I shrugged again, aware that the flippant gesture irritated the piss out of her, and strolled off, fighting the urge to give a backwards glance at Daniel in the sky. Heading away from the field, I directed myself down the central corridor once I was inside the sheltered walkway and casually walked toward the Hall—one of the largest Forums in the Academy.
Today was the Skill’s test. What I likened to the humans’ SATs, and I was about to do my worst ever in an exam.
Though the part of me who believed in striving for success was inwardly cringing at the prospect, eight months of being isolated was more than enough of hanging out around here.
When I headed into the Hall, I saw Professors Leopold, Kincaid, and Narren hovering on the base platform in front of the boards.
When Leopold saw me, his mouth curved in a snarl and he strode toward me, then began hauling me over, hurrying me to the nearest seating area and dumping me there. Of course, the big perv managed to peer down my white tee, ogle my breasts, all while copping a sneaky feel of my ass—the bastard was great at multi-tasking.
Creep.
“As we were saying,” Narren snapped, glowering at me but it slipped off me like water on a duck’s back. “You have five hours to finish the exam. You may leave after the third hour.”
As I stared at the clock, I wanted to moan at the prospect of sitting here for three hours.
Sol wept.
Looking at the paper down in front of me, I scrawled in my name with the pen provided—one I assumed couldn’t be bewitched to help anyone cheat—and took a quick glance around me to see who was in here with me.
How they’d picked the sets who’d sit the exam together, I wasn’t sure. As I looked around, I saw that there was a mixture of students from all castes, and I saw no common denominator. Not by name or by caste, nor ability or strength did there seem to be something we all had in common.
To be fair, I was definitely their worst student so it wasn’t like I could be in a room all on my own.
“The exam begins now. Good fortune.”
Huffing to myself, I shot the Professors a look. Leopold glared at me again, but I just cocked a brow at him and mentally flipped him the bird.
After today, I’d be counting down the days until I was out of here, and the prospect of freedom had never been so sweet.
Sure, I’d never see Daniel, Matthew, and Joseph’s chests again, but Sol, that was why the Hemsworth brothers existed, right?
Taking my sweet time about it, I opened the exam paper and studied the questions. As I read through them all, I was disconcerted to realize I knew most of the answers.
The first part of the test dealt with history, and that was my favorite part of the studious torture they called a curriculum here.
Why did the witches and Fae join the Battle of Hastings and not remain impartial?
I snorted. Easy. Because William the Conqueror had been very lucky. He’d wed a witch and his daughter had ensorcelled a Fae. Even though most Fae loathed humans, they tended to be their notion of forbidden fruit.
The questions carried on, asking about battles the two races didn’t fight together, requiring discussions on the best practice for sword play when it came to fighting in close quarters. There were questions on game theory and practical magic during a battle—the stuff that helped them remain in the sky no matter what altitude they were at.
Each and every question I had an answer for. It almost stuck in my craw that I knew what they were because it killed me even more not to write in an answer.
With a grunt, I slouched back into the seat and studied Narren, who instructed classes on Battle Theory—the most boring of them all. He was a rather effeminate male, as were a lot of the guys here. So beautiful as to be noxious with it. I could only stand so much preening and vanity, and that type of Fae had it in buckets.
Still, it made him a very good subject for drawing.
In my time here, sequestered away from everyone who mattered to me—whether I mattered to them was another thing entirely—I’d grown to appreciate drawing as an outlet for my frustrations. I’d gotten better over the months, and I was quite accustomed to doodling now when I grew bored.
So that’s what I did.
In each box, where an answer should have been, I drew a detailed image of the professors who were adjudicating the exam.
From Leopold’s stocky features that were a little past middle age and told me he’d seen over one-twenty years, to the delicate prettiness of Narren’s handsome visage. I gave each professor my full attention, and when I next looked up and saw I still had an hour to go, I almost died.
Those final sixty minutes seemed to take a lifetime, but as they passed, it felt as though the burden on my shoulders lightened to the point where I was certain I understood how Atlas had felt. I empathized with him totally, in fact.
Getting away from the Academy and all its ties would represent a whole new start for me. I’d return to LA and, with my new skills with drawing and the time I’d had to develop ideas that had been inspired by my time here, I’d try to take the next step—maybe design some of my own things and get a small collection together.
Jessica’s rep had grown exponentially, but it had faltered too. A pissed off ex-employee who refused to be named in the blogs and online chatter, had revealed my name as the person behind the ‘Jasmine’ bag so if I could take my part of that infamy to the next level, maybe I’d be able to get some interest in a capsule collection.
My brain whirled with ideas for the future, and when I saw the third hour was over, I got to my feet, slid the exam into my hand, rolled it into a scroll and tapped it against Leopold’s open palm when I passed him, taking a wide curve around him to avoid any sneaky chances he might take to feel me up.
He accepted it with a nod, and I headed for the door.
When I exited the Hall, I blew out a deep breath and, for the first time in eight months, my smile was anything but pained.
❖
“You can’t be serious,” I rasped, staring down at the letter in my hand and gaping at the results.
Jeanien, who was looking over my shoulder, whispered, “How can this be?”
I blinked up at her and she blinked back at me. The entire year was standing there reading their results, and it was telling that she was gaping at mine because she wanted me to stay here as little as I wanted to be here.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“Me neither,” she muttered, snatching the sheet of paper out of my hand and peering at it as though the words would change and would reveal something else, something far more desirable.
As she eyed it, studying it like it was some kind of poison pen letter, her head slowly shook from side to side.
“This can’t be.”
I was in wholehearted agreement, but the letter didn’t lie.
Gabriella (Human Born)
93%
Warrior Caste Assignment.
I’d doodled on my fucking exam. How the Sol had I gotten 93% correct?
There had to be something wrong, something in the system that had miscounted my score, and yet, my name was there. It wasn’t my full name because I was caste-less, and after that, all that mattered to these bastards was the fact that I was human born, but that was further identification—I was the only human born in the class this year.
“I can only pray to Gaia that I’m not assigned to you as your tutor,” Jeanien grated out, shoving my results back at me. “To deal with you for a further four months is a punishment I should not have to bear.”
When she stalked off, evidently as pissed off as me, I didn’t even bother gaping at her back. Instead, I just reread the letter, trying to figure out if this was a joke. I was even half-tempted to cast a spell to see if this was bullshit or not—a lie or a prank that someone was playing on me.
But no one was interested in what I was doing, no one cared about my score.
Everyone here was reading their own letter and reveling in it or s
eeking commiseration from their friends.
Even in this I was alone, and the notion, along with eight months of solitude had my eyes burning once more.
I ran off, and still, no one saw or cared. Blindly, I headed back to my quarters, except, when I made it back to them, the hallway was completely different to just an hour before.
Gold dust had always lined the walls. It was like the glitter was mixed into the paint or something, and now, I realized why.
There’d been about twelve doors down this corridor. Each one leading to a student’s bedroom.
Now there were four.
Which meant the wheat had been sorted from the chaff, and somehow, as impossible as it should have been, I was the wheat.
Uncertain which was my room now, I tried the first two doors but they didn’t open when I twisted the knobs. The third one did, and when I saw it, when I saw the change from my cozy little dormitory into this behemoth suite, my mouth trembled again.
Sure, it was pretty, but, and it was a huge but, I didn’t want it.
I’d wanted to be sent packing. I’d wanted, no, I’d been banking on failure so I could go home. So I could start my life with this part of my past buried firmly away. Instead, the unthinkable had happened.
I was stuck here for the interim.
Reaching up, I rubbed at my eyes as I slammed the door closed behind me.
Turning around, I pressed my forehead to the door and tried to collect myself.
This wasn’t the end.
This week’s classes had been about the upcoming term, and I knew that for the warriors, troupes would be coming together.
No one in their right mind would pick me, and when I was the odd one out, they’d send me home, surely? They’d realize their mistake, wouldn’t they?
Wouldn’t they?
Sol, I could only hope they would.
Because another four months of isolation would drive me insane, and a mad witch who had little control over her powers, locked away in a Fae Academy had all the makings of a horror story… The Fae just didn’t know it yet.
Part Two
Semester Three
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
Abraham Lincoln
Five
Matthew
“Why does she have to be so hot?”
My lips twitched as I followed Gabriella’s flight path from one side of the courtyard to the other.
Her form, even after all these months of practice, wasn’t perfect. Her wings were dark. Her skin was olive. And she was human born.
Of her many flaws, those four were the most difficult to get past for any Fae male. But Daniel was correct.
She was hot.
So hot, she was like a walking flame.
I tilted my head to the side as she made an imperfect landing.
As a general rule, with our wings alight, we tended to fly with one leg slightly bent and our arms held faintly aloft. We used both sets of limbs to alter our speed, and for balance and directional purposes too. Gabriella didn’t do that. She had a distinctly wonky flying style, and to be frank, it was a wonder she managed to make it up off the ground with the way she held her arms.
What had her instructor been thinking?
Still, I conceded, in an attempt to be fair, it wasn’t wholly the teacher’s fault. The human born were never that great at flying. Fae were born with wings, and we learned to fly before we could walk. Human born flyers didn’t attain their wings until they were of age, usually at eighteen. Our wings, by that point, were bleached by the sun. Human born wings, on the other hand, looked like concrete. From freshly mixed to recently poured, they were a variety of grays and ugly.
But even as she landed with both feet flat on the ground instead of lightly dropping onto one, even as her dusty charcoal wings fluttered to a halt when she came to a standstill, there was just no getting away from how fucking beautiful she was.
“Yeah,” I admitted gruffly. “She’s gorgeous.”
And against the gray stone backdrop of the Academy in the courtyard we were training in, she was like Technicolor after a lifetime of black and white.
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought that, and I doubted this time would be the last. But now, it was different. Now she was no longer just another student, she was in my troupe.
Joseph slammed his elbow into my side, breaking into my thoughts. “Gaia, he speaks.”
I shot him a narrow-eyed look. “Fuck off.”
His grin widened. “You always were a sore loser.”
“What exactly did I lose?” I grumbled. “I’m the one who’ll be flying with her first.”
“Then why such the long face?”
Flying was like dancing for the Fae. A pleasure. A joy. But it was neither when one’s partner stepped on one’s feet… Gabriella did all the aerial equivalents of flying on someone’s feet.
That was why we’d gambled on who’d fly with her first.
That first flight was going to be a fucking risk, one I wasn’t looking forward to. I’d already twisted my wing last month, and it was still hurting, so having to help the heffalump across the sky wasn’t going to make shit any better for it.
“My wing’s hurting,” I told him absently, as I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees so I could watch her and let my wings lay flat on my back.
“Shit, it is? Fucking Dyrian. Dude’s a prick. Why he did that—”
“I don’t care that he did it. I’m mad that the instructors let him get away with it,” I groused, my eyes on Gabriella.
She was compelling to watch. Unlike most Fae females, her skin wasn’t pale, and her hair wasn’t a light blonde. It was an inky black that was starting to streak with shades of gold. As were her wings, although only a few were tipped in such a way. Eight months at the Academy had changed her coloring, but it hadn’t altered who she was.
Hispanic to her core.
The Fae were anti human on the whole. We didn’t specify our dislike to certain people among them, we just didn’t appreciate any human. They were global litterers, inept and incapable of caring for themselves. But humans weren’t our interest. The witches were.
Unfortunately for us, the witches were born amid mankind, which meant interactions with the humans had always been necessary.
Then, five hundred years ago, the first Fae had been born to a human couple. A child, aged eighteen, had sprouted wings, and she’d been the first of the human born Fae, which had necessitated further interactions with them.
Even if they were few and far between.
For every five thousand Fae, there were only ten human born. Gabriella was rare. But she was rarer still for more reasons than just that, and I knew it because I’d seen it with my own eyes. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t uttered a peep to the instructors, the faculty, or any of our peers… but I’d seen her do it.
Had seen her draw a book from across the library over to her when she’d thought no one was looking.
It had slipped off the bookshelves as though her fingers had pulled it back, then flew over to the table where she was seated as though it were being carried in someone’s arms.
It was why I’d requested her for the final member of our troupe. When I’d told Dan and Seph what I’d seen? They’d been just as eager as me to work with her.
The instructors had been relieved too.
Gabriella was clumsy, useless with weapons, and incapable of defending herself.
She wasn’t a benefit to any troupe, and no one had wanted her for their group.
Until us.
The first hybrid in five hundred years.
The living, breathing evolution of our species.
It was incredible.
She was incredible.
Dan hissed. “Fuck, that had to hurt.”
Focusing on the scene in front of me, I winced when I watched Instructor Leopold hop up and down on one foot, his wings taking the weight off him with each bounce, making him look like a hy
peractive Tigger.
“She stabbed him in the toe?”
Gabriella cried, “I’m so sorry!”
Seph snorted. “Sorry’s going to make him bleed less.” He cut me a look. “I get why we’re doing this, but you know, if we survive our training with her, it’s a miracle, right?”
My lips curved. “Thought you liked living recklessly.”
Dan chuckled. “Yeah, Seph, you were the one who was complaining about how boring shit is.”
“It is,” he scoffed. “But boring and alive is better than exciting and dead.”
“She won’t kill us,” I argued.
“No, but she can maim us.” And Sol, if she hadn’t proven that by dropping her sword onto Leopold’s foot.
She had her hands raised to her cheeks, cupping them as though hiding her blush, and as I studied her, I noticed something.
The faintest smirk.
A slight amusement in her eyes.
Both were in complete contrast to the horror she was displaying as she tried to appease the cursing instructor. Her bumbling act made me wonder if it was exactly that—an act. For show.
Rubbing my cheek in contemplation, I watched as her smirk appeared again. This time loaded with satisfaction as Leopold ground out, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. I need to get this seen by the medics.”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she mumbled, all flustered as she turned to watch him limp away as he staggered into a takeoff.
“That was interesting,” I murmured softly.
“What was? Her injuring one of the best instructors at Eight Wings?” Seph queried with a snicker.
“No. I think she did it on purpose.”
Silence fell at my words, and as I climbed to my feet and walked over to her, I saw I had her attention again.
She scowled at me. “What do you want?” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest. She even tapped her foot—the epitome of impatience.
Even pissed off, she was pretty. Her plump, rosy cheeks gleamed gold thanks to all the sun she’d been catching, and her bright eyes seemed all the more like garnet. She had a rosebud mouth, a pointed little chin, and high cheekbones. With her slanted brows, she looked like she was vaguely irritated, and from her attitude, it felt like that was the case as well.
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 6