by Kenna Bardot
I fought back the threat of tears, unwilling to cry again. Saying goodbye to them never got easier, and I suspected it never would. I could only await the day when goodbyes didn’t last more than a day.
Fourteen
Kaia
Nothing but black surrounded me.
Tied to a chair in the Oxygen Deprivation room, I could hear the rustling from the others as they shifted uncomfortably around me. We'd been sitting there for what had to have been nearly an hour.
Waiting.
Just.
Waiting.
Unbidden, I remembered the last time the blackness had threatened me. I remembered how I’d descended into the numbness that blackness could give me.
I remembered Lottie - saw her as she’d been that last moment she’d been alive. I whimpered. I had wished to never see it again.
We wore thick cloths tied over our eyes, blocking all the light from reaching us. There was no sense of the Fifth Years I took my trials with aside from the sounds they made. The door hadn't closed, no resounding thud and hiss of the locking mechanism sealing us in. Which only made one question repeat in my head as I pushed visions of Lottie out of my thoughts.
What were they doing?
I focused my breathing, taking slow, deep breaths. Having barely survived two oxygen deprivations in my past, one in that very room no less, my anxiety threatened to consume me.
"Breathe, Little One," Cel murmured, that deep voice soothing me like a balm. "You're not so pathetic as you were last year."
"Geez, thanks Marcellus," I grunted, flexing my fingers. My wrists ached where they were secured to the arm of the chair.
"Stop it," he whispered, his voice deepening in that way he had when he meant business. "No one can deny you're an Air now. It's for this you were Reborn. To be blessed by Zeevar. You're the only one who hasn't realized that yet."
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. I did it for me, to reassure myself even as I took a deep breath, absorbing the words he whispered to me.
“Children, don’t panic,” Docent Ho’s voice was comforting in the pitch black. “Headmaster Stewart would like to say something.”
"You will complete the Trial in total darkness. You must find a way to breathe for twenty minutes. Good luck to you all," Headmaster Stewart drolled, and then there was the thud and hiss of the door closing.
The air thinned around me instantly, but I focused on that core connection to Zeevar, feeling it pulse inside me, and sucked in deep, gasping breaths of whatever oxygen remained.
"Ah!" a woman's voice hissed. Blythe. The only female Fifth Year Air student. The other classes had already finished their Trials before ours, the difficulty determined according to their age. That, as usual, was how I found myself doing the Trial with them.
“Blythe, are you okay?” I heard Cel call out worriedly near me.
“Yes, Cel. I’m fine. I’m not actually helpless.”
“Oh, good,” he grunted before I heard a thudding and a muffled curse from his general direction.
Something tickled at my neck, a curling and twisting sensation slithering over my skin. I jolted away from it, hissing out a precious breath I hadn't been able to sacrifice. The pressure of it sank into my boots, pressing the leather into my shins like something I couldn't see leaned against me.
"Focus," Cel whispered, his own breathing cool and collected. I nodded and the unseen motion gave me some form of comfort, like acknowledging Cel's quiet strength would give me some of my own. My arm pulsed beneath my whip as my skin tightened. I focused on that feeling, letting it expand to every inch of revealed skin. It hit my chest, a light settling just below my throat where my tunic left the skin open to the Air. I sucked in a deep breath, letting that light flare brighter as I fed it.
My eyes closed behind the blindfold. I didn't need my sight to feel. More slithering touches and torturous weights settled against me, teasing at my skin. Each one made my light flare with a pulse of Air that I just couldn't seem to grasp. I ignored them in favor of drawing the little oxygen in the room into my lungs.
A breath in.
A breath out.
A few grunts here and there alerted me to the others’ struggles, but it wasn't until a pressure burst against my chest that I understood. My breath whooshed out, lost to me as it pressed on my lungs. When it didn't let up, I focused on drawing what little I could through the skin not affected, letting my arm and the back of my neck draw in just enough to let me survive.
When the pressure finally let up, I drew in a huge breath that felt untainted by the Oxygen Deprivation Chamber in comparison to what little I'd gotten with that pressure on my chest.
I breathed easily for a few more minutes, content in the knowledge that for the first time I'd survived Oxygen Deprivation without having someone to save me.
When the door opened and the Headmaster spoke, even though I couldn't see him, I knew he did so glaring at the smile on my face.
"Congratulations. You've survived the First Trial." Air swirled around me and untied the blindfold at the back of my head, and I opened my eyes to stare up at Gale's proud, smiling face. He was untying my wrists carefully, taking one risky moment to gently caress the back of my hand with his before moving on to Cel.
Docent Ho stood by the doorway, beaming at all of us in approval. The other Docents were attending to the other students, but I stood and walked out.
I didn't look back, and I didn't waste time.
I made my way from the room with my head held high and a smile I'd seen on Alec Gaius' face far too many times.
Because I was an Air Mage.
And no one could take that away from me.
✽✽✽
“Now that you are all Disciples, I am sure that Docent Frost, who you all shadowed with first, has already reiterated the point of knowing where you will go in your careers as Mages, as well as how this is important so you can spend the rest of your time in InkHaven Academy working towards that final goal. With me tonight, you are going to shadow a Protection,” Docent Tomos lectured us as we stood shivering in the snow-covered courtyard. Winter had arrived with a bang.
“Before we leave the Academy, we need to get the assignment. We will visit an Augur in the other building. Please follow me.”
We crossed the courtyard towards the Ink side of the school. Docent Woods led us towards a room down a long, golden-lighted hall.
I passed by Mar, who shot me a wide-eyed look, and I returned her smile before rushing to follow my classmates.
“Talk later,” I promised her, and she shouted a “Damn right!” at me.
In fifteen minutes, and following a ceremony that was similar to the handing out of assignments for rebirths, we found ourselves outside the front gates.
“We will take a transport orb. Please exercise caution while inside it.” Docent Woods held out his hand with the spiked brass knuckle on it and wrapped a bright red wall around us with a flick of the wrist. We shot into the air quickly, and I decided right then and there that I wasn’t a big fan of transport orbs.
I relished the freedom of flying more but knew that it was a skill that was only taught starting the second half of the fourth years. So it made sense that Docent Woods wouldn’t make us fly.
We landed in a quiet alleyway in the middle of the city. It was quiet, but as I looked around, I recognized how near we were to the happy hour district - the area of the city where people went to have a good time and drink alcohol.
I’d been there a grand total of once when I’d still been an Inked. It wasn’t just an InkHaven thing - I had refrained from parties whenever humanly possible.
“Samantha Garcia,” Docent Woods spoke up. “Her date isn’t until three years from now. And we are here to ensure that she survives until that day.” He walked out of the alleyway and stopped just before we reached one of the streetlights. We all stood in the darkness.
“Do you hear that?” he asked quietly, and I strained my ears before I could hear it. “Pl
ease observe the woman about to cross the street.”
We saw her, a small, slight woman wrapped in a long beige coat and tall dark brown boots. She patiently waited for the walk light to turn green before she started to cross the street. In the blink of an eye, a silver car barrelled down the street, running the red light and blasting the car horn.
But it was too late for her, standing as she was in the middle of the road, caught like a deer in headlights with the car headed straight towards her.
That was when Docent Woods stepped forward and sent a very deliberate streak of red light towards the front right wheel of the car. It swerved just enough, as if in slow-motion and crashed head on into a snowbank. On the other hand, the woman had made a run for it and had thrown herself to the other side of the road.
She - the woman Docent Woods had called Samantha - laid on the snow-covered sidewalk panting heavily. She stared at the car that had swerved and nearly hit her. Her hands trembling in her gloves, she reached up to touch a finger to the golden tattoo glowing at the back of her right ear.
She breathed what could only be a sigh of relief as the driver of the silver car that nearly ran her over lurched out of the car.
“Are you okay?” he asked, slurring his words.
“I am.” She looked at the car that was buried deep in the snowbank. “You’re drunk.”
The man flushed.
“You shouldn’t drink and drive, dammit. You nearly killed me.”
“Is it your date?”
Samantha stood up, patting snow from her coat. “No. But not all of us die on our date. Some have actually died before it, you asshole. So be careful.”
“Okay, we’ll leave them to their argument, yeah? Time to go back now. But that is, in essence, the job of a Protector.”
My classmates started clapping, but I stood just a little apart. While we had saved lives rather than taken it, it made me even sadder. This was what Lottie had wanted - what she would have thrived in doing.
And it just hurt to know she was never going to do it.
Yes, I felt like an Air Mage, and I was proud of that.
But I wished that I could have Lottie to be an Air Mage with.
And that was bittersweet.
Fifteen
Kaia
Emerson and I studied side by side in the library, exchanging occasional glances with one another, especially considering the way Emerson continued to watch me wearily. I knew he was waiting for the inevitable drop – that moment when I would lose the momentary high I’d found since having Vali. I’d been having bad dreams again. Taking the medication to soothe the troubling images again. Ever since the trial, the dreams had haunted me. And he knew. When I looked at him, I knew he knew.
I hadn’t told him yet about my shadow with Docent Woods. How doing it made me miss the person Lottie could have been even as I dreamt of who she had been. No, I didn’t say anything. I knew he would worry about me even more.
When Pia dropped into the chair next to Emerson, I looked at her expectantly. Zeevar knew she was incapable of being in my orbit without acting out some attempt to torment me. And with the ups and downs of how I was feeling from the last week, I couldn’t help but feel her steady way of just being rude and insulting could distract me.
But unlike her usual, catty self, Pia ignored me completely, instead turning icy blue-gray eyes to Emerson with an intentionally sexy little smile.
“What are you studying?” she asked him, her voice deep and raspy. I wondered if she actually spent a considerable amount of time practicing it. She leaned into his space to glance at his book, giving a direct view down the front of her top to show off the ample cleavage I would never be able to compete with.
“Annals,” he answered shortly, and I could hear the skepticism in his voice. I stifled my laugh, turning back to the book in front of me with an amused shake of my head.
“Oh I love annals,” she stressed and ran a tongue over her top teeth, accentuating the slightest gap between the front two. I snorted, hiding my face behind my hand.
“Sorry, don’t mind me. Continue with your innuendo.” I waved a hand in dismissal, and ignored the seething glare she sent my way before turning a sickeningly sweet smile back to Emerson.
“That’s not what I heard, but okay.” He shrugged in dismissal, turning back to his book.
“I think you’ve been misinformed,” she cooed, and I tuned out the conversation entirely to focus on my studying. It struck me that a few months prior I’d have been threatened by Pia’s blatant attempt to seduce Emerson. But no matter how torn in two I might feel by my recent losses, I knew one thing above all else.
My men loved me.
Not just loved me, but loved me.
Pia would never be a threat to that so I was able to find amusement in whatever she was trying to do.
“Are you thirsty, Kai?” Emerson asked, turning his back on Pia to fuss over me. “We could go get some water before we need to meet up with Docent Porter.”
“I’m okay, honey,” I murmured in appreciation, taking his hand in mine and smiling up at him.
Pia’s sweet smile faded off her face, and the scowl returned and I turned to her. “You know, you’re much prettier when you don’t look like a raving bitch,” the input was necessary. “For a moment there when you were pathetically trying to seduce my man, I thought maybe I could see what Vali ever saw in you. Then you showed what was inside so the outside became considerably uglier.”
“What is wrong with you?” she asked Emerson. “You should be grateful for the opportunity to be with me.”
My eyes widened, even though I’d known that was the attitude several of the girls took. Women in the Air track were rare enough that it enabled that entitled attitude especially if one wanted to be with a Mage in the same sect, but I didn’t think I’d ever heard one of the others voice that entitlement so blatantly.
“I’m happy with what I have,” Emerson answered simply. “You can’t tempt a man who already has everything he wants.” He turned away from her, but mumbled for my sake, “golden pussy and all.”
My heart clenched as I fought the dual sensation of threatening tears and the urge to giggle at the reminder of Lottie.
“Emerson,” I warned him, knowing the conversation was taking a turn for true ugly that felt unnecessary.
“Ugh, please,” Pia snarled. “Pussy is pussy.”
“I feel obligated to inform you that Vali disagrees,” Emerson’s voice dropped to a cool glint I rarely heard from my more easy-going man. So it was scarier than the others if only for the fact that it was more rare. “Good pussy is worth sacrificing for. Toxic pussy is tossed aside like trash.”
“Sacrificing? Like Lottie did stupidly?” Pia hissed, her face red in anger. I stood from my chair abruptly, the mention of Lottie, a dead woman who couldn’t defend herself, enough to push the conversation over the edge. Whatever light amusement I had been feeling at that point dissipated to be engulfed in a bubble of rage.
“You know you’re not to talk of that, Ramos.” I looked around and saw that people were looking at us. I noted that a lot of them were throwing dirty glares at Pia, which shouldn’t have surprised me. While, because I was new and people could write me off, Lottie had been widely liked among the other students, going out of her way to make people feel at home at InkHaven. Insulting her memory was a sure way to get Pia blacklisted.
“But, please do go into graphic details, right here in a public space in full earshot of students below fourth year. Perhaps, it’ll get your ass expelled, and we’ll be rid of you forever.” I took a step forward, getting my face up into hers as she’d also stood up the moment I had.
“You weren’t enough for her to stick around, Shaw. One day, the men who have allowed themselves to be so stupidly blinded by you will realize that.” She chuckled at me, a dark and sardonic sound that grated on my nerves.
“No, Pia, she loved me. But she knew that she wasn’t leaving me alone, because I have enough men w
ho love me just for that - being me. What do you have?” I poked a finger to her shoulder, which she swatted away.
“Ramos, what you’re saying is never going to happen. I don’t know the details of what happened with Lottie, but I know she loved Kaia in a way you’d never understand or have,” Emerson spoke up softly as he slammed his book shut and stood up next to me in a show of support.
“If she was so great then why didn’t she have a gaggle of men around her at all times?” Pia threw me a smug look and it took all of my willpower not to claw at her face. I’d learned from the scene in Gale’s class - do not take out all the anger on the slut, much as she deserved it.
“That’s because she didn’t place all her value on how many dicks she had on tap. She was happy enough in finding value on who she was as a person. Besides -” I was cut off when Otto angrily approached our table. His hands were bunched into fists, visibly trembling.
He gave me a stiff nod before he rounded on Pia, “Ramos, Lottie had more class, beauty and intelligence than you ever will. The only reason she didn’t have a “dick collection” as you put it is because she didn’t want one. Trust me, if she’d wanted one I would have been there, and I know at least three or four others who’d have dropped all whoever else they were with to be with her exclusively. But she didn’t want that so we had to be content with what she gave us.”
I reached over and gave Otto’s arm a quick squeeze because his entire body had started shaking now rather than just his hands.
“Leave us alone, Pia. Leave me, my men, all of us alone. We want nothing to do with you, and you just look desperate to try and take them from me. Finally, leave the memory of Lottie alone, because even when she’s gone, she’s going to be better and more loved than you ever will be,” I muttered, and it was true. I knew, as well as anyone with eyes, that my men weren’t going to leave me. I was finally secure enough in that.
“You took my man. It’s only fair I return the favor.”
I huffed a laugh. “I didn’t take Vali from you, because you never had him to begin with.”