Early morning has a strange stillness to it now, as if the entire world is holding its breath, waiting for something. Only the great Vs of geese break the silence, sounding out their distant call.
Flee while you can. Winter is looming.
* * *
“How are things with the Icarals?” Aislinn asks one day in Chemistrie lecture.
About a week has passed since Ariel’s kindred was killed, and my North Tower lodging remains a tense but newly silent place. My bruises and cuts are mostly healed, thanks to the ministrations of Priest Simitri’s personal physician and a strong healing liniment I mixed up in the apothecary workroom.
“I only go back there to sleep,” I tell Aislinn. “And Ariel’s gotten very quiet. Mostly she just lies around. She never speaks to me. Never looks at me.” I glance furtively around the mostly deserted Chemistrie lab, my voice low, scholars slowly filtering in. “Seems to like the chicken I stole for her, though.”
“Do you think she’s safe to be around?” Aislinn asks, concerned.
“I don’t know.” I pull out some parchment and my pen and ink. “Wynter stays close to her. She seems to be able to keep her relatively calm.”
Wynter and I are increasingly on speaking terms, although I try to give her space, not wanting to have my mind read. She is, in turn, extraordinarily careful not to touch me. We exist in a polite, wary orbit of each other. I’m becoming increasingly curious about her, however, finding excuses to wander past as she draws. She no longer waits until I’m asleep to work on her art, and I steal glances of her beautiful sketches, which are mostly of Ariel and the chicken or of Elfin archers.
“I hardly ever see Ariel anywhere but in the North Tower,” I tell Aislinn. “But she turned up in Mathematics a few days ago.”
Aislinn’s eyes widen at this. “You’re kidding.”
I shake my head. “It was a huge surprise.”
“What happened?” she asks, and I launch into the story.
* * *
I was quietly taking my seat as Professor Mage Klinmann’s chalk clicked out a staccato rhythm on the wall slate, a steady rain pelting the long, arching windows. He’s a Gardnerian, my Mathematics professor, and pleasant enough to me. But it’s hard to warm up to such a rigid man. I’m always uncomfortably aware of the glint of cruel bitterness ever present in his cool green eyes when he looks at anyone of another race.
I had just finished setting out my pen, ink and notepaper when a collective gasp went up from the Gardnerian scholars around me. I glanced up from my desk.
To my great surprise, Ariel was standing in the doorway, her wings flapping around herself agitatedly.
Mage Klinmann turned his head to look at her, then quickly jerked it away, as if the sight of Ariel burned his eyes. All of the scholars looked away as well, murmuring to each other unhappily.
Everyone except Yvan, the only non-Gardnerian in the class.
“For what reason do you interrupt my class, Ariel Haven?” Mage Klinmann questioned. His voice was calm when he said it, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking out at his fellow Gardnerians, catching their sympathetic glances as they, also, pointedly tried to avoid looking at Ariel.
“They said I’m too smart for the class I was in,” Ariel spit out, self-consciously, her eyes darting around as she fidgeted from one foot to the other. I could see her fighting off the urge to cower, her posture that of someone braced for an attack. She thrust out a piece of parchment at Mage Klinmann. He must have seen it out of the corner of his eye—his lip twitched and he turned farther away from her.
“And how do I know you did not fool your professor in some way, Icaral?” he asked, almost sounding bored. “I’m told that your kind are very crafty.” He smiled at this, still not looking at her.
I’d seen people avert their eyes from Ariel and Wynter before, but only as they passed, never during conversation. It was strange and demeaning and filled me with an intense discomfort.
“You should look at me!” Ariel cried, her pockmarked face reddening, her hands balling into tight fists.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m talking to you! You should look at me!”
Professor Klinmann sniggered lightly. “And why, exactly, is it so important that I look at you?” He eyed the other scholars, as if they all shared an inside joke she was excluded from.
“Because I’m talking to you!” she cried, her eyes blazing with humiliation.
This prompted outright, incredulous laughter from some of the Gardnerian scholars.
Professor Klinmann seemed to be valiantly trying to ward off a smile. “Now, now, Icaral. To look at you would be against my religious beliefs. You’re well aware of that. It’s not a personal slight, and it would be foolish of you to take it as such. So you shouldn’t let your feathers get all...ruffled.” His eyes shot up to the Gardnerians before him, twinkling, and the scholars obliged him by breaking out into polite laughter, everyone studiously continuing to avert their eyes from Ariel.
Ariel flinched back as if struck, then turned and stormed out of the room.
I half rose, almost ready to go after her, then remembered that she hates me, and slowly sank back down.
I’d never seen anything like this.
I listened to the laughter of the scholars surrounding me in horror, suddenly nauseated. I turned to Yvan, who was seated across the aisle from me. He was the only other person in the classroom not smirking or outright laughing. He looked just as horrified as I felt.
Perhaps sensing my stare, Yvan turned to me, his eyebrows knit tightly together in anger. The moment his intense green eyes met mine, he gave a start, possibly surprised that I wasn’t laughing like the others, the two of us instantly united in this sickening outrage. We held each other’s gaze for a long moment as the anger in his face gave way to something akin to astonishment.
As if he was seeing me for the first time.
* * *
“It seems like it would be terrible to always have people looking away,” Aislinn considers as I finish telling her my story. Her brow tenses. “I never really thought about it before.”
“And now,” I tell her, “Yvan doesn’t flat-out hate me anymore. He still won’t speak to me, but the other day during my kitchen labor, when no one else was looking, I was having trouble picking up a large bucket of water, and he helped me. He grabbed the bucket out of my hand and walked off with it, cursing under his breath and acting like he was angry at himself for even doing it, but he helped me nonetheless.”
“Strange.”
“I know.”
The other scholars in Professor Volya’s class are trickling in, including our rune-marked professor herself, so we cease our conversation and turn our attention toward the front of the room.
Aislinn and I are not only fast friends by now, but research partners, as well. Not able to partner with a Lupine, on the second day of class Aislinn simply took a seat next to me, sitting as far away from Jarod Ulrich as possible. Diana smugly and wordlessly took the seat next to her brother, shooting a triumphant look at Professor Volya. Professor Volya pursed her lips unhappily, but decided to ignore the slight. Jarod’s face, however, remained tense and troubled for the rest of the class.
Aislinn, for her part, doesn’t spend much class time taking notes, as I’m generous in sharing mine. Instead, Aislinn hides classic novels and poetry books in her Chemistrie text and reads discreetly through every lecture. The class we’re currently sitting in is no different from any other, and after Professor Volya begins her lecture, Aislinn plasters a studious expression on her face and dives into her secret book.
I, in turn, dive into furiously scribbling notes on the distillation of essential oils. We’re about half an hour into the lecture when a neatly folded piece of parchment is tossed onto my papers from the direction of the Lupi
nes. I look at it curiously.
It reads Aislinn, in neat, attractive script.
Confused, I glance over at the Lupines. Diana seems clearly annoyed about something, and Jarod appears to be concentrating on the lecture.
I hand Aislinn the note, needing to elbow her to break her reading haze. Her brow furrows in puzzlement as I give it to her.
Aislinn quickly opens the neatly folded note. It reads:
What are you reading?
Jarod Ulrich
We both give a start, Aislinn’s eyes flying open wide. We glance over at the Lupines in unison. Jarod is focusing straight ahead at Professor Volya with an expression of unbroken concentration. I turn back to Aislinn. She’s now staring sideways at Jarod uneasily.
I can’t imagine that she’ll respond. After all, she’s afraid of him. He tried to help her twice, once when she dropped her books, another time when she spilled a vial of Ornithellon powder. Both times, he appeared wordlessly by her side, and both times, his attentions made Aislinn obviously fearful and uncomfortable.
But this time she surprises me.
Aislinn quickly writes the name of the poetry book on the paper, as if she has to act fast before she loses her nerve, then places the note firmly before me. I gape at her, dumbfounded, wondering if she’s taken complete leave of her senses. She gestures sharply toward the Lupines with her chin to spur me on, her brow knit hard with tension. For a few seconds we silently argue, but she remains resolute. I sigh deeply in reluctant surrender, shooting her a look of utter disbelief. The next time Professor Volya turns her broad back to us, I pick up the note and toss it onto Diana’s papers.
Diana glares at me, rolling her eyes disapprovingly, then hands the note to her brother.
Jarod takes it nonchalantly, his eyes never leaving the front of the room. He opens the note without looking at it, then lets his eyes flicker down briefly, his expression neutral. He pulls out a fresh piece of paper and begins to write as if he’s taking notes from the lecture. Aislinn and I watch him out of the corners of our eyes as he folds the note and places it in front of his sister, ignoring Diana’s irritated huffing as she defiantly folds her arms in front of herself, letting the note just sit there, unmoved. She shoots her twin repeated, hostile looks, but he calmly keeps his eyes straight ahead. Finally, when I think I’ll die from curiosity, Diana gives in, picks up the note and throws it at me.
I immediately pass the note to Aislinn and she eagerly unfolds the paper. “What is it?” I whisper.
A look of amazement spreads across her face. “Poetry!” she gasps.
I glance over at Jarod. He’s still pretending to be engrossed in the lecture.
Aislinn impatiently flips through her poetry book, biting on her lip in consternation, until she finds what she’s looking for. Then she places the note on the open book and moves them both toward me for my perusal.
The poem Jarod has written, an ode to the beauty of autumn, is identical to the one on the printed page. I look over at Jarod again, and there’s a small smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Aislinn carefully refolds Jarod’s note, places it as a pagemarker in her book and pretends to focus in on the lecture, her eyes glazed over with surprise.
* * *
I turn to Aislinn at the end of class, dumbfounded. “I cannot believe you are passing notes with a Lupine male.” I stare at her, amazed. “I thought you were terrified of them.”
Aislinn turns to me, her silver Erthia sphere necklace catching the light, her expression riddled with conflict, as if faced with a world suddenly turned clear on its head. “There’s been a mistake. There has to be some mistake.” Her eyes flicker to where Jarod stands with his sister. She looks back to me and shakes her head, but her gaze is full of certainty. “Elloren, it’s impossible to be evil and uncivilized and love the poetry of Fleming. I’m sure of this.”
I look toward Jarod just in time to see him briefly and discreetly meet Aislinn’s gaze and smile. Aislinn returns his smile shyly, colors then quickly turns away, hugging her poetry book close to her heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stick Magic
“There’s something strange about you and wood.”
I pause, my hands coated with esmin bark powder.
Only the drip, drip, drip of condensation from a distillation tube breaks the silence of the deserted lab. Tierney and I are the last scholars here at this late hour, finishing up work that takes twice as long without wand magic.
I’ve known for some time that Tierney’s noticed. It’s like something in me is waking up, and it’s more than just the echo of my grandmother’s power in my blood. I’ve always had fanciful imaginings about source trees, but the more time I spend in the apothecary laboratory, and especially in the attached greenhouse, the stronger my strange leanings have become.
And Tierney’s noticed.
She noticed when the small, potted Gorthan trees from the inaccessible northwestern forests opened their flowers at the brush of my hand. How a fiddlehead fern once reached up to curl lovingly around my finger, the small plant’s waves of adoration washing over me. She knows that I don’t have to label any ingredients that come from trees now. That I’ve learned to read mixtures intuitively, and can easily and effectively stray from the stated formulas more and more.
I level my gaze at Tierney. “Yes, well, there’s something strange about you and water.”
A flash of fear crosses Tierney’s face.
Whereas I know Tierney has been surreptitiously watching me, I also know she hasn’t realized that I’ve been doing the same. On several occasions, I’ve peered into the lab, late at night, and have caught sight of odd things. Things that left me blinking and wondering if my ongoing sleep deprivation is playing tricks on my mind. Tierney absentmindedly playing with water rivulets, the streams and balls of water following her swirling finger like playful kittens. Tierney directing steam with her fingers. Tierney holding a ball of water in her hand.
I’ve been forced to come face-to-face with the truth of it—like Gareth, there’s no doubt that Tierney and I have mixed blood.
Fae blood.
For a long moment Tierney and I stare at each other in edgy silence.
“Have you noticed,” Tierney ventures, “that we’re the only two people in class without white armbands?”
More and more Gardnerian scholars have begun wearing these armbands, showing their support for Marcus Vogel’s rise to High Mage in the spring referendum, Fallon Bane being one of the first. I can’t bring myself to wear one, no matter how important it is to fit in. The thought of Vogel as our next High Mage fills me with a powerful dread I can’t explain.
“Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,” I tell her with forced lightness. “That’s my aunt’s domain.”
Tierney shoots me a look of hard appraisal, her mouth inching up in a coldly sardonic smile.
It makes me uncomfortable, her look. Like I’m being harshly judged and found lacking.
“I’ll need your help with the vials,” Tierney uneasily blurts out. “Carrying them, I mean. With this crook in my back—I can only carry a little.”
I nod, eager to let all these threads of conversation drop into oblivion. I take my bowl of powder and shake it into the viscous syrup that’s simmering before us. The rich scent of cedar and cloves flavors the air.
“They’re in my room,” she adds.
I cough out a sound of disbelief as I wipe the bark powder from my hands. “I can’t go to your room. What if Fallon sees me there?”
“She won’t,” Tierney says with a shake of her head. “She has military drills most evenings.” She shoots me a significant look. “Weapons training.”
A dark laugh wells up. “Oh. Weapons. Is that all? So she’ll be well practiced when she walks in and slays me.”
Tierney cocks a shrewd eyebrow and regards me evenly. As if waiting for me to get this humor out of my system.
I let out a long sigh. “I cannot run into her, Tierney.”
“Fallon’s a fanatic about her schedule,” Tierney states evenly. “She won’t be there for a few more hours. I’m sure of it.”
* * *
I stare at Diana Ulrich, blinking.
She’s dozing on one of the four beds in Tierney’s crowded room, belly down, one arm dangling listlessly off the bed, snoring loudly.
Completely naked.
Tierney notices me gaping at Diana as she packs soft cloths around each vial in the first of two long, partitioned wooden boxes. She shrugs. “It’s shocking at first. But I’ve gotten used to it.”
Diana makes a snarfling sound and rolls over, her legs splayed apart. I blush and turn away.
Tierney sends me a thin smile. “I’m almost done.”
I glance around the room as Tierney works, curious. “So which bed is Fallon’s?”
Tierney snorts and gives me an incredulous look. “You think she’d sleep out here? With all of us?” Tierney jabs her thumb in the direction of a side room. “Her bed’s in there.”
I cautiously step into the adjacent room as Tierney begins loading the second tray of vials. It’s dramatic, as I expected it would be—done up in deep red and hard black, an expansive four-poster bed in its center, expensive sheets thrown about, a half-eaten plate of fruit spilling onto the white undersheet.
I note, with some petty satisfaction, that Fallon Bane is a slob.
I guiltily pad into the room, feeling like a thief in the night, curiosity getting the better of me. She has an impressive spellbook collection. Rows of brand-new grimoires, leather-bound with crisp gold-embossed titles, are housed in a locked bookshelf, its diamond-paned glass reinforced with iron latticework. Silver knives and swords with bejeweled handles and a cunning bow hang from the walls. An expansive fireplace with a grate of wrought iron worked into the shape of dragons’ claws cranks out a delicious warmth. And to top it all off, a real-life dragon skull hangs over the mantel.
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