Adapt: Book Two of the Forgotten Affinities Series

by Analeigh Ford

  Adapt

  Book Two of The Forgotten Affinities Series

  Analeigh Ford

  Adapt by Analeigh Ford

  © 2018 Analeigh Ford

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of including brief passages for use in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For permissions contact:

  contact@analeighford.com

  Visit the author’s website at:

  analeighford.com

  Ebook ASIN: B07JJ6NT3R

  Also by Analeigh Ford

  The Forgotten Affinities

  Absorb

  Adapt

  Abandon

  Contents

  1. Octavia

  2. Octavia

  3. Flynn

  4. Octavia

  5. Octavia

  6. Octavia

  7. Octavia

  8. Octavia

  9. Draven

  10. Octavia

  11. Octavia

  12. Octavia

  13. Octavia

  14. Octavia

  15. Octavia

  16. Octavia

  17. Cedric

  18. Octavia

  19. Octavia

  20. Octavia

  21. Octavia

  22. Octavia

  23. Octavia

  24. Flynn

  25. Octavia

  26. Octavia

  27. Octavia

  28. Octavia

  29. Octavia

  30. Octavia

  31. Octavia

  32. Octavia

  33. Octavia

  34. Octavia

  35. Octavia

  36. Octavia

  37. Octavia

  38. Octavia

  From the Author

  1

  Octavia

  They still want to take away my powers.

  Not much else is sure, but of that at least I am certain. No one has dared say as much to me, at least not during my recovery, but I can see it on their faces when they look at me. I’ve spent the better part of four weeks in the infirmary, and although everyone visits me as often as they can, I know it’s taking a toll on all of us. Even Kendall has started to show it.

  I can handle rejection. I can handle the truth. What I can’t stand is not knowing what is going to happen next.

  I haven’t even been allowed to study for my classes, though Flynn keeps sneaking me new magic books each time the old ones get confiscated.

  At first when she would catch me, the nurse would remind me in that shrill, no-nonsense voice of hers that I needed to let my body and mind recover fully before I go back to my studies. Now she just takes it away with a sign, and we both know it’s really because there isn’t any point.

  I think I’ve been here so long now that even she has given up on trying to treat me like a regular patient. They aren’t going to let me go back to class. I know it.

  Or, at least, I thought I did.

  But today is different.

  Wednesday shows up before visiting hours and she isn’t even scolded. Instead, my best friend is allowed to wake me with a violent shake of my shoulder until I groan and try to muffle her voice by shoving my head under one of the infirmary’s very flat pillows.

  She wastes no time tugging it away. “Get up!” she says, hitting me over the head with the stolen pillow once to prove her point. “I overheard Harvel and Drummel saying the principal is going to meet with you today.”

  Now I sit up. I still feel the touch of sleep pulling at the corners of my eyelids. I must have heard her wrong, though it could be why she seems to be missing one of her shoes. I’ve been waiting to hear those words for so long. “What?”

  She begins to tap one foot impatiently as I stretch and rub the sleep from my eyes.

  “Yes, now come on! Don’t you want to at least, I don’t know, brush your hair or something?” She isn’t able to conceal the disgust that crosses her face as her eyes roam over the dreadlocks threatening to form at the back of my head.

  Her words finally sink in, and I am barely able to keep from tripping over my tangle of blankets as I jump out of bed. Two books fall out from under my pillow, both smuggled in last night by Flynn, but I don’t even try to hide them this time. If I am finally getting a meeting, then it doesn’t matter anymore. Either I won’t have to hide them, or I won’t need them.

  Cedric appears at the door as soon as I am standing. Wednesday can’t keep up with me as I fly from the edge of my bed into his arms. I know he’s heard the news as well, because he seems to have lost his belt. As always, his body stiffens at first but slowly, as his arms lower to slip around my waist, he relaxes into me.

  “It’s true, then?” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Is it all over?”

  I feel him shaking his head even though I haven’t dared look at his face yet. I was afraid of what I might find there. Now I pull back a bit and look up at him. His handsome face is as unreadable as ever—all hard angles and sharp planes. I don’t know what I was afraid I would see before. I reach for him with my mind, but he only lets me in for a second.

  He shuts me out before I can be completely overwhelmed.

  If he wasn’t already holding me, I might have stumbled back from the sheer force of his anxiety and uncertainty melding with my own.

  “My father has been very careful around me. I know as little as you. Possibly less. I just overheard…”

  “The statues, I know,” I say. “Leave it to them to find out before we do.”

  Just as he says this, Kendall and Flynn turn the corner towards us—each of them missing an article of clothing as well. I break away from Cedric and embrace them both.

  “This has been a long time coming,” Flynn says. I catch him flinching ever-so-slightly the moment he sees the books he lent me sprawled out on the infirmary floor. I shift my feet to the side to block his view. “Too long.”

  Kendall nods his agreement and gives my forearm a reassuring squeeze, his face lit up for the first time in weeks.

  “Where’s Draven?” I peer behind the other three boys, but there is no sign of the Ritual Mage. “Did anyone text him to make sure he knows?”

  “I am sure he will be here when he decides to be here,” Cedric says. “We only just found out.”

  “When is my meeting scheduled for?”

  My only answer is a general, communal shrug. I can’t stop my foot from tapping impatiently. I’ve been waiting for so long, even another minute is going to feel like an eternity.

  I have only just changed into some fresh clothes and sat down to let Kendall brush my hair when we get interrupted by a flurry of text messages all around. We are all, with the exception of Wednesday, wanted in the principal’s office. I lean over to see if Cedric’s father, the principal, personalized his at all. He didn’t.

  I know things have been particularly icy between them ever since the events some weeks ago. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing it does have some effect on him. They may never have been close, but was once there between them has been spread thin.

  Draven still hasn’t arrived yet, but Cedric motions for the rest of us to head down the hall. It’s a short w
alk from the infirmary to the principal’s office, but it feels like it goes on for miles. It doesn’t help that Wednesday and the others let me lead and we take one or two wrong turns along the way.

  To be honest, I might have taken one of them on purpose just to catch a glimpse of the once-familiar front hall. It’s been weeks since I was allowed out of the infirmary. I even thought about calling to tell my parents, hoping for some kind of get-out-of-the-infirmary-free card, but I ultimately decided the risks outweighed the reward. Besides, I am not ready for that “hey mom by the way I am dating four guys” phone call. The novelty of it all should have worn off a bit by now, but my weeks in near-solitary kind of put everything in a weird state of limbo.

  But now that I turn the corner and see the open door to the principal’s office, I suddenly feel like four weeks was not enough time at all. I glance at the three boys here with me. Kind Kendall. Stoic Cedric. Constant Flynn. They’ve each tried to help me through these last few weeks the best they could—but none of us really knows what is going to happen. We don’t even know if, after today, we are going to be allowed to see each other. They could try to separate us, forbid us from keeping contact.

  I don’t think any of us knows the particulars of what happens to mages who have their powers stripped.

  Draven’s words from a now far-off memory return to me now. I’d like to see them try.

  And just like his memory, the Ritual Mage appears as well. He steps out from inside the principal’s office and gives us an exaggerated sigh.

  “You all coming, or what?”

  He presses his mouth to my forehead for a second in the doorway. I want to believe the lighthearted tone of his voice means I have been worried for nothing, but the tightness of his grasp makes me think he is afraid to let me go.

  But he does, and I steel myself up to walk inside. After all, it isn’t such a big deal. It’s only my whole future, all our futures, that’s about to be decided.

  2

  Octavia

  Not much has changed of the office itself since I was last here. The large window still overlooks the street and the dormitories across the way, albeit a bit duller now that fall is fully upon us. Some of the books on the wall have been removed, undoubtedly because a very valuable one was stolen by one of the boys here with me at the beginning of the semester. It may well be the very reason I am still alive here, today, but the fact that he stole it in the first place still stands. I am guessing the principal has moved all the really valuable ones somewhere where they will be less likely to be pilfered.

  Wednesday waits in the hall while I go in and sit in one of the seats in front of the desk with my four boys lined up behind me. For the first time, the rest of the school’s teachers are not present.

  Instead, someone I’ve never seen before stands with his back to us over by the window. He doesn’t so much as turn around to glance at us as we enter. This can’t be good. They say in court jurors won’t look at you if they have found you guilty…so I hope this person is not the one who has decided our fate.

  The principal does not avoid my gaze however, though that doesn’t mean much. He would look me dead in the eyes even if he was about to strip me of my powers right here, right now, himself. He clears his throat and waves an arm at the door to slam it shut behind us.

  “It has been some time since we last spoke, Octavia,” he says. “I imagine these last few weeks have been trying for you.”

  “A bit,” I say, pushing down the urge to tell him how much of an understatement that is.

  “After the events that occurred at Homecoming, I decided that your fate was no longer something that just concerned us here at the New York Academy of Mages. Over the last couple weeks, I have been in touch with the board of directors at all other major mage schools. Their response was overwhelmingly unanimous.”

  I grip the pads of my chair tight.

  “They all agreed that you should be stripped of your powers, effective immediately after the incident.”

  My vision swims and my stomach churns. I knew this was coming. I just knew it, but I never prepared for it. How could I?

  “But, then why did you make us wait so long?” I snap. I can’t keep the fear and anger out of my voice. Kendall places a hand on my shoulder as subtly as he can, but for once it does not make me feel any better.

  The principal stops us from protesting further. “I disagreed.”

  I freeze in my chair, further accusations caught on my lips before they can be spoken. “What?”

  “Flynn here plead a very convincing case on your part, that your multiple affinities are not, actually a mistake—but just an anomaly on account of the unusual circumstances of your birth.”

  “So, did the test results come back?”

  Flynn told me they took some DNA while I was unconscious in the hospital, but the nurse never told me what became of it.

  He nods. “You do, after all, contain the DNA of not just one person—but three.”

  I sit back in my chair now. So Flynn was right. I absorbed two triplet siblings in utero and took on their magical affinities. This still doesn’t explain the principal’s sudden change of heart, however, when I would have thought he went to the other school boards to get justification in taking away my powers. I say as much.

  I feel Cedric stiffen a bit beside me when I do, and I wonder if maybe I crossed a line. He would know; he’s been on the receiving end of his father’s temper his entire life.

  But the principal does not respond with anger or violence. Instead, he surprises us all with the closest thing to a laugh that I have ever heard come from his mouth.

  “Believe it or not, Octavia, I do have your best interests at heart. If your multiple affinities are not a mistake after all, then the only person who was in error, was me. This school was founded to teach mages to use magic and to reach their highest potential in a safe, controlled environment. I provided none of that to you. To any of you.” He stops to clear his throat. “I also feel partially responsible for the events that occurred that night. Amelia was a dear friend of mine. It was I who introduced you to her and gave her access to you, as well as the rest of the students. And for that, I must apologize.”

  This, I did not expect. I glance up at my four boys, and their faces show as much surprise as mine. Cedric is the first one to bow his head as a gesture of acceptance.

  I try to do the same, but he still hasn’t gotten around to what he’s actually going to do with us yet.

  “So, if you knew you weren’t going to take away our powers, why did it take you so long to tell us?”

  “Because there are still those that I answer to,” he says. “I cannot simply go around disregarding all magical law. So I conferred with the other members of the tribunal…”

  Cedric presses a thought into my mind, and I accept it.

  It’s basically the judicial system of all mages. My father is the head.

  Of course he is.

  His father continues, completely unaware of the mental interruption. “…and we finally came to a decision.”

  “Which is?” I brace myself for the worst yet again. It would be just like him to build us all up only to tear us down.

  “You shall be allowed to keep your powers until we have the opportunity to gather and properly evaluate your case.”

  I don’t know what all that means yet, but I cannot help the swell of relief that floods my body. For the first time in weeks, the fear that has clung to me like my own persistent shadow seems to loosen its hold.

  “So, what does that mean for us?” I ask. “How long do we have to prepare?”

  “Three months,” he says. I glance up at my boys again. It isn’t much, but it is more than we were given before. “At which time, the tribunal will commence and decide your fate.”

  He doesn’t give us much time to celebrate before he continues. “In the meantime, there will be some changes to your course of study. In order to convince the rest of the tribunal that you should be given
this opportunity, there were some stipulations.”

  I nod my head. I try to remind myself that whatever he is about to say is probably going to make our lives more difficult, but my own overwhelming relief makes it hard for me to feel anything other than gratitude.

  “First of all, you will be tested alone, without the aid of your paired mages.” He looks up at the boys gathered here with me. “While Flynn, Draven, Cedric, and Kendall are encouraged to help you progress in your studies, they will not be allowed to be in attendance.”

  “Why not?” I blurt. It’s common knowledge that mages rely on their pairs to practice magic. The fact that I will not be able to draw on their power does not bode well for me.

  “Because we must know that you are in control, not these other four,” he says. “If something were to happen that separates you from them again, you must be able to protect yourself and others without any assistance.”

  I know that he is referring to how I was unable to overpower the mage who kidnapped me and Wednesday just a couple weeks ago. Because I was unable to protect us, she nearly destroyed the entire mage world by using me to cast a ritual that would lift The Sight. The spell keeps magic invisible to the naked, non-magical eye. Without it, we would no longer be able to hide in plain sight as we have now for millennia.

  I try to look contrite, but I know my disappointment must be visible.