Shadow Trials

by Isla Frost

  I was wrong.

  I’d also expected to wake up face-first on the floor with my mattress on top of me after the wardrobe incident. But I was wrong about that too.

  Ameline beat Millicent to it.

  “Where the heck were you last night?” she demanded, concern etching her features. “I woke up and you were gone. And when I tried to go looking for you, Millicent wouldn’t let me out.”

  I thought about that for a moment and figured it must have been when Millicent had me locked up and wanted to prevent anyone coming to my rescue.

  Or maybe she just wanted to prevent her favorite Ameline from getting into trouble.

  “Um. I went to the bathroom?” I tried—not sounding the least bit convincing.

  It was way too early for an interrogation.

  Ameline crossed her arms. “I waited up for you. For ages. But you were gone so long I must’ve fallen asleep.”

  By now, Bryn was stirring from her own slumber. She sat up, rubbing her eyes and making no attempt to pretend she wasn’t listening with avid interest.

  “Out with it,” Ameline ordered. “All of it.”

  Bryn smirked. “Yes, I’d like to hear it too.”

  People often mistook Ameline’s softness for weakness. I knew better. She might be sweet-natured and amiable about most things, but once she drew a line in the sand, so help you if you crossed it.

  I could see by the set of her jaw that this was one of those times. So I told them.

  The set of Ameline’s jaw did not improve throughout my tale. Meanwhile, Bryn was all but bouncing on her bed—especially when I described breaking my way into the locked chest.

  When I’d finished, Ameline gave me a dark look. “We’re supposed to be in this together. You could’ve been hurt!”

  “Yes,” Bryn added, “and if you’re going to go on fun life-endangering adventures in the middle of the night, the polite thing to do would be to invite us along.”

  Ameline’s gaze flitted to Bryn—something I was grateful for just then.

  “Um, well, missing out on fun wasn’t exactly what I was afraid of, but I suppose the end result is the same.”

  Her gaze returned to me.

  “You’re not to go sneaking off alone again. You either cease your nighttime activities, or you take us with you.”

  The stubborn set of Ameline’s jaw was still there, and Bryn was throwing her knife, spinning into the air and catching it again, hilt first. Perhaps to signal she’d be a useful companion on a late-night jaunt. Or because she had trouble sitting still.

  Either way, it was obvious they weren’t about to take no for an answer.

  I wanted to protect Ameline. Needed to protect her. But maybe in this case, that meant bringing her along.

  The first trial proved we were stronger together. It also proved that the danger Dunraven had warned us about was real. And since no one would tell us what happened to those who failed the three-month trial phase, we had to be among the students that passed. Both of us. Because the thought of one of us continuing at the academy and the other…

  Well, separation was not an option.

  That meant any advantage, any edge, any foreknowledge our snooping might reveal, we needed. Not just for the first three months but for whatever came afterward too.

  Even so, I made one last attempt to dissuade them. Or Ameline at least.

  “You would have to break a lot of rules,” I pointed out. “You hate breaking rules.”

  She scowled at me like she knew exactly what I was trying to do. She probably did.

  “Nice try. But they threw the rulebook out the window when they magicked us into the middle of the freaking forest and told us to find our way home. Besides, they haven’t explicitly forbidden us from exploring the manor.”

  Hmm. That was a good point. I wasn’t sure they’d forbidden us from anything actually. Except making Grimwort repeat himself.

  “Fine,” I said. “Next time I go snooping, I’ll take you with me.”

  Triumph flashed across both their faces.

  “But before we try again, we need to work out a way of winning over Millicent.”

  Bryn snorted. “Why bother? If she wants to hold a grudge, let her. We can handle it.”

  Ameline shook her head. “Weren’t you listening? She almost got Nova into serious trouble. Besides, do you really want cold showers the entire time you’re here?”

  Bryn missed the catch, and her dagger thudded blade-first into the floor.

  Ameline snatched it up. “We’re trying to win the manor over, not infuriate her further.”

  “All right, all right.” Bryn conceded. She returned her butt to the mattress.

  Or tried to. But the whole bed scooted out of the way so she landed on the floor. Right next to where the blade had bitten into the wood.

  I bit back a snicker.

  Ameline, who was, as ever, a better person than me, got straight back to the business at hand.

  “Okay. So Millicent got mad at you for damaging her walls. Maybe fixing or restoring something for her will work. Have you noticed anything in bad shape?”

  I grimaced.

  “I might have destroyed the back of a wardrobe last night.” I’d neglected to mention that detail in my retelling. “But only because she locked me inside.”

  Ameline pursed her lips. “I don’t think repairing something you broke will go far in winning her over, but it might make her less mad at you at least. What else?”

  She gave both Bryn and me a dirty look. “Something one of you aren’t personally responsible for breaking.”

  I thought my way around the manor—or the parts of it we’d been to. “It’s not broken exactly, but the stairwell by the dining hall has very creaky steps. Maybe we could tighten them up?”

  Ameline rewarded me with a smile. “Good idea. We’ll do it tonight then.”

  “Tonight,” Bryn and I agreed.

  And then we prepared ourselves for another morning of being tortured by Cricklewood.

  Chapter 17

  That day’s classes were more of the same, only worse.

  The storm had tempered, but it was still raining hard while we ran around being yelled at by Cricklewood. That combined with our lingering exhaustion from the trial and the shell shock from everything we’d learned the day before meant it was a muddy, wet, and grueling two hours.

  One kid sat down and refused to get up. Cricklewood didn’t bother to argue. He simply plucked one of the long hairs from his chin, and the horrid thing grew and morphed into a gray whip that chased the rebel around and thwacked him soundly anytime he dared to slow.

  I was so appalled I ran into one of the sentinel hedge cats, which rustled its leaves and hissed.

  The sole highlight was that Cricklewood didn’t promise to see us again that evening.

  Maybe they wouldn’t give us trials every day. A smart move if they wanted any of us humans to survive.

  Then again, it was even odds they didn’t.

  I dragged myself from one classroom to the next, trying to cram my head with information while simultaneously wondering whether our plan to win over Millicent would work.

  All right. And sometimes my thoughts drifted to Theus.

  What were his motives for helping the humans? The trial I could understand since it was one of the ways to get points. But last night? No one had been around to assess him then, and I could think of nothing he might’ve derived from showing me my family.

  So why offer?

  Because it will cost me little and may mean a great deal to you, he’d said. And then claimed he’d wanted nothing in return. Like he was doing it out of pure benevolence.

  I didn’t believe that. Not for a second.

  The Firstborn Agreement—the reason I was here right now—proved that the walkers didn’t do anything for free. Let alone the way they’d rocked up fifty years ago on our world’s metaphorical doorstep and demanded we accommodate them. Then proceeded to destroy most of the planet whe
n we didn’t respond the way they wanted.

  So why then? Could Theus have his own agenda for gaining my trust? The way I hoped to gain his?

  He’d been so much on my mind that when I walked into my Rudimentary Magic class and saw him seated there, my first instinct was to pretend I hadn’t. Last night he’d watched me cry. Seen my heart wide open as I’d looked at my siblings. He’d seen me vulnerable. And in the light of day, that felt acutely uncomfortable.

  But regardless of his agenda, I needed him for my own. I couldn’t afford to alienate him. So I waved a greeting and received a tug of a smile in response.

  Was he amused by me or being friendly?

  Grimwort stood up, and I switched my attention to the lesson. We had to direct a droplet of water through a series of small obstacles on our desks—without allowing its surface tension to break. It was a delicate task requiring oodles of finesse we didn’t have, and every time my focus wavered, the droplet would burst and scatter in every direction. At which point I had to go through the painstaking process of re-forming it before starting over.

  Under other circumstances, I might’ve enjoyed the challenge. But our lives were on the line, and it was difficult to see how this would help us survive the next trial.

  Grimwort insisted superior concentration and self-control led to superior magic, then napped behind his desk for the rest of the lesson.

  I exerted a great deal of self-control in not setting his chair on fire.

  But I supposed I should’ve been grateful he wasn’t accusing me of breaking into his office.

  The walkers, of course, did not bother with the exercise. Between the frustrating attempts with my water droplet, I noticed that with the exception of Lirielle, they largely ignored Theus. Almost as if he were beneath them the way they believed humans to be.

  Was that because Theus was consorting with the livestock? Or some other inscrutable reason? He’d said honor and strength were of utmost importance in their culture. Had Theus somehow lost his?

  I was concentrating on floating my water droplet through a paper tube when Lirielle drifted over to my desk.

  “Beware,” she said without inflection. Her smoky blue eyes fixed on mine with an intensity that mismatched her languid, dreamy manner. “The silent stares will bring you grief.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She frowned. “The offense is not mine to excuse.” Then she drifted away again without clarifying squat.

  I glanced around. No one in the class was staring at me. I tried for half a minute to decipher the meaning behind her cryptic words, decided that way lay madness, and returned my attention to the water droplet.

  That walker girl was not normal.

  Bryn, Ameline, and I made it through the rest of our lessons, crammed in three extra hours of study and wand practice after dinner, then finally allowed ourselves to tackle the Millicent problem.

  We all agreed that our first priority had to be our performance in class and the trials. As much as we wanted to uncover the truth behind this academy, it would do us no good if we failed the trial phase. Or worse, failed to survive the trial phase. So we’d settled on:

  Survival first.

  Passing second.

  Snooping third.

  The corridors were quiet, but it was still early enough they weren’t entirely empty. It didn’t matter. There was no need for stealth since no one could object to our fixing the stairs.

  I held my wand over the bottom step of the ancient timber staircase and realized the flaw in our plan.

  I had no idea how to go about this.

  Pursing my lips, I walked the span of the step to find the creakiest point, aimed my wand, focused my imagination and will, and shifted my weight.

  The timber groaned beneath me.

  Well, I shouldn’t have expected winning Millicent over would be easy.

  I suspected she’d enjoy seeing me grovel, and I needed to get a better look at the step, so I got down on my hands and knees. Then gave up on that and lay flat against the floor.

  It was going to be embarrassing if anyone walked past right now.

  “If you’re that tired, you really ought to go to bed,” Bryn suggested sweetly from the top of the stairs.

  She’d started at the other end, and I assumed by her lack of boasting that she wasn’t having any better luck than me.

  “I’d be less tired if you didn’t snore like a pig choking on a donkey,” I retorted. Actually, when she snored, she sounded almost dainty. But she didn’t need to know that.

  I wriggled until I was eye level with the step. “Ameline, walk up and down over this a few times, would you?”

  Given she was already in Millicent’s good books, Ameline had a supervisory role.

  She obliged, and I saw the timber sag beneath her boot, shifting against the supports with an ominous groan. So I pointed my wand again and imagined the timber tread strengthening, visualizing it becoming as unyielding as stone so it would not bend or shift.

  “Try again.”

  Ameline came down again, and this time the last step didn’t make a peep when it bore her weight.

  “Ha!” I crowed.

  I had to take my victories where I could get them.

  Bryn cheerfully lowered herself to my level, and with Ameline as our tester, we completed the whole staircase in about ten minutes.

  I didn’t know how long the magical strengthening would last. But I supposed if it wore off, we could always do it again.

  Now to learn whether Millicent accepted our peace offering…

  I was dusting myself off—already daydreaming about being woken by a gently rocking mattress rather than flung to the floor—when Glenn and Glennys came trotting up the staircase.

  They got about a third of the way before their expressions changed. Not to one of pleasant surprise at the newly silent stairs. No. It was a look of horror.

  One that quickly changed to pity on Glennys’s face and a smirk on Glenn’s. If you’ve never seen a golin smirk, count yourself lucky.

  “What have you done?” Glenn asked.

  “And more importantly, can you undo it?” Glennys added.

  “Um,” I said.

  Ameline jumped in. “Nova and Bryn wanted to do something nice for Millicent. You know, after the, ahem, wall incident?”

  Bryn crossed her arms. “We fixed the noisy old stairs for her. Why on earth would we undo it?”

  Glenn’s smirk widened into something more disturbing—though it was probably still supposed to be in the range of a smile. My supposition was confirmed a moment later when he did the braying laughter thing.

  “Oh, you poor dears,” Glennys said. “I’m afraid you’ve just upset her further. Millicent likes her stairs and floorboards to be creaky. It’s the closest thing to an audible voice she has, you see. She uses them to express herself.”

  Glenn paused his guffawing to explain. “Think about it like trying to apologize to someone by stuffing your dirty magical sock in their mouth.”

  I looked down at the golin’s bare, clawed feet. What would they know about socks?

  Unfortunately, they knew plenty about Millicent.

  I groaned. Then groaned again when for some reason Lirielle’s warning popped into my head, and this time it made sense.

  Beware, the silent stairs will bring you grief, she’d said. I’d thought she’d meant stares and totally missed the point.

  The walker girl might not be normal.

  But that didn’t mean she was wrong.

  Chapter 18

  Two entire weeks passed by in a blur of lessons and practice and very little sleep.

  Undoing our magic on the stairs had proven harder than applying it in the first place, but thanks to Ameline, the whole fiasco hadn’t been a complete waste. She’d had the presence of mind to ask the golin what Millicent might accept by way of apology, and Glennys had told us she liked gifts.

  Not that we’d had any time to action the knowledge. We were spending every spare moment
cramming more information into our heads or practicing our magic exercises until we’d drained our power reservoirs dry. And we weren’t the only ones.

  Despite the difficulties of this odd magic school with its side dish of death—the homesickness, the constant fear of the next trial, living alongside the monsters who’d destroyed our world, and suddenly being able to perform magic—most kids had adapted surprisingly well to their new lives.

  Perhaps in part because they were too exhausted to question the purpose behind it all, and I wondered if had been planned that way. But humans are good at acclimatizing. If you live in constant fear and exhaustion, you get used to it. The emotions lose their edge, and you keep going because that’s what has to be done.

  So the second trial when it came was easier than the first. We were a little less incompetent, a little less unnerved, and this time each human was paired with a walker.

  No one made any friends, but with the walkers’ success dependent on keeping their human partner alive, no one died either.

  Jayden came the closest when his inattentive walker had gotten distracted and forgot for a moment that Jayden existed.

  The trial acted as a sort of wake-up call for Ameline, Bryn, and me. Yes, surviving and passing had to take precedence over snooping, but if we weren’t careful, the three months would come to an end before we’d even managed to win over Millicent.

  So that evening, given we were too exhausted for study anyway, we came up with a new plan.

  “What kind of gifts might a building like?” I wondered aloud.

  We were sitting around the fire that Bryn had made way too hot as usual, and I was beginning to sweat.

  Ameline kicked me. “She doesn’t like to be called that, remember?”

  I bit back my first response. “Sorry, Millicent.”

  Not that verbal apologies had done me any good in the past. Still. That was why we were having this conversation.

  “A piece of furniture?” Ameline suggested. “A pet? A nice non-hazardous plant?”

  Bryn, who never seemed to get too hot, was sprawled out on the floor in front of the fire. “Maybe she likes jewels or other valuables. Pretty trinkets from the Before—”