by S. W. Clarke
“Hey, I’m Clementine Cole. I’m the witch”—I held up my brand-new witch’s broom, which, I swear, made one of the fae hop back with a flutter of wings—“and I’m here to learn to fight. Fight better, that is. Because I’m actually a pretty good fighter. Or at least, I was in my old life. But I’ve never killed anyone.”
When I finished, the room was silent. I hadn’t ever strung together so many words.
Torsten chuckled. “A good fighter has joined us. We’ll have to test her mettle.”
And though one part of me wanted to laugh and wave him off with a little, “Oh, that’s not necessary,” another part of me liked that—the part of me who enjoyed having her mettle tested when it came to fights.
Because the truth was, if there was one thing I was really adept at, it was knuckling up.
Definitely beats Introduction to Microsoft Office.
So I said, “Sure. When do we start?”
Torsten’s dirty blond eyebrows went up. “Soon enough. Soon enough.” His finger went out to one of the students. “First round of the day. Maric, I believe you requested a duel?”
Maric, a brown-haired human, slid his blazer off and rolled his shirt up to the elbows. If it meant messing up the uniform, I already liked this class. Maric took a long look around the room, meeting eyes with the other students.
Finally, he pointed at a tall male fae whose white hair gleamed under the single lantern dangling from the ceiling. “Keene.”
A murmur of excitement passed through the small room, a few cheers from the humans. Why was the room so small, anyway? Surely there were more open spaces to hold a class like this. Like the meadow, I thought again but didn’t say.
Maric and the fae he’d called Keene stepped toward the padded mat covering the center of the floor, the fae now removing his own blazer and setting it aside. He undid the top two buttons of his shirt.
Torsten put a hand out in front of me, urging me back toward the wall. “You don’t want to have your neck in the way.”
I obliged, but not willingly. “They have to keep to the mat, right?”
Torsten shook his head, pulling at his beard with a rumble of amusement. “What kind of class do you think this is? Wrestling?”
My eyebrows pulled together. “It’s—”
A yell resounded through the room, drowning my voice—and even my thoughts—as Maric bull-rushed the fae. He got him, too, grabbing him around the waist and sending him toward the back wall.
Except…the fae wasn’t in his grip by the time he reached the wall. He was on the other side of the room, pulling a staff from a weapons rack.
I hadn’t blinked. I hadn’t lost my mind.
The fae had been in Maric’s grasp, and then he wasn’t.
Before I could process what had just happened, Keene launched himself across the room, flying toward Maric, who had hit the wall hard and was just now turning.
Keene swung the end of the staff around, ready to pop Maric with it. But Maric threw himself aside, crashing into a few of the other students and clanging against one of the weapon racks.
He scrabbled amongst the weapons, grabbing at the first handle he could find. As Keene came at him for the next attack with the staff, Maric managed to yank a longsword from the rack, raising it just in time to meet Keene’s overhead swing.
Metal and wood came together hard, Maric blocking with the flat of the sword. Keene lifted the staff for another attack, and Maric managed to shoulder-check him a few feet back.
The two of them went on fighting each other all the way around the cramped space. When they came near me and Torsten, the barbarian nudged me aside before I took a hit with the staff.
This wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t neat. It was dirty.
It was whoever could get the upper hand—by any means necessary.
This was real fighting.
I had a feeling I’d much prefer this to Flight.
It quickly became clear that in a space like this, the sword—a shorter-range weapon—was a superior choice to the staff, which was at least six feet long. Every time Keene swung with the staff, he narrowly missed—and sometimes hit—other students or the racks or the walls themselves.
But he had picked the staff because it was the closest thing to him when he’d disappeared and reappeared across the room. I still had no name for what the fae had done.
In the same way, Maric had selected his sword in a moment of frenzy. He’d just happened to grab hold of the superior weapon.
After a minute more of fighting, the two of them ended up weaponless and on the ground. They wrestled, though not for long: the finer-boned fae was quickly overcome by the stockier human, who got him in a sleeper hold with one arm around his slender neck.
I’d expected Torsten to call it, but he didn’t.
Not until Keene, his face going red, slapped the ground. He could barely speak. “I yield,” he panted.
Silence descended, apart from the two combatants, who breathed hard on the floor. Maric didn’t let him go.
I wanted to step forward. To tell Maric he was cutting off the blood to the fae’s brain. But I didn’t, because I sensed this was part of it, too.
Maric still didn’t stop. Not until Keene’s face went slack, his whole body losing its tension.
I instinctively understood why: they were fighting dirty, and yielding didn’t necessarily mean the fight was over.
It was settled: I liked this class way better than Fernwhirl’s.
Torsten stepped forward. “It’s done, then. Maric’s the victor.”
And finally, the fae was allowed to roll away. When he came around, the two of them got up, shook hands, departed to opposite sides of the room.
Keene wasn’t even upset; he’d taken Maric’s sleeper hold for what it was—training.
Torsten glanced back at me, his eyes twinkling with mirth. “All right, Clementine. You seem to know a thing or two about this. Let’s find out whether that’s true.”
Everyone stared at me again. And I had been challenged by Torsten.
Together, those two things meant I absolutely, unequivocally couldn’t back out. Of course, when it came to a fight, I never did.
But then, that had been in my old life. Back before I knew magic existed. Back before I had seen a fae blink from one side of a room to another.
Nonetheless, I shrugged. I tried to hide the adrenaline shake in my fingers as I slid off my blazer. “Who’s my opponent?”
When I turned back, unbuttoning my sleeves to roll them up, Torsten looked pleased. “You choose.”
Before I could even begin to survey my options, one of the fae stepped forward. “I challenge her.”
I glanced around Torsten, found a black-haired, black-eyed fae gazing back at me. She was the tallest I’d ever seen, and the most slender. If she were a human, she’d have been scouted in a mall long ago.
I recognized her. She’d been the one staring at me from on high when I’d arrived last night, her eyes as hard and cold as they were now.
“Liara,” Torsten said to the fae, “she’s no match for you. Wait a few months to duel this one.”
Oh, that got my blood singing. Especially being referred to in the third person while I was standing right next to him.
I stepped out from behind Torsten. “She won’t know if I’m a match for her until we fight.”
A tension entered Liara’s body language, like a chord had been struck. She didn’t even bother to remove her blazer as she took another step forward. “In that case, I’ll go easy, Professor. No weapons for me.”
I pulled a hair tie out of my blazer pocket, began tying up my curls. “Then I won’t use a weapon, either.”
Torsten leaned toward me, whispering, “Take the advantage.”
I pretended I hadn’t heard him as I finished setting my hair and stepped into the center of the room. “Liara, right?”
The fae strode forward, the room a midnight blue through the gauze of her wings. “And you are the witch.”
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I cocked my head at her. That didn’t even sound like friendly competition—it sounded downright insulting. “Not a fan?”
The ghost of a grimace touched her full lips. “Not since a witch killed my parents.”
Where before I’d been shaking my arms out, bobbing up and down, I went completely still. And a pall descended over the room. Around me, no one moved. No one spoke.
It felt almost irreverent to do so.
A witch. A witch had killed this fae’s parents.
I had so many questions. But this wasn’t the time to ask them, or to get answers.
We were opponents in a fight. And this was a different fight than the one I’d thought I was getting into. This was something dangerous.
She carried a poison inside her; I could see it in her eyes. Here before her stood the world’s last witch, and someone to pin her anger on.
I took a deep, slow breath. “I’m not that witch. But I understand why you want to duel me.” I stepped forward. “Go ahead—I don’t break easy.”
A light flared in her eyes. I had given her permission to unleash whatever power she possessed.
And so, as I lowered into my fighting stance, she did, too.
With a sweep of one arm and a gesture I had never seen, she pointed one finger at me. From it emerged a searing flash of blue light, growing to the size of a star. It encompassed my vision from end to end, and then?
And then the world went dark.
When I woke, I lay on my back with a weight pressing on my chest. From somewhere, a soft song emanated through the air—one of the loveliest tunes I’d ever heard.
When I opened my eyes, a curmudgeonly voice rumbled atop my chest. “She’s up.”
I lifted my head against the pounding that ensued the moment I raised it. Loki’s green eyes stared back at me, his paws placed neatly together as he perched on my chest.
And the singing stopped. To my right, a chair scraped across the floor, and Eva’s pristine face appeared. “Oh, you’re awake! That’s excellent.”
I blinked; her face was shrouded in incandescent light. “Where are we?”
“The medical ward. Can you see all right?”
I blinked hard. “I think so. Apart from you being directly in front of the light.”
“Oh.” She moved her head, and the light behind her blasted directly into my eyes.
Pain seared through my skull, throbbing harder. I cringed, dropping my head back onto the pillow. “What is that, the sun?”
“It’s a lantern,” Loki said without an ounce of sympathy. “You’re familiar with those.”
I didn’t even have the energy to think of a comeback. “Why do I feel like I just drank a pint of vodka and not a drop of water?”
Eva patted my arm. “You got hit by Liara’s magic. She really let you have it, so I heard. But you’re recovering stupendously well.”
I thought back to the moment before I’d dropped into the void. I remembered a blue flash shooting from Liara’s pointed finger, and a foreign gesture with her hand. “Fae can do that?”
“Oh, sure. I mean, each fae has their own specialty. Liara shoots crazy-powerful magic from her fingertips. She’s like the headmistress.”
I recalled now her promise not to use weapons. I realized, in retrospect, that Torsten’s caution for me to use a weapon was because he’d known what Liara would do with her hands.
I really hadn’t stood a chance. Not even half of one.
I groaned. “I didn’t last a second in the fight. Now everyone’s going to think I’m evil and weak.”
Evil wasn’t so bad, but weak? Unacceptable. I hadn’t survived adolescence by being soft and vulnerable.
“Really?” Loki said. “You got blasted and knocked your head, and all you care about is your street cred?”
“What else is there?”
Loki kneaded into my chest, tiny needles of pain arcing through my skin. “Oh, I don’t know...anything else?”
Eva set a cool hand on my forehead. “Trust me—if you want to pass the qualifiers to become a guardian, you’ll learn how to handle yourself with mages. If you want, I’ll teach you how to fight a fae like Liara.”
My eyes slitted open. “You will?”
She nodded, a soft smile appearing. “I will.”
A thought occurred to me: I had one more obligation today. I took a survey of the walls around me, but couldn’t find a clock. “What time is it?”
Eva sat back. “It’s after one.”
I had just enough time. Just. “Help me out of bed.”
She retrieved a steaming mug from the table by my bed. “Let’s start with sitting up.”
I’d never sat up so fast in my life. Loki made a noise of dissent as he tumbled off me and onto the bed. After I’d taken a long sip of tea—man, mages made some excellent tea—I stared Eva down. “Let’s go.”
Eva sat up straight. “Go where?”
“I have one more class today.”
Eva looked relieved that I wasn’t bugging her to train me this very instant. I sensed she’d been expecting as much.
I threw the covers off. “And if we don’t go now, I’ll be late. I’m not going to be the witch who got KOed in combat class who’s also late.”
Chapter Thirteen
Fifteen minutes later, Eva and I stood at the entrance to my Rescue class. She’d told me it was halfway up a staircase circling another enormous tree.
I stared up at it. It looked exactly like all the others. “How am I supposed to tell them all apart?”
Eva smiled, set her hand to the trunk. “This one’s about five hundred years old. It’s a good two hundred and fifty years older than the tree your combat class was held in. See the difference in circumference and the bark?”
I squinted. “No.”
At my feet, Loki yawned. “T-minus two minutes to start.”
“All right.” I waved goodbye to Eva. “I’ll see you back at the dorm.”
She looked concerned. “Are you sure you can make it up there after getting blasted in the face by Liara’s magic?”
“Oh, it’s no problem.” Actually, my whole body ached. And I guess, after all, I had been hit by lightning—just a little bit of it, at least. “I’m totally fine.”
Loki turned around from his perch on the first step. “She’s not.”
I swatted a hand, as though Eva could even understand him. “He’s just a cat. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
She just smiled. “I’ll pretend he was concerned about your welfare.”
As Loki and I climbed the steps—slowly, very slowly, in my case—I pointed a finger at him. “Leave the diagnoses to me, the human. The human who knows her own body.”
Loki’s tail flicked. “Have you looked in a mirror lately? It doesn’t take a human to see you got blasted in the face by elemental magic and should probably not even be walking right now, much less on your feet.”
“It can’t be that bad. I’m still walking, right?”
“Yeah, sort of. If you count hobbling as walking.”
I didn’t even have time to rest as we came to the landing before the classroom; I was already late.
When I opened the door, every head turned. A dozen students were seated in pairs at desks, and at the front of the room, a frazzled woman in spectacles stared at me from overtop her black rims. She’d been holding a book open, which she now lowered to her side.
I had never seen such a serious classroom. This is where we learn to rescue? I’d expected something more…lively. All their eyes were severe, intense. But they all seemed to widen when I arrived. Or at least, their faces became animated. Curious. Worried.
Why were they worried?
Right—because I’m the witch.
“Oh my, dear,” said the professor. “Are you all right?”
Loki threaded past my feet and nearly tripped me as I stepped in.
“Sure. I’m great.” Now I was really wondering how bad I looked. “I’m the new student�
�Clementine.”
She gave me a look as blank as a canvas.
I cleared my throat. “I’m the witch.”
“Ah.” The professor nodded slowly. “Well, I’m glad you’ve found the class. Please, take a seat wherever you like.”
The classic take-a-seat-wherever-you-like offer, which always involved a quick, self-conscious survey of the room and seizing the first open chair you could find to save yourself from standing up there for everyone’s inspection.
Not that I minded attention. But given the spectacle I seemed to make everywhere I went, and the fact that I was late, I had the sense it was better to make myself less noticeable sooner rather than later.
So I grabbed an open seat in the front row next to a short, red-haired fae who smiled at me with dimples. At least someone didn’t seem alarmed by my appearance—or my witchiness.
Without another word said, the professor lifted her book and resumed reading, her finger set to the page. I didn’t even know her name, much less what book she was reading from.
I began to raise my hand into the air when the fae next to me snatched it down. He leaned toward me. “Professor Milonakis doesn’t like to be interrupted,” he whispered. “Trust me.”
Milonakis. Eva had mentioned her at breakfast; something about not making sex jokes in front of her. Now I got it…she took herself very seriously.
I nodded gravely as he slid his book between us, already open to the page the professor was reading from. An invitation to read along.
And so I did, grateful for the angels of the magical world’s better nature: Evanora, Aiden—despite his teasing—and this guy, who looked about ten years old. They’d all done me small favors, which was about all that had gotten me through this long, often painful day.
Despite Professor Milonakis’s monotone voice, I found myself unexpectedly engaged by the reading. This chapter was a deep-dive into the world’s points of power, which mages could tap into to travel from place to place.
Apparently there were four types of such points:
1. Rivers, like the one Headmistress Umbra had used to transport us from DC to the academy. The bigger and faster and older they were, the more powerful their connection to magic.