this. They’ll think you don’t like us.”
“You’re still talking? Jaheen, get some of that yogurt you were going to throw out. I think Blair Kaine here could do with a little makeover.”
“Tell him to get it. Why me?”
“I asked you, didn’t I?”
“Didn’t have to.”
“Just go.”
Maybe they weren’t cousins after all, but siblings. Smacked a little of how I got along with mine. “Some problems?” I asked in the same mild voice I knew she hated to bits by now. “Do you need my help with anything?”
“Shut up. You can stay right there and get comfortable. You’re not budging until I have my fun.”
Almost time. She was making me stare at the rest of the dining hall where more and more heads were turning to look at us. Addy and Genie were probably still on the far side of the long stretch of the room, which was good because they might have turned this into a fight. I didn’t need that. What I had planned was better by far. My pulse raced at the thought. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t - but this was self-defense. I was doing nothing wrong. I had to protect myself, didn’t I?
‘Jaheen’ returned with a small white porcelain bowl, and it was the first time I got a good look at his face even with the side of mine still mashed atop the table. He had a faint green hue to his lips too, and although his eyes weren’t yellow like the girl’s, there was something in the sharpness of his eyebrows and a squint that resembled hers. Almost definitely related. Behind him, nearly everyone in sight was staring at me now, and she’d been right: no one was coming to help me. No students, no professors, no one.
He was almost close enough, Jaheen. A half a dozen more steps and he would be right next to me once more, and the other two were still holding me down. I probably could have fought free while he was gone, but why would I? Four more steps, three -
