by Mana Sol
I should apologize and grovel at their feet or something suitably disarming if the fae girl and her friends cornered me again. I knew better than to hope they wouldn’t. This was their turf, and even if they didn’t have plenty of chances to catch me alone, it wasn’t as if Addy’s and Genie’s presence would dissuade them. If anything, our being together only made it easier for them. Fish in a barrel. And because I’d made enemies, I had put the girls in the line of fire, too. I’d thought they would be the ones to mess things up for me, but I’d been the one to line us all up for a nice ass-kicking in the next few days.
If I wanted to do right by them, I needed to keep my head down. Everything I did, said, every enemy I made was theirs, too. We were in this together, and as Addy had said, there was no avoiding it. We had to watch each other’s backs. My bruised ego would have to take a backseat, and I had better get used to it. Fast.
I twisted a savage pinch into my upper thigh to brand the lesson into it. I was in the lion’s den, surrounded by people who didn’t care I was a Thaumaturgist or how valuable I could be to the Citadel. Didn’t matter to them how hard I’d worked or all the things riding on whether I succeeded or failed here. I wasn’t one of them, and that was enough for them to ignore everything else. The professors? I would be surprised if they even bothered to pretend they knew nothing. More likely was that they’d walk right on by while someone dunked my head into the nearest stone fountain. Maybe they’d even blame it on me. After all, I was the one who accepted the invitation, wasn’t I?
I pinched the bridge of my nose and held it like that for a long moment to get my emotions under control. Nephilim aura aftereffects, I realized belatedly. It was amplifying everything I felt, making me more bitter, more afraid, more homesick. It figured that something had slipped through with how hard I’d been trying to keep my mind off of him. I etched the Dispelling sign into the air, fingertips glowing white as shining threads of magic spooled out of them to form a blue circle. I twitched my fingers again to draw a line through it, twice, just in case, and broke the circle. It shattered into pieces of blueish white, and wisps of energy pulled themselves out of my chest to join the shimmering shower.
Damn it. That was thrice now that I’d had to cast a counter-curse since last night. Either he was even stronger than I expected him to be or I was that much weaker. But hadn’t I resisted his aura twice, too? The second time, I hadn’t even needed to Dispel it at all.
I shook my head, half to clear my thoughts and half in disgust, and just then my alarm twinkled with soothing, growing chimes. My room became awash in a soft white glow, and I shoved away the covers wrapped around my waist with a sigh. Too late to go back to sleep now even if I thought I could. With one last frown at the mostly-faded silvery handprint lingering on my wrist, I shoved away the last fragmented thoughts of blue eyes and electric touches and slid out of bed.
* * *
“Bye now,” Genie chirped. There was butter on the side of her mouth again, and I paused mid-stride with a frown. Why couldn’t she keep her food off her face? And who did she learn her eating habits from in the first place? I’d spent more time trying to avoid watching her eat her breakfast than I’d spent eating mine.
“Genie, go wipe your mouth off -” I began to say, only to see Addy whip out one of the nice cloth napkins from back in the dining hall. “Addy!”
“What! I’m pretty sure our scholarship covers a freaking napkin, okay!” She began wiping at the corner of the other girl’s mouth. “Open it so I can get the corner -”
“You can’t just take those whenever you want. Take it back.”
“Make me, then, Miss Smartypants. Some of us aren’t too good to take an extra napkin or two in case we need it.”
I shook my head. Of all the ways to broadcast how different and more wretched we were, this was probably one of the most ignorant. “Let’s just go into the girls’ room.”
After that, we had only a few minutes to chat and go over the plans we’d decided the night before. Addy and Genie would attend their morning classes together while I went to mine, and then we would meet for lunch in the secondary dining area. I hadn’t explained everything that I should, but I’d told them about newfound fae friends who might come looking for me - us, rather. No mention of the yogurt or Zed, only that they’d been rude and inserted themselves into my company without invitation. None of us wanted to deal with that kind of headache on our first day, so it had taken little effort to ease Addy off her retaliatory reflexes and agree to the sensible plan. And then we would attend our afternoon classes together, the few integrated courses I would be taking with them.
“Don’t get into any trouble,” I said before I could stop myself, and Addy sent me an irritated look over her shoulder as she herded the oblivious Genie away. I sighed. I was overcompensating for yesterday, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. I’d almost been the first one to crack and now I was lashing out with self-important authority as if it would make up for what I’d done. At least the fact that I’d almost outright hexed someone remained a secret…and if Zed didn’t say anything, neither would I.
“Literally acting so crotchety. Didn’t realize we packed a mom when we came here.”
“And I can ‘literally’ hear you right now,” I said loudly, but it was too late. They rounded the corner and disappeared, leaving me to duck my head and walk away before I attracted any more attention from the other students who were already glaring at me. Good start to my day.
When I finally reached the classroom, I pushed my hair back and made sure my uniform skirt was in perfect order before entering. I wouldn’t be making any friends no matter how immaculate I looked, but I could at least work to give them less to aggrieve me over. And indeed, the dozen students inside sitting at their desks glared at me in concert as I picked my way between the two rows and found an empty seat. An empty seat with no immediate neighbors, thankfully, and I hoped there weren’t many more students joining us in these next ten minutes before class began. I rather enjoyed being out of arm’s reach of anyone.
But it wasn’t to be. A small gaggle of students entered the classroom a few minutes later, and I studiously ignored them all when I spotted Zedekiel somewhere in the middle. No, not spotted - I hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of a shoulder between that handful of students. It was the tingling around my wrist that had told me he was close, and I discreetly drew another Dispelling sign with my thumb and forefinger. That was going to be four times since last night. I’d never had to do it more than three times for any curse, ever. I grimaced and poured all my determination into looking elsewhere as he sat down like a king among kings. Everyone moved aside to give him a respectful berth, and he shot a glare at one particular Light fae who tried to shimmy her seat too close. Archangel, indeed. Untouchable, huh?
“Take your seats,” a white-haired professor announced at the front of the room. I hadn’t even noticed her entering at all: Thanks, Zed. “Class will begin now.”
12
“Welcome to your first day of Combinatorics,” the professor announced. “I am your instructor, Lorena Pompey. At all times, I expect you to address me as Professor Pompey without exception, no matter how familiar you might be with me outside of the academic sphere.”
I frowned. Her voice was melodic, aged, and calm, but her words were a transparent warning to the rest of the class as sharp as any blade. I sneaked a glance to the right to see their reactions, and I caught more than a few of them exchanging meaningful looks. The significance of her warning had greater breadth than I realized, though I couldn’t deduce in what capacity. Did she have relatives in this class? Grandchildren of family friends? She didn’t quite have the look of vampire aristocracy even though her large brown eyes were flecked with telltale red. If anything, I would have thought she wasn’t born a vampire at all, that she was a member of a lower caste. She and Professor Octavius looked nothing alike with her warm face and button-like features, and the professor’s robes she wore were a friendly medium blu
e rather than sophisticated black. She could easily pass for human if she wore dark lenses in the Tenements. So in what capacity was she ‘familiar’ with all these students who were children of the Citadel’s most elite? She seemed more the type to make them turn their noses up if they crossed paths outside the Academy.
She delivered a few more introductory words concerning expectations for behavior and diligence, more warnings that didn’t apply to me because I had never missed an assignment in my life. After that, the proper work began. It was my first time seeing anyone so casually use their magic in a mundane setting, but I supposed in a school like this one, what she did was mundane: with a glowing fingertip, she illustrated diagrams in mid-air or against the dark board that took up the entire front wall of the classroom. We hadn’t had that at my old school. Humans rarely had any magic worth refining to begin with, but even in our most advanced courses with the most skillful instructors, they never spent magic so wastefully. Chalk on blackboard surfaces for anything too complicated to describe orally, and the spoken word for everything else. Physical resources were always in short supply, so we had no choice but to accustom ourselves to the scarcity; writing utensils and magic didn’t come from nothing, after all. But here, Professor Pompey simply rattled on while tracing her illustrations in the air with no concern for magic conservation at all. I scribbled furiously, marveling at how easy this was. Was this how all the wealthy Arcane Institutes were? No wonder the students that graduated from here were so much more successful. I didn’t know whether to be excited or bitter about such a skewed dichotomy but settled on the former. The second-class treatment humans had to deal with from the Otherkind aside, it wasn’t anyone’s fault that humans had less magic to spare. There was no one to blame there, nothing but nature. And since I was here, the best I could do was take full advantage of it. Maybe one day, things would be different…
“Fifteen-minute break,” Professor Pompey announced, and instantly several heads went down to rest on their desks. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Miss Kaine, a moment, if you will.”
I was still in the middle of scratching out the last several words of my notes from her lecture, and I paused mid-stroke and looked up to find her already walking out of the classroom. Glares burned into my back as I followed her out, chest aflutter and toes curling in my shoes. I had done nothing wrong, I was sure. I was a model student and always had been. Besides, what could I possibly have done? I’d listened. I’d taken notes. I’d been quiet and well-behaved. Even so, when Pompey closed the wooden door behind us and motioned for me to join her by the wall, I was already hanging an apology on the tip of my tongue just in case.
“Miss Kaine,” she said with a furrowed brow. “I couldn’t help but notice you’re using a quill. And an inkwell. Do you have difficulty etching?”
“No, Professor. I retain what I learn better when I’m writing it down, not etching.” To prove it, I raised my hand and traced an array between us, even spinning the inner circle within to demonstrate its stability.
But instead of putting her at ease, all that did was replace her worried frown with an uncomfortable smile. “Ah,” she said. “Well, Miss Kaine - I understand it’ll take time to adjust, but typically, we don’t use ink and quill here. Or any writing utensil that makes sounds, actually. In a small environment like this one especially, the scratching can be a bit disruptive.”
My face burned. I hoped I wasn’t outright blushing. “I apologize.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Kaine. I understand things must be extremely different from how they were done at your home institution. But your thoughtfulness is appreciated and if you ever need any help, don’t hesitate to ask.”
I was still embarrassed, but I decided to like the woman anyway. Few people in this entire place felt anything but cold indifference or outright dislike for me, and Professor Pompey was neither. “Thank you, Professor. I’ll work hard to keep up.”
“I say, I think you won’t have to try very hard to do that at all. I noticed you were drawing a three-layer algorithm from memory on the side of your notes to test the theorem I was lecturing on.”
Shame gave way to a bubbling spring of sneaky pride. I’d better not, I scolded myself, so I modestly ducked my head. “I enjoy the mathematics of magic. Combinatorics was something I’ve always been interested in.”
What a juvenile thing for me to say, so lukewarm and generic, but the woman smiled and nodded. “I’m glad I have at least one student in my class who wanted to be there. I think you’re the only one.”
I pretended surprise because that was the polite thing to do. It wouldn’t be nice to agree that most everyone hated mathemagics with a passion across every single race, magical or not. “I think they’ll change their minds as the semester goes on,” I said meekly, knowing full well I was lying and that she knew I knew it. Still. Politeness.
“Ah…we shall see. Keep up the good work and I might even find an aide at last. The head faculty has been on me for a while to find one, and I think you would be a charming fit. Keep on with the algorithms, Miss Kaine, I was very pleased to see someone proofing the work and showing their understanding for once.”
“I didn’t think you would notice. I sit in the back, so…”
“Ah.” She paused. “Well. Yes…”
Too late, I realized exactly what she wasn’t saying. She’d noticed because I’d drawn attention to myself - with my quill scratching all over my paper. My face heated again like a lava flow, and she patted my shoulder with a too-friendly enthusiasm. “Well, that’s all. Just one thing - Deputy Headmistress Olisanna, have you met her yet?”
“No, Professor.”
“That’s all right, I didn’t think so. She sent word just before class began that she wants to see you in her office between your morning and afternoon classes. You’re to bring all your things and meet her outside on the courtyard by the North Tower entrance.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“And of course, since we’re lucky enough to have one of your very own Form Representatives in the class with us, he can escort you there.”
I opened my mouth to object, but she was already herding me back into the class once more. As I passed through the doorway, my wrist tingled again, and I glanced to the left to see Zed glaring at me from his seat, ignoring his chattering friends.
Wonderful.
13
Combinatorics was a two-block class, and so was my next course. Thankfully, Zed wasn’t in this one, and I happily spent my first Advanced Theory class away from his irritating glares. Not that I caught him since I studiously avoided looking in his direction for the rest of our first class, but it was a feeling, a strong feeling…I hope. Or was I projecting my own weakness onto him and inwardly hoping he’d been watching me?
This was why I didn’t mess with Nephilim. I’d never felt so out of control before. More than once, I caught myself running my fingers along the faded silvery print on my wrist while listening to Pompey. How long would it be before Zed’s mark disappeared? Damn Nephilim and their angel-touches. One would think they would be more cautious about being so handsy, but I supposed he had no reason to worry about what marks he left on me since I was only human. What was I going to do about it, run to the professors and whine? It didn’t even hurt.
Still, it bothered me. I tugged firmly on the sleeve of my uniform blazer and began walking toward the North Tower.
Zed was waiting by the entrance of the wing. I had hoped we would miss each other so I could walk alone, but at least we didn’t have to speak. I refused to walk behind him and headed toward the staircase, keeping stride, and more than once I caught him throwing me a sharp look when I failed to skitter out of his way as we moved through the oncoming students. No sympathy for him. I was the one who had to keep passive-aggressive company with the one person in the entire Academy who hated me the most. But at least he wasn’t shoving me off the winding staircase we climbed to the third floor. There was only one office there, and when we approached the
door, still side by side because I was not going to walk behind him like an obedient lamb, I stuck my hand out and knocked.
“Come in, it’s unlocked.”
The large wooden door creaked open in a decidedly eerie way, and I looked around the dim, circular room before stepping inside. So dark. The blonde woman standing behind her desk and facing away from us remained half-hidden in the shadows, and I had to squint to get a better look at her. Why weren’t there any magelights in here? Just two lit torches in their sconces with the others unlit. Definitely eerie.
Zed lingered outside the doorway while I waited a few feet away from the desk. I wished I couldn’t feel him there, but the Nephilim touch on my wrist, though nearly gone, still tingled just enough to let me know he was nearby. Well, if he wouldn’t make himself useful, then he should go, I thought petulantly. Or were we just going to stare at the Deputy Headmistress’s back while she fiddled with something from her towering bookcase?
“Have a seat.”
Her voice was even huskier than it had sounded through the door, and it didn’t suit her reedy, almost possibly tall frame at all. Shoulders narrow, willowy arms that made her sleeves billow like there was nothing in them, an inhumanly angular face - now that she had turned around, I understood in an instant what she was. Dark fae, older blood, earthy and otherworldly at the same time.
“Thank you for your help, Zedekiel,” she said, and I didn’t dare interrupt to say he’d been no help at all. “But one more thing. Please let Professor Octavius know I’ll have to borrow you again this weekend after classes. It seems Ravonne is unwell, and she thinks she’ll be too indisposed to help.”
