by Eva Chase
“Imogen,” I said, “if I could persuade something like this to stop working… That strategy could apply to any physical form, right?”
“Any physical form created to conduct magic, anyway,” she said. “The more intricate and condensed the form is, the harder it’d be to shift it, though. Why?”
I turned toward the door, my heart thumping faster. “I’ll tell you later. Thanks for your help.”
I had a life to save.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Connar
The last place I expected to see Jude going into was the junior cafeteria. I stopped in my tracks on my way through Killbrook Hall after my monthly check-in with my mentor, blinking a few times before I convinced myself that it really had been his lanky form slipping through the doorway few seniors ventured through under regular circumstances. There wasn’t anyone else on campus with that dark red hair. It’d have been pretty hard for me to confuse someone else for him.
What was he up to? A tug of uneasy curiosity drew me to the doorway.
It was early afternoon, a little late for lunch. Only a few clusters of the younger students still sat around the wooden tables that filled the room. Tomorrow evening, those tables would be draped with fancy fabric and the sconces on the burgundy walls would be lit for the league competition banquet. Right now, the place looked unimpressive in the muted daylight that glowed through the windows. The meaty smell of whatever the staff had served for lunch hung in the air.
Jude had seated himself at the end of a table right next to one of the bunches of students. Not just any students either, I noted after a moment. Gold leaf pins glinted on all their shirt collars. They were Naries. What did he want with them?
Not much, as far as I could tell from simply observing. He pulled out a book and turned the pages absently, occasionally glancing up in the general direction of the Naries’ table next to him. They chattered on without giving him much mind. Out of all the students here at Blood U, they had the least idea why he was anyone to be wary of.
After a few minutes just standing there in the doorway watching, I started to feel conspicuous. The puzzle in front of me still niggled at me, though. I pushed myself on into the room.
Jude’s gaze shot to me with a startled twitch of his expression when I sat down across from him. He frowned. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said quietly, but there was no real venom in his voice, only mild irritation.
“Finding out what the hell you’re doing here,” I said. “What’s going on? What’s important about them?”
His shoulders came up as he slid farther down the bench so we were less likely to be overheard by the Naries. “Nothing. I just wondered.”
I followed him, still confused. “Wondered what?”
Jude turned his frown toward his book rather than me. “What they even have to talk about. What they think is important. How someone could find their company appealing. I don’t know.”
Someone, huh? That last bit clued me in. “This is about—”
His gaze jerked back up. “Don’t. We aren’t talking about that.” Then he looked toward the table of Naries, his brow knitting as if he found them as puzzling as I found his sudden interest in them.
What had Rory said to him when they’d had their fight anyway? He obviously wasn’t going to tell me, but it was also obviously eating at him.
That question had niggled at me all the way down to my gut from the moment I’d picked him up on the side of the road, maybe because I had the most direct experience with having failed her. But he’d probably called me because he’d known I was less likely to keep prodding him about it than Malcolm or Declan. I wasn’t going to hassle him when he was so clearly unsettled.
I wasn’t sure I was any less conspicuous sitting here, and Jude hardly wanted my help with anything. “Well, good luck with it,” I said, getting up. Malcolm had asked me to meet him in the lounge in a few minutes anyway.
Our private room below the library had always offered a bit of an escape—not as much as my cliff spot, but a place where I didn’t have to be quite as aware of the fears and suspicions I provoked in everyone on campus. Normally, relief would have washed over me as I descended the stairs. Today, the tension in my gut clenched tighter.
I couldn’t remember us ever arguing the way Malcolm and Jude had before. Declan had barely come down at all in the last few weeks, and I wasn’t sure I could blame him. A deeper apprehension coursed through my body as I sat myself down to wait for Malcolm, to find out what he was planning now.
He came down a few minutes later with an energy about him that was eager but brittle. I didn’t need any Insight spell to tell me something had frustrated him and he didn’t intend to take it lying down.
“Good,” he said, seeing me. “I’ve got it all figured out. We don’t need anyone else—the two of us can build off each other’s spells just fine.”
I shifted forward on the couch, ignoring the jab of tension that comment gave me. “What have you figured out?”
He walked from one end of the room to the other, his eyes intent but distant as if picturing something a long ways away. “We’re going to knock her down hard with the whole school as audience. The league banquet is the perfect opportunity. The girls in her dorm already think she’s going bonkers. Victory and the others have been spreading that gossip, and probably some of the others too. Everyone’s primed.”
The jab turned into a dull ache that filled my entire abdomen. “Primed for us to do what?”
“To show just how out-of-control the star pupil has become in her insistence on going it alone. You can kick things off. Mess with her food or her drink, make her seat shift under her, whatever else you can think of that’ll unnerve her but not be too noticeable to anyone else. While she’s thrown off by that, I’ll slide in there and take care of the rest. If she still isn’t ready to bow to us, then I’ll just make her do it.”
The vehemence in his voice had taken on an almost frantic edge. My body tensed. Malcolm didn’t let himself get overly caught up in anything—not usually. He observed and he made his moves with cool confidence. I didn’t see that cool right now, and I wasn’t so sure about the confidence either.
“Do you really think this is the best approach?” I ventured. “The banquet is sort of sacred. All the professors will be there too.”
“That just makes it better. Let them watch too. We’ll be ruling over all of them when the old guard retires—they should know what happens to anyone who challenges us.” He spun on me. “Come on, Connar. I need you with me on this. We’re so close.”
If we were, I didn’t think he’d have that wildness in his expression. I hesitated, and all the doubts that had been churning inside me since the moment I’d turned on Rory collided with a lurch of my pulse.
I trusted Malcolm. I’d have been willing to lay down my life for him if need be. But I didn’t believe he was right about this, about her. And even though I’d called him my best friend and given him that trust, I was fucking terrified to tell him that.
That wasn’t right, was it? We were all scions, no matter how we’d come into that title. My opinion should at least matter enough for him to care without brushing off everything I said. He expected me to follow his lead and do whatever he asked simply because he said so as part of the loyalty between us, even though I’d never have pushed him the same way.
Rory had never pushed me. Even knowing how close I was with Malcolm, even when she’d been willing to open up to me, she’d never once asked me to so much as speak up on her behalf, let alone come right over to her side of the fight. When we’d talked the other day, despite all the anger I’d seen in her, she hadn’t thrown my past in my face; she hadn’t demanded anything other than that I leave her alone.
She’d only ever wanted me to be myself, to follow what mattered to me, whatever that happened to be. Wasn’t that some kind of loyalty, one I could hardly say I’d earned? My hand closed around the memory of the dragon she’d made for me where i
t had once pressed against my palm.
I hope you don’t forget that you’re you too, she’d said when she’d given it to me. At least some of the time, that’s got to come first.
If it didn’t come first now, then it probably never would.
“Connar,” Malcolm started again in his cajoling tone.
I stood up before he could go on. My entire chest had constricted into one big knot, but I propelled out the word. “No.”
Malcolm blinked at me, momentarily speechless. “Excuse me?”
I crossed my arms. “No, I’m not going to mess with Rory during the banquet. I think we’ve done enough. She’s still standing because she’s strong enough to deserve to. I’m done with this.”
His eyes flashed. “What the fuck is wrong with you? We’ve got her; we just have to—”
“No.” My voice came out louder than I’d expected, loud enough to cut him off completely. A strange exhilaration washed over me despite the ache inside.
I could make this choice. I wasn’t even betraying him, no matter how he was going to see it. I was making this stand because it was better for all of us. “And if you try to hassle her tomorrow night, I’ll step in. You want her in the circle? Find another way.”
For a few seconds, we just stared at each other. Malcolm’s jaw worked. “I have always had your back—”
“And I’ve always had yours. That’s why I’m saying no, just this once. You’re taking this whole thing too far. This isn’t you.”
“Don’t you dare tell me who I am or what I’m capable of,” he snapped. “You—She—” He shook his head, his entire posture rigid. “Fine. That’s how you want things to be? Or maybe that’s how she wants things to be. You think she’s so above all this? When you get your head on straight, you’ll see how she’s breaking us apart. Until then, get the fuck out of here.”
I wouldn’t have wanted to stay anyway. As I headed up the stairs, the clenching inside me started to release—and a new weight settled over me.
As far as I could see right now, it wasn’t Rory breaking up the pentacle of scions. Malcolm was doing that all by himself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rory
I kept a careful distance from the cafeteria where the banquet would be held as I hurried to the staff wing of Killbrook Hall. Clinks and thumps carried through the doorway as the members of the other leagues set up the décor. The smells of roast pork and caramelized onions and all sorts of other deliciousness drifted from the kitchen. My mouth might have watered if it wasn’t parched dry in anticipation of the spell I was about to attempt.
I’d waited until not long before the feast was supposed to begin so I could be sure any staff not teaching classes right now would be downstairs supervising the preparations. The hall of offices was empty and silent. I set my feet softly on the carpet on my way to Professor Banefield’s door just in case someone had lingered after all.
The door opened with my whispered spell, even easier now with practice. I slipped through his office and ventured into his apartment on the other side.
The smells of sickness had spread from his bedroom, even though I had to assume the health center staff who’d been coming to look after him must have been doing their best to keep things clean. Stale sweat, dried vomit, and something like rotting fruit mixed together in a sour cocktail that faintly laced the air. It got stronger as I reached Banefield’s bedroom, enough that my stomach turned.
In the thin late afternoon light drifting through the window, his broad body looked even more diminished than it had when I’d been here only a week ago. The sheet had fallen off him and his undershirt had ridden up, showing the lines of ribs protruding from his side, shallower and then deeper with his erratic breathing. His hair no longer stood up in its usual tufts but clung damply to his scalp.
This was my fault. Whoever had attacked him had done it to hurt me, to stop him from helping me. So I’d better be able to make it right.
I sat down carefully on the edge of the bed by his sprawled legs. I’d spent all of my time between classes and meals for the last two days reading any information I could find in the library about using persuasion to influence physical objects. There wasn’t a lot of it, and most of it related to the sculpted pieces like the one I’d found on the wall outside our dorm, expanding on what Imogen had told me. I knew a little more than I had yesterday morning, at least.
Had the health center doctors even considered this approach? Had they realized the mole was the likely source of my mentor’s illness in the first place? It didn’t seem right that I might have figured out a solution where they hadn’t… but then, it was possible they hadn’t looked all that hard once they’d realized it was almost certainly a magical attack.
It was possible they’d realized that whoever could conduct an attack like this could strike them down as well, and decided it was better to let Banefield’s illness run its course.
I might face consequences from our enemies if I cured him, but at least I could face them with his help. If I could convince the mole to give up its magical resonance, he’d be able to tell me who our enemies were, maybe even how to protect ourselves from another attack. Or how to fight back.
As I tugged up his pajama pant leg like I had before, Banefield stirred. I froze, distinctly aware of how inappropriate it was for me to be sitting on a professor’s bed while he slept, partly undressing him.
Banefield’s head turned. His eyelids stuttered and opened just a crack. His voice was a weak croak. “Rory?”
“I’m going to try to make you better,” I said quickly. “I know someone’s placed a spell on you. I think I might be able to remove it. Will you let me try?”
He peered at me a moment longer before his gaze wandered off as if he hadn’t heard me. His eyelids closed completely. A hacking cough sputtered out of him, and then he lay still.
Well, he hadn’t made any attempt to stop me. I guessed that was as close to permission as I was going to get.
No sound but his breathing emitted from his chest as I uncovered his knee. Peering at the mole more closely than before, my pulse skipped a beat. I hadn’t studied it that intently before, assuming it was meant to look like any mole. It… almost appeared to have a magically attuned shape to it, like a tiny version of one of those conducting pieces, only made out of flesh instead of metal or stone. The tiny dimple here, the barely visible ridge there.
Of course. That made perfect sense, didn’t it? How else could the person who’d cast the spell have been sure the mole would hold its energy until it needed to activate? They’d built a conducting structure right on his body. Maybe it amplified the effects too, or some other awful function I hadn’t encountered yet.
Imogen’s words came back to me. The more intricate and condensed the form is, the harder it’d be to shift it. I’d better get started.
“I was going to have a daughter,” Banefield mumbled, so low I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. His eyes stayed closed.
“What?” I said quietly, not wanting to disturb him if he was simply talking in his sleep.
“She was pregnant. Amara was. Twenty-two weeks, with our little girl. And they—they—” Another cough rattled out of him.
I rested my hand on his calf as if that might comfort him, my heart wrenching. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.”
He rambled on in the same mumbled, wavering voice. “They didn’t call. They didn’t do anything they should have. Stupid bloody feebs.” His chest hitched. “They—she— But you. You would have forgiven them.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it, really.” I sure as hell wasn’t going to blame him for being mad about his wife and their unborn child dying.
“You would,” he said, with more firmness than before. “You would. Because you let yourself see.” He trailed off for a long enough moment that I thought he was done. Then he added, “She would have been like you, I want to think. If my daughter had come. That’s what— If I hadn’t�
�� She would have seen too.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe, my throat was so constricted. I didn’t totally understand what he was saying, but the gist was clear enough. “I’m sure she’d have tried to save you,” I said. “So that’s what I’m going to do too. Just rest for now, and I’ll do my best.”
I touched the mole lightly, fighting a cringe, letting my fingertip absorb the shape of it. A faint pulse of energy tickled my skin. I focused on the feel of it and the image of it in my mind, the toxic spell contained in a sort of chamber I could picture inside it, and rolled magic off my tongue with the command that had worked on Malcolm’s stone. “Let go.”
I didn’t sense any change from the form beneath my finger. Banefield’s head twitched. “No. If you— They’ll— I can’t stop them.”
“Maybe I can,” I said in the most soothing voice I could summon. “It’s okay.” Please let it be okay.
It wasn’t the structure but the energy its shape resonated with that I had to focus on. I couldn’t forget that, even as the prickling pulse sent a queasy shiver through me. The tiny strands of a spell wound through the nub of constructed flesh—I could speak to them too.
“Let go,” I murmured again. The energy didn’t so much as tremble. Fuck. Okay, on to the untested strategies.
Think about the purpose the spell and its container. What was the right direction to untangle it from its target? Was the sickening spell leaching my mentor’s health away from him or leaking poison into him?
No matter what I did, he couldn’t get much worse off. I squared my shoulders and aimed my attention at the mole again. “Release.” Nothing. “Pull back.” Still nothing. “Snap.”
Sweat was beading on the back of my neck now. I was throwing all my effort into each casting, and they seemed to just bounce off the thing.
“No,” Banefield muttered again into his pillow.
Could I take the spell into me? “Come here,” I said to the fizz of energy. No luck.