I held my breath as the footage played out, my gaze glued to Darius as he fought like a man possessed, taking down the gangsters one after another before turning his rage on Zane himself. As the row of bikes outside the house exploded in a fireball, I flinched, looking up to find that the class was ready to begin and everyone was looking at me.
Darcy caught my eye, raising a brow and I hurriedly locked my Atlas as I shot an apologetic smile at Mother Dickins. She didn’t seem to mind and I had to fight to contain my grin over what I’d just watched.
There might have been something a little wrong with me, but watching Darius go all Dragon on some assholes who actually deserved it had given me fucking tingles. Dammit.
“Professor!” Kylie called from the back corner of the room where she was sitting alone with a ring of empty chairs around her. Even Jillian had abandoned her since she’d been outcast and knowing she was entirely isolated like that gave me a smug sense of satisfaction which just wouldn’t quit. “Aren’t you going to punish Tory for using her Atlas in class?”
“Did someone just fart?” Tyler asked, looking around like he was hunting for the source of the noise as laughter spilled out around the room.
“Is everyone ready to begin?” Mother Dickens asked mildly, looking around with a smile, her gaze skipping over Kylie like she wasn’t even there.
Darcy’s eyes flashed triumphantly as Kylie dipped her head and I snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, I definitely like her more than Highspell,” Darcy whispered to me and I definitely agreed.
“Can anyone tell me how many different spells there are for the healing of a physical wound such as a graze, cut, burn, broken bone, internal bleeding, etcetera?” Mother Dickens called and several hands rose around the circular room.
She pointed to Sofia who beamed before answering. “One.”
“Ten points to Ignis,” Mother Dickens replied, giving Sofia a short round of applause. Everyone seemed unsure whether or not they should be joining in, so a few people clapped while others looked awkward and before anyone had really done anything, Mother Dickens had moved on. “That’s it. One spell. And unless you choose to take Advanced Healing in your junior year, that single spell is the only one you will spend time learning in this class. Anyone care to tell me why?”
“Because once you know how to make a bendy bone hard again, you don’t need to know anything else?” Tyler called out and several students laughed.
Mother Dickens flicked a finger his way and his laughter fell silent as he was trapped within a silencing bubble before she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Because healing is unlike any other form of magic. And almost all Fae agree it is the hardest magic of all. It comes from inside you, from the very fabric of your power. Most magic involves creating something from nothing. Your own power is given form by your intent and your ability. However, with healing magic, you need to learn how to tap into the very purest form of that magic where it lives and encourage it to blossom in harmony with the body of the Fae you are treating. Who knows why that is?”
No one seemed to have the answer to that and Mother Dickens smiled kindly before stepping back to the centre of the room where a small trolley stood beside the bed. It held various pieces of medical equipment like scalpels and tweezers and she grabbed a glass beaker from it.
“Why can a Vampire draw magic from blood that is bottled?” she asked, lifting her wrist to her lips as a pair of fangs snapped out.
“Woah,” Darcy muttered and I raised a brow too. I was getting damn good at Order spotting and I totally would have pegged her for a cutesy Order like a Pegasus or a Cantrovian Rabbit. Not a damn bloodsucker.
We watched as she bit into her own wrist and decanted a glass of blood before healing the wound over again.
“Is it because our magic lives in our blood?” Diego offered.
“Yes! Ten points to Aer. Our magic is imbued in the very fabric of our DNA. The reason why we feel that hollow sensation in our chests when we’re out of power is because our magic lives in our hearts. And our hearts move it around our bodies in our blood. Therefore, even decanted blood holds magic. Which is why Vampires drink it. And why the Nymphs attack the heart with their probes when stealing our power. The probe of a Nymph is, in fact, hollow. If you imagine a giant needle being used to suck the power directly from the heart of the Fae they attack then that gives you some concept of how they steal our magic.”
“Could any Fae drink blood to gain magic then?” Diego asked. “Not just Vampires.”
“Why not give it a try?” Mother Dickins offered, moving towards him with the glass of her blood held out.
Diego’s lip curled back in horror and I had to fight really hard not to laugh as he tried to stammer excuses and she pushed the glass into his hand.
Mother Dickens eyed him sternly and with a hopeless look in our direction, he lifted it to his lips and took a sip.
I swear I threw up in my mouth a bit. I didn’t know why it was okay when Vampires did it. In fact, it was freaking hot when Vampires did it half the time. But something about him raising that glass full of her warm blood to his lips had my breakfast swirling in my gut something chronic.
I watched his throat bob as he swallowed and Mother Dickens reached out with a single finger, pressing it to the bottom of the glass to make sure he kept drinking. His throat bobbed again and again as he eyed me wildly like he was asking for help, his skin turning a little green and I decided there was zero chance of me eating my lunch today.
“Ohmagod,” Darcy muttered beneath her breath.
“Do you feel powerful?” Mother Dickens asked with a chuckle as she took the decanter back.
Diego shook his head and clapped a hand over his mouth and I shuddered. No fucking way would I have drunk that.
“Vampires seem like the Fae who change the least physically when in their Order form, but that is in fact entirely untrue. There are a lot of arguments that state that a Vampire actually changes their physiology the most of all Fae when in our shifted forms. From the outside, it may seem that only our fangs shift.” She snapped hers out again to demonstrate, grinning in a way that looked utterly ridiculous on a Vampire before she retracted them once more. “However, internally, a Vampire’s entire digestive system changes when we ingest Fae blood. Our stomachs have a separate chamber to collect the blood away from normal food and water. Then there is an entire network of organs something similar to the intestines, and veins which filter the blood and extract the magic from it. We have chambers in our hearts which can transform the shape of the magic we consume into the shape of the magic we can create with our Element. Meaning we can ingest the blood of a fire Elemental for example and then our bodies can transform that into the magic we use to create water. Other parasitic Orders have their own methods of doing this…but I digress.”
The entire class was deathly silent as we listened to her in fascination and I was fast realising that there was still a whole hell of a lot about Fae that I had no fucking idea about.
“So, back to the point of this lesson – and all future lessons you will be having with me this year and next until you master it – standard healing. I’ll need a volunteer.”
I raised my hand instantly and more than a few people looked at me in surprise. Me and Darcy might have been topping all of our classes (aside from Cardinal Magic now due to Professor Twat Cougar) but I basically never offered up answers or volunteered for shit. But this was different. I needed to learn how to heal. It was vital. And there was no way in hell I was going to waste time in this class by holding back.
Mother Dickens smiled brightly as she beckoned me forward and hopped up onto the bed in the centre of the room as she waited for me.
I strode towards her, working to ignore all the eyes I could feel on me as I came to stand over her on the bed.
“Okay, Tory, I’m going to cut my hand open and I would like you to heal it for me. Place your palm over the wound, close your eyes and bring your ma
gic to the surface of your skin in an utterly formless and pure stream of power.”
I nodded as she reached for the scalpel on the tray of surgical instruments and she gently nicked the back of her hand so that a bead of blood ran to the surface of her skin.
I released a slow breath and placed my hand over the tiny wound with my eyes closed as I tried to summon my magic in the way she’d instructed. It took a few minutes but eventually, I felt my power nudging against hers. It wasn’t like power sharing, it was more like dipping my toes into the top of a wave as it rolled away from me and wondering whether or not I should follow as it retreated.
“Good. Now, you need to meet the flow of my power seamlessly. My blood is here to heal this wound on its own. All I need you to do is add your power to the site of the wound and slowly add more and more of it until you give enough to allow the wound to heal. The reason it’s so difficult is because your own magic must remain formless so that it can follow the path of mine. My body wants to heal, it’s natural, and all you’re doing is helping it to do so faster. Some Fae find that they can manage this magic on themselves because they don’t need to find balance with another to achieve it, but they never learn to heal someone else.”
I nodded, trying to take in everything she’d said while fighting against the urge to tell my magic what to do.
I stood there for a long time, trying to push my magic into hers and slamming against a solid wall time and again. Mother Dickens and the entire class just remained silent as they watched and I tried not to let the pressure of the situation get to me.
I pulled my attention away from the task, exhaling as I let my mind wander over the lyrics of a lullaby instead of trying to force it and all of a sudden, my power connected with hers and slid inside.
My palm warmed and I cracked my eyes open to see a glow of green light emanating beneath it as excitement trickled through me.
The magic came with a rush which made me heady, euphoric even as my power coaxed her body into action faster and faster before the magic suddenly finished its job and burned out.
I pulled my hand back and gasped as I spotted the perfect patch of skin where the cut had been.
“Bravo, Miss Vega!” Mother Dickens cheered and this time the class joined in when she clapped. “Now let’s start building up your control until we can be confident you could heal a severed leg!”
***
Healing magic became our latest addiction and Darcy and I spent every evening that week cutting ourselves and letting the other heal it. Mother Dickens hadn’t been lying when she’d said it was hard. Even a paper cut proved really damn difficult to fix most of the time. The magic was so different to anything else we’d learned that it felt like having to unlearn all of it again before we could even begin. Like trying to write in perfect cursive with your left hand when you normally wrote with your right. But we were going to master it. Determined to be able to heal ourselves or anyone we cared about whenever we needed to.
So after spending most of Saturday night awake studying before crashing in Darcy’s room somewhere around four am, my alarm woke me and I glanced at the time with a gasp of shock.
I snatched my atlas from the nightstand as Darcy yanked a pillow over her head and stared at it in horror as I realised it wasn’t the alarm. It was the fucking snooze function. And I was already ten minutes late for my run with Darius.
“Fuck,” I cursed, half falling out of bed and throwing open Darcy’s closet as I stripped out of my clothes.
I grabbed a pair of red yoga pants and a pink sports bra, tugging them on and cursing as I realised they clashed horribly. But I didn’t have time to change them. I needed to get the hell out of Aer Tower and back over to Ignis House before he left without me or gave up on me.
I took exactly thirty seconds to pee and brush my teeth in Darcy’s en-suite and that was it.
I didn’t have time to waste on anything else so I kicked my feet into a pair of her sneakers, threw her window open and dove out into the chilly morning breeze.
“Tory!” Darcy shouted irritably as my wings snapped open and the cold air whooshed into the room where she was still trying to sleep.
“Sorry!” I called back. “No time to close it, I’m late!”
I shot across campus as fast as my wings would take me, sped over The Wailing Wood, crossed into Fire Territory and sighed in relief as I spotted him leaning against the glass wall of Ignis House.
I landed a bit too fast and stumbled in my unlaced sneakers before slamming face first into Darius’s chest as he lurched forward to catch me.
“Sorry,” I laughed as I looked up at him with a grin and he fell still as he helped me steady myself. “What?” I asked, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes.
“You’ve never smiled at me like that before,” he said in a rough voice, reaching out to brush some tangled strands of black hair out of my face.
“Shut up, I smile at you all the time,” I replied as heat touched my cheeks and I tried to run my fingers through my knotty hair.
Really should have taken a minute to brush it dumbass. Let’s hope he assumes it’s from flying.
“Not like that you don’t,” Darius countered, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth too as his gaze ran over me. “You look…cute.”
“I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t do cute.”
Darius snorted at me. “You look like you got dressed in the dark…”
“Gee thanks, any more observations, Sherlock?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him but I was still grinning so there wasn’t much bite with my snark.
“Well… You’re not wearing any makeup.”
“I…woke up late, so-”
“I like it,” he said, his smile growing as he looked me over. “You look all sleepy and innocent. I could almost imagine you just woke up in my bed.”
I was definitely goddamn blushing now and thanks to my lack of bronzer he was clearly well aware of it. The sky was darkening overhead already as we lingered, but I fought the stars for just another moment.
“If I’d spent the night in your bed, there wouldn’t have been anything innocent about it,” I taunted to get him back onto safer, less mortifying topics of conversation. Like sex.
“As much as I ache for the feeling of your body against mine – and I really fucking do – I think if I was allowed a single cheat against this curse that keeps us apart, I’d just want to be able to hold you in my arms,” he replied. “Just to wake up with you there, knowing you were safe.”
My heart pounded at his words, but a crash of thunder from the heavens stopped me from replying. I offered him a frustrated smile and turned away from him as I began my run.
Darius followed behind me, far enough back to allow the clouds to scatter again and I tried not to dwell on the disappointment that lingered in me as I upped my pace.
Did I just shoot over here at the speed of light without brushing my hair or putting any makeup on rather than risk missing out on our run?
I shook my head at myself as I tried to figure out what was going on here. I’d been purposefully ignoring this question up until now, but I seriously needed to consider what I was doing. Running with him every morning, messaging him every night. Exchanging little looks whenever we ended up in the same place and thinking about him way too often.
This felt a hell of a lot like the start of something instead of the end of it, but that wasn’t possible.
Even if he wanted it. Even if I wanted it. We couldn’t have it. The damn stars wouldn’t allow it.
My mind twisted around and around as we ran on and I cursed the stars out with everything I had.
But why was I doing that? Hadn’t I made my mind up about this? Hadn’t I already made the only decision I could?
Darius might have been showing me more of himself now, he might have stopped hurting me and be trying to change but had he done enough to make up for all the pain he’d caused me? When I really thought about it, I still wasn’t sure. But I was sure t
hat he made me smile when he messaged me, that I looked for him whenever I arrived in a room, that he seemed to be trying to do everything he could to set things right. And that I fantasised about him more than I had about any man in all my life. Even Tom Hardy. Even. Tom. Hardy.
Fuck it.
We ran around Aqua Lake, circling the shore and heading on into The Wailing Wood. Darius kept pace behind me in silence like always, but I decided to drop back.
He glanced at me as I started running at his side and I cast furtive looks at him beneath my lashes from time to time as I continued along our route.
Students walked the paths, ensuring we were never actually alone for more than a moment or two but we weren’t really with anyone else either. So far, the stars didn’t seem to mind.
We kept running all the way through The Wailing Wood to Aer Tower and beyond until we reached the crossroads where the path we usually took headed back towards The Orb and a narrow track led up to the fields which ran along the cliffs above Aer Cove.
I hesitated at the crossroads, glancing at Darius for a moment as the damn butterflies made a return to my stomach before taking the narrow path up onto the cliff top. The path was empty with no one up on the cliff as far as I could see. If we ran up there, we really would be alone.
I glanced back over my shoulder as Darius paused, wondering if he’d dare to follow me. How far was he willing to push the stars on this?
He only hesitated a moment before jogging after me as I ran for the cliff top and a smile tugged at my lips as I put on a spurt of speed. If he wanted to run with me then he’d have to keep up.
My feet pounded up the track and I panted as my muscles burned in protest at the incline.
The sky grew dark overhead as we ran on and I glanced up to see thick storm clouds sweeping overhead despite the fact that there had been nothing but pale blue to see only minutes ago.
Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts) Page 68