"Correction, the prince is allowing me to pester him again. I don’t think we are in favor territory yet. Besides, Rowan and Analine aren't the only ones here. I’ve already decided. I'm going to walk right to headmaster Cail's office, bat my eyelashes a few times and demand an audience." I put my hands on my hip, tapping my toe impatiently as he scratched the last few words onto the clean sheet.
"You're going to flirt and a demand an audience of an Eternal?" Eddy asked, chuckling at me as he folded the paper up into fourths and wrote "Queen Joclyn" on the front. Or I think he did, I couldn't read those swirly letters that he preferred. Which is why I had also volunteered him for this job.
"Exactly. He won’t be able to say no," I said, snapping the letter from the table before he could add more swirlies. "This has to work. If it doesn't, I have every intention of breaking my way out of here next weekend."
"You've already tried that, Gem," Eddy said, leaning back in the chair and holding the coffee up. "You know it's not going to work."
"I'll make it work. You read Adrian's letter. We can't leave them to rot." I nodded to the folded scrap of old newspaper that was leaving a dirt smudge on the top of the table. It might as well have been burning a hole in it.
"'Twenty missing. Knives from the roof. Twice this week. Hungry.'" Eddy repeated from memory, the words buzzing in my head.
It had taken us an hour to translate the mess of circled letters, words, and doodles that had come in during mail call that morning. Every phrase that we pulled through was a grim picture. I would figure out how to solve the rest of that, right now all I could do anything about was the food.
"I won't let them starve," I hissed to myself, shoving the letter in my pocket and taking off toward Cail's office.
"Make sure you come back in one piece," Eddy called behind me as I left, waving a hand as he sipped his coffee. Something he was always doing lately.
I shot him a look he didn't see and shut the door behind me as quietly as possible, lest I summon the Bitchicade next door. I could hear her crying about some dress and a spoiled plan on the other side. Shattering glass accented each shout, the sound so loud that even I jumped.
Yeah, there was no way I wanted to deal with that today.
"Drama. Drama. Drama." I took off down the hall, making a beeline for the cafeteria and the line of offices in the hallway behind.
I had no clue which belonged to headmaster Cail, but I would knock doors and beg for information if I had to. This was getting done. I would even poke myself in the eyes and bring on a few fake tears.
I had no interest in turning into a mini Sia, but this was an emergency so I might as well take a page out of her book.
Rumbles of noise filtered from the cafeteria, all the older students studying, practicing and nibbling on the piles of food that covered every single table. Even the empty ones.
Fucking wasteful Eternals.
Rage was not going to help me get my point across, no matter how much I wanted to tell them how big of dipshits they all were. I took off past the cafeteria before my fury took hold, stumbling into the hall of doors that was twice as long as I expected.
"How many teachers does this place have?" I mumbled to myself, thanking everything in the world that was good and not smothered in death that these things had placards.
L. Stone
M. Hayward
G. Gregario
Some of the names I recognized, some I didn't, it was when I got to the end of the hall that I stopped short.
A. Krul
C. Krul
R. Krul
"Rowan Krul. Well, well, well," I mean, if I ever wanted to be a stalker, this would certainly be helpful information. Right now, I felt like one of those bleary-eyed girls that follow him around, especially when I heard yelling from beyond the door.
"Trouble in paradise?" I chuckled to myself. At least Rowan could control himself enough during a lovers spat to not throw shit around his room like a toddler.
He was a total douche, even more so since he missed our skit extraordinaire in Analine’s class, but maybe the fact that he wasn’t throwing a full-on temper tantrum evened it out.
“They were all ready for engagement photos!”
Ouch. I’d be screaming too if I was one step away from permanent attachment to the leech.
I turned from the yelling that was starting to sound too much like tears to the door on the other side of the hall, the one labeled 'C. Krul' and knocked twice. ‘C. Krul’, it sounded like the ridiculous children's book they were forcing us to read in our remedials class.
"See Krul. See Krul run. See Krul fall on his face in a pile of shit. See Krul sad." I said that last part right as the door opened and Headmaster Cail peered through the crack in his door, brows furrowing as he looked me up and down.
"Yes? Gemma. This is my private quarters. What are you doing here?" He got angrier and more frustrated with each word.
"Oh!" I said, looking up and down the hall. Rowans, presence was suddenly making sense. "I didn't realize."
I really needed to get out of there. If only because I was sure those were sobs I heard coming from Rowan's door. As I had already mentioned before, I don't do tears of any kind, Prince tears included.
Cail noticed the sound too, his eyes narrowing toward the door as a bit of warm wind soared by me, drowning the sound. A shield I realized, putting two and two together. Good to know I was actually listening during most of my classes.
"Well?" Cail snapped, pulling my focus from the door. "What can I help you with?"
"Oh! Right!" I pulled the haphazard and very wrinkled paper from my pocket, jutting it toward him with what I hoped was a humble expression. "I have this letter for the Queen. When I met her before, she told me to tell her if I needed help with anything. And I do. I wrote it down."
I tried beaming at him, still holding out the letter. He still didn't move.
Damn, I really sucked at this being nice stuff.
"You can read it if you want. Or I can. It's a letter. We used the word magnanimous and my friend Ed did the spiral writing. See." I pointed it out, trying to force a bigger smile, it slid off my face with the dark narrow glare that he was giving me.
Ugh. I didn’t know what was worse, Analine throwing insults, or Cail throwing scowls.
"Can you get it to her, please? I know she would really want to help if she knew. Please?" I was officially snapping, my hand shaking from holding out the letter so long, the paper starting to flap around like it was caught in a breeze.
Thankfully Headmaster Cail took the paper, staring at the writing for a second before he shoved it in his pocket. Mission success!
Well, half success. I was still going to celebrate.
"I will make sure this gets to her." He whispered, he sounded much more earnest about it than his sister did, even with the scowl.
Who knows, maybe he always looks that way.
"Thank you so much," I tried to smile again, giving him a nice toothy smile as he shut his door. "I'll never bug you here again, I promise!" We will just have to hope he heard that last part.
His door was already closed, leaving me alone in the hall with Rowan’s hissing anger and a throb in the mark the Vilỳ’s bite left behind, electricity rumbling from the bite on my elbow. Like it wanted me to help the prince or something. Stupid magic, it was all going haywire after he played himself the white knight last week.
I turned, ready to barge through the door and hug him or some shit, but instead took off down the hall, hand over my elbow.
God, all this playing nice was exhausting, I hated having to think about what it would be like every second of the day. Worrying about who liked me, who didn’t, if I was smiling enough, if I was smiling too much, if my hair looked right... No one had time for that. Let me be me. Sod all the bitches that don't like it.
I shook my hands, my shoulders, and cracked my neck in an attempt to shake off the sludge of trying to be good. As if it were as easy as that. I had a feeling t
hat all this nice guy bullshit was starting to stick.
Shit.
To be sure, as I was about to turn the corner and head back to my room, I sent some magic to Rowan’s door, accidentally on purpose setting it on fire.
Yep, still got it.
16
Rowan
“If you drop your lower finger the power strings differently,” I whispered, leaning toward Gemma as she worked on sending an attack toward an apple. She was supposed to be cracking it straight down the middle, but so far had only been able to explode the sucker.
“Drop your lower finger?” Gemma scoffed, her laugh echoing over the stone. “You do realize that doesn’t make any sense, right?”
I shook my head and grabbed two more apples from the crate. Quickly severing mine in two, while she exploded yet another.
“Damn it!”
The usual stair that we claimed as our own was covered in a slick coating of liquified apples.
Still, it was better than the rest of the class. Most of them hadn’t been able to do anything except knock the apple over.
Well, except Sia who had been able to cut the apple into two pieces, that while not equal had earned her the praise of Etma Diarius and me several smug looks. She had been trying to weasel her way back in my life for the past few days. I had made it very clear on several occasions that it wasn’t going to happen, I still had to peel her off me more than once.
“Why can’t exploding the damn thing be good enough? I mean it’s the same thing, right?” She was now drawing squiggles and lines through the apple smear with her magic.
She had excellent control of her power and her manipulations of the elements, but only in some things. In so many ways she reminded me of Angie when she was three and would explode things in lieu of throwing a toddler temper tantrum. It’s a good thing my parents were patient, I think we went through four-bathroom remodels that year.
“I think you’ve spent too many years blowing up shit to know what to do,” I said, setting out two more apples. “You gotta slow down and focus on each cell of the apple.”
“Dropping lower fingers and focusing on the cells of an apple?” she said, clearly mocking me as the corner of her mouth quirked. “That’s not what Diarius said. Wait. Is this some kind of super-secret royal training you are giving me? Do I need to sign a waiver, or be threatened by your dad again?”
I shook my head, “You did not get threatened by my father.”
“Oh yes, I did. Ultimate life threat. I could tell he was serious too because he gave me the look.” She screwed her face up, her eyes narrowing as her lips pulled into the slightest of frowns. I almost lost it. She looked like him, well, if he had purple eyes and a pink curl-hawk.
“That’s a little freaky how uncanny that is.”
“Could be worse,” she shrugged, “I mean, does your mom do that staring into your soul thing, often?”
“More often than she should.” I looked down, suddenly hyper-focused on the apples.
We were officially heading into treacherous ground. I had felt the pull of sight when my mother had been with her, I knew she had seen sight. True sight. I wasn’t interested in talking about it.
“Sounds like it scares you as much as it does me.” I didn’t miss that her voice had taken on a lower quality. Hesitant. Afraid.
I glanced up, she wasn’t even looking at me, she was staring at the window, her eyes flaring like a sunset against the sun as it dipped closer to the mountains.
“Give me your hand,” I spoke in little more than a whisper, but she jumped as though I had yelled.
“Why? So you can zap me again?” Her voice was harsh, the fear from before swallowed by her teasing. I could still see it in her eyes. Her worry dug into me, even as my magic went into overdrive.
She had felt it. She had felt the flare as our magic connected. As the power recognized…
I swallowed, not ready to acknowledge what that meant and held out my hand, desperate for her to grab it, to feel that power swirl again.
“No." It was taking everything in me to keep my voice level. “So, I can help you to cleave an apple rather than destroy it.”
“No thanks, your girlfriend has been giving me some serious side-eye and I think I like my head in one piece.”
“Not my girlfriend,” I said between clamped teeth. Gemma didn’t care, she smiled broadly and leaned in. Her eyes were so close that I couldn’t pull myself away from them.
“Tell her that, Princey.” We turned as one, Gemma waving enthusiastically at a stone-faced Sia, who was looking right at us. Judging by the depth of her scowl she had been staring at us for a long time.
“Hi!” Gemma said loudly, still waving. “Good job on the apple! I’m glad to see your doing better.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but of course, she chose right then to attempt to split the apple in half again.
It exploded again, Gemma laughing raucously at herself.
“Drop your lower finger,” I tried to prompt, she wasn’t having it.
“Naw. Besides, I think I like it better this way.” She gave me a broad smile as the bell rang and another apple exploded, showering the side of my head with liquid fruit.
Judging by the grin, by the laugh that rattled over the room, she had done it on purpose.
“Thanks Gemma,” I whispered, waving my hand and cleaning the apple away.
“No prob,” she gave me a wink and my heart gave a little stutter, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting as my magic reacted. “I can’t let you move out of your douche status that quickly.”
With that she was gone, leaving me in the massive room to gather my books and head down to the Rugby pitch, ready to douse some of my raging emotions with a few good tackles.
It took some skill to dodge around Sia, who was already yelling after me before I had stepped more than half a hall out of the classroom. I picked up my pace, darted into a lesser used hallway, down an empty flight of stairs, around two more corners and she was gone. There was no way I had gotten rid of her that easily, though. I kept moving, nearly running through a shortcut into a lower hall. I expected the place to be empty thanks to school letting out for the day. Instead, I came face to face with dozens of tattooed and pierced faces. One familiar grin standing out of the crowd.
“Greer?” I asked, causing his bulky figure to turn, a teetering stack of books in his arms almost falling at the movement.
“Row? Damn, what the hell are you doing here?” The bulky man shuffled, two books heading to the ground. I caught them easily, a little tug of my magic causing them to soar in my arms.
“Would you believe I took a wrong turn?” I asked, grabbing a few other books from his pile and adding them to mine.
Greer didn’t even flinch, though he did roll his eyes. He was the only person in this school that knew me, even then his knowledge was limited. I wasn’t ready to tell him about exactly why I disappeared for days. Or the dreams of blood-soaked tunnels that I had been having since I arrived there.
But it was nice to have someone to talk to, even a little bit. Besides, with his big laugh, calm demeanor, or quiet caring he reminded me of my family. It would figure that the only people that had even remotely accepted me were those that had been the most ostracized. Looks like I did fit in.
“Avoiding Sia again?” Greer gave me a wink and turned down the hall, guiding us through the waves of Undermortals that were now openly staring at me.
“She’s still trying to adhere herself to me,” I whispered, smiling at a few of the gaping students. I had only been in this hall once before. Then it had been empty besides Sia and her cronies when they cornered Gemma. I would have to remember to avoid this at all costs.
“You thought the remedial hall would be the best place to avoid her suction cup fingers? Or the lips that will suck out your soul?” He sounded like Gemma, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I calmly placed another book back onto his pile.
“You can’t deny it’s no
t true, Row.”
“You’re right, which is why I’m not saying anything. I’m just going to keep walking down this hall, carrying your books.”
“Rowan Krul, the benevolent prince,” Greer said with that booming voice of his. I almost punched him.
“No, thank you. I’d sooner punch you than let that nickname stick.” I gave him a look, I had told him enough about that. He should know better, but the guy was giving me that wide grin that was stereotypical of him. I winced.
Damn. I braced for it, but never could have guessed what was coming.
“Go ahead, prince, punch me!” Greer was in full-on bellow now, pulling the focus of everyone around us including a guy about my age with a tattoo around his eye, the jagged spikes almost the same as my Aunt Wyn’s.
“Nice tats,” I said, gesturing to his eye. The guy was giving me a look, but with one smile he faltered and almost walked into a door.
“You know, if you keep doing that you are going to get a reputation.”
“As long as it’s not as the King’s perfect son, or ‘that sickly prince with that bitch for a girlfriend’. Anything is better than that.” Greer laughed so hard he nearly sent his teetering pile of books to the ground.
I barely caught them, but this time I put them all on his pile.
“What are all these for anyway?” I asked when I caught sight of the topmost book, the old tattered volume looking about a hundred years old, ‘Math for a New Age’ printed in faded letters.
“There’s a reason it’s called the remedial hall, Row.” Greer sighed, shifting as we walked past dorm after dorm. I could tell by the space between the dorms that there were much smaller than what I had been given.
I was going to have to talk to my cousin about preferential treatment.
“We don’t have school back home, so they ‘catch us up’ but it’s more like four years of belittling us over knowing nothing. These are for the classes I miss because of Rugby practice.” He jostled the books as his magic flared, the lock to his door clicking open before he kicked it wider and darted inside.
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