by Martha Carr
Before she could respond with her attack, the firedrake darted between the two girls, flapped around Fritz, and raked aggressively with his tiny, sharp claws.
“Hey!” Murphy shouted. “We’re not trying to fight our familiars—woah!” She ducked when Bella’s twirling bo staff whistled. It would have struck her shoulder if she hadn’t been fast enough.
“Adsulto protentia,” Teresa shouted. A shimmering burst of translucent light launched from her hand toward Bella and Raven and slid them back across the grass.
Raven looked at the girl in astonishment. I need to ask about that spell. Teresa swung her practice sword at her but she blocked it easily enough. Bella raced forward to attack Murphy with the bo staff again. The girl was able to swing the ax in time to defend herself, but that was the limit.
“Hey, watch out!” Raven slipped between the other two girls a moment before Teresa’s practice sword swung into Bella Chase’s back. The blow when the weapon connected with her sent a jolt up her arm, but she moved quickly and swiped her blade at their opponent.
The only thanks she received was a sneer from Bella, who wasn’t about to let her take the credit for defending her or for fighting off their sparring opponents. Her bo staff lashed out at Teresa, who barely managed to block the attack. The move forced Raven back a few steps to avoid being knocked over and her partner stretched her hand out and shouted, “Pareo telum!” A yellow light flared around the head of Murphy’s ax and jerked it sideways. The girl held on tightly.
Bella advanced and her firedrake familiar flapped around the sparring ring while it uttered tiny shrieks. Teresa slipped around her to swing her sword in an aggressive arc toward Raven again.
“Woah!”
Their weapons met with a jarring impact and she spun aside and prepared to deliver a retaliatory strike against Teresa. Before she could, however, Bella stepped between them again and delivered a strike with the bo staff. The other girl deflected it and in the next moment, Bella Chase fought the two other students on her own and drove them across the sparring ring.
She didn’t even try to defend me.
“Bella, we’re supposed to be a team!”
“It’s fine.” The girl spun away from Murphy’s whistling ax and cracked the staff against the other girl’s calf before she jerked the opposite end up and jabbed at Teresa. “You can pay me back later.”
Not for this.
With a grunt of frustration, Raven hurried to where Murphy and Teresa did everything they could to defend against their attacker’s wildly spinning bo staff. The cat darted between Bella’s legs, and the fierce mage in training cried out in surprise when she almost tripped over him. Teresa took the chance to swing her blade toward Bella’s hip but Raven was there to block with her dull sword. Her partner looked at her in surprise, and she shoved the blade away before she prepared to attack again. “I think I paid you back.”
Her uncooperative partner growled and stepped sideways to shove her out of the way with her shoulder and hip. “I got this. Stop getting in my way.”
The bo staff arced toward Murphy’s head. The other witch ducked aside and lifted her ax. It was too heavy to do exactly what the girl wanted and only glanced off the staff and Bella launched into a rapid series of strikes that Teresa almost couldn’t deflect.
“Hey, there’s no I in team!” Raven shouted.
“Nope. But there is a me.” Bella leapt away from their opponents before she could reach her side again and almost knocked her down. “Wesley!”
The firedrake gave a piercing shriek—not anywhere near as loud as a dragon’s—before he dove toward their adversaries. The glow of fire built in the firedrake’s open mouth and Raven shoved her practice sword into her other hand. She can’t attack them with fire like that. It’s way too dangerous.
Murphy swung her weapon again and didn’t see the pillar of fire that streaked from the firedrake’s mouth toward her.
Raven thrust her hand out and shouted, “Sequantur flamma!”
The fiery attack stopped in midair and Murphy looked up with wide eyes that reflected the glowing orange. Raven pulled her hand away and tossed the churning fire into the sky. It sailed harmlessly behind the sparring students and over the field before it finally petered out. A few distracted students stopped their mock battles to watch it soar above them.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bella shouted and whirled toward her. “That’s crossing the line.”
“No.” With a frown, Raven returned the practice sword to her right hand and straightened to glare at the girl. “Attacking Murphy and Teresa with your firedrake’s abilities when they only have crappy weapons to defend themselves is crossing a line. You could have seriously hurt them, Bella. And we’re supposed to fight together.”
“What you did directly undermined my attack. If you’re so worried about being a team, you should’ve used that as an opportunity to win.”
“I’m not trying to seriously hurt anyone else simply to win a sparring prize.” Raven shook her head. “That can’t be all that matters to you.”
“Well, I’m fairly sure Professor Fellows isn’t trying to teach us how to save our enemies and turn against our partners.” Bella raised her staff and swung sideways toward Raven’s ribs.
She deflected the blow with ease and positioned to defend herself with the dull edge of the practice sword. “Hey, I didn’t attack you.”
The girl thumped the end of her bo staff into the grass again and glared at the other mage in training. “Stick to your dragon, Alby. I’m the only one who gets to control my familiar and his abilities.” Her firedrake responded with another shriek and swooped to land on her shoulder.
Raven scoffed. “Not if you’re trying to fry other students to a crisp.”
“Isn’t that what dragons do?”
By now, the closest students had forgotten their sparring altogether to watch their altercation.
She gritted her teeth and stood her ground. “Yeah. On command. But I’m not trying to hurt anyone and I’d never tell Leander to attack anyone else like that.”
Right on cue, a much louder shriek than Wesley’s rose from the other side of the stables across the field. Many of the students jumped in surprise, and although Bella didn’t react physically, her gaze darted toward Leander’s new pen. Raven didn’t turn to look.
“Holy crap, you were right,” Bennett shouted and smacked one of the other boy’s shoulders. “She did bring a dragon to Fowler.”
“That’s a dragon?”
“Did you see it blow fire?”
“That’s only smoke, Rory.”
“Enough.” Professor Fellows stormed across the grass toward the young mages in training who confronted one another. He darted one fleeting look at the stables, then stepped into their sparring ring and folded his arms. “Did you two forget the object of this exercise?”
“No, Professor.” Raven shook her head but wouldn’t look away from Bella’s burning gaze. “Only one of us did.”
When the weapons professor stepped toward them and leaned forward to get their attention, Murphy drew in a sharp breath. Her ax thumped into the grass, but he ignored her. “My reason for pairing you two together wasn’t arbitrary. I want you both to understand that. If you can’t come to some kind of an arrangement that doesn’t endanger other students or disrupt my class, we’ll have to look at very different alternatives I don’t think either one of you is willing to explore.”
Raven forced herself to look up at him and nodded. “I understand.” And I’m not worried about it. I know I did the right thing.
“Miss Chase?” Fellows raised an eyebrow at Bella, who sighed with exaggerated patience and finally looked at him. “You said there was a prize. I’m only trying to win it.”
“Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear. But what I said, Miss Chase, is that the object of this lesson was to find balance and to learn to fight together as a team. And don’t try to use ‘I didn’t hear that part,’ as an excuse. We both know you’
re too smart and too driven for that.”
Her nostrils flared, but she didn’t say anything else.
“I want both of you to return your weapons and wait at the wheelbarrows for me. We’ll rotate Miss Murphy and Miss Reynolds through a few other matches until the end of class. Go on.”
Bella glared at her partner again and hefted the bo staff in her hand before she turned swiftly and stormed out of the sparring ring. Raven headed after her. She caught Murphy’s gaze and whispered as she passed, “You should practice with an ax more, Murph. I think you got somethin’ there.”
The girl giggled nervously before she realized she’d dropped her practice weapon.
Professor Fellows instructed the other students to resume sparring again, while Raven joined Bella beside the wall around Fowler Academy’s main buildings. She tossed the practice sword into the wheelbarrow and turned to wait for their professor. The other girl folded her arms and fumed.
“Hey, I’m not trying to cut you down,” Raven told her. “I know you want to win, but these aren’t real battles, Bella. You know that.”
Her partner uttered a derisive snort and tossed her hair behind her shoulders. “If it was a real battle, I definitely would have won.”
She scrunched her nose and couldn’t help but laugh a little. “And I wouldn’t have stopped you or your familiar with that fire blast.”
Bella’s gaze darted from the field of sparring students toward her, and she tilted her chin. A tiny smirk flickered across her mouth although her glare remained. “I won’t pull back from my potential because you tried to give me a compliment.”
Raven shook her head and watched Professor Fellows move quickly toward them. “I don’t expect you to.”
“Good.” The girl gave her a sidelong glance and licked her lips. Her familiar stretched his wings wide from his perch on her shoulder. “I don’t expect you to either.”
With a small nod, Raven turned her attention to the approaching professor, but her mind had taken off again. Did we make some kind of pact? It’s progress, I guess. Now, I only need to find a way to get Leander involved as my familiar and we’ll pass this first year with flying colors. She laughed inwardly at herself. Or maybe only flying.
Chapter Seventeen
At the end of their last class for the day, the entire student body of Fowler Academy was told to meet again in the main courtyard of the grounds inside the entrance gates. While the professors stood outside the front doors into the main hall, waiting for all the students to gather together at the end of a long day of learning, Henry slipped through the jostling, laughing, joking students in the crowd toward Raven.
“Okay, Alby. Time to spill it.” He nudged her shoulder and rolled his shoulder to ease the weight of the bag he carried.
“Spill what?”
“You were in the middle of telling me about your new living arrangements.” He glanced toward the outer wall that separated the main campus from the fields, barn, and stables beyond. He couldn’t see all the way to Leander’s pen, but she got the point.
“Right. That letter I gave Flynn apparently made him think my grandpa will be gone for a long time. And everyone seems to think I’ll be safer living on the grounds in the dormitory than staying in the same house I’ve lived in my whole life.”
“What about the goats?”
Laughing, she turned to face him and gave him a playful frown. “Really? That’s the first question you have?”
“Wasn’t it yours?”
“I guess. Tied with, ‘What about Leander?’”
“Yeah, the dragon’s definitely out of the bag now.” Henry glanced around them and nodded at Murphy and Fritz who tried to squeeze through the press of students to reach them. “You’re not worried about keeping a dragon at Fowler Academy?”
She grinned. “Do I look worried, Derks?”
He studied her for a long moment, then snorted. “Not even a little. And it’s weird that I’m not surprised by that.”
“It’s not weird. It’s much better this way. He told me this morning he prefers this new pen to the one at Moss Ranch. Honestly, I can’t blame him.”
“You brought your dragon?” Murphy asked as she reached them and dived into the conversation. “That was actually approved?”
“It was Headmaster Flynn’s idea in the first place, so yeah.”
“And you’re not, you know…worried that something might happen?”
Raven wrinkled her nose and regarded her friends with a playful frown. “Why does everyone keep asking that? We’re fine. Leander’s doing great, I have my familiar with me, and yeah, it’s weird to be away from the ranch all the time like this. But it looks like Connor Alby covered all his bases before he left so there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Except for some idiot breaking into that pen when he thinks no one’s looking,” Henry muttered.
“Except for a dragon looking at him and saying, ‘Thanks for bringing me lunch.’” Raven burst out laughing when her friends looked more terrified of that than she’d expected. “Hey, I’m kidding. No one can open that gate. I’m the only one with a key.” She patted her forearm and the rust-brown rune tattooed there on their orientation.
“Wow.” Murphy’s eyes widened. “Private access?”
“I’m not sure anyone else would even want access, Murphy.”
Maxwell croaked loudly from Henry’s bag, and he stroked the toad’s head before he tucked him inside again. “I don’t know, Alby. I heard Mike daring Thomas to go up to the pen and have a closer look.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Thomas refused and said he wasn’t an idiot, so we can give him points for that.” He looked at the gathered students and shook his head. “There’s bound to be at least one person who’s dumb enough to think they’re brave.”
“I sure hope not.” Raven scanned the faces now too. “You know, William was hesitant enough to even let me see Leander the first time. If a dragon trainer feels the need to stay away, I don’t think Leander will have a problem scaring the stupid out of anyone who tries something.”
“Or fry it out of them,” he muttered.
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Attention, please!” Professor Gilliam called at the front of the gathered crowd. She pressed the tip of her wand against her throat and muttered, “Magis clamabat.” The next time she spoke, her voice boomed over the central courtyard. “Everyone, quiet down. We’re here to make an announcement, not to supervise your shenanigans. I’m talking to you, Mr. Jeder.”
The spell for manipulating wind that Mike had cast on himself and his friends around him ended abruptly. Their flapping tunics and ruffling hair settled and the boy cleared his throat as his friends jostled and teased him for being called out.
“Thank you,” Gilliam continued. “Now, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’re officially out of winter and making our way quickly into spring. It’s the start of the planting season, the growth of new things, and the return of some much-needed sunshine and warmth after the coldest months. And, as I hope you all are well aware, a reminder that the second semester of the school year is underway and will be over before you know it. For you first-years, that means extensive exams before the end of the year and hope and determination that you’ll pass and enter one more year here at Fowler Academy. Don’t forget to study.”
Henry rolled his eyes and groaned quietly. “We’re not even halfway through the semester and already, she’s going on about exams.”
Raven nudged him with her elbow. “I bet you’ll be completely prepared after all that time spent tutoring Jenny.”
He gave her a scathing glance and folded his arms. “It’s only one spell.”
Murphy looked nervous and focused on Fritz, who had curled around her foot.
“But don’t get me wrong,” Professor Fellows added with a little chuckle. “We also know that all work and no play makes for angry and volatile mages in training.”
Professor Gilliam frowned at him,
her entire demeanor unamused, and he merely laughed again. “What Professor Fellows means by this is that we’ll hold a little event at the school at the end of next week. It will be a chance to give your brains a rest from so much studying and an opportunity to simply have fun.”
Henry pumped a fist at his side and grinned. “Getting rid of all exams forever.”
“We’ll host a spring gala here on the grounds, and all of you are expected to at least make an appearance.”
With a sigh, he lowered his fist and rolled his eyes. “Way to build up for too much disappointment.”
“What’s a gala?” one of the first-years shouted, followed by a round of laughter and a few jokes at his expense.
“A dance, Mr. Alderman.” Professor Gilliam looked entirely unamused. “And feel free to find yourselves a date.”
Most of the first-year boys either groaned or exchanged disappointed glances. A good number of girls seemed excited and whispered to each other while they cast hopeful glances at the boys who barely paid them any attention. The upperclassmen didn’t jump up and down in excitement, but they smiled and jostled each other, knowing exactly what to expect.
They’ve all been through this before.
On the other side of Professor Gilliam, Headmaster Flynn cleared his throat. “Anyone interested in joining your professors on the planning committee for this event, please speak to Professor Gilliam at the end of these announcements. It’s not required, of course, but it’s an excellent skill to have in one’s repertoire.”
Henry snorted. “Yep. Powerful mages who can decorate to a theme are in popular demand throughout the kingdom.”
Raven laughed, and Murphy leaned past her to raise her eyebrows at Henry. “It sounds kind of fun. I bet they’ll teach us a few extra illusion spells. Remember all the colored lights at the ceremony when we announced our familiars?”
