“So...” Kyra dragged the o sound out as she wagged her eyebrows suggestively. Guess I wasn’t getting out of this particular conversation, no matter how much I wanted to. “You like him then?”
“I don’t know him well enough to like him.”
“Maybe you should get to know him better?”
As if it were so simple as that. Even if we could get to know each other better...did I really want to? There was a dangerous element to Anatole, a danger that both drew me in and made me want to turn and run in the opposite direction.
“I can’t do that,” I said, keeping my voice low as we navigated the busy hallways. All around us, people practiced their spellcraft homework and discussed the latest human book making waves in Velkin—apparently, they were debating whether Game of Thrones was a history book or a work of fiction. Totally oblivious that the world could be ending any day now, just because someone wanted to keep the human and the Velkin separate. “We have this pact. We need to keep our alliance a secret, so we have to pretend that we hate each other in public, you know?”
“That seems dangerous. With all of the people in this castle who hate you...he could get put in a bad situation, you know?”
“I know. But if it means protecting our worlds from complete and total ruin, then I’ll just have to deal with it. Whatever comes.”
Again, I was trying to convince myself more than anyone else. After last night, the thought of Anatole becoming that cold-hearted prince that he had been when we met...it hurt more than I was willing to admit. But this wasn’t just about my feelings anymore. This was about the fate of all of us.
“Okay,” Kyra said, her worried look only feeding my anxiety. I hadn’t gotten any better at lying, it seemed. “Just be careful.”
“I could tell you the same thing. You and Tormin? What’s going on there?”
At first, I was grateful for an excuse to turn the spotlight off of me. Then, I watched as Kyra tried valiantly to keep a brave face while she spoke about him, and I desperately wished I hadn’t brought it up. “No one would accept a member of the Velkin royal family falling in love with a common pixie like me. Even if he is the third son, Tormin will eventually have to make a political match.”
“So, you’re both in love with each other, but neither of you wants to make a move because you know it won’t work out?”
“...We immortals have different rules governing our relationships to you mortals. Because we live for so long, our perception of relationships is fundamentally different. When we choose someone, we’re choosing them for the rest of time. I don’t want to have Tormin for a second if I can’t have him for eternity, you know?”
I didn’t. I didn’t know. Because last night, there were moments when Anatole would look at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, moments that felt like forever. But he couldn’t have gone from hating me to wanting to marry me and spent eternity together in just one night. Kyra’s explanation only left me more confused about what, exactly, had happened between us last night.
“Yeah. I understand,” I lied, with a shrug. “Seems weird that the king would want Anatole to marry a human, then.”
“Not weird at all. The King wants eternal peace. And if his son spends eternity with a human, and his children are parented by a human and his grandchildren are grandmothered by a human...”
“Then that begins a lineage of peace between our people.”
“Exactly. So, are you up for it?”
We made our way up the Grand Staircase towards the corridor where Human-Velkin relations would be held, my steps feeling heavier with each passing second. Anatole would be in this class. I’d have to face him and pretend I still hated him with all my heart.
“Up for what?”
“Being Queen.”
Me? A Queen? I couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. He still hates me.”
“It didn’t look that way last night. The Leron was very romantic.”
It had been. I’d never felt as precious as I did in his arms, with his gentle hands holding me to him. But it was all an act. It had to be a gambit he was running to get something out of me. I wasn’t sure what it was yet, I was only certain it was the only logical explanation for what had transpired between us last night. “He’s playing a part. Nothing you saw last night was real. Hell, I don’t even know what’s real and what’s fake with him half the time. Besides, I only just met him. I’m not going to marry a guy I just met, especially not when I’d have to marry him for eternity.”
“Maybe not yet. But I can’t imagine any of the girls in there are going to be in the running. If what I saw last night was him hating you, then he must despise each and every one of them.”
“He’ll find a way out of marrying a human. I’m sure he and Ariedre will be very happy together,” I snarked, a surprising bitterness seeping into my tone.
“He can’t marry Ariedre. Her father was exiled for what he did to you and now she’s not a noble anymore.”
So it had been Ariedre’s family crest I’d seen on his armor. A pit opened up in the bottom of my stomach. Maybe Ariedre had been a monster to me, but I knew what it was like growing up without parents. Having one of them banished must have been terrible. Sympathy filled my heart for her, even though she didn’t deserve it.
“Yeah, she’s screaming to anyone who will listen that Anatole’s going to marry her to save her from a life among the common folk, but no one else seems to agree with her.”
Just at that moment, as we idled up to the lecture hall where Human-Velkin relations would be conducted today, a surprising sight greeted us. A crowd of indescribably beautiful characters were strutting down the hall. Someone must have been doing some advanced reading for today’s lecture, because the clique now not only included the Elf Girl Gang, but Beatrice and her human gaggle, too.
And none of them looked too happy to see me.
I groaned under my breath. “...Speak of the devil.”
“And the devil’s new sidekick,” Kyra said, nodding towards Beatrice.
“Run while you still can.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“You and Tormin belong together. The last thing you need is the princess brigade over here telling the whole world that you were involved in a cat fight. Now, go.”
A moment of indecision played out across Kyra’s face, but soon enough, she turned and sprinted in the opposite direction. This was my fight, one I needed to face alone. I wasn’t going to drag her down with me by association.
With my courage collected, I tried to barrel forward towards the lecture hall door. No dice. Ariedre held out one angry hand like a cop trying to direct traffic. I skidded to a stop to avoid her touching me.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I wasn’t aware The Academy had hall monitors,” I snapped back in reply.
“And I wasn’t aware that little humans like you had the power to exile thousand-year-old families here in Velkin. You really must be pathetically desperate with Anatole if he’s giving into you that easily.”
“Your father advocated mass murder. I didn’t have anything to do with him getting sent away. That was the King’s choice.” I searched Ariedre’s face and saw something there I didn’t expect to see: hurt. She was really hurting about what had happened to her father. Her words about me spreading my legs for Anatole still stung, but my heart also bled for her. “But I’m sorry it happened. No one should have to go through losing a parent.”
Her jaw opened. But it was a red-faced, shaking mad Beatrice who cut her off before she could say anything.
“You’re sorry? Oh, like I guess you’re sorry you humiliated me in front of the entire class?”
“You did that without any help from me,” I retorted, folding my arms across my chess. Beatrice, unlike Ariedre, didn’t earn any of my sympathy.
Her eyes widened, and she started for me. “You bitch—”
Ariedre caught her by the arm, withdrew a sm
all, silver device, and handed it to her. A wand. My stomach turned. We’d been warned time and time again that humans playing with wands was highly dangerous. “Here. Take a spin with this.”
Terror gripped me. I wasn’t going to stay around here and find out exactly what happened when a human got ahold of a wand. Sprinting in the opposite direction, I shoved my way through the crowds in an attempt to dodge the bolts of pink and green light flashing in my direction.
“Oh, your aim is terrible. Give me that thing!” I heard Ariedre call from behind me as I made my way towards the Grand Staircase.
“But Ariedre, it’s against the rules—”
“Do you think I care?”
Pounding, heavy footfall followed me at a close clip as the Grand Staircase came into view. Just a little further...Just a little further...
Bam! Stars exploded in my vision. Pain blossomed across my back. My limbs screamed with electric pain, and then...they just stopped working. One minute, I was just at the top of The Grand Staircase, about to catch the bannister and slide out to the courtyard and to freedom...The next, my legs gave out underneath me, and I was falling, falling, falling, down the marble steps, only to get hit with a new spell and a new wave of pain every fourth or fifth stair.
By the time my rag doll body hit the ground, finally dropping in a heap at the bottom of the staircase, I was grateful for the marble flooring. The cool stone seeped into my broken, bruised body, and in the brief moment of quiet that followed as the posse tripped, giggling, down the steps to follow me, I watched as my split lip and bloody nose made a small puddle on the white flooring.
I didn’t have the strength to run. Even breathing hurt. Looking up to face the crowd now surrounding me seemed impossible. Getting up and fighting them, an impossible dream.
They’d defeated me. Utterly and completely.
And then, a voice resounded against the marble. A familiar voice. A voice that filled me with forbidden, terrible hope.
“What is going on here?”
Unable to lift my head, I moved my eyes to see Anatole approached us, his handsome face drawn up in a mask of complete indifference. Ariedre beamed and practically threw herself against him, purring as she handed him the wand in her hand.
“Anatole. Come on. Do it. Finish her off.”
Silence. Or maybe there was sound, and I just didn’t hear it because I was too focused on Anatole’s eyes. They flickered with something, a brief communication with me that I didn’t quite understand.
I knew it was for the good of saving the world, for our cover. And still, I begged him with everything I had in me: please don’t do this. Please. Please.
He raised the wand, hit me with a curse, and joined in their laughter as I lay there, bleeding on the ground. The sound of that laugh echoed in my brain like a horror-movie refrain, destroying every last illusion I had about him.
Well, I wasn’t going to lay here and be mocked. I wasn’t going to allow him to destroy me. With every movement sending shards of jagged pain through my skeleton, I shoved myself—slowly—to standing. My body shook with the effort, the Adrenaline, the blood filling my mouth. But I stood on my own two feet, stared him in the eye, and then spit that mouth full of blood onto the perfect white floor at his feet. His eyes met mine. And I didn’t see any remorse there, not even deep below the surface.
“How could you?”
He didn’t answer as I walked away. And that silence followed me all the way up to my dormitory, where I collapsed before I could even open the door. I don’t know how long I lay there at the top of our staircase, waiting for Kyra to get home. Slipping in and out of consciousness made keeping track of time a difficult endeavor. But when she did finally make it back to our room, Kyra dropped a bag full of potions bottles, shattering them and forgetting them as she sprinted from the second landing up to the place where I was curled in a pathetic ball near our doorway.
“Oh, Carolyn. He did this to you, didn’t he?”
For hours, I hadn’t let tears fall. But the second Kyra’s soft, gentle hand touched my face, the second someone showed me even an ounce of kindness, the dam broke. And I couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Yes. Come here. Come here. It’s okay...Shh...It’s alright, I promise.”
But no matter how tightly Kyra held me and no matter how many times she whispered that everything was going to be alright, I never could quite make myself believe it.
Chapter Sixteen
Anatole
When we’d begun this save-the-world scheme together, Carolyn and I had devised a system of wordless communication, wherein when one of us needed to talk to the other, we would whisper the desire to the sleeping dragon statues positioned on either side of the Academy’s Grand Staircase. The dragons would inform the other person of the message, and we would both agree to meet back at the lighthouse that night.
The system had worked the first time Carolyn had called me the lighthouse for our lying lesson. But after three days and three nights of waiting, I was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t the dragons who’d failed to properly pass along the next message.
It was Carolyn. Carolyn didn’t want to see me.
For three days and three nights, I’d been waiting for the chance to apologize, but for three days and three nights, I sat there. Alone. Waiting for a woman I knew was never going to show up.
I’d earned that. I’d earned her hatred. Her distrust. I hadn’t slept since the incident. I hadn’t eaten. Every time I so much as blinked, I saw her pained, brutalized face behind my eyes. The look of betrayal she shot me as she begged how could you would forever feature in my nightmares.
Tonight, I decided to distract myself. Maybe she wouldn’t show up. She probably wouldn’t show up. But until she did, I would hold vigil here, waiting for the moment she allowed me the chance to apologize. I would wait as long as it took. All around me, candles flickered, illuminating the darkness as I played war with a swordsman’s dummy. Carefully, deliberately, punishingly, I practiced my forms, letting my muscles ache with every false thrust and parry. With the fireplace roaring and the candles flickering, it wasn’t long before sweat formed all across my body and my movements became more frantic, less controlled.
“Brother.”
The fireplace glowed with green light, pulling me away from my training like a dog called by a whistle. Adric’s face flickered in the flames. The conflict that had been raging within me about Carolyn—how I’d hurt her, how our plot hung in the balance between my warring emotions—now only got worse as his glowering face stared me down.
“Adric? What are you doing here?”
His glower melted into a sardonic smirk. For the first time, I noticed a darkness invading his eyes. A shiver ran down my spine at the sight of it. “Can’t a fire-projection of your brother show up every once in awhile for a little friendly chat?”
“Of course. My apologies,” I said, returning my sword to its sheath. “How have you been faring?”
“Well enough, for someone in exile. How goes your search for the human menace?”
“I haven’t been able to turn over anything in that regard.”
Probably because there isn’t any human plot to take over Velkin. The thought surprised me. I hadn’t even realized that was a conclusion I’d been considering, yet it settled like the truth in my bones. I had the sense, though, not to say anything like that to Adric.
“Haven’t been able to or haven’t been looking?”
“No one is more dedicated to the cause of Velkin than I am. You know that."
“Do you really believe that, brother? Because that’s not the word I’ve been hearing.”
“You shouldn’t be hearing anything; you’re in exile.”
“But for how long? Once you’re king, you’ll return me and together, we will bring Velkin to its full glory. Unless you have other plans with your human.”
My breath caught. I tried to recover quickly. “What human?”
“The one everyone is talking about. Th
e one who got Vertor and his lot exiled. The one who has you second-guessing the plans we’ve been trying to set in motion since we discovered Earth.”
“There is no such human. Father exiled Vertor on his own and the only human I’ve been interacting with, I put in Magical Care just four days ago.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“Then you aren’t doubting our plan? You’ll find the human menace, prove to the people that they are out to destroy us, and bring me home so our plans can be made complete?”
My stomach revolted.
“Why do you hate them so much?”
“Why don’t you?”
“Maybe Tormin is right. Maybe they’re too weak to ever stand against us.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I want there to be peace. That’s all.”
“There is no peace until they are dead. All of them.”
A chill ran up and down my spine at the dedication in his voice. It rattled the walls, shaking me to my core.
“Of course. You’re right,” I said, without conviction. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for the conversation to conclude so I could go back to my brooding and my swordsman’s practice.
“You’ll see, brother. When we have conquered them all and brought about a new golden age in Velkin, you will see that you were wrong to doubt, even for a second.”
“Farewell, brother. I will send for you when the time comes.”
“Not if I send for you first,” Adric practically crooned.
“What does that mean?”
But I asked the question to the wind. By the time I turned around, the flame extinguished, plunging the room back into darkness.
Alone again. Alone with my thoughts and my guilt and the war raging within me. I returned to my sword play, knocking at the target as though I could swing a sword against my own indecision.
Mother’s visions against Adric’s prophecy. My prejudice against my growing feelings for Carolyn. Victory for Velkin against peace among our worlds. A million different paths sprawled out in front of me, branching out into the distance. No matter where I turned, I feared that whatever choice I made would be the wrong one.
Magic Exchange: A Supernatural Academy Romance (The Velkin Royal Academy Series Book 1) Page 13