by S. W. Clarke
Savage.
Keene looked like he wanted to blink out of existence and never reappear.
“Each of you will spend three and a half days on, and the same amount of time off-duty.” Umbra nodded at Fi. “When you’ve decided on who will occupy each shift, please inform me.”
Fi’s face went serious; she was already contemplating the teams. “Yes, Headmistress.”
Once Umbra had left, everyone broke into chatter.
Meanwhile, Fi rose, walked over to where Umbra had stood. Paced, staring in turn at each of us, then at the floor.
Around me, Elijah and Isaiah made the argument for never being split up. Circe was joyous to have half a week off. Mishka and Akelan sat together, whispering. Keene went on about his hair.
I glanced over at Liara, an unexpected lightness filling my chest. I would have more than three days each week to just…be.
And I realized that of anyone here, she and I knew each other the best. How had that come to be? It was all the training together. I knew the color and sound of her magic, her movements.
If the size of our group on a mission was going to be halved, sticking together gave us a greater chance of success.
She met my gaze. “We need to be on the same shift.”
I nodded. “Great minds think alike.”
Once Umbra had left, Fi placed both sets of knuckles atop the table, leaning forward. “All right, it’s clear who should be on which team.”
“Is it, though?” Elijah gestured between himself and Isaiah. “If you split us up, it won’t be so clear to us.”
Fi rolled her eyes. “As if I would do that. You two would never stop whining.”
Isaiah smirked. “It’s Elijah who does the whining. I have manly complaints.”
Elijah punched him in the shoulder, eliciting an “Ouch.”
Fi walked over to the chalkboard, began writing names in a vertical list.
In the first list:
Liara
Elijah
Isaiah
Fi
And in the second list:
Mishka
Clem/Loki
Keene
Circe
Akelan
She tapped the board with her chalk. “I’ve split up our magic and our roles in terms of power balance. Any objections?”
Of course, nearly everyone objected.
When I managed to get a word in, I said, “You haven’t taken into account who works best together.”
Fi’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”
“Clementine and I have trained together,” Liara said. “Extensively.”
Akelan shook his head. “You’re our two fastest chasers. Putting you together would hamstring the other team. No offense, Mishka.”
Mishka, who’d at some point conjured a plate of balaclava, shrugged and went on eating. “None taken.”
I pointed down at my lap. “But you’re forgetting one thing. Loki makes six members of the first team.”
“He’s like, half a member,” Circe said. Loki and I must have both shot her a look, because she raised both palms. “Don’t scratch my eyes out, you two.”
Fi looked thoughtful. “Well, I can’t split you and your familiar, so it is a fair point. Actually, it enhances the power of the first team—makes it unbalanced.”
I sighed. “Just rotate us. Loki and I will be on both teams.”
On my lap, Loki’s claws dug through my skirt. “We’ll what?”
Everyone turned surprised eyes on me.
“Rotate you?” Elijah said. “You’re going to lose your hair faster than Keene.”
Keene groaned. “Can we please drop that joke?”
I shrugged at Elijah. “I’ve dealt with worse stress. Besides, you need your two fastest chasers as often as possible.”
These past few months had been awful on me, but I was telling the truth. I had lived through worse stress.
Besides, I owed it to Mishka.
“I’ll rotate, too,” Liara said into the silence that followed.
I glanced over at her, found her jaw set. She was totally committed to this line. She would be on duty every day without a second thought.
Mishka’s injury must have also affected her more deeply than I’d realized.
Across the room, Fi folded her arms. “That’s a major sacrifice for both of you.”
Loki stared up at me. “Request a couple days off a month. Do it now.”
I glanced down at him. “Since when did you become the master of negotiations?”
“Now’s your best chance. And godsdamn, I’m not going to be roped into this without a few concessions.”
I lifted my eyes. “Loki would like two days off a month.”
“Fine,” Fi said. “Clem, Liara, and Loki will rotate with two floating days off a month. Are we all happy with these teams?”
The others couldn’t really complain. Mishka went on eating her balaclava.
“Good. The first team will be on duty for the next three days.” Fi pointed at the list. “We’ll swap to the second team at noon on Thursday. Meeting adjourned.”
As everyone left—even Loki, who went in search of food—Liara and I remained at the table.
“You’re an idiot,” she said once we were alone.
I smirked. “Takes one to know one.” I stood to leave. “See you—”
“I need to know something,” Liara said to my back.
I turned. “What is it?”
“I’m allowed back into the restricted room. I’ll take one of my floating days and go this weekend to study hexes.”
My eyebrows went up. “You’re back in that quickly?”
She shrugged like it was nothing.
“How on earth did you finagle that?”
“Like Eva said, the Youngblood name still opens doors.” She paused. “Anyway, that was a preface.”
“What do you need to know?”
She stood, turned to me. “I need to know that everything I’m about to do for you will pay off. I need to know you’ll fulfill this prophecy.”
“I will,” I said at once. “Hell, you’ve already told me you’ll kill me if I don’t.”
She raised a finger. “I’m going back into the restricted room. I’m going to learn the dark art of hexes. I’ll share everything I learn with you. And when you recover this cursed chain, I’m going with you.”
“Liara…”
“I can’t let you fail, Clementine. Not at this. You know I’m more powerful than anyone else you could bring. You’re better off with me there.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“And,” she said, “after you’ve gotten the chain, I’ll be there when you retrieve the blade.”
“I don’t even know where the blade is yet.”
“But you will. After you’ve gotten this piece, you and Aidan will figure out where the last piece is located. It has to go in that order, based on the prophecy—one piece at a time.”
I studied her. “Did you read this prophecy yourself?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “After you told me about it in Singapore, I went into the Room of the Ancients and found what I needed to.”
Of course she had.
“I’ll have to think about it.” I began to turn away again, but her hand shot out, gripped my wrist. I tried to yank it away, but she had a vise grip.
“You have to understand,” she said. “I was ten when my mother and father were murdered in their sleep. The witch tried to kill me, too.”
I stopped trying to jerk away. Her fingernails were digging in, making grooves. But I gave her my attention.
Liara’s eyes glistened with old horror and hatred. “My mother managed to scream before she died. That was what woke me. From her bedroom, she screamed, ‘Liara, save Vivi.’ That was all. And already the house was on fire, and I didn’t know what to do. I just flew straight to Vivi’s room, and I grabbed her.”
I didn’t open my mouth to say anything. I just listened.
“When I opened the window,” she went on, “something blasted me in the legs. My pants caught on fire—gods, it hurt—and when I looked back, she was there. The fire witch.”
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“I screamed.” She blinked a tear free. “I was so scared. She glowed with insanity. Her eyes were like bonfires. I leapt out of the window and I flew.”
So that was how Liara had gained her lightning. The fire witch had burned her legs.
Liara let go of my wrist, knelt. She’d always been one of the few students to wear tights under her skirt, no matter the season. And now I knew why. She ripped her black tights to reveal scarred and mottled skin at the calf and knee. Then the other leg.
“But why didn’t you…” I began.
“Heal it?” She stared up at me.
And I knew. I already knew why.
Her hand ran over the burned skin. “Because I never want to forget exactly how it felt.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The morning of the Solstice Ball, Aidan and I met, as per usual, in the library. Through the steam rising from the teapot between us, I nodded at him. “You were right.”
He sat back from his reading, forearms resting on the arms of his chair. “There are so many things I’m right about.”
“About Liara.”
“She’s grown?”
“That, and…” I swirled my spoon in my mug, trying to figure out the right words. “She’s going to help us. When the time comes to retrieve the other two pieces, she’ll be there.”
“You trust her?”
I glanced up. “Not as much as I trust you or Eva, but more than I trust anyone else at the academy.”
He gave an impressed nod. “That’s quite a lot. How’d she earn it?”
“She’s helped me in ways she hasn’t needed to. But it’s about more than that—she really, really wants to destroy the Shade.”
“Why, besides the obvious reasons?”
“I’m not at liberty to share. But, you know—fire witches.”
He nodded, his hair gleaming in the light as he did. And then it hit me—
I set my spoon down. “You styled your hair this morning.”
His cheeks tinged. “I style it every morning.”
I swirled a hand atop my head. “But you went extra fancy.” My eyebrows rose. “You’ve got a date tonight.”
He groaned. “Please don’t make me regret it.”
“That depends. Who is it?”
He shook his head.
“Is it a first-year?”
“Maybe.”
“Cradle-robber.”
He made a face. “And what are you doing tonight, Cole?”
“I’m on-duty. Can’t rescue anybody in a taffeta gown and heels.” I wouldn’t pretend I wasn’t secretly happy about having to miss the dancing. It had about broken Eva’s heart, but I had still promised to show up—I’d just be on the periphery.
“I still can’t believe you volunteered to rotate.”
“Can’t you? I’d have thought you would understand about nobility and self-sacrifice and all that.”
“I do.” He eyed me. “But—sorry Cole—nobility and self-sacrifice aren’t what drive you.”
My hand flew to my heart as though he’d pierced me. And in some ways, he had. Mostly because he was right.
Mishka’s arms and her blood were what drove me. And beneath that, guilt and shame were what drove me, but that hadn’t changed in a decade, anyway.
I needed to veer this conversation back to uncomfortable ground. “Tell me who your date is.”
He tapped the book in front of him. “We still have the issue of the riddle, and where exactly under the ground in Siberia we’ll find this chain. Have you forgotten about that?”
We hadn’t made any progress on either of those things in months. it had become almost perfunctory to open books and lay out our notes but to accomplish nothing else on the subject.
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said. “But I have nothing new to offer.”
Aidan accidentally broke off a biscotti he’d been dipping too long in his tea. “Maybe we’re not trying hard enough.”
I eyed the broken biscotti. “Or maybe we’re trying too hard.”
So we agreed that until we made any progress, we would focus on what we could control.
Later that morning in Mounted Combat, I let go of Noir’s mane with both hands as he cantered around the ring. I focused on what Rathmore had taught me about fire riding—allowing the flame to consume me without letting the Spitfire take control—and managed, for the first time all year, to ride the edge of control as the flame sputtered its way up my body, encompassing my arms, chest, head.
“Good, Clementine,” Farrow’s voice said from some faraway place, though I knew she couldn’t be more than thirty feet away. “Keep at it just that way.”
And then the Spitfire raised its eyes. It expanded in my chest, on the verge of unleashing.
I had to let the flame go. The Spitfire couldn’t come out; I wouldn’t let it—not here with these people. Not when I still had so much trouble reining it in.
It was progress, but it wasn’t fast enough.
In Goodbarrel’s class, I finally managed to light all my fingers. I raised ten flames like candles toward the ceiling, and Goodbarrel clapped. “Well done, Clementine!” He pointed at the far wall, where ten circular, two-foot-radius targets had been hung. “Now hit all of those at once with your separate flames.”
Half the class had already mastered the targets. The other half, including me, could maybe nail three at once.
Aidan couldn’t even attack the targets; his everflame would eat them up before he quenched it. As a solution, Goodbarrel had conjured fat marshmallows and set them in a line at one empty end of the common room.
Aidan struggled to hit them all. Even fat marshmallows were still tiny targets. Meanwhile, Goodbarrel ate all the ones he didn’t hit.
My class of first-years even made progress with their riding. Half of them had mastered mounting bareback, and the other half were shaky. But they could all get on their horses after no more than two tries.
It probably helped that I’d threatened to “go all fire witch” on them if they failed three times. None of them knew what that meant, and I didn’t exactly, either, but the mystery of not-knowing seemed to be even more effective.
Sometimes it paid to be evil.
I’d hardly seen Eva in a week, she’d been so busy with preparations for the ball. That evening when I came back, she wasn’t in the dorm; she’d probably long ago left to set up.
But Loki was there, sleeping on my bed. A rift had developed between us ever since I’d missed the last mission, and it was on me to mend it.
I came to sit by him. “Hey, cat. Let’s make a deal.”
He cracked one eye. “I don’t generally deal with my inferiors.”
“You be my date to the ball, and I’ll get Vickery to conjure up your favorite fish.”
He sat up with a yawn. “She does that every time she sees me, anyway.”
“How about you just be my date, then?”
“Eh…”
“I won’t make you wear a bowtie.”
“Fine. I am in the mood for salmon.”
I showered, dressed in work-casual guardian clothes: a long-sleeved shirt, my jacket, riding pants and boots. Then Loki and I made our way toward the meadow, where ethereal music echoed through the trees.
When we arrived, we found ourselves standing at the entrance to a grand portal, lights set up in a circle from ground to twenty feet in the air. Inside, the ballroom shimmered with courtly elegance—golden tables with woven iron legs, vines with white flowers draping from the trellises that ran high up to create a curving ceiling. At the far end of the room, a chorus of angelic female voices sang in synchrony as what sounded like a harp was strummed.
The ball was entirely changed from last year. More…otherworldly.
“This is differe
nt,” I said as we stood in front of the grandeur.
“It’s supposed to be the fae portal.” Loki’s tail feathered against my leg. “Shall we pass through?”
Through the portal, I found the entire student body had transformed into fae.
I stared as a couple whom I could have sworn were Maise and Torsten passed me by with fae wings attached to their backs. Then two of the first-years from my riding class. Finally, Aidan and Saoirse, one of the first-years from my riding class.
I couldn’t wait to tease him about it.
When Fi Waters came by with iridescent green wings, I stopped her. “All right, explain.”
She shrugged, lifting her drink at me. “I’m off-duty, Guardian.”
“Not that.” I flicked one of her wings, which shuddered in a strange way. “This.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh. The theme’s ‘Through the Portal.’ Didn’t you get the memo?”
At my feet, Loki scoffed. “Of course not. So embarrassing.”
I glanced down at him. “I can still find wings for you. Don’t doubt my tenacity.”
“Gods no.” He slipped through the crowd, disappearing toward the food table.
Fi remained in front of me. “I meant to thank you, Clementine.” She nodded at my jacket and boots. “It can’t be fun dressing for work tonight.”
I shrugged; if only she knew how little I minded. “At least no one will ask me to dance.”
She smiled, always demure and understated. “We’ll remember this. The sacrifice you and Liara are making.”
The music shifted to a new song, one just as ethereal, but with more of a lively tune. At the head of the room, the instrumentalists had shifted to a fiddler and a single singer who looked just like Professor Fernwhirl.
I squinted. It was Fernwhirl.
Akelan appeared at Fi’s side with an elaborate bow, requesting a dance. He was as big as Torsten, with the same stolid movements of an earth mage. Except now he had a pair of dwarfed blue wings clinging for dear life to his back.
Fi glanced back at me, her glass of mead extending my way.