“They are?” Dina asks.
Sir Boris clucks his tongue disapprovingly. “Have you not been studying from your books like you’re supposed to?” he asks. “The word undine comes from the Latin word unda, which means wave. And what affects waves? The moon! OK, let’s move on to the plants now. We have—”
“Sir?”
We all stare at Bri, amazed that she’s pulled out of her torpor long enough to interrupt the professor.
“What is it now?” Sir Boris asks, suppressed anger thickening his Russian accent.
“What about circles?” Bri asks, completely unfazed by his wrathful gaze. “Like the one that’s around our school, but a different version.”
The question seems to have drained all of Sir Boris’s annoyance away. “It is said those things are possible,” he says grudgingly. “But that is an art we know very little of.”
“If that’s true, Sir, then how are we going to rebuild our school?” Daniel asks, for once sounding concerned.
“Well that’s different,” Sir Boris says, clearing his throat self-consciously. “It’s not made to catch anything, just keep things out.”
“Specific things out,” Brockton says with a pointed look in my direction.
“Nasty things,” Ross adds. “Can’t wait till it’s functional again.”
Sir Boris slams his cane onto the board, cracking it. “Enough of this already, the school’s defenses are none of your concern. But how to catch elementals is. Napichite pazhalusta[45]!”
***
We spend the rest of the hour in the same manner, Sir Boris making us write down list after list of elemental likes and dislikes, what makes them tick, how to avoid insulting them if caught unawares, and what to do in emergency situations—which basically boils down to wearing as much iron as possible, the slight glitch there being that undines could easily drown you, and salamanders turn your armor into a life-sized toaster.
When the bell finally rings, we all rush out at top speed.
“Move, halfling!” Ross shouts, barreling into me, Brockton and Daniel right on his heels.
I yelp as I scrape my hands and knees on the rough flagstones and glare back up at the three boys’ retreating backs.
“I thought the battle would have matured them a little,” Keva says, helping me pick up my scattered notes.
“And I thought it wouldn’t have changed others quite so much,” I retort, snatching the papers from Keva’s hands.
“Are you having a fit because I’m spying on you?” she asks.
I scowl at her and Keva has the gall to laugh.
“Oh, Morgan,” she says. “How could you not know? It’s so obvious.”
“You think it’s funny?” I ask, outraged. “Not only am I expected to grovel at Arthur’s feet all day long, but on top of that you’re going all Big Brother on me too?”
Keva flicks her braid over her shoulder. “First of all, the groveling will only really take place once Arthur finds out what you did to his room,” she says. “Second, if he’s smart, he won’t want you to be at his beck and call twenty-four seven. Not if he wants to stay sane anyway.”
“Yeah, but even then I can’t get a break with you lurking behind me all the time.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Keva says as I stand back up. “I won’t tell them anything that you don’t want them to know. But in exchange, you’ve got to promise me something too.”
“What?” I ask suspiciously.
Keva leans in and whispers, “I want to check out fairyland.”
I cock my head questioningly then take a step back when the answer hits me. “You mean Avalon?” I exclaim.
“Not so loud, you nitwit,” Keva mutters. “But yeah, essentially.”
“Why?” I ask. “I thought you guys hated anything Fey.”
I gesture vigorously towards the classroom left open behind us and accidentally smack Bri in the face as she finally emerges. She reels around and hits the wall before straightening up, looking dazed.
“St. George’s balls!” I exclaim as Keva bowls over laughing. “Are you OK? I didn’t see you there…I’m really sorry! Are you hurt?”
“Don’t sweat it,” Bri says, rubbing her reddened forehead. “What are you two doing here? I thought you’d be in Lore class already.”
“Waiting for you, of course,” Keva says, grabbing her arm.
Keva throws me a pointed look, and I’m not sure whether she’s still waiting for an answer from me, or if she’s warning me not to talk to Bri about Avalon, but I nod ‘yes.’ To both.
Chapter 8
I do my best not to let the change in Bri affect me too much over the next few days, yet I can’t help but to acutely feel the loss of her once animated presence.
Even when Owen was sick and in the asylum she’d still confide in me, laugh with me, help me with my studies. Simply being with her had made me feel like…I was home.
Now, she’s turned into a robot, doing things solely when told to, only coming out of her catatonic state to spout a few random statements on the Fey that has even the teachers stumped. Every day she seems to be drifting further and further away from us, like a raft caught in a storm, and I sometimes fear she’s going to try to follow her brother by sitting on the Siege Perilous herself.
A ruler smashes on my desk, inches away from my hand and I jump in my seat.
“I would stare less at Bri’s profile and a little more at what I should be doing if I were you, Morgan,” Miss Pelletier says.
I let go of the inch-wide bluebell bulb I’m supposed to plant, staring guiltily at the deep fingernail gouges I’ve dug into its white scales. With a sigh, Miss Pelletier hands me a small pot and I immediately proceed to fill it up with earth.
“Can anyone tell me why bluebells are so important?” she asks, resuming her pacing around the muggy room.
Dina’s hand shoots up. “They’re a sign that the area is ancient,” she says. “Especially when found together with other plants, like wild strawberries and forget-me-nots.”
“And what does that imply?” Miss Pelletier asks.
Dina’s complacent smile melts off her face as she can’t answer, then turns into a frown when Bri raises her hand.
“They’re a sign of Fey presence,” Bri says, her voice sharp as an executioner’s axe. “They’re often used to trap people, especially children, into their lair.”
“Excellent,” Miss Pelletier says, clapping her hands together. “After you’re done with your bulbs, we’ll go over how to counteract the Fey’s trap. As you all know by now, every poison has an antidote. With this countercharm, you’ll be able to reverse the bait and destroy their hive.”
I repress a shiver at the casual way with which she says it, as if destroying Fey is as simple as wiping the blackboard clean.
At the table next to ours, Daniel raises his hand enthusiastically. “We’re already done with our potting, Miss,” he says. “So how do we disarm their traps?”
Miss Pelletier glances over at his and Brockton’s pots, then nods satisfactorily. “Very good,” she says. “You two can start on the extraction now. Use the triple closed alembic[46] for the first phase. After that, you’ll need the retort[47] with tubus[48], but wait until I’ve come by before you move on to that step. And please, please, read the instructions carefully. We don’t want anything to explode now, do we?”
“Yes, miss,” Daniel says, before motioning for Brockton to fetch the material.
But in his hurry, Brockton drops one of the glass vials and it shatters on the floor, spraying Daniel’s boots with its contents.
“Oh, brilliant,” Daniel says, smacking Brockton on the back of the head. “It’s certainly not thanks to you we’ll defeat Carman, that’s for sure. Now clean it up!”
The burly boy hurries to follow Daniel’s orders, without a word of complaint, though at a slower pace to avoid any more mishaps.
“Hurry it up, slowpoke,” Daniel says, kicking Brockton in the shin. “I’d like to get this don
e before the end of this century!”
Brockton’s knee gives out and he collapses against their table with a yelp, nearly bringing down the whole apparatus with him. I look at the teacher in indignation, but though she’s witnessed everything, she remains in her corner, tight-lipped.
“Why doesn’t Miss Pelletier say anything?” I ask. I may not like Brockton, but the part of me that always wants to defend the weak screams for me to help him out.
“It’s up to the knight to teach his own squire as he sees fit,” Jack says. “Some knights may try to intervene but—”
“—but Miss Pelletier isn’t even a knight,” Keva finishes for him offhandedly. “So she can’t say a word.”
“Well that’s total nonsense,” I say, as Daniel gives the whimpering Brockton another kick with his steel-tipped boot.
“It’s the way things are,” Keva says.
“Makes me glad I became an apprentice blacksmith instead,” Jack says.
I flinch as Brockton cracks another dish and watch in horror as Daniel grabs a pair of shears from one of the racks.
“Never seen you quite so eager to learn anything beyond EM, Daniel,” Keva says nonchalantly, patting the earth in her own pot.
“Times are different now,” Daniel retorts, pointing at me with his secateur[49], Brockton momentarily forgotten. “We’ve got battles to fight against those of her sort.”
Keva swings her trowel around so fiercely that dirt spatters all the way over to his table. “You’re just jealous Morgan’s got more battle experience than you do, admit it,” she says. “While you were cowering safe behind the school walls, she was out there fighting Carman.”
“Freeing her more like,” Daniel retorts. “I’ve got another theory instead. Wanna hear it? I think she was in league with them all along, a spy like. We all saw how tight she and that Fey guy were.”
I grip my flowering pot at the mention of Dean, remembering his final moments, his last words meant to comfort me even as the earth was eating him alive. But that’s not something I’m ever going to be able to tell any of these guys.
Daniel’s voice grows louder as the rest of the class pauses in their work to listen to him. “The barriers didn’t fall apart on their own, you know. Someone must’ve helped from the inside.”
“Daniel?” Bri’s soft voice cuts over the buzzing murmurs of the class. “Why are you trying to piss her off? We’ve all heard what she did to that guard. Now I don’t think you’d fancy having your brains splattered all over the place, would you?”
The blood drains from my face so quickly I’m afraid I’m going to faint.
“Briana!” Jack exclaims.
“Morgan!” Keva says, at the same moment.
I blink slowly and the room comes back into focus, as are the faces of my classmates, their fearful eyes staring at me in shock. No, not at me, at the table.
I glance down as something smooth and cool brushes over my hand then coils around my wrist. The remains of my shattered pot are lying about my splayed fingers and, poking out of the spilled dirt, is the bluebell bulb, writhing and contorting as long green shoots sprout from it, using my blackened hand for support. Mesmerized, I watch as a bud forms, growing larger and larger until a cobalt blue flower unfurls into a delicate bloom over my elbow.
“What are you?” Keva breathes next to me.
“A-a demon,” Daniel says, his voice subdued.
I hear the distinct ring of metal being drawn and a long, serrated knife buries itself in the table, cutting the plant’s stem neatly in two. I gulp, unable to tear my eyes away from the gleaming blade sticking a nail’s breadth from my hand.
“She’s a Fey,” Bri says before pulling the knife free and returning to her potting.
◆◆◆
“Don’t you worry so much,” Keva says. “Everyone’s got a demon or two inside. Just look at Bri going all Jekyll and Hyde on us.”
I rub my arm, unable to dispel the sensation of the plant curling around it. “That…that wasn’t me,” I say. “It couldn’t have…it just happened.”
“Things don’t just happen, Morgan,” Jack says. “For every reaction there’s an action.”
“I know physics too, you know,” I say sullenly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m the one behind the action.” Or does it?
We wind our way down the corridors in silence, keeping well behind Bri as she marches head down through the thickening crowd of students on their way to the cafeteria. Spurred by the heavenly scents wafting over to us, my stomach rumbles loudly.
“Say, did you notice something special about our teacher today?” Keva asks, catching up with Bri who’s suddenly stopped at the edge of an uncommonly large throng gathered before the dining hall doors.
“Must’ve made something special for today’s lunch,” Jack says, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “They’ve been doing that more often lately, to keep people’s spirits up. Last time it was a chocolate fountain for dessert.”
Already salivating, we both push forward, eager to get in. Only Bri isn’t budging, as if rooted to her spot by some invisible force, despite Keva trying to get her to move.
“Don’t you think Miss Pelletier took your knife throwing extremely calmly?” Keva asks Bri, pulling on her arm to get a reaction out of her. “And I know exactly why that is.”
“What did you do?” Jack asks suspiciously, as we backtrack towards them.
“Nothing,” Keva says, her wide eyes full of innocence. Which of course means she’s absolutely, irrevocably guilty. She pats Bri on the shoulder, smiling widely. “Bri’s brother, on the other hand….”
“Remember that you’re his squire,” Jack says reprovingly. “You’re not supposed to make his life harder.”
“I’m making it easier, thank you very much,” Keva retorts. “And rose colored.” She smiles cheekily. “I wrote a letter to Miss Pelletier, signed by him, and now he’s using any far-fetched bio project as an excuse to go make goo-goo eyes at her all day long!”
But despite her taunting, Bri remains unresponsive, and Keva’s wide smile turns into a scowl.
“Well someone will be doing lots of things to Hadrian soon,” Keva huffs, finally letting go of Bri’s arm. “And he won’t mind it one bit!”
Without another look at her, Keva marches into the cafeteria. But Jack and I hang back. Most of the crowd has funneled through the doors by now, leaving Bri standing in the middle of the hallway with an inscrutable look on her face.
“What’s the matter?” Jack asks her.
But her eyes remain riveted to some point over his shoulder, and we trace her gaze back towards the news board.
Front and center is a newly pinned article that makes my blood run cold:
DISASTER HITS SOUTHEAST ASIA, CAUSING UNPRECEDENTED DESTRUCTION
Indonesia is left in chaos after the violent, double explosion of the Mount Tambora and Mount Krakatoa volcanoes destroyed parts of their islands, killing thousands of people. Clouds of ashes have spread out over the entire island of Jakarta and neighboring countries, keeping them in continuous twilight.
Temperatures have dropped ten to fifteen degrees and they keep going down, leaving governments scrambling to prepare for a volcanic winter that is bound to affect the whole world.
But that is not the worst of it. Scientists have now picked up on seismic readings that show irregular activity around Lake Toba, and have issued a warning that the supervolcano under it could erupt as well, with an estimated VEI[50] of 7 to 8—enough force to wipe out Indonesia’s population. The last Toba eruption occurred some 70,000 years ago and it has been hypothesized that the volcanic winter that resulted from it lasted from six to ten years, followed by a general cooling of the Earth that did not end until a thousand years later.
Is this what’s in store for us as well?
“Carman,” I say, my mouth gone dry.
“A-and her s-sons,” someone adds beside me.
I find Elias frowning at the board, his usually pensive fa
ce now intensely concentrating on the article.
“Sons?” I ask, exchanging puzzled looks with Jack who shrugs at me.
“I-I was there at your t-trial,” Elias says. “You said that lawyer was C-Carman’s son. S-So I did some reading and…d-do you know what h-his real name was?”
“Dain,” I whisper after a momentary hesitation, remembering Carman saying it right before she tried to kill Lance and Arthur.
“V-Violence,” Elias says with a nod, his voice dropping even lower. “S-So that leaves Dub and D-Dother. D-darkness and Evil.”
“What makes you so sure it’s them?” Jack asks. “On the last count, they were supposed to be dead.”
“Gone, not dead,” Elias says, getting so excited his usually stooped shoulders straighten up and his stammer disappears. “Remember those black-veined murders? They involve a lot more power than any elemental could conjure, so it has to be a higher-ranked Fey. And then, there was that attack on Jennifer that happened on school ground. There’s no way a lower-ranked Fey could have breached our school’s defenses without actually taking our wards down. I mean, just that proves it was stronger than even the one who placed the wards there to begin with!”
“Unless he had help from the inside,” I say sullenly.
“But don’t you see?” Elias says. “If he’d had help the first time, why then would the Fomori need help taking down the wards? They could have gone through without notice too, killing everyone around before anyone realized what was happening!”
“And Dean did meet with someone else while he was down here,” I say, warming up to this new theory—anything to keep people from lumping me in with the rest of the deadly crew. “Maybe that other son slipped in through the wards to deactivate them and let the Fomori in. How come no one ever told me Carman had more sons? This makes so much sense!”
“Don’t you start with that Myrdwinn Junior business again,” Bri says, startling me. “No one’s found any evidence of this guy you claim to have seen. And everyone knows the old kook’s got no one in his life except for Lady Vivian, least of all someone related to Carman. Besides, if it weren’t for him, our Order would never have survived down here as long as it has, because it’s thanks to him our school’s protected!
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