by K A Riley
“Vega, look at your hands,” Niala said, taking a step toward me, Rourke at her side. She looked like she was trying to focus on my face but couldn’t. Even as she stared at me, her eyes moved around like she was following the trajectory of a bouncing ping-pong ball.
I pulled my eyes down to see that my hands were…gone.
Only they weren’t, not exactly. They were a sort of translucent, swirling purple, like I’d turned into smoke. I could see them like vapor in front of me, but each time I tried to focus on some part of myself—my forearm, my finger—it seemed to disappear from view.
“What the—?” I choked out, pulling my eyes to Callum’s. I knew how frightened I must look. How confused.
Except for the fact that he probably couldn’t actually see my face.
“Breathe,” he said softly, his eyes searching for mine. “Just breathe.”
I did as he said, inhaling deep into my lungs before pushing out a slow exhalation. I found myself tumbling to the ground, landing with a soft thud, the earth puffing out from under me in gentle waves as if a whiff of air had disturbed it.
Sitting there, I watched as my hands slowly turned solid again, my flesh returning to its proper mocha shade. I’d never been so happy to see my own skin.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered to no one in particular. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I could do that.”
“Didn’t know?” Freya snarled. “As if you wouldn’t know a thing like that!”
“Shut it, Freya,” Niala shot from the other side of the rope barrier. “Can’t you see she’s freaked out?”
“The mallet…it went right through her!”
“If it hadn’t,” a deep voice said from somewhere behind me, “it would have killed her, and you know it. I want to see you in my office in five minutes.”
I twisted to my right to see that Merriwether had stepped into the courtyard. The look in his eyes was pure rage, and the power in his voice was unmistakable.
“But…” said Freya. “You told me when we first met that this was a competition, Headmaster.”
“A competition to prove yourself worthy. You failed. Now get moving!” Merriwether shouted.
Freya pushed herself to her feet, a surly look in her eyes as she glared my way.
“Vega,” Merriwether said, “Come to see me this evening after dinner. I wish to speak with you. For now, you’re dismissed.”
Niala and I shot each other a Holy crap look before I managed to scramble to my feet and slip under the ring’s rope. I shot a look over my shoulder at Callum, whose face told me he was almost as tormented by what had transpired as I was.
“The rest of you are dismissed, as well,” Merriwether announced.
A chorus of disappointed moans rose up behind me as I left the courtyard.
Great. I’d ruined everyone’s sparring fun, as well as turned myself into even more of a pariah than I already was.
My first full day at the Academy was going fabulously.
Truth
Truth
Instead of hanging around where I risked running into the students from the sparring session, I grabbed a dry bun and some butter from a cart at the entrance to the kitchen, ducked into a dark alcove, and summoned a door to the Grove.
I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to risk seeing Callum, but it was the only place where I could possibly be alone.
I couldn’t seem to rid myself of the pained look Callum had in his eyes when I’d left the courtyard. The look of someone who was horrified by what he saw. Disgusted, even. I could only imagine that he thought I was some kind of awful aberration.
More than anything, I felt embarrassed, as if I’d had a dream I shouldn’t have had and everyone in the entire Academy had been party to it. I’d been stripped naked in front of the world, only to have the world point out what a freak I was. By now, everyone in the entire Academy probably knew what I’d done. They knew I possessed some dark power that no proper Seeker was supposed to possess.
I sat on the grass, my back against the narrow trunk of a lemon tree, and ate my meager dinner, all the while feeling like a reject. Being ostracized from society wasn’t exactly a new sensation, but somehow it felt worse in the Otherwhere than it ever had in Fairhaven.
At least in Fairhaven, I had my house to escape to, a room of my own to conceal myself in. Here, I had no choice but to be around other people. And to make matters worse, some of them already hated me.
“Penny for your thoughts?” a voice said, stirring me out of my self-pity fest. A frown crossed my lips as I turned to see Callum walking toward me, his hands behind his back.
“Will made me the same offer back in Fairhaven just before he left for California. He never paid up.”
“I’m embarrassed to admit it,” Callum replied, circling around to sit down in front of me. “But I don’t have a penny to my name. How about this?”
He took his hands from behind his back and handed me a long-stemmed rose, its petals practically glowing a deep crimson red.
I took the rose from him and breathed in its heavenly aroma, relieved that Callum, unlike so many of my fellow students, wasn’t horrified with me or off somewhere cringing in disgust at what I’d done back in the courtyard.
“It’s beautiful,” I sighed.
“So…about that thought.”
“Let’s see. A bunch of students already hated me. But now they hate me even more, because…” I stopped myself, worried my voice would crack.
“Because, as it turns out, on top of being a Summoner, you’re also a Shadow,” Callum said.
I nodded miserably. “Whatever that actually means.”
“It means you’re amazing,” he replied.
I summoned the courage to pull my eyes to his, only to see a smile that told me he was proud of me for some insane reason.
“If I’m awesome, why were they looking at me like that?” I asked. “Like I was this horrible creature who was going to eat their faces?”
“Because it scares them to see,” he said. “Shadows are rare, and people associate them with rogues, assassins, and with the most powerful magic-users in the Otherwhere, not with newcomers to the Academy, and certainly not with Seeker Candidates.”
“Well, I have no idea where this lovely gift comes from,” I said. “It’s not like I’ve spent my life around these masters of the Dark Arts.”
“There’s another reason the students were acting weird.”
“Great.”
“The fact that you can summon and take on a Shadow form—it means you’re a Multi.”
I stared at Callum, overwhelmed by yet another curve ball thrown my way. What on earth was a Multi?
I’d been there less than two days and already my head was reeling, a couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone, and a fist-sized knot had taken up permanent residence in my gut. In a ridiculously short time, I’d gone from being the epitome of boring to the incarnation of freakish.
Two days before, I was the nobody girl in the shadows. Suddenly, I had a spotlight on me and a group of repulsed kids staring at me like I had two heads. I wanted to scream, growl, cry, curl up into a tight ball, and run away all at the same time.
Callum must have sensed my anxiety, because his voice dropped and slowed to a molasses crawl.
“A Multi isn’t a bad thing. It’s just someone with more than one magical ability. Very few people are Multis. Only the most skilled in the Otherwhere. People like Merriwether and the Crimson King, back when he was alive. They say it can happen when one is a descendant of both a Seeker and a magic user—two parents, one from your world, one from mine. It’s a hereditary thing, like having hazel eyes.”
He gave me a wink then. It was funny. My eyes were hazel. But they seemed to change all the time now, varying from green to brown to blue and back again, depending on my mood.
“My father had blue eyes,” I said. “My mother’s were dark brown.”
“And they combined into something beautiful,” Callum replied.
“Well,�
� I said with a flush of my cheeks, “my grandmother was obviously a Seeker. But my grandfather was a fisherman from Cornwall. So you’re saying there was someone else in my ancestry?”
He nodded. “There must have been. Which is rare.”
“Why’s that? I would have thought magic users got together all the time.”
“They do. All but Seekers.”
All of a sudden, I understood.
“Seekers can’t stay here,” I said. “That’s what you mean. They don’t marry people from the Otherwhere—they don’t have children together.”
“Right. They come to the Otherwhere, perform their duties, and leave when they’ve finished,” Callum said with a nod. “Most Seekers, as I understand it, go on about their lives back in your world. They leave this place behind forever. It’s always been the way.”
“That’s what my Nana did. She walked away and married my grandfather. And he was no wizard, except when it came to catching Atlantic salmon.”
Callum went silent, a strange look in his eye.
“What is it?” I asked. “What is it that everyone knows but refuses to tell me?”
He pressed his hands into the grass and leaned back on his arms, inhaling a deep breath. “I asked Lady Gray about the rumor about your grandmother, the one that says she betrayed the Academy.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She said that somewhere during the process—while she was recovering the Relics—she met a man. One who worked for the other side.”
I froze. All of a sudden it all made sense—the hatred, the looks, the disdain.
My own grandmother had fallen for the enemy.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I can’t…”
“I don’t really believe it either. But I remember hearing whispers about it, even back when I lived in Anara. I remember the stories about the Seeker who left in shame after the Portals had been sealed. She had issued an apology to the Academy and walked away, never to be heard from in the Otherwhere again.”
“You think…you think the man she knew back then…” I began, unable to finish.
“Was your grandfather? What do you think?”
I didn’t need to reply. I already knew the answer. My grandmother had gotten together with a powerful magic user. Someone cruel, malicious. She’d fallen for the enemy then returned to Cornwall, met my grandfather, and covered up the whole thing.
“But wait. My father never used magic,” I said. “Wouldn’t he have shown some signs?”
“Not necessarily. Like so many hereditary traits, magic can skip generations. Besides, your grandmother may well have tried to turn him away from it. Maybe she didn’t want him to end up with the same fate she did.”
“If she wanted to discourage him, she had a pretty funny way of doing it,” I said, recalling her strange cottage in Cornwall, with its creepy objects and potion-like vials. The place practically screamed magic. Then again, maybe she deliberately exposed him to thoughts of magic and witchcraft as a means to make him rebel against it. My father was a kind, sweet man who was strait-laced to the core. Nothing about the occult or the paranormal had ever interested him in the least. At least not as far as I knew.
“Look, Vega,” Callum said, leaning forward, crossing his legs and staring into my eyes, “there are always going to be people who don’t like what you are. That’s what happens to those with extraordinary powers. Trust me, I know.”
“But how could you know? You never…”
I bit my lip when I realized I was about to point out that he never displayed any powers. I hadn’t seen any sign that he was anything more than Callum Drake, the very handsome, very intelligent instructor.
“I keep my cards close to my chest,” he said. “There’s a reason for that. I’m sorry—I wish I could say more, but I can’t.”
He looked sad for a moment, but it passed. “Just do yourself a favor and try to embrace who and what you are. Whoever your grandfather might have been doesn’t matter, because, you’re…amazing.”
“I’m a freak.”
“Fine. But you’re an amazing freak.”
We exchanged a quick narrowing of the eyes, then burst into laughter. It was the first time in what felt like ages I’d let myself laugh, and it felt good.
For the next two hours we lay in the grass, staring up at the sky and talking about Callum’s world and mine, about our hopes for the future, about everything except for fear and doubt.
“I should probably head to the dorm,” I said at last, pulling myself to my feet. “I’m sure my peers will want to gawk at the demonic beast I’ve become.”
“Nah. It’ll be fine. They might even surprise you, you know.”
“Or they might murder me,” I said with a wink. “It’s been nice knowing you, Callum.”
“Silly girl.”
“Silly boy.”
With that, I smiled and took off to see what my ridiculous fate had in store for me next.
Summons
When I got to the dorm, I pushed the door open and strode through with as much confidence as I could muster, only to find an unexpected scene unfolding in front of my eyes.
The Zerkers, who were congregated in a far corner, chatting amongst themselves, turned to look when I entered the room. Some of them appeared frightened, their backs hunching the moment they saw me. They reminded me of a dog I’d once seen getting swatted on the nose for digging up its owner’s garden. Cowering, confused, slightly terrified.
The only one who didn’t look scared was Crow, who was standing on his own by the window. He nodded respectfully to me, and I thought I detected a slight smile.
The Seeker Candidates, on the other hand, sat on the other side of the room. They’d pushed their beds together and were squeezed in close to one another, having an intimate conversation.
Niala and Rourke sat on her bed. He was in his canine form, and her hand was buried deep in his fur.
When I headed her way, she said, “I think you should go make nice with your fellow Candidates.”
“Oh? Why?” I asked.
“Just…trust me.”
Taking a deep breath, I did as she suggested and headed over to where they were sitting. They lifted their eyes to stare at me. If the Zerkers were frightened of me, the Seeker Candidates looked impressed, even in awe. Even Oleana, who’d only ever looked at me with disdain, wore an expression that told me she was eager to talk to me.
“How did you do that?” she asked as I came near. “The Shadow thing—that was amazing.”
My lips twitched into a smile. “I’m not so sure about that. There are people here who can shoot fire with their fingers. All I did was disappear—it’s what I’ve done my whole life.”
“Well, it was cracking,” said a boy with dark hair and rosy cheeks. His accent sounded English.
“Thanks,” I said. “Honestly, all I know is I was afraid for my life.”
Meg, who was sitting closest to me, moved over and patted the mattress next to her. I took the cue and sat down, looking around at the Candidates.
“It was painful,” I said. “Scary, too. I felt like something had been torn away—my flesh and bones, all at the same time, if that makes any sense. Like the only thing left was my mind.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Oleana said, “I don’t think Freya really wanted you dead.”
“The mallet she flung at my head would beg to differ,” I replied.
“Freya really wanted to win. I heard her talking one day about the great Mariah Sloane…” She shot me a glance that told me she wasn’t sure it was okay to mention my controversial grandmother before continuing. “She said she’d heard her mother tell stories about Mariah’s accomplishments. I guess Freya’s mother never had a kind word to say about her, but the way she talked about your grandmother, you would have thought she worshiped her.”
“So Freya was trying to prove herself?” I asked.
Oleana nodded, her red hair bobbing in waves. “I think she w
anted to make her proud. She got carried away.”
“She’d probably heard the prophecy,” the dark-haired English boy blurted out.
“Prophecy?” I asked, my brow furrowing.
“You don’t know?” asked Meg.
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard anything about a prophecy.”
The other Candidates shot one another a look before Meg finally spoke up. “They say the Crimson King has an heir, and that he will come back someday and take the throne from the Usurper Queen.”
“There’s an heir?” I asked. “But I assumed…”
“That she killed whoever the heir was?” Meg asked. “We did, too. But I heard Lady Gray talking to another instructor about it the other day. She said she thinks you’re the one who’s supposed to help the heir find his way back to the throne.”
“Why me?” I asked.
Meg shrugged. “Something to do with your bloodline.”
I waited for her to expand on the thought, but she didn’t. I shot a look toward Oleana, expecting the same haughty look of entitlement I’d seen the previous day, but I didn’t get it. Instead she nodded reverently in my direction.
“If it’s you,” she said, “it’s well deserved. I mean, I really wanted to be the one. But I can’t compete with your abilities.”
I eyed her, trying to detect a hint of sarcasm. But there was none. It was so strange to be sitting there with eleven sets of eyes fixed on me, eleven faces awaiting whatever I was going to say next. Everyone was paying attention to me, and for once I didn’t mind.
“I appreciate everyone’s faith in me,” I said. “I really do. But we’re all in this together. So let’s keep training and see what happens. No one should make any assumptions about who will win the Trials, or about any prophecies that may or may not play out. I just want to survive to see the end of the week.”
I rose to my feet and smiled. “I promise to help you all survive, too.”
“Thanks,” they replied in almost perfect unison.
With one last quick nod, I headed to the washroom to splash some cold water on my face. As I stared at myself in the mirror, I liked what I saw: A confused girl whose confidence was growing by the day. A girl who had survived several near-death experiences and was learning to fight for herself.