by Eva Chase
He trotted off, I straightened up, and the Bloodstone scion came striding out through the main door of Ashgrave Hall, just a few feet away.
Rory’s hair was in disarray, clearly not combed with anything other than a swipe of her fingers since she’d woken up. Her blouse hung unevenly over her sleek jeans. And yet she still managed to look so stunning that fuck me if my pulse didn’t skip a beat in that moment.
Of course, part of that was anticipation. “Hey, Glinda!” I called out before she’d taken two steps toward Killbrook Hall—off to see her mentor or maybe the headmistress, no doubt. “You don’t look so hot. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
Rory spun around. She might have looked flustered, but her dark blue eyes still flashed with that gleam of challenge when they met mine. Somehow that iron will rose up whenever the two of us faced off. Now that I knew to expect it, the sight sent a thrill through me alongside my resolve.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she snapped. “One of your stupid persuasion spells, probably.”
I let my eyes widen and held up my hands. “I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. I just got back from an hour’s run with my familiar around campus.”
Her gaze flicked over me, taking in my sweaty shirt and the exercise towel tucked over my shoulder. Glancing farther, she’d have caught sight of Shadow just before he vanished into the forest.
She let out her breath in a huff. Her voice came out so fierce yet husky that it provoked a deeper thrill straight down to my groin.
“If you are doing something, I am going to find out, and then you’re going to regret it.”
“I look forward to it,” I said with a cheery wave.
She made a face at me and hurried off. Her stride wasn’t quite as steady as it usually was. I should have felt victorious as I watched her march into the other hall, but mixed in with the triumph was the same sort of jab as when I ordered Shadow into that godawful kennel.
Rory Bloodstone wasn’t meant to wobble. It wasn’t a good look on her at all. Why the hell did she have to cling to her pretentious joymancer ideas about heroes and villains so stubbornly?
If she would just fucking admit she needed us, then we could get on with the good parts of having the full pentacle of scions together at long last. And she did need us, whether she wanted to accept it or not.
None of us made it alone, not in the field of barons and heirs.
Chapter Seven
Rory
I stopped just inside Killbrook Hall to take a deep breath and take a stab at tidying my rumpled hair. It was possible I was going crazy, but I’d really prefer not to convince Professor Banefield of that before I even opened my mouth.
He had to be back, didn’t he? It’d been two days ago he’d said he was leaving for his “trip.” We were supposed to have a mentoring session in an hour and a half anyway. Surely he’d have sent a message along if he’d had to cancel it?
If he wasn’t there, I didn’t know who I’d talk to. Ms. Grimsworth didn’t exactly put me at ease, even if she had warmed up a bit since discovering my many strengths.
Just remembering how I’d woken up turned my innards into one huge knot. The tips of my fingers still throbbed from where I must have dug them into the folds of my sheet, hard enough to wrench the fabric apart. Because that’s how I’d found myself when I’d hurtled out of sleep with my throat raw and my ears ringing—tangled up in torn strips, bits of thread clinging to my skin and my pajamas.
I hadn’t even been dreaming, as far as I could remember. I’d torn into the sheet for no reason I could imagine, and Deborah had told me I’d been yelling too. Nothing pleasant, from her hesitance in mentioning that part.
I couldn’t wake you up, just like I couldn’t last week when you got caught up in writing on that paper, she’d said with an anxious paw on my hand. I couldn’t get close as it was, the way you were… moving around. I peeked out into the dorm, but the other girls around all looked startled.
I’d asked her if she could scurry through the walls to check Declan’s room below mine, just in case. Even if I didn’t want to believe he would mess with me like that after the tentative understanding we’d come to, one of the other scions might have been able to use his room to get close enough to effectively cast. But she’d returned to report that it’d been empty, no one around.
My dormmates who’d been up had still looked startled when I’d emerged a few minutes later after a hasty change. Even Victory, who’d been standing by the table, had stiffened as if she were wary of what I might do even as she’d arched her eyebrows. The other girls had averted their gazes and given me a wide berth, one of them flinching at the tap of my footsteps.
A whole lot of nervous fear had flooded me, but I hadn’t gotten any satisfaction from it at all.
And then Malcolm had been waiting outside with his goading comments. Maybe it’d just been an awful coincidence… but if he didn’t have anything to do with my weird episodes, and my dormmates didn’t either, then the problem was probably me, wasn’t it? Something in my own head, nothing magical at all—or a response to the magic I wasn’t used to that was now flowing through me more and more potently.
I swallowed thickly at that thought. None of the staff had mentioned any concerns that my time with my joymancer parents, the four or so years while my natural magic had been completely suppressed, might have any negative effects. Had they ever known any fearmancers who’d been stifled like that before, though?
A senior guy I vaguely recognized walked out of the hall that led to the staff wing. Someone with an official early morning appointment with one of the professors, I guessed. His gait slowed when he saw me, and my back automatically went rigid. He clearly recognized me.
I caught a flicker of anxiety, and then he was striding up to me, his jaw set. He bobbed his head in a weird almost-bow when he stopped in front of me. “Rory Bloodstone. I was hoping I’d get a chance to talk to you. I—I’m taking part in a challenge on the casting grounds this afternoon. It would be an honor if you’d watch my performance. I do intend to win.”
I blinked at him. He didn’t sound as if he were happy to be talking to me or he really wanted me spending any more time around him than was happening right now. At least the guy who’d tried to flirt with me the other day had seemed like he thought it was a good idea until I’d told him off. Or maybe this wasn’t a come-on but some bizarre fearmancer custom that no one had bothered to tell me about.
“Why?” I said. I didn’t have the energy to beat around the bush right now.
A sharper flare of fear shot into my chest. It felt a lot more like panic than nervous jitters. Why the hell was he talking to me at all if I made him this uncomfortable?
His hands fumbled in front of him as if he thought he could grasp onto an answer with them. “I—I think you’d be impressed with what you see. My family has a strong heritage in both Illusion and Persuasion.”
Okay, I was pretty sure this was another attempt at dating me. Fearmancers just had really weird approaches to courting.
“Look,” I said, as gently as I could manage around my already frayed nerves, “I don’t give a crap about your family heritage. I mean, not just yours, but anyone’s. All right? And I’m not really interested in having people impress me either. You’ll probably do better with your challenge if you’re not inviting people you’re terrified of.”
That last bit might have been a little too much honesty. His expression flickered, and his posture tensed more than it already was. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” he sputtered, and dashed off before I could tell him he hadn’t really.
One of the juniors who lived in the dorms above had come into the front hall while we’d been talking. She glanced after the guy and then gave me a haughty look that reminded me of Victory, although this girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
“Don’t be mad at him,” she said in a slightly sneering tone. “His parents probably put him up to it. Landing a scion would be a big
step up for them.”
“Thanks for the… tip,” I said, feeling abruptly defensive of the guy. God, if he’d put himself through that conversation despite his fear of me, how much more terrified was he of his parents? “Maybe everyone here should practice staying out of other people’s business.”
At the sharpness in my voice, a flicker of anxiety rippled out of her. She took a step back. I restrained a groan and hurried off toward the staff wing before I could inadvertently terrorize anyone else.
The hall with the professors’ offices—each of which led into their personal apartments, from what I’d gathered—was totally quiet. My steps sounded too loud despite the thick carpeting on the floor. I stopped at the door with Prof. Archer Banefield engraved on the bronze plaque and knocked, first softly and then, when I didn’t get an answer, as hard as I dared.
I didn’t hear anything from the other side. I was debating between trying one more time and just stewing in my worries until our actual meeting time when the lock clicked over.
Banefield opened the door looking rather rumpled himself, which was saying something when he never came across as all that neat to begin with. If possible, his light red hair was sticking out in even more directions than usual, his shirt buttons were off by one, and he was still in his socked feet.
“Rory,” he said, managing his usual warm tone despite his disarray. “I wasn’t expecting you this early. I was still in the process of, ah, getting myself together for the day.”
Embarrassment flared in my chest. “I’m sorry. I can come back later. I just—this morning—I needed to talk to someone, but it can wait.”
His eyebrows drew together as he took me in, concern shadowing his eyes. I guessed my attempt at composing myself hadn’t been a total success. He motioned me in. “No, it’s all right. You’re here now. Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened?”
Once I was in his office, sitting on the rich brocade of the armchair where I’d spent so many mentoring sessions, I felt even more awkward. “I’m not even sure exactly what’s going on,” I said. “Whether it’s me or someone using magic on me or… or what.” Were there other possibilities beyond those two? I hoped not. “If it’s someone else messing with me, I know I should deal with that myself. It’s just—if it’s me—I’m not really sure what to do. I thought someone should know, anyway.”
Banefield leaned back in his chair with a puzzled frown. “What exactly has happened?”
I explained about the time last week when I’d gone into the daze and then how I’d woken up this morning, leaving out the parts about Deborah’s attempts to intervene and her observations of the nearby students. When I’d finished, Banefield’s frown had deepened. He looked almost… angry.
He’d never seemed all that perturbed by the treatment I was getting from the rest of the student body before, and honestly a lot of that had been worse than this, just easier to identify. I hadn’t screwed up with how I’d handled the episodes, had I?
“You’re right that an immediate casting generally requires close proximity,” he said, setting his elbows on his desk with a thump. “Have you checked your room for any objects that might be holding a sustained spell?”
I nodded. Deborah and I both had the first time, and we’d done another quick sweep this morning while I’d thrown on my clothes. “I haven’t found anything that I can tell has magic in it.”
“You should be able to sense anything that could have that strong an effect on your mind. If there’s anything you could have failed to check—clothing, or personal articles that often leave the room with you…”
“I checked everything,” I said. “The last thing I want is for this to keep happening.”
He rubbed his mouth. “Professor Sinleigh told me she arranged for you to begin additional tutoring in mental shielding with her aide. Has that started yet?”
“We’ve met up twice,” I said. “It’s definitely helped. I’m getting in the habit of maintaining a low-level shield without needing to constantly think about it—while I’m awake. I guess it’ll take more practice before I can keep up that kind of security while I’m asleep. But if there isn’t anyone or anything around working the magic, then maybe it’s not coming from outside my head, right? I don’t know—I never had any teaching or practice with this stuff, and then all of a sudden…”
I faltered before I forced myself to say my deepest fear, but Banefield picked up on the direction I was heading in. He met my eyes with a firm expression.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Rory,” he said. “I’m sure of that much. Even if we haven’t determined how, what you’re experiencing… It will be the work of outside forces.”
“How can you know that?” I said. “How often do long-lost scions turn up needing to figure out their magic years later than every other student?”
He paused with a twitch of his jaw. His gaze slipped away from me. His fingers laced together, his knuckles whitening as if he were grappling with something between them. When he finally looked at me again, his words came out low and rushed.
“I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say. They may have— But we need you, I can see that, and I can’t let them— You have to stay on guard. There are plans being put into motion, and the—”
His voice cut off with a hitch. The color drained from his face as he pressed his hand to his gut. His mouth tightened into a thin line.
“Professor?” I said with a jolt of panic that was no one’s but my own.
He opened his mouth and then doubled over with a violent retching sound. I scrambled to my feet. Before I’d even made it to his side, his body sagged over the arm of his chair as if all the life had gone out of him.
Chapter Eight
Rory
Will he be all right? Deborah asked from where she was cuddled next to my leg at the edge of my bed.
I ran my thumb over her soft fur, summoning the bits of hope I’d found beneath the heavy weight inside me. The sun was beaming outside the window, but it didn’t brighten my mood.
“I’m not sure,” I said—quietly, aware of the clinking of silverware as my roommates ate lunch in the common room. “The mages who work in the health center didn’t want to tell me anything more this morning than they did yesterday. They did say he was improving, at least, and I think they expected he’d be going back to his quarters pretty soon. But they’re talking as if it’s just a bad stomach bug and he fainted because it came on so fast.”
Hmph. Very convenient timing for a severe flu to kick in suddenly when he was about to tell you something important for your safety.
“Yeah.” I’d spent an awful lot of time thinking about that since Professor Banefield’s collapse. I just wasn’t sure how it could have been a purposeful attack. We’d been alone in the room and talking normally—I didn’t think anyone outside could have heard what he was saying. After the way Banefield had asked about searching my room for spelled objects, I didn’t think he slacked off in that area himself. But there was still so much about magic I didn’t know.
He was the one I’d have gone to with a question like this, which obviously was out of question. Deborah had shuddered in horror at the idea of someone causing an illness like that—joymancers usually went around curing them, like my dad had during his volunteer hours at the hospital—so she wasn’t any help. Who else could I talk to about it without potentially putting Banefield or myself in even more danger if it had been purposeful?
I was an official student now, with a place on campus no one could take away from me and powers everyone was starting to respect, but in some ways I was still as alone and adrift as I’d been when I’d first set foot on campus. Maybe even more so, now that I knew what horrors the people here were capable of.
“Keep listening at the walls,” I said, “as far as you can safely go around the building without being seen.” It seemed unlikely that any of the students would be involved in a magical assault on a professor, but it couldn’t hurt to monitor things. �
�If someone is hurting him, I have to help him. He was obviously trying to help me—it seemed almost like he knew something about the weird stuff I’ve been experiencing, or at least who might have caused it. ‘They’ and ‘them’…”
Could it be the other scions?
I frowned. “I don’t think so. Banefield didn’t step in even when Malcolm was being awful to me in front of everyone last month. Why would he suddenly care so much about ripped sheets and random writing? He said he was taking a trip somewhere—he was gone for at least a day—right before this… Maybe that had something to do with it. Or with whatever he found out that he wanted to tell me. I wonder if I should take a trip too.”
Deborah nuzzled my knee. What do you mean?
“I don’t know where he went, but my family—my birth family—has properties I’ve never seen yet. The Bloodstones could have enemies I don’t know about. There might be information out there I can use. I just have to figure out how to get out to them.”
Shelby had mentioned that there were buses that stopped by town, but who knew if they’d get me to the right places. Most of the students seemed to have their own cars, or else they had their parents or a chauffeur pick them up when they wanted to go somewhere. The school had a chauffeur or two of its own, but I didn’t really want to call on one of those to take me on what could be a day-long road trip. Especially when I didn’t know if I could trust them either.
“I’ll have to talk to Ms. Grimsworth,” I said. “I’d need her to loosen up the tracking spell on me if I’m going that far anyway.”
Are you sure venturing out there is a good idea? If your family has enemies, which they very well might given the way these people operate, they’ll find it much easier to hurt you if you’re out there on your own.