by Cora May
Ash looked at her with a sidelong glance.
“If you’re certain…”
“I am.”
“I hope you really believe that.”
Addelai let the matter drop after that. She was through talking about it. It would only make him worry more, and she decided that that wasn’t fair. Not if she couldn’t tell him the whole truth. And she most certainly could not tell him the whole truth. So she picked up her jogging pace a bit—she had fallen seriously behind her usual pace anyway—and turned her focus back to the field. Ash did the same, being sure to keep pace with her no matter what speed she went. She admired his loyalty.
When the joggers reached the end of the loop, Professor Nessi instructed her students to pick a bow, giving them brief directions as to weight and size to help them pick the right one for their bodies. Addelai quickly chose the appropriate bow for herself and helped Ashby pick his. They listened to a short lecture on safety and use of the weapons before lining up behind the targets.
Addelai looked at the circular target fifty feet from where she stood. She took a breath and closed her eyes, feeling the muscles in her arms and back, becoming aware of every inch of her body. She called on the Jasper stone that had been embedded in her arm. The blood in her wrist began to heat in response. She took another breath and drew an arrow, carefully notching it in the bow right above her left hand.
With her eyes still closed, she imagined the target. She drew the bowstrings backward and aimed and released. Then she waited and listened as the air parted by the point of her arrow.
She didn’t open her eyes again until she heard the thud of the point hitting the target. When the sound released her trance-like state, she stared directly at the target.
“Well done,” a voice congratulated her from behind.
Addy started, turning to face the speaker at once.
“Thanks, Professor,” she mumbled.
“I’ve never seen such perfect aim on such little instruction.”
“Oh, I… I’ve been shooting before,” Addy admitted sheepishly. If Ash already knew, it wasn’t worth pretending to be a natural anymore.
“Quite a few times, I gather,” Professor Nessi said. “And how often do you use your stone?”
Addelai’s hand went to the stone that was on the pendant around her neck. It was cold and dark, clearly not having been in use.
“No, not that stone,” Professor Nessi said. With her eyes, she motioned to Addy’s other wrist.
Addy paled. An implanted stone was against the rules. Many students did it anyway, but getting caught with it would surely bring consequences. Besides that, she had been caught cheating by her favorite professor. That alone was enough to break Addy’s spirit for that day’s training.
Professor Nessi took pity on her star student. She lifted her lips in a small smile and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“I had mine put in when I was your age,” Nessi admitted.
Addy gasped.
“You have one?”
“When you’ve been given a gift you never asked for and then immediately drafted into a war you hadn’t planned on fighting, you do not consider the opponent’s feelings about fighting fair. You use every trick and advantage that you are given. And, certainly, having your given stone so close to your blood, and in a place that it cannot be taken from you, is an advantage that must be taken.”
Addy suddenly felt like a small child lost in the world. She had had it implanted for the sake of being better than all of the other students at all times, without appearing as though she had used the stone around her neck. She hadn’t been considering any bigger war at the time that it was inserted, and now she felt simple about the whole situation. Nessi was so much more experienced than she was. She saw the world through much more grown eyes. There was something specific, though, that Addy felt was spoken directly to her. She wondered how much Nessi actually knew.
“What do you mean… ‘drafted into a war?’” she asked for clarification.
“Come see me in my office this afternoon.”
That was all the woman said before she walked off and corrected the form of another student who had missed the target completely.
Addelai gulped. She wasn’t sure now if she was really in trouble for the cheating, or if there was some sort of bigger picture that she should be even more terrified of.
For the rest of practice that morning, she became the student that missed the target completely. She had let go of the stone in her wrist, allowed it to rest inside her blood. She suddenly didn’t want it anymore. She regretted having ever put it in.
She wondered if she could find the boys that had originally introduced her to the forbidden idea and ask them to take it out and to make it look as if it had never been there to begin with. They had been ever so careful in the original introduction of the stone and her bloodstream, they had hardly left a scar behind at all. They had done it several times, she was sure.
As she pulled another arrow back, she tried to remember their names. Gregory… Something? Or maybe it was Craig. Something incredibly plain, she remembered that much. The other boy, though, she couldn’t even begin to remember what he was called. Ugh. Of course not. She wasn’t going to find them anyway; she already knew that. It had been hard enough to find them to begin with. And, in the end, it had been they who found her, wasn’t it? When she had begun to toy with the idea of putting the stone in her arm, they had come to her and offered a deal under the table. They would be quick and precise; all she had to do was supply the stone.
Why? she had asked. What’s in it for you in the end?
Power, the one with the boring name had told her. Not just for us, but for every student in this castle. The headmistress likes to limit us. She trains us, tells us what we are, teaches us how to cope with our Blessings. But she also teaches us to fear ourselves. She reminds us of the damage we’ve done, she tells us what evils we are capable of and how easy it is to lose control. She teaches us to be afraid of what our loved ones gifted us with, so we never fully understand what we can do. There’s always a part of us that holds back. It goes both ways, too, between us and the stone. The stone touches our flesh when we wear it around our neck, but it yearns for our blood. It is never satisfied, so it never reaches its full potential.
That’s where we can help, the other one said. I know it’s a weird thing, here we are, out of nowhere, offering to insert this for you. But trust us, we’re not evil. You’ll never even hear from us again. We just want the student body here to understand and have access to their fullest abilities.
How did you even know? she had asked. That I was considering this, I mean. How did you know to find me?
The one with the boring name touched the inside of his wrist then.
Because we have power, he told her.
She had asked for a day to think about it, but she knew she had already made her decision. Would they, who were so adamant that the stone be put in, take it out? She doubted it very much. Greg, or Craig, or whatever his name was, had clearly been an Amethyst Gypsy and clearly had the ability to read minds, despite the Gypsy’s constant claims that they were not able to hear thoughts like that. How else would he have known what she had been considering when she hadn’t told anyone at all? So, logically, if he was still around, he must know that she now wanted it removed. If he was willing to do that, then he would find her.
That was the best she could do, she supposed. She put the thought out there. Now she just had to wait and see if he would find her.
Though she wasn’t really sure what she wanted. The boys had spoken true. The stone yearned for the contact of blood, and ever since she had her stone inserted, she felt its fullest power. She felt complete in her Blessing, and she wasn’t sure that taking it out would solve all her problems anyway. Most likely, Nessi would still carry out whatever plans she had for her. And if that meant expulsion, then she would lose all her stones. What would taking it out now do for her? At least if she kept
it, she had a chance at fighting her way out of the school and keeping it with her.
But then, if Nessi had other plans for her… Well, it would be dumb to get rid of the stone then, wouldn’t it? It was her protection. Sure, she could fight just fine with the one around her neck, but that was nothing like having the stone in her blood.
She sighed as another arrow missed its intended target.
None of it mattered anyway. Those boys had not been her friends, really. They spoke true, too, when they said they wanted nothing in return and she would never see them again. She had been so hesitant, thinking that she had signed up for something bad. She had barely slept that night as she tried to come up with a list of things they could do to her. Ultimately, though, she had gone through with it under the promise that she would be much stronger than them. Should they try anything, she would be able to get herself out of it with her newfound power.
The insertion had been a quick process. One slit, made expertly for minimal scarring, and they slipped in the stone that she had brought to them. It was quick and relatively painless. The boys had smiled at her, wiped her blood from their utensil, and bid her a good day.
That was the story of how she got the implant, and that was relatively soon after she had arrived at the school. Since then, she had been doing her best to be the best, and it was pretty obviously being noted.
She looked around her fellow Jasper Warriors as another Warrior missed the target for her intended arrow. None of them were awful Warriors, per se. But none of them quite matched her caliber of expertise. She wondered why that was—if none of them had ever implanted the stone, or if they had all simply been a lot smarter than her about it and kept it quieter.
She watched as Ashby took a shot. His arrow hit the target, but not in the dead center. It was off to the right about three inches. That was one technical thing about archery that she did know without the stone—you’re not supposed to aim dead on. You have to veer it to the left a little bit because the arrow drifts right. She could have told him that, could have corrected him, but she let it go. He had looked so thrilled in that moment, having clearly bested everyone else—including her, though she had bragged about her skill—for the day. His face was lit with that satisfaction.
Besides that, she had more pressing things on her mind. She might not be a part of this school anymore—she wondered if she would even be able to say goodbye to her friend.
CHAPTER NINE: CHANTA
C hanta wasn’t happy to have been woken up that early on a Saturday morning, she realized once Addy had finished having her episode. Still, it gave her time to think.
She had been shown to her room immediately after the ceremony the previous night. She got to meet Addelai Kindred, the tall, plain Jasper Warrior. She clearly worked out most days, her body was toned enough for that. She had hard looking, rounded shoulders, and Chanta could see the back muscles she had, too, through the thin tank top she wore. Her skin was a tanned color, and her lips were dark pink. She had curly brunette hair and big brown eyes surrounded by thick black lashes. She wasn’t what Chanta had pictured a Jasper Warrior to be, especially after having met the Head of the House. Sure, she was plain, and a bit muscular, but somehow, she was beautiful, too. Maybe that was just because of the promise of friendship she had in her eyes. She had preferred to go by Addy, she had told Chanta immediately after Avery Swan had introduced her by her full name.
Brinziel Venice—or Brin, as she, too, corrected Avery—was the exact opposite. Chanta was taken aback by the girl’s beauty. She was tiny. Her dark brown skin covered thin wrists. She held her head high, stretching her neck tall, accentuating her collar bones. She had a small nose that was upturned slightly and round hazel eyes that looked at her quizzically. Her hair was dirty blonde but held tight, springy curls that were clearly natural to her ethnicity. She smiled at Chanta, and Chanta couldn’t decide if she was jealous or mesmerized by that small, delicate smile and those pearly white teeth. She was used to being the prettiest girl by far, but this short fairy-like doll of a girl was surely challenging that.
Once Avery had left them alone, the girls immediately began to pounce on Chanta, asking her all sorts of questions that she didn’t understand and telling her all sorts of stories that sounded fake—though they fit right in with the theme of the school so far. Addy was the first to tell Chanta the story of how she had arrived.
“I had knocked down a wall in my house, with nothing but my own fists, and thrown some furniture around like darts. I was always good at sports, but man, I didn’t know my aim was that good, too! Anyway, my parents called an anger therapist, but Prisanni had intercepted the call and came for me. She told me that Jasper was my earth stone and that I was a Warrior. So she’s been training me ever since.”
Brin told her a little bit about the stones—nothing she hadn’t already learned from the book. “This school isn’t a punishment,” Brin had assured her. “It’s not like prison or some military school or private school. I mean, it is a private school—so private, most people don’t even know we exist. But that’s the point. We’re all Blessed here—given a gift by the Anam Solas. Secrecy is our friend because the Unfamiliars don’t understand us.” She told Chanta that she was a Celestite Communicator, and briefly delved into what that meant for her—again, nothing that Chanta hadn’t already known. When she finished, the girls asked about Chanta’s own story.
She had the chance to start over. She had the chance to forget her past, to redefine herself. Yet, she only hesitated for a moment before she told them her story.
“My mother believed that I was possessed. You see, when people get too close to me, they get hurt. Bad. Sometimes it’s a third-degree burn, sometimes it’s a broken nose. It’s not me that does it. I don’t know what’s doing it. Or who. Or whatever. All I know is that it only happens around me. My mother locked me in a closet because of it. That’s when good ol’ what’s-her-face came to my rescue, I suppose.”
She had watched the girls carefully but didn’t receive the response she thought she would. Neither of them had shown fear. Instead, Brin looked distressed, even reached out a hand to comfort her. Addy looked lost in thought, for just a moment, before she tried to guess Chanta’s stone. It was no surprise to Chanta when it took her four guesses before she picked the Celestite stone. It was also no surprise to her when Addy and Brin both looked puzzled over the revelation. From what she had told them about her past, about her weird ability, and what they knew about the Celestite stone, they said it didn’t match up right. It didn’t feel right to them.
She didn’t know anything about this school or the Blessings or the Anam everyone was talking about. She didn’t understand any of it, and she didn’t know what to think about any of it, either. But she did know that she felt the same thing her roommates did. The stone didn’t fit her. None of the stones fit her. As much as she wished she had been given the Gold stone, it wouldn’t have felt right to her, either.
So where did that leave her? She was an oddity amongst oddities, a freak amongst freaks. She didn’t belong in the school.
So where did she belong then?
The conversation between the girls had dwindled somewhat after that. Chanta realized they were letting her do some thinking to herself for a bit.
She read the letter that Prisanni had given her. The oath was meant to be signed and turned in to Prisanni on the first day of her classes. It was a pretty simple oath, but she felt hesitant to sign it.
I, Chanta Elizabeth Larr, solemnly swear to use my Blessing the way it was intended by the Anam Solas who gifted it to me. I solemnly swear to respect my earth stone, to wear it around my neck and to keep it away from my blood. I solemnly swear to uphold the principles of Prisanni’s School for the Blessed and to use my Blessing to preserve the school and human life when I am required to do so.
There was a place for her to sign below that, a solid line with an “x” marked next to it. It looked like the perfect size for her handwriting, like it had
been planned for her. It was still blank, though. Signing an oath made it feel too real. If she signed the oath, then everything would change. She would be a part of the school, and she was going to have to uphold whatever principles the headmistress had made up. It would be like signing an oath for slavery, wouldn’t it? The headmistress could change those principles on a dime, couldn’t she? So signing it would be forfeiting her freedom. Wouldn’t it?
She knew she was just making excuses for herself. This oath had been signed several times. When she let Addy and Brin read it, they had told her it was exactly the same oath they had signed, word for word, save for the name. The principles, she was told, were basic. Addy had told her the main theme of it all was just to be kind. The oath was only meant to be a reminder to respect the stones and Blessings and to stay on the path of goodness. Chanta was only making excuses and prolonging the signature because she was anxious.
She looked over her class schedule again, too. There were regular high school classes listed—math and science and English. There was, unfortunately, even a physical education class. She had never been good at exercising, and now, after having been locked up for as long as she had been, she felt utterly deteriorated. She would be embarrassed, surely. Put to shame in front of new classmates. Then again, her sad little noodle arms could benefit from some activity.
Education was still important, Brin had explained to her. That’s why those classes were still there. Yes, they needed to learn to harness their abilities, and yes, they had the Emerald Keepers to hold the knowledge, too. But Prisanni was teaching them to be self-sufficient in every sense of the word. After all, what kind of careers could they make with their Blessings? Especially when they had to keep on the down-low when they were out in the human world. The Unfamiliars couldn’t know what this school was about. They wouldn’t be able to handle it. They wouldn’t understand. Prisanni made sure they got their high school education so that they would fit in with the world when they graduated. It was truly meant to be a school.