“Well,” Tearly said. “You, ah, showed them, I guess. Congratulations. You’re going to be miserable.”
I picked at my food. My stomach was a mess of knots. I had no appetite. “What happens now? They can’t kick me out, can they?”
“No, they can’t,” Tear said with a shake of her head. “They’re stuck with you.”
“And I can’t quit?”
“Not without special permission from Headmaster Windswallow, and she isn’t going to give it to you.” Tearly took a bite of her sugared pork and chewed thoughtfully. “People have society regrets every year. She gives some speech at the next assembly about learning to live with our choices.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered.
Across the room, I saw Lucien stroll inside with his group of friends, and my face heated. His gaze caught and tangled with mine, and my stomach twisted. Lucien’s expression turned dark.
I stood.
“I’m not hungry,” I announced, and left to take a walk.
~
The warm air folded around me like a blanket, at first comforting, then smothering as I paced the length of the great lawn and then along the tree line. Memories of the crypt pushed through my efforts to suppress them—I kept seeing the look on Griffin’s face as Marit had commanded me to kiss Lucien. Rage trembled through me—how dare they treat me, or any other middling, that way? How dare they act like I was a puppet that existed for their amusement?
I didn’t notice that I’d taken the path into the forest until I was too far to see the lawn anymore.
I stopped, Tearly’s warning ringing through my head.
Never go alone.
How stupid was I going to be? First joining Briar, then wandering into an enchanted and dangerous forest by myself?
I whirled to return the way I’d come and stopped as someone stepped from the shadows and blocked my path.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw it was only Professor Annita, who taught my Fae Court Histories and Politics class.
I smiled at her in startled relief.
“Hi,” I said. “I thought you were some kind of forest monster for a second.”
She didn’t smile back. “Miss Solschild, is it? You shouldn’t be out here alone, not even this close to the school grounds. It isn’t safe.”
“I know,” I said, my smile fading. “I’m sorry—I was distracted. But I know it’s inexcusable. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not,” she said severely, her brows drawing together.
My expression must have been stricken, for hers softened slightly.
“Come,” she said. “I’ll walk you back, and perhaps you can tell me what has you so distracted that you’re ignoring rules now.”
As we returned to the campus, I explained my dilemma with Briar. I left out the part where I’d been humiliated by Basilisk, but when Professor Annita probed, I confessed to the charmwine incident in vague terms.
“Charmwine is strictly against school rules,” Annita said with a frown. “I’ll have to report this to the headmaster, Kyra.”
Great. Now I was going to have a reputation as the school snitch on top of whatever else they thought of me.
I figured I could worry about that later, though. One thing at a time.
Professor Annita escorted me back to the great lawn, and when we’d reached it, she said to me, “Don’t worry too greatly about your choice in society. They will be your sisters now. They swear an oath of loyalty. They cannot hurt you, even if they loathe you.”
“That’s not the most comforting thing anyone has ever said to me,” I replied with a grimace.
Professor Annita smiled faintly. “Their respect for you may come with time, and perhaps friendship. The fae are fickle folk, and Briar is populated with those of more fae blood than mortal. They will not be angry long. If anything, your surprise inclusion might win you admiration.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Frankly, it wasn’t on my radar.
What had the wondering well said? Oh, who was I kidding? I knew those words by heart.
Sometimes foes are mistaken for friends, and friends mistaken for foes.
But that couldn’t be what it meant. There was no way Lucien and Griffin’s friend were ever going to like me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE FIRST MEETING of the societies was the next day, at the end of the weekend. Lyrica hummed under her breath as she dressed for her meeting, which required glittery makeup and sparkles in one’s hair, and Hannah stressed about what shade of black to line her eyes with to make herself look as fierce and fae as possible.
I stared at my reflection, feeling as if I had stones in my stomach.
Briar members, Tearly had informed me, always wore roses in their hair. Classic, simple.
There was supposed to be a letter, delivered by the stag and the birds. Lyrica and Hannah had both gotten a letter, with instructions on where to meet and what to wear, as well as enthusiastic greetings to all new members.
I didn’t get a letter. It seemed to have mysteriously gone astray.
Luckily, Tearly knew where the Briar society house was located, and how they dressed on their first meeting day. I wouldn’t wander like an idiot or show up completely lost.
Lyrica and Tearly fussed over my hair, weaving the vines and roses in among a mass of braids and curls that cascaded down my back. They used no magic, since this wasn’t a special occasion that allowed it, but the result looked magical anyway.
“Thank you,” I said, turning right and left to get a better view. “It looks magnificent.”
“I’ve done well, if I do say so myself,” Tearly said proudly, her hands on her hips. She had a dusting of silvery glitter along her cheekbones and curls, making her look like she’d escaped from a kindergarten craft table. She smiled at me, but her eyes were sad.
“Don’t let them bully you,” she said with a jut of her chin. “Show them exactly what middlings are made of.”
We walked together to the bottom of the North Tower, and there we parted ways—Tearly and Lyrica heading on toward the great lawn, Hannah toward the forest, and I continued alone through the gardens.
I had the shortest walk of all of us, for the Briar society house was not far from the gardens at the foot of the tower.
The Briar house sat nestled among the trees at the edge of the rose garden like a forgotten secret, and I reached it all too soon, with barely enough time to collect my courage before I was in front of the door.
A tree wrapped half the house in clinging branches, and I realized after a moment that it was a rosebush, hundreds of years old, that had melded with the stone and plaster of the house over centuries. The house was white, with cracked columns and marble steps that led to a blue door with an arched top and a handle in the shape of a rose. Everything was cloaked in an air of hushed mystery.
The door opened beneath my hand, and I stepped across the threshold and inside.
The air smelled like rose petals and crushed violets and a hint of the kind of dusty scent of a forgotten library. It smelled like the magic of old books and summer hollows. The wooden floor creaked beneath my feet.
I heard the rush of leaves and looked up, and saw that the rose vine that had overgrown the outside of the house had somehow penetrated within it too, and clung to the ceiling, obscuring the plaster with a tangle of thick wooden branches that bit into the frame of the house and a quivering shield of leaves and drooping roses. A few petals drifted downward as I closed the door behind me.
This house didn’t need magic to make it beautiful. It was breathtaking just as it was.
I followed a hall with walls papered in hunter green and gold until I came to a sitting room, painted in a deep, lush turquoise. The vine clung to this ceiling too, dangling a chandelier of flowers overhead, and there were windows, arching Palladian windows open to the wind, and little round windows of stained glass, and the room was filled with shifting, gold-green shadows that made patterns on the floor.
Th
ere, in the sitting room, perched like queens on the gilded couches and chairs, were the other Briar girls, wearing their school uniforms like queenly robes, their faces set with expressions ranging from boredom to anger.
Waiting for me in cold silence.
“There she is,” one said with a scowl. Her words came out hissing. “The troublemaker herself.”
The girls pinned me in place with their eyes, their gazes poisonous. I noticed immediately that none of them wore roses. They all had gold vines in their hair, woven into braids or cascading free. Once again, I was the outcast. The different, strange, unwanted one. Had they done this on purpose? Had they somehow known I had the wrong information?
And I felt suddenly weary, angry, and annoyed. I missed my mom and Grandmother Azalea, and someone had tried to kill me, and their dislike of me was petty and stupid and unkind. I wish I didn’t care that they all obviously hated me, but I wanted to shrink into the floor.
I wouldn’t let them see that I was afraid. They couldn’t kick me out—that gave me some power, at least.
Everyone was looking at me with disgust, like I was a racoon that had wandered in from the woods.
“Yes,” I said in the resulting silence, since everyone seemed to be waiting for me to do or say something horrifying. My legs trembled a little, but my voice came out confident and steady. “I’m the troublemaker. My name is Kyra. Someone invited me to join Briar, and so I did, and it serves you all right. You’re snobby and stuck up and you think being elite makes you better than everyone else. Well, you’ve got a middling in your midst now. Congratulations.”
Expressions of rage flashed across a few faces.
I turned to go, and my hand was on the door when someone demanded, “Where do you think you’re going?”
I turned. Selene was leaning forward with an odd gleam in her eye. A challenge, maybe?
“I’m leaving,” I said. “You can’t kick me out, but I don’t have to sit here and have you stare at me like I’m not even speaking.”
“Oh,” said Isadora from her place on the couch. “You have to sit here. We aren’t going to let you waltz away now. You’re going to suffer.” She smiled thinly, and her eyes glittered like black ice.
“Suffer,” I repeated. A burst of nervousness filled my stomach.
Were they going to try to beat me up? Lock me in a closet? Unleash bees on me?
“Yes,” Marit said with a somehow-elegant jerk of her head. She smirked at me. “We’re putting you on the student council.”
~
Turns out, every society had to send a representative to the student council. Some societies saw this as a coveted position. Basilisk and Briar, on the other hand, sentenced unlucky members from among their number to the task like prisoners going to an execution.
And now, the honor was all mine.
After declaring me student council representative, a move which they all chorused their formal agreement for, the Briar girls took an oath.
The girls formed a circle around a bowl of roses, which Selene set fire to, and then I was nudged into the circle, and everyone put out their hands. Selene drew out a dagger with a handle carved in the shape of a rose, and she pressed the tip against every new member’s finger one by one, leaving beads of blood to drip on the roses below.
I expected the prick to hurt, but it was painless. I stared at the blood that quivered like a ruby on my finger while we repeated a promise to remain loyal to the members of Briar even over our respective courts. The flames turned blue and silver as we repeated after Selene, and the smoke swirled around our outstretched hands and into our faces, making me cough. A cold tingle rushed across my fingers and up my arm, aching in my bones, and for a moment, the bead of blood on my finger flashed silver.
“It is done,” Marit said when we were finished and had fallen silent. She looked at each new recruit one at a time, holding their gaze fiercely. She stared me down last of all as she said, “That oath is binding for life. It’s in our blood now. We cannot break it. Briar is your final and utmost loyalty, and the members are your sisters. You cannot betray them to an enemy, even in service to your court.”
I exhaled, wondering if this meant I would be free of their spite from now on, the student council position excluded? When they’d promised suffering, had they meant something else?
After the formal oath-taking, the newest members were given a tour of the house. Briar’s society home was cozier than I expected, and smaller—a kitchen, a pantry, a cellar, the great room where we’d taken our oath, a sitting room, and then a staircase that took us to a second story with four large, gabled bedrooms. There was a second staircase leading to an attic, which apparently was haunted by wood sprites that sang at odd hours of the night.
The walls of the rooms were painted in lush purples and rich greens, magentas, and burgundies, with carved paneling covering the ceilings. The single washroom was painted robin’s-egg blue, and the walls were coiled with exposed brass pipes that ended at a tub as big as a bed. Everywhere grew the vines, the thorny strands tangled across the ceilings and occasionally creeping down the walls, biting into the plaster and dropping rose petals on the ground. The scent of roses hung heavy in the air. All the windows were open, letting in warm gusts of breeze that make the curtains flutter.
After the tour, we pricked our fingers again, this time on the thorns of the rosebush that grew through the house, and dropped the blood on the doorstep. Only members of Briar could enter, we were told.
“What about the wood sprites?” I asked. “How did they get in?”
“They were here when we took over the house,” our guide, a girl named Noni, said as if I’d asked a supremely stupid question.
We ended the tour in the kitchen, where platters of sumptuous food waited for us. Honey-drizzled breads, and cream-stuffed rolls, smoked mushrooms and sugared berries, fresh fruits and vegetables gleaming with butter and sweet sauces. It all looked delicious, but somehow, mine tasted like dirt, and when I spat out a piece, I saw that it was dirt. I glared at the others, but they ignored me, eating with relish and exclaiming at the deliciousness of the food.
“Does life-long loyalty not extend to the food?” I snapped finally, after pulling a wriggling worm out of my mouth.
The Briar girls barely spared me a glance. “Oh, middlings often have trouble with fae food,” one girl sniffed. “If it isn’t properly enchanted, it can be quite a nasty experience.” She grinned. “Well, you might as well be eating dust and spiders, hadn’t you? And we thought it wouldn’t be fair of us to let you dine as we do, not when you could end up with a mouthful of scorpions in the courts. It’s only loyal of us to give you an honest experience. We wouldn’t want you to think you could trust any fae feast you encountered, would we?”
Spiders? Scorpions? I put my plate down with a clatter. The other girls smirked.
Definitely not free from their spite, then.
“So, either you’ve enchanted my food, or you’ve enchanted yours?” I asked flatly. “Isn’t that forbidden? A teacher is probably on their way here now to punish you all for casting a spell.”
“We didn’t enchant it,” one girl said with an innocent expression. “Inara gets packages of treats from her mother back at court. I suppose it only tastes good to those of proper fae blood. A middling can’t taste the magic. And they can’t catch us for a spell we didn’t perform.”
“And you won’t say anything,” another girl added. “You wouldn’t betray the loyalty of your Briar sisters by snitching, would you?”
I ground my teeth together.
“Marit,” another girl said, this one tall and willowy, with curly black hair, drooping velvety ears, and pale white freckles across her dark brown skin like spots on a fawn. “Didn’t I hear that you have six weeks of detention scrubbing the library floors for distributing charmwine on society night?”
Marit’s face turned a shade of purple that made me fear for my safety, oath or not.
“Our new recruits can do i
t for me,” she said loftily. “It’ll be a good reminder about snitching.”
The newest girls, all of whom seemed to know that it was somehow my fault, turned to me with glares of fury.
I rose and left the room without a word. I wasn’t going to sit there and pretend I didn’t notice their abuse, and I was tired of acting brave.
I stalked from the house, heading for the North Tower. My eyes stung.
The door creaked behind me.
“Wait,” a voice called.
I turned and saw the girl with the white freckles. She jogged to catch up to me, and a grin brushed across her lips.
“I’m sorry for stirring the pot,” she said. “I couldn’t help myself. You rattle Marit, and she needs rattling. She’s too comfortable with her status as queen of the snobs.”
Up close, I could see that she had dark brown eyes like a doe’s.
“I’m Elome,” the doe-eyed girl said, reaching out one hand like an offering of goodwill. “I’m pleased to have you in our society, Kyra.”
I hesitated, looking at her outstretching hand. Was this a trick? Another spider threat? Slowly, I put my palm in hers. Elome gave my hand a squeeze. No spiders.
“El-o-mee,” I repeated, sounding out her name. “Hi.”
“We aren’t all snobs,” she said with a laugh. “At least, not as snobby as the triplets and their ilk. I suppose I am a bit snobby, being elite.”
I flushed. “I didn’t mean to imply that all elite—”
“Relax,” she said. “It’s mostly true anyway.” She studied me. “What court do you hail from?”
“The summer court,” I murmured, feeling embarrassed as usual, like I was lying. I felt like an imposter to claim it.
Elome’s brows lifted. “No wonder Marit hates you,” she said. “She’d give anything to be from one of the seelie courts.”
With that mysterious statement, she turned and headed back for the house, leaving me standing there. When she reached the door, she glanced over her shoulder and gave me another smile.
“I think you’re going to make a fine addition to Briar,” she said. “But don’t tell the others I said so. I’ll deny it.”
Spellwood Academy Page 14