"Press your power against your skin, Sia," Gemma said, stretching her arms wide. "I'm a mother fucking stone wall."
The class broke out into howls of laughter as I jumped to my feet. I was ready to send another attack her way, even though my bones were screaming in agony from whatever she had hit me with.
First, she thinks she can get away with talking to my boyfriend. Now she humiliates me in front of everyone?
Screw making it look like an accident.
"Enough," Diarius said from behind me, her magic snapping in a visible well between us as Gemma sank down to the floor, laying back down and tracing shapes in the air like the last few minutes hadn't happened. Well, except for that smug grin that needed to be wiped off her face.
"Bitch," I hissed, sinking down to the stone step that was still steaming with Gemma’s residual magic.
"As you can see, shields are a vital part of our learning, as is the control of our tempers. We cannot spar effectively until we have mastered a basic shield. Or if we are prone to outbursts. I cannot teach you more complex attacks until then." She looked around at everyone, the last few students to wake up looking around the class in groggy confusion. "Each week our shields grow stronger and we will add more skills to this foundation. First, we must master the foundations. We can never guarantee that we will be evenly matched in a spar and we must be prepared to face magic stronger than our own."
"Stronger?" I hissed to myself, turning from the teacher to Gemma, who had sat up to give me a grin. The bell buzzed over the hollow amphitheater and people gathered their bags, heading back to their dorms, or yards, or whatever they did at the end of the day.
"Thank you, everyone! Please work on your breathing before bed tonight, we will continue this lesson tomorrow," Professor Diarius yelled over the bustle of everyone bolting for the door. She was already making her way back to the cluttered desk in the corner. The weird flute music had already made a return.
"Professor Diarius," I said before she could move too far away, trying to keep my voice sweet even though my back was aching. I grabbed my bag and limped after her, my left knee screaming with every step. What the hell had that girl hit me with? "There must be some mistake, professor. Gemma... I mean... she can't be stronger than me. I slept longer than anyone in this school. The King was certain that the power--"
"Your shield was strong, Sia, but not strong enough," Diarius said with a finger in the air. She was still plowing toward her desk, leaving me to continue hobbling after her. I doubt she noticed. "Especially when faced with unregulated magic like Gemma's. Because of her history with her magic, she is in fact, stronger than you. Perhaps you will catch up to her before the end of the year, for as you must learn control, so must she. She may have stronger magic now, but you have the potential to master skills faster as you will build with a base of rules and understanding. Working from the correct places is easier than working backward, trust me."
"So, if I keep breathing and imagining my magic as walls, I can beat her?" I asked, leaving Diarius to sigh and look up before going back to shuffling papers on her desk.
"There is no 'beating' anyone here, Sia," Diarius said, sinking into her frayed chair and looking up at me with that same disappointment from before. It only made my blood boil more. "We practice our skills this way as it is one of the best ways to master power. There is no beating because there is no fighting. There is only practice, work, and perfection."
I nearly laughed, I actually had to bite my lips to stop from doing so. Practice, work, and perfection was the mantra my parents had pushed into me from a young age. It clearly did not have the same meaning. Here those words were surrounded by flowers, at home they were written in blood.
8
Rowan
Six days. I had slept for six days.
Unsurprisingly, it had taken me longer than expected to fall asleep after my class with Gemma. But after tossing, turning, and more than a few shouted swears to the ceiling I had fallen asleep, and slept for six days. It was my longest stretch yet. Hopefully, it was just because I was extraordinarily tired and a bit emotionally drained after my first week at Imdalind Academy.
Not just because my Drak magic was becoming louder.
The dreams that had plagued me weren't really promising of it being some issue with exhaustion. I had woken up crying after watching hundreds of men storm through what looked like an old subway tunnel, the tubes lined with graffiti and splashed with blood as the wall of muscled men took hundreds of Undermortals down with swords.
Swords. Like some archaic murder scene.
Blood had splashed over everything as children screamed, as boots pounded, as people begged to be allowed to live, to be taken to The Wastelands, wherever that was.
I had no way to tell when the massacre had taken place with how fast the scene kept changing, different tunnels flashing in my mind’s eye as the horrors grew. It wasn’t until the screaming rebel in the middle of all of that blood appeared that I could even guess what I was looking at. Gemma stood, the lone protector between her people and those who had come to slaughter them, magic swirling all around her.
Healed, centered, perfectly strong magic.
It was her, alone, against hundreds. She didn’t even flinch.
I very rarely dreamed of the future, my vision of the Gauntlet being one of two. Three now. Not that it sat any better against my chest. The dream had ended with Gemma, standing before my brother Talon. The massive guy was on his knees, yelling something I couldn't hear before she put her hand around his neck and…
The memory was freezing and I pulled my race toward the class I was already late for to a stop, forcing myself to catch my breath and push the entire thing from my mind. Impossible. There are some things you don't forget. Watching your brother’s head get lobbed off was going on that list.
He may be a jerk, but that… that...
I swallowed, straightened my jacket and pushed open the door to my second-period class, which had to have been the loudest thing known to man. Every head turned, Professor Stone’s demonstration of wind-powered levitation and localization ending with a bang of wood against stone as the log she had been lifting fell to the ground.
Professor Lexia Stone was a Chosen, bitten during the war and bonded to one of the Skȓítek guards that had fought alongside my father for generations. She had been one of the first to marry an Eternal. Well, after Aunt Mira. But that story was weird.
Lexia had been around my whole life, which was why she looked more irritated than awed at my late arrival. The frizzy brown bun atop her head was bobbing as she narrowed her equally as dark eyes at me.
"Sorry," I began, running my hand through my hair. "I..." I stuttered to a stop.
What the hell do I say? I overslept? I am harboring gifts from another race of magic that does weird things to my body? I'm bored out of my mind and can't be bothered with these lessons?
I clearly should have given more effort to working out an excuse for my weird sleep cycles, or found out if the teachers had been warned. Doubtful considering how much we were trying to conceal it. Instead, I stood at the front of the room with my mouth hanging open, a wave of hushed laughter rolling through the class that was all completely focused on me.
Great, guess I should have paid a little bit more attention to the class starting times, I could have skipped this one altogether. Thankfully, Professor Stone came to my rescue, waving me off.
"It's no worries, Rowan, I am glad you could join us."
I bowed to her as I would to my father when he decided not to punish me, gaining myself more giggles as I turned toward the sea of students, all sitting before desks covered with logs of their own. Maybe I would get lucky and find a seat toward the back. Disappear in the crowd like the Undermortals did. Like Gemma did.
Thinking of her name pulled my focus right to her, perched on a rickety chair as she stared, her dark eyes and quirked eyebrow raised to me in confusion. My heart seized in my chest, the thing pounding so loud
that I was sure everyone could hear. Which is probably why they were all staring at me like I lost it.
"To continue," Lexia Stone bellowed over the class as I nearly fell into my seat. "The control of your magic and of wind is vital in order to master any of these skills. If you are lacking control, then you will never advance past this level one course, I can guarantee you. The minute lifting and manipulation of objects using only wind power is our first step. This is why we will focus on the lifting, spinning, and dancing of these objects for the next three months..."
She gestured toward the side of her desk where three boxes lay open, ready for everyone to gather their supplies.
A top, a playing card, and a feather.
Everyone else was excited, chatter waving through the thirty or so others. I nearly slammed my head into the desk just to make sure I hadn’t accidently been sent to hell. I had done this when I was five. I even taught Angie how to do it last year. Could they at least have started me in the fourth and final year instead of making me go through all of this? No wonder Talon was such a womanizer, he had to find something to do in this mess.
"Look!" Someone hissed to my left and I jerked as I watched the top from Professor Stone’s desk begin to spin and lift itself from the desktop. I didn't feel so much of a whisper of wind. Perfect control.
Ms. Stone looked at me with a furious expression, I shook my head, mouthing 'this isn't me' to her.
"I have a question," Gemma yelled from the back of the class, the loud clomp of her boots echoing over the squeal of chairs and desks as everyone turned to watch her saunter between rows to a now fuming Professor Stone, finger pointing to the top as tiny sparks flew from beneath her nail. "What if you already know how to do this? Do you want those of us who might be bored out of our god damned minds to knit you a blanket instead? We can make it in your favorite colors."
"There will be alternate tasks once you have mastered this skill," Lexia said through clenched teeth as the bell rang. No one moved, they sat frozen to their desks. Heads ping-ponged between Lexia, who was fuming, and Gemma who rolled up her jacket sleeves and put her hands on her hips like she was preparing for a duel. The normally marked wrists of the Chosen visible and bare.
Another sign that she wasn’t like the rest of us. A revolutionary. A fighter.
A killer.
I didn’t know what to think of her anymore. What to believe, my magic was as confused as my heart, both raging and flooding and screaming inside of me.
"Does it include levitating you, because I could get behind that." More than a few students laughed, then gasped, as a blast of wind moved between the isles, rushing right toward the teacher with clear intent.
My chair ground against stone as I stood, sending the old metal thing to the ground as I waved my hand and banished her wind, the magic fading into nothing. Papers, hair and everything else that the foolish gust had picked up falling to the ground like lead weights as I stood there, facing Gemma and her smug smile.
The same smile as in my dream. When she faced the army. When she beheaded my brother. The memory of the images grew stronger as my head spun, tiny hairs on the back of my neck picked up with the warmth.
“I won’t let you do that,” I growled, unsure of which Gemma I was talking to, and what exactly I was going to stop.
The girl of now.
The girl of later.
Her smile faded as my scowl deepened, leaving the two of us in a stand-off, our magic buzzing through the air. I had felt her magic before, felt the strength of it, the way it warmed the air and danced playfully against my own, both of them humming with the power of the earth. Before, my magic had rejoiced at that touch, fire moving through my veins.
Now it felt tarnished, dead, against me. Everything felt dead. Dead and warm and... My head spun and I clamped my eyes shut slamming myself back into my seat in what I was sure she would register as defeat.
Right then, there were worse things than losing a pathetic stand-off with her.
"You are dismissed!" Lexia bellowed when other students began to show up, eyes wide in confusion as to what they had walked in on.
“Poor Princey,” Gemma scoffed in her usual taunt as she turned on her heel and went back to her desk.
I was the first one out the door, bolting towards my defense class, wishing it would feature Uncle Ryland and a place to blow off steam. Maybe I could convince Professor Diarius to let me demonstrate something.
Like blowing something up.
"Rowy?" That shriek was the last thing I needed right now, it ran through my spine, straightening every bone and snapping every muscle together in preparation for the onslaught.
It came before I was ready for it, the tiny body and spindly arms of Sia Demarco wrapping around me from the back, her fingers pecking at the buttons on my blazer like a hungry bird. She would starve before I let her continue that.
"Hi, Sia," I sighed, removing her from my back and moving around to face her, which was ultimately more dangerous, as she immediately went for a kiss. I held her down, large hands on her smaller ones as I held her in place. Thank god she didn't fight me that time.
"Is everything alright?" She asked in a voice that was too reaching, even for her. "I was getting so worried! I had our whole weekend planned, I even got us tickets to a show in town, ‘My Prince, The Hero’.” It took everything to keep the smile on my face. “But then after class on Friday, I couldn't find you. Did you go back to Imdalind? To see your family? I would have liked to see them again. Next time make sure you take me, you are supposed to be escorting me, you know."
Sia, in Imdalind, at a family dinner. There was no chance in a million burning apocalypses that I would let that happen. If only to protect Angie from her ego.
"It's nothing like that," I said, continuing on our trek toward class, cringing as she wrapped her hand around mine, her skin was clammy, like she had been licking her palm.
"Then where were you, I was so worried?” So, fucking nosey.
I was actually surprised that she hadn't shown up at my room and dragged me out to the show dinner, or whatever it was she had planned. Then again, she probably tried. It usually took one of my siblings jumping in my bed or ripping my door off its hinges to wake me up most days. Which, now that I was thinking about it might be why I slept so long. Having no one there to wake me up equals long uninterrupted hours of sleep. This whole Academy thing actually might be better than I thought. If I could work out an excuse to where I vanished to for days at a time.
"Rowy?" She prodded, tugging on my arm and pulling me out of my thoughts. "Where were you?"
"Sleeping," I spoke without thinking, so much for coming up with some epic excuse. I guess convincing her the Eternals were actually part of some spy network was out. Of course, I highly doubted that lie would help smooth things over with the Chosen.
"Sleeping?" I wasn’t sure if she was curious or disgusted. Time to get this back on track.
"Yeah, that or throwing up. I wasn't feeling well." I had never seen Sia move so fast, especially when it involved stepping away from me.
"Ew," she gasped, her face tangling into disgust as she wiped her palms on her plaid uniform skirt. Man, if that got her to move that fast then I needed to pretend to be sick more often.
I had found my excuse. Everyone had been spreading rumors I was chronically ill for years, time to embrace the horrible, vomit-filled reality.
"Yeah, it was awful," I sighed dramatically and forced a cough as she took another step back. "It’s gotten worse since I came here too. My body had to acclimate to living above ground or something." It was bullshit, but she was still looking at me like I was going to hurl all over her. It was a beautiful sight. "I'm still not feeling the best, but I didn't want to miss any more school."
I forced another cough, wishing there was a way to make myself turn a natural green color. Didn't matter, I had clearly already taken it far enough.
"You poor baby," she crooned the words, wrapping her hand around mine,
although she still kept a solid foot between us. "Let me know next time, I can have someone bring you soup or something."
I bit back my laugh. The extent of Sia's caring for someone was sending a maid to deliver soup. Heartwarming.
"Yeah, I will." Another cough escaped as we reached the door to the courtyard for our Defense and Healing class, the massive wood door swinging open and giving Sia a quick escape route from me and my germs. She blew me a kiss as she skipped off to her sparring partner. I had a feeling that she wasn't going to be coming any closer for a while.
Professor Diarius was already lecturing about the different shield types, but paid no attention to either my or Sia's late arrival. She prattled on as I climbed the long steps toward what had become my usual spot and the girl who was enchanting spitballs to slam into the side of Sia's head.
It should have been funny. I should have smiled, but I couldn't. It was the same as before, when she had stood up to Lexia. All I could see was that dream.
All I could see was her ripping my brothers head off as she laughed.
All I could see was her spitting at my father’s feet as they put her in shackles after the Gauntlet.
All I could hear was my brother's voice naming her as the enemy in that blood-soaked hall. As he claimed she wanted to kill us all.
She turned to me, smiling with something I couldn't place, the grin sending my magic into overdrive, even as my heart froze. As I froze.
Her smile faded as I stood there, staring, everything pulling me in two directions.
I said nothing before I turned and walked out of the classroom, leaving the lecture, and the girl behind me, sure the grin had been just a shadow of the dream, and praying that she didn't want to kill me, too.
9
Gemma
"Get up you turd," I snarled under my breath, elbowing Eddy in the side. He was inches away from collapsing onto the pile of books in front of him, the drool that was dripping from his mouth already pooling on the old leather cover.
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