Royals of Villain Academy 8: Vicious Arts
Page 16
There were too many other things going on for me to give that fact much immediate attention, but I filed it away for later. Maybe I could make something useful out of it when I didn’t have a civil war to prevent.
As I tossed the apple core in the garbage, Maggie came in. “The coast is clear?” she said with an arch of her eyebrow.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “There wasn’t really anything to be nervous about. Are they already finished downstairs?”
She shook her head. “It looks like it’s going to be a while longer, and your Nary friend says there isn’t anything for the rest of us to do. I figured I’m better off getting some sleep while I can—because who knows how much I’ll appreciate having gotten that rest later.”
“Good point.” I glanced toward my bedroom. Despite the coffee I’d drunk, my head was getting heavy. It’d been a long day, and I couldn’t say I’d been sleeping well in general. “Maybe I’ll turn in for the night too.”
It might have only been because of Morgan’s comment, but the small space of my room did feel eerily lonely once I was inside it. I curled up under the covers, wishing I knew for sure I’d get a future where I could snuggle in bed with all four of my lovers around me, no more worries about the fate of our entire society hanging over us.
A squeal that carried through my bedroom door yanked me out of sleep. I sat up, blinking blearily in the morning light that crept past my curtain, my pulse racing faster. Was something wrong? Had—
“It really worked!” a breathless voice said, and I realized the squeal must have been in excitement rather than distress. My heart kept thumping, but in a more upbeat rhythm now. I kicked off the sheets, pulled on my bathrobe over my nightgown, and headed out.
Victory, Cressida, Morgan, and a couple of Morgan’s friends were all huddled together around a laptop set on the dining table. Seeing the two haughty fearmancer girls in such close proximity to a group of Naries threw me for such a loop that it took me a moment to remember why I’d come out in the first place.
Morgan glanced up at me and beamed as I hurried over to see what they were looking at. “Those jerks must be running scared now,” she said.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Victory was smiling too. “The Nary newscasts are reporting that some of the recent turmoil may have been caused by terrorists, and they’re showing photos of the fearmancers who went out there, asking if anyone has information on their activities.”
“All the government law enforcement agencies have got to be on their case after this,” one of the other Naries said. “They’re going to have a lot more trouble using their voodoo on anyone.”
My spirits lifted. It wasn’t a total triumph, but it was a huge step in the right direction. Now we’d just have to wait and see how the barons responded. At some point, surely, no matter what my mother and Baron Nightwood felt they owed their supporters, they’d have to realize it was too much trouble to—
A shrill tone pierced the building’s walls and rang into my ears, seemingly from all around us. I clutched the edge of the kitchen island with a wince. The others looked around, the Naries’ expressions bewildered while a shadow crossed Victory’s and Cressida’s faces.
“What the heck is that?” Morgan asked.
A lump had filled my throat. I willed it down, pushing myself straighter, even though my stomach stayed clenched tight.
“That’s the alarm built into the school’s wards,” I said. “Someone’s trying to break through them.”
Apparently we were getting the barons’ response right now.
Chapter Twenty
Rory
Victory, Cressida, and I left the Naries behind with hasty words of reassurance I didn’t totally believe. We were met by a bunch of other fearmancer students as we burst out into the hall. Even the mages who hadn’t heard Ms. Grimsworth’s explanation about the warning alert could tell the sound signaled something important—and bad.
I realized halfway down the stairs that I was still only wearing my nightgown, bathrobe, and slippers, but I couldn’t imagine going back for proper clothes. I wasn’t going to let my outfit be the deciding factor in whether Blood U stood firm or fell.
As we passed the fourth floor landing, Declan rushed out in a similar state of disarray among more classmates, a wool coat pulled hastily over plaid pajamas. His normally neat hair stuck out in irregular tufts, but his hazel eyes shone sharply alert. How much sleep had he gotten after he and Brandon had finally finished all their computer trickery?
“Have you heard anything about what’s happening out there?” I asked as we fell into step together.
He shook his head. “The alert woke me up. But it doesn’t take much to guess who’d be attacking us. No one except our fellow fearmancers even know where the university is.” His lips twitched into a tense smile. “Looks like yesterday’s stunt caught their attention, if not entirely in the way I’d like.”
He wouldn’t have seen the news yet. “The Naries are already reporting on the supposed terrorist activity,” I said. “It’s got to have thrown a wrench in the barons’ plans.”
A wry voice carried from behind us. “And now they’re trying to throw a whole lot more than a wrench at us.”
Jude had managed to pull on slacks and a sweater, probably because, knowing him, if he’d come running straight out of bed, he’d have been in nothing but boxers, if that much. His hair was equally rumpled, a pink indent from a crease in his pillowcase crossing his cheek like a scar. The image jolted me back to weeks ago when we’d found him crumpled near death in the west field.
“I’m coming,” he added in a taut voice, maybe catching the shift in my expression. “I can do something, even if it’s just hurling insults to conjure a little emotional distress. I’m not going to be remotely safe if this invasion succeeds.”
I couldn’t argue with that—and it wasn’t as if I had time to anyway. We spilled out into the first floor hallway beside the library, with Maggie, Malcolm, Connar, and Holden catching up with us there. Outside on the green, a couple of our remaining professors stood on the grass with Ms. Grimsworth and a few of our blacksuits. Junior students poured out of Killbrook Hall beyond them. Malcolm made a decisive motion, and both his sister and Noah loped over to join our pack of heirs.
At the same time, the staff were gesturing for our attention and one of the blacksuits was hollering instructions. “We need people by the road and beyond the east and west fields. The wards will hold strong once they’re tuned properly, but most of the participants in the current offensive have prior permission to cross them. My colleagues are changing that as quickly as they can as our attackers arrive, but we need help pushing them back in the meantime.”
One of the other blacksuits pressed her hand to her ear where she must have been wearing a radio for communication. Her jaw tightened.
“The assault is focusing in on the mid-east field. A few of the barons’ blacksuits have pressed past the wards!”
Her colleague leapt into action. He jerked his hand toward us. “Scions, take the east field. The rest of you, spread out across campus.”
Before he’d even finished speaking, all of us heirs and a handful of our classmates were moving, running across the green toward the field beyond Nightwood Tower. My slippers wobbled on my feet, and I murmured them more tightly into place with a quick spell. Shouts rang out up ahead, although I couldn’t make out any of the fighting yet. It’d be deeper within the forest that bordered the campus.
As we reached the trees, a lanky figure sprinted across grass toward us. The new Baron Killbrook must have gotten word of the shift in the assault. Hector waved us onward. “Get in there as quickly as you can. We’ve got to try to keep them behind the wards.”
We dashed into the forest, dodging tree roots and fallen branches. A flash of magical energy split the dim space ahead, followed by a cry of pain. Our side or theirs? I propelled myself faster, my lungs constricting in my chest.
If the baro
ns’ people overran the school and took all of the resisters into custody… nothing we’d done so far would really matter, would it? There’d be no one left to oppose them. Even people who’d been on the fence would hesitate after seeing our failure.
We couldn’t let that happen.
Hector had veered through the trees to catch up with us. His voice came out forceful despite his ragged breaths. “Our blacksuits are wearing blue cloths like scarves. If you see any without that, do whatever you can to stop them.”
I nodded, gathering casting words for shields and propulsion onto my tongue. Connar and Malcolm were already speaking spells with a quiver of magic around us. Jude snatched up a jagged-ended branch and brandished it like a spear, clearly determined to put up as much of a fight as he could if it came to that.
More flashes of blazing energy highlighted a line of figures ahead of us: blacksuits with the splotches of bright blue Baron Killbrook had mentioned, some of the other professors and staff. I caught sight of Professor Viceport’s pale bob and Mr. Wakeburn’s shaggy hair.
My toe stubbed against a protruding rock I hadn’t seen, and I pitched forward. Maggie caught my elbow before I outright fell. She shot me a firm smile. “Let’s show them what Bloodstones are really made of.”
Yes. As we charged the rest of the way to the front lines, I spotted other people deeper in the forest. Blacksuits in their standard uniforms and other mages the barons must have rallied to this cause barked casting words and flung out spells in an erratic, crackling wave. A bolt of heat sliced through the barrier the guys had conjured and seared across my jaw with a stab of pain.
Around my wince, I snapped out another defensive spell, and then conjured a blast of wind to slam into the oncoming attackers. Several of the blacksuits staggered backward—a few toppled right over. I rushed on until I was just behind our own officers.
They were chanting casting words in rhythmic tones, their hands twitching now and then toward our enemies. Removing the permissions that had allowed those fearmancers to step past the wards before, presumably. But that would only help us if we could push them back behind the wards to begin with. Once they were in, there was nothing to do but fight.
Voices rang out all around me: more shields, more whirlwinds and lurches of the ground to toss the advancing forces farther back. My fellow scions had gathered close around me, most of the guys casting, Jude waving his branch threateningly while hurling his promised insults.
When I glanced back in the midst of my own volley of spells, Maggie was flanking me on one side, Holden just behind me on the other, Noah close to Declan and Agnes hanging slightly back behind Malcolm. Her mouth was pressed flat and her eyes were wide, but she’d taken Jude’s lead and grabbed a makeshift spear of her own.
We had other company too. Victory and Cressida had followed us across the east field, along with several other Guard members and classmates. But as I yelled out the words to stir even more magic from behind my sternum, to turn that thrum into a wallop of energy that smashed through a fresh assault of magic and sent the casters reeling backward, the steady sense of our little group of heirs wrapped around me.
It didn’t matter that not all of us could cast very much or even at all. It didn’t matter that some of us had trained for the barony for years and others had never considered it until months or days ago. We were our families’ children, in power if not in goals, and when we put all that power to bear together, the air sang with it.
Why the hell wouldn’t the pentacle of barons be stronger with every member of age participating rather than squabbling over who got the seat? New problems would come up with that approach, no doubt, but in that moment all I could feel was how right it was for us all to work our magic together. How naturally we wove our spells around each other’s, complementing each other’s specialties, filling in the weak points.
“There’s more!” one of the blacksuits hollered. They threw themselves into their spells to adjust the wards even more urgently. New figures barreled into view, their mouths already moving with castings of their own.
The air shuddered around us. One man, off to the side, whipped a hand through the air to launch a casting so subtle I couldn’t see more than a glimmer of its energy—but vicious enough to snap through the barriers in place around us.
He’d aimed it at the bunch of us, but he’d been closest to Jude. The glint scythed through the air, my heart lurched, and without another thought I sprang past Connar to shield the other guy physically as well as with the spell that tumbled from my lips.
The glint shattered against my magic just an inch from my face—sharp enough that a few flecks of its energy scratched across my cheeks. I knocked into Jude, who caught me with his free arm. His gaze caught on my bleeding face, and his eyes narrowed with a glitter of anger.
“I’m okay,” I said quickly.
“And so am I,” he replied with a pained smile. “Don’t put protecting me ahead of everyone else.”
I gave his arm a quick squeeze. “I think I can manage both.”
After a few more volleys back and forth, the pressure against us seemed to dwindle. Which didn’t mean it was break time. “They’re shifting their main force to the south!” one of the blacksuits called out, and the bunch of us raced over to lend our skills near the road to town.
I didn’t think we’d taken many of our opponents down. Most of us hadn’t been aiming to hurt them anyway, only to force them to back off. Despite the cool air and the forest shadows, sweat was trickling down my neck beneath the collar of my bathrobe, but the oncoming force against us was starting to thin.
The blacksuits’ strategy was working. The wards were doing more and more of the work, preventing the invaders from even getting close to us. The protections around the school had held secure against the top joymancers who’d spent decades trying to track down the fearmancer stronghold—they could fend off our own kind too.
At least, until the barons came up with some other strategy to get at us—or forced us to leave the safety of the wards. We could only protect ourselves in here, not out in the rest of the world.
That knowledge dampened any exhilaration I might have felt as the battle wound down. Finally, there was no one left to fling spells at. I let my voice fall silent, my throat stinging from the strain, my jaw still throbbing from that first strike. When I swiped my hand over my forehead, it came away with a thin streak of blood.
My companions looked equally exhausted and relieved. Connar turned and caught me in a squeeze of an embrace. Malcolm set his hand on my shoulder after, as if he felt he needed to make some physical claim as well.
“We’re secure for now,” one of the blacksuits reported. “Thank you so much for your swift assistance, everyone. We may need to set up more regular patrols than we can manage on our own, but for now, get some rest. Anyone with more serious injuries, report to the infirmary.”
We meandered back to the main campus buildings on weary feet. I might be exhausted, but I was also so keyed up from the fighting that it was hard to imagine really resting, let alone getting back to sleep. The blacksuit’s comment had been one more reminder that even if we’d defended ourselves once, the war was far from over.
Victory had stuck with us when we’d moved to the south end of campus. She ended up trudging along next to me, a chunk of her auburn hair scorched away over her ear, smudges of dirt dappling her cheeks and hands. After a short stretch of silence, she glanced over at me.
“You’re pretty quick in a fight. I’m glad I’m on the same side as you.”
I couldn’t stop a tired laugh from tumbling out. “I hope that’s not the only reason you’re on the same side.”
She made a face at me. “Of course not. I’m just trying to say—I respect how much you’re willing to put yourself out there for the rest of us. Even when it’s literally life or death.”
She spoke in her usual unflappable tone, but the words held a hint of an apology. It took me a moment to mull over my answer.
/> “I never had anything against you, you know,” I said. “I mean, other than you being a jerk to me. I wasn’t out to take your room or undermine your status on campus or anything like that.”
“Yeah. I’ve been figuring that out. I guess a lot of us were stuck seeing everything from one specific point of view, and we overlooked a lot of other things. Like the fact that apparently most of our barons were batshit crazy.” She made a spinning gesture with her finger by her ear.
“To be fair, even I only took them for assholes, not outright maniacs, until recently.”
“Yeah. Well. Somehow I suspect you caught on faster than I did.” Her head dipped as we came into Ashgrave Hall to head back to the dorms. “I never gave you much credit for how hard it must have been to keep standing up to us when you weren’t used to the way things worked here. I wanted to see you as weak for being so worried about the Naries and all. But… maybe I was being kind of a coward myself, when things started to get bad, hoping I could live my life the way I always did without getting involved. Expecting other people to pick up the slack so I could stay out of anything tough.”
A twinge ran through my chest. I smiled at her, more genuinely than I’d ever thought I’d be able to with the girl who’d once been my nemesis. “You fought just as hard as the rest of us out there right now. I don’t think anyone could get away with calling you a coward.”
She lifted her chin. “I am a Blighthaven. We step up when we’re called on.”
There was that usual pride. But after the admissions she’d just made, the attitude didn’t rankle me.
“I appreciate that,” I said. “And if I have my way, there won’t be many more calls after this one.”
I had no idea how likely I was to make that happen, but the tip of her head and the small smile that crossed her lips made me feel I’d won two battles today rather than just the one.