“I’m Professor Underwood. Why don’t you take a seat?”
I didn’t want to take a seat. I wanted to run out of the door screaming. But Blake wanted me here, and that meant here I was stuck. I shut the door and slunk over to the seats, sinking into the one that didn’t have the cloak on it.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I wasn’t given a choice.”
“Ah, so you can speak.”
I glared at him, then realised I was acting like a child.
“Look, can we just… do whatever it is we’ve got to do, so I can get back to the rest of my work?”
I’d much rather be working on the case Lewis had set me than messing around with magic. I hadn’t wanted to be a shifter. I sure as hell didn’t want to be infected with druid magic.
“I understand this must be hard for you,” he said, taking the other seat. I huffed a bitter laugh.
“Understand? I doubt that. I had a whole life ahead of me until that psycho halfbreed bit me.” I broke off and narrowed my eyes. “You know her, don’t you? Alpha Blake said she’s a student at Dragondale.”
“We prefer the term hybrid,” Underwood said. “And yes, I am one of Kelsey’s professors.”
“Kelsey.” I curled my lips around the name. It sounded far too innocent for the person who’d single-handedly ripped my life to shreds. And they hadn’t even punished her for it.
“She’s as much a victim as you are,” the halfbreed professor said.
“Really? Did someone attack her and steal her whole future?”
“No,” Underwood said. “Someone cursed her and used her to attack innocent people – something she’ll have to live with for the rest of her life. And in doing so, they exposed her hybrid status and turned her into an outcast.”
I slumped in my seat. When he put it like that…
Dammit, I just wanted someone to be held accountable for what was done to me. That didn’t seem like so much to ask.
“The curse,” I said. “They managed to cure it?”
Underwood nodded. “One of her friends gave her Solerium Sithum leaf.”
“That didn’t work on me.”
“You’re saying Kelsey transmitted the rage spell to you?”
“Yeah. It’s not… I mean, I can control it, mostly.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not the only thing she infected me with.”
“Indeed.” Underwood seemed happy to go along with my change of subject. “Though I warn you, if you continue to think of your magic as a curse, you’ll likely never reach its full potential.”
“I don’t care about reaching any potential. I want it gone as much as I want this rage spell out of me. But since that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, I’ll settle for you teaching me how to turn it off.”
Underwood regarded me thoughtfully. I guess all the people in his sunny little world ran around casting spells and acting like magic was some sort of blessing. It wasn’t sunny in my world. Being banished to the dungeon to train made that hard to miss.
Eventually, he shook his head.
“Magic isn’t something you can turn off. It’s a part of who you are. And though your instructors won’t share the details with an outsider, I gather it’s been useful to you.”
Was that a trace of bitterness in his voice when he spoke about being an outsider? Interesting. He was an outsider, though. A halfbreed, which was bad. Wrong. The other shifters here at Fur ‘n’ Fang had made that apparent enough. But now that I thought about it, I wasn’t quite sure why. It must’ve been hard growing up an outcast because of something out of his control.
Then I thought about the other halfbreed I’d met, and I felt a whole lot less sympathetic. Maybe they were shunned by the shifter community because they were weak, susceptible. Maybe they deserved to be shunned.
It wasn’t like it mattered, anyway. They belonged with the druids.
Except Underwood had said that being a halfbreed made Kelsey an outcast at her academy. Which meant he was, too.
“Why do you teach at Dragondale if druids hate your kind?”
“Because they hate my kind,” he said with a sardonic smile. “My job is to educate. But I think we were talking about you.”
I stared down at my fingernails. I’d torn one off in shifting practice this afternoon, but it had grown back. It was a little flimsier than the others, but by morning it would be fully healed.
“The magic helped,” I admitted after I’d run out of fingernails to examine, and then jerked my head up. “But I was only in danger in the first place because of Brad’s magic.”
“Interesting,” Underwood said, the slightest frown creasing his forehead before it smoothed out again, and I wasn’t sure whether he meant my admission that magic had helped me, or that Brad’s magic had put me in danger. Or that Brad had magic. Crap. Was I supposed to have kept that to myself?
“Whatever you say down here stays between us,” Underwood said, and I swallowed and nodded. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about Blake chewing me out for my slip, which was good, because he had no sense of humour.
“So, shall we get started?” He gestured to the assortment laid out on the desk. “There are four elements, and all druids have one primary element. Many are able to control a second element in time, but I think it’s best we work under the assumption that you will only develop one.”
“I’ve controlled two elements before.”
Underwood’s eyebrows shot up before he regained his composure and pasted a not-quite-natural smile onto his face.
“How… unexpected. Which elements can you control?”
He didn’t believe me. My cheeks flushed red.
“I can burn stuff,” I said. “Uh, people’s arms, mostly.”
Underwood hid an amused smile.
“Fire,” he said. “The same as Kelsey. That makes sense.”
“And… wind, I guess? I blew some scents towards me.”
“Air. They don’t teach you much about Druidry here, do they?”
“Other than the fact druids like to lord it up over everyone?” I shook my head. “Not really.”
“There are four elements,” Underwood said – not, I noticed, bothering to deny that druids throw their weight around. “Earth, air, fire and water. It’s impossible to control two opposing elements – fire and water, or earth and air – or at least, so we believed until recently. It’s possible you may also have other magic, besides elemental. We’ll try to work that out today.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. He was right – better to know what I was facing right off the bat. “What do I do?”
“First, I’d like to see your elemental powers. Which is your strongest?”
“Fire, I guess? I mean, I had that for a long time before I found out about the other one.”
“Okay, so we’ll assume fire is your primary. Hold your hand out. Uh, no, palm up, like this.”
I flipped my hand over, and Underwood held his next to it.
“We’ll start with a basic exercise. You’ve probably already done this inadvertently. You’re going to focus your energy into your palm, and make it glow.”
As he spoke, his palm flared bright green. The coloured light engulfed his entire hand, so that it was hard to make out more than a faint outline in the centre of the brightness. That was pretty cool.
And utterly useless.
I stared at my palm and willed it to turn red. After a good ten seconds of staring, I turned to Underwood with a shrug.
“You were infected with Raphael’s rage spell, you say?”
“Raphael? He’s the one responsible for what happened to me?” I pressed my lips together in grim satisfaction. So, there was someone I could blame. I almost missed the shadow that passed behind Underwood’s eyes.
“I wonder if it’s possible,” he said, “that the magic inside you is drawing its power from the rage spell.”
“What would that mean?”
“When have you been able to use your magic?
”
“It’s rude to answer a question with a question,” I said, but when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to say anything else, I answered anyway. The sooner we got this sorted, the sooner I could go back to pretending I didn’t have magic and was just like everyone else, right? “Um, I burned a cloth when I got frustrated, and I burned Ryan when he grabbed me and I was trying to get him off.”
“Were you angry both times? And the other times you used your magic?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I guess.”
“It’s possible that the rage spell has become a trigger of sorts for your magic.”
Okay, that made sense. I stared at my palm again, and thought about how unfair it was I was stuck down here in a dungeon instead of studying law at UCL, in the real world, where I belonged.
“Excellent. Nice work, Jade. And now take a few deep breaths, and as you breathe out, visualise the magic fading.”
The red glow faded away until my palm was flesh-coloured again. I grinned.
“Cool. That’s way easier than shifting.”
“That’s just the beginning,” Underwood said. “It gets harder.”
“Yeah, that figures.”
Chapter Six
We didn’t get as far as testing what other magic powers I might have beyond controlling fire and air, and we didn’t even really do more than touch on my air power. Magic was exhausting. Like, worse than shifting, combat, and fitness in a single afternoon exhausting. I was beat by the time Underwood agreed that we’d done enough for one night. But he’d be back tomorrow. And the day after. And every weekday, until he and Shaun were satisfied with my level of control. And since that relied on a shifter and a halfbreed agreeing on something, I was pretty much screwed. I said as much when I dragged my weary behind to Shaun’s office to report how my session had gone.
“Your wellbeing is my only priority, Jade,” Shaun said. “And I’m sure this Underwood feels the same way.”
“If that was true,” I griped, slumping in my seat, “you wouldn’t have made me drag my arse up here at half past seven.”
“Language. Could you at least try to remember who you’re talking to?”
“I’m trying, but I’m just too damned exhausted.”
“Funny. How was your lesson?”
I rolled my head forward to look at him, in case he’d missed the whole ‘exhausted’ bit, and the fact that I could barely move.
“That good?”
I rolled my head back again and stared up at the ceiling.
“You realise these sessions only work if you actually talk to me, right?”
“Who’s Raphael?”
When I jerked my head down to look at him again, his eyes had widened. He recovered his poise quickly.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“What is it with people answering questions with questions today?”
“You tell me,” Shaun said, pressing his lips together and looking smug. Touché.
Apparently, I wasn’t going to win this one, either, and frankly I was too tired to be stubborn.
“Fine. Underwood let it slip. He said he’s the one who cursed Kelsey.”
“That’s true,” Shaun said. “I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“Can’t,” I asked, “or won’t?”
“Both,” Shaun said firmly. I knew that look. There was no point in pushing, it wouldn’t get me anywhere, and I didn’t have the energy to waste.
Then Shaun did something that caught me off guard, and took pity on me.
“Look, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you what you want to know. But you’ve made amazing progress, Jade, and I don’t want this to set you back.”
I folded my arms over my chest and cocked a brow at him. He searched my face for a long moment, then nodded.
“Raphael is a druid, a powerful one.”
“I thought all druids were powerful.”
“They are,” Shaun said. “So the fact I’m telling you this one is particularly powerful should mean something.”
I chewed my lip and nodded. A dangerous druid, more powerful than the rest.
“So, he’s like their version of Draeven, then?” I ventured.
“Alpha Draeven. And no. Raphael is a criminal.”
“Oh.” I supposed that made sense. The head of their alpha pack or… Grand Council, or whatever, was hardly going to go around cursing their own kind. Even halfbreeds. There was no need.
“He managed to curse her, even inside their academy?”
“I don’t know the details,” Shaun said. He held up a hand before I could accuse him of holding out on me again. “You know how communication is between shifters and druids. It was no small thing getting Underwood to come here.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. And it wasn’t lost on me that the only one who came, the only one who could come, was a halfbreed, equally despised by both communities. Ironic.
“So,” Shaun said, clearly keen to change the subject, “aside from being exhausted, how did you cope with your first day back?”
I thought about that, then caught myself chewing my half-healed fingernail and dropped my hands back into my lap.
“I met Leo.”
“I heard you did a bit more than that.”
“You instructors must be really bored if you’ve got nothing better to talk about than me,” I said with a pout. Shaun smiled and I scowled at him. “There’s no point reading anything into it, I don’t know why everyone’s so desperate for it to mean something. I still don’t think he should be here – and don’t think it’s lost on me that I finally agree with Madison about something – and if we’re stuck with him, does he really have to be in my lessons? Don’t answer that, doesn’t matter. I only chose him because the others still treat me like an outcast.”
“You have something in common, then.”
Something about the way he said it got right under my skin, and I got to my feet, glaring at him.
“Yeah. We both know a certain psychotic halfbreed with a penchant for biting people. Can I go now?”
Shaun nodded.
“I’ll see you on Friday evening, and every Friday, from now on.”
“Oh, joy,” I muttered, stalking out of his room and slamming the door behind me.
I was halfway back to my dorm when I started to feel stupid. Childish temper tantrums weren’t really my thing. I guess I was more wiped than I realised – and that was saying something. I had no idea why being compared to Leo pissed me off so much, other than the fact he’d somehow managed to forgive the person who ruined my life. Even if, really, it hadn’t been completely her fault.
But it was someone’s fault, and if there was anyone here who knew about druids – and maybe Raphael – it was the person who’d spent most of last year living with them. I took a left and headed for the common room. I wasn’t sure if Leo would be there, but it was as good a place to start as any. Because tired or not, there was no way I was getting any sleep until I had some answers.
Leo wasn’t in the common room, but Madison was, and she was hunched over a textbook, side by side with Dean, her hand resting on his thigh. She caught sight of me and glared up at me.
“Not even eavesdropping is going to help you win this case, Jade.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Please, as if I need to. And you do realise that this is a common room, right?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Perhaps I should leave it for you commoners, then.”
Ouch. I walked right into that. It was a good one, too. I was a bit jealous.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “Peasantry isn’t catching, which you’d probably know if you weren’t so inbred.”
“Could you two give it a rest?” Dean groaned.
“She started it,” I protested. Wow, I really was twelve. “Never mind. I’m looking for Leo, have you seen him?”
Madison looked like something snarky was on the tip of her tongue, but Dean silen
ced her with a glare. Just as well. I was in no state for a battle of wits, or, honestly, any kind, with Madison right now. If magic was this draining for everyone, I didn’t know why the druids bothered with it.
“Try the library,” Dean said, before I could get my butt kicked in a verbal sparring match. “I think I saw him heading that way with Cam and Mei after dinner.”
It was absolutely, completely, utterly illogical to feel betrayed that my friends were working on the assignment with the guy I’d chosen to be part of our team – which didn’t stop me feeling it anyway. I left the common room and headed several corridors over to the library.
Dean had been right. The three of them were clustered round a table when I got there, with a pile of books in the middle. Two of them looked up at me guiltily, and Leo just looked wary. I waved them off and sank into one of the chairs. It felt nice to be sitting, but I didn’t think that was going to do much for my bone-deep weariness.
“Where are we at?”
Much as I wanted to question Leo about Raphael, I couldn’t quite find the words, and I really did need to know what we were researching if we were going to beat Madison. And we’d better beat her – losing didn’t bear thinking about.
“These are the case notes Lewis gave us,” Mei said, sliding a manilla folder across the table. I’d only glimpsed it in Law earlier before he’d had us pressing on with the rest of the lesson, and I hadn’t had time to read it yet.
I flipped it open and scanned the first sheet, then looked up at the other three.
“We’re defending a murder case? Is he for real?”
Cam shrugged.
“Guess he thought it’d be more interesting than a petty theft.”
Well, that was a fair point.
“Under pack law,” Mei said, “he could be imprisoned, pack bound, or given the death penalty.”
“No prizes for guessing what Madison will be pushing for,” I said. Never mind that the death penalty wasn’t even officially a thing in this country. The shifters played by their own rules – unless, of course, the druids got involved. As Leo had more than enough reason to know. I felt a sudden acidic churning in my gut. The alpha pack had planned to execute him, before the druids refused to hand him over.
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