Good Witches Don't Cheat (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 2)

by S. W. Clarke

  I stopped, staring at him. “You’ve got no idea what I’m doing. You’ve never fought a witch.”

  A second later, I threw both hands out at him with an overdramatic yell. Nothing close to fire came out of my palms, but I swear every pair of boots left the floor for just a moment. Well, except maybe Callum Rathmore’s.

  But it had the effect I’d wanted. (Okay, maybe I had wanted fire to come out of my hands, but I was prepared for this eventuality.)

  Jericho’s panicked arc of flame cut through the air toward me, and I dropped under it, my chest touching the ground. I stared up at Jericho the whole time, and the moment the flames had cleared my vertical space, I threw myself up and lunged at him.

  He didn’t expect that. And he really didn’t expect my boot surging out at his groin. I managed to make faint contact before his hands grabbed my foot and thrust me away.

  A bolt of flame followed. I angled my head left just in time to avoid getting blasted in the face. Another bolt shot out at me, and I angled my head right, dancing backward.

  Jericho came forward, striking at me again and again, orange flames flowering into existence and dissipating into the air. Every time, I focused on evading his hits.

  “Clementine,” Rathmore said with clearly frayed patience, “this is a duel to test your ability to use fire magic. Please, use some fire magic.”

  I glared at him. “Would you please—”

  My snark was interrupted by a cauldron of flames blasting me right in the chest. I was thrown backward, hitting the ground so hard stars dappled across my eyes and my breath left me.

  Well, that had goddamn hurt.

  I lifted my face. At least my chest wasn’t on fire, which meant fire magic burns really were suppressed in this room.

  Jericho crossed toward me, one hand out with growing flames surrounding it. Apparently my smack talk had worked well. Too well.

  Get up, Clem. Get up, now!

  Jericho’s next shot flew from his hand, hissed as it hit the floor where my head had been.

  I’d rolled just in time. But Jericho was already correcting for that, his other hand glowing with flame.

  Keep rolling. Keep rolling!

  I rolled right into the feet of one of the students, and I grabbed the hem of her skirt to haul myself up. “Thanks,” I breathed to her shocked, dismayed face as I spun away.

  Jericho was right there.

  He was about to nail me.

  Fire magic. Use your fire magic.

  By instinct, my hand rushed into my pocket. My fingers closed around the key, cold and heavy and promising just the opposite. Supercharged flames. Kindled air. Fire for days. But I didn’t want to rely on it. I needed to do this myself.

  Before I could decide one way or another, Jericho’s flaming hand was at my chest, pushing me back into the wall. The students parted in a wave as my back hit wood, and he stared down at me with the gauzy air shimmering between us overtop his flaming hand.

  He was waiting for me to concede.

  The night I’d stood outside the gates of Hell last spring, fire had formed a white-hot rosette in the palm of my hand. And I saw with crystal clarity the moment I’d thrown my hand out before me, flames slicing through the air and separating upper bodies from lower bodies, all those vile creatures split apart like fruit by a knife’s edge.

  One of my hands was still in my pocket. My fingers still gripped the key.

  I wouldn’t concede.

  My other hand went out toward Jericho, the palm open, and with a noise somewhere between a growl and a scream, the flame surged into life along my fingertips, up my forearm toward my shoulder. And when my hand found his face to push it away, I heard that same hissing as when his flames had hit the floor.

  Except I heard something else, too.

  Jericho’s mouth opened, and he also started to scream.

  I jerked my hand away, the flames dying as soon as I did. And as he dropped back, his hands clutching his face, I caught a glimpse of pink on his cheek.

  “I’m burning,” he said, muffled through his hands. “Help me.”

  The students around me gasped.

  Callum Rathmore stood. When he strode toward Jericho, I knew this wasn’t at all how it was supposed to be.

  I wasn’t supposed to have the power to burn anything. Not here. Not in this enchanted room.

  But somehow I had burned a guardian’s face.

  Rathmore gestured two students forward. “Take him to the infirmary. Ensure he gets there as quickly as possible.”

  The students came to either side of Jericho, helping him out of the common room while I stood there staring after, feeling wholly wretched and wanting to apologize, which seemed like the paltriest thing I could do.

  I had burned his face. Sorry didn’t cut it.

  So I started after Jericho, resolving to at least go with him to the infirmary, but Rathmore’s finger shot out toward me. “You stay.”

  “That was my fault,” I said. “I need to go.”

  “You need to remain right here.” His finger didn’t move, and I felt pinned to the spot. Normally I’d push past someone with the chutzpah to give me an order simply because they were giving orders, but not with Rathmore.

  It bothered me that he had some power over me. It bothered me even more that I didn’t know why.

  And so I had to stand there and listen to Jericho’s suffering. From the moment he started toward the door until it closed behind him, he groaned with what I knew must be agonizing pain. I knew how powerful the flame I’d tapped into had been; I had felt its heat up my arm.

  On top of which, Jericho was a guardian. He had responsibilities—life-and-death ones.

  An empty circle had at some point spawned into existence around me, all the students moving step by step away. So I ended up standing alone, and I leaned against the wall with my eyes burning acid into the floor and arms crossed in a semi-protective, semi-disaffected pose.

  Meanwhile, Callum instructed everyone out. And when I moved away from the wall, he added: “Everyone except you, Cole.”

  And again I stayed as the students grabbed their bags and left the common room in a bustle of movement. I could already feel the wariness in how they circled wide around me as they passed, in the whispers whose general tone and shape I could make out.

  The fire witch had done this.

  She’d burned someone.

  When the door closed, the fireplace kicked up to a roar, crackling away as Callum Rathmore began a methodical pacing up and down the line from the sofa to the door. Back and forth, back and forth, his robes fluttering behind him and his heavy boots thumping on the floor in rhythm.

  He was walking as quickly as when he’d carried me in. Maybe that was just the speed of his stride—or maybe it was a reflection of strong feeling, of anxiety.

  Finally, when he didn’t speak or look at me, I unfolded my arms. “Listen, I know I screwed up. I didn’t mean to burn him, for god’s sake.”

  He didn’t stop pacing. He didn’t look up.

  “Is this some form of punishment?” I asked. “Are you transmitting shame to me through the silent treat—”

  He stopped, eyes flashing on me. “How did you do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He thrust his hand through the veil his hair as he spun toward me and came forward, so intense I had to resist the instinct to retreat. His eyes were dark as pieces of charcoal as he stood over me. “You do know. What you did shouldn’t be possible.”

  I forced myself to stare up at him, jaw set. “I don’t.”

  His lips twitched as he studied my face. “Don’t lie to me.”

  My hands fell to my sides, ready to be thrown out in exclamation that I didn’t know, but as soon as my right hand brushed my skirt, I felt it: the key.

  And then I did know. Or at least, I had a suspicion.

  He recognized the change in my expression. “What is it?”

  I swallowed, my mind a flock of disturbed birds fluttering
away from a pond. I didn’t know which one to follow, which direction to take. But I knew I couldn’t tell him about the key. He was the headmistress’s newest hire, and the professors here were all loyal enough to her that they would report news of it to her.

  No doubt he was loyal, too.

  And Umbra had already taken the key from me once. It had come back to me on its own; the wisps had called it my claim. I wasn’t about to test its ability to return to me again. I wasn’t going to take a risk on Callum Rathmore.

  I swallowed, my eyes traveling between his. “Maybe a fire witch makes possible what shouldn’t be.”

  A beat passed, during which I had the sense that he might wring the truth out of me if he felt it would be effective. He was a black-maned lion in that moment, his hair illuminated by the fireplace’s flickering flames.

  He could destroy. He could overpower. He was the apex predator.

  But the hard set of my eyes and mouth seemed to put him off that possibility, and with a growl he turned away. “A fire witch,” he scoffed.

  The instant his eyes were off me, my shoulders came forward, my held breath leaving my mouth. I hadn’t known I’d been standing so rigid. He hadn’t seemed this menacing back when I’d met him outside the academy grounds. “Is that so ridiculous?”

  “Yes,” he said on the heels of my question, eyes flashing over his shoulder. He turned, paced a few steps in the opposite direction, gaze still on me as if deliberating something. “You have a high estimation of your powers, witch.”

  “And why shouldn’t I?”

  “The rest of your kind is dead.”

  “Because the mages of the world killed us off,” I said, my blood instantly up. Who was he to question my heritage? “Even a lion can be taken down by a pack of hyenas.”

  His eyes narrowed with mirth or derision. I couldn’t make out which. “A lion. That’s you?”

  And you, I thought but didn’t say.

  I only nodded. “Even if I didn’t have fire, I would have fought Jericho right to the ground.”

  “But you did.” He paused, fully turned to me. “You had fire, and you burned him with it. Do you know what this means?”

  I didn’t answer. I knew he was preparing his answer.

  “You’re too dangerous to train with the others.” His deep voice brooked no argument. “If you want me to teach you, then you’ll train alone.”

  Chapter Six

  Too dangerous.

  I had been called that once before. I was thirteen, and I’d just been sent back into the foster system by my first adoptive family. A week earlier, I’d beaten their darling son up for swinging Loki by his tail.

  I found out how dangerous I was in a meeting with my counselor. She went to the bathroom and I, curious, stepped around her desk and lifted open the flap of my file. Somehow it was already solid with documents, even though I’d only been in the system for a year and a half. As I flicked through the pages, I came across that phrase.

  Too dangerous.

  I was too dangerous to be placed with other children, she’d written. I’d broken that boy’s nose, and now I was high-risk.

  With that stamp, no other family wanted me. I spent the next five years sitting on picnic benches and having interviews with couples who thought they liked my red hair and curls until they found out what I was.

  Dangerous. A liability.

  Eventually I took to dropping onto the opposite side of the picnic bench with crossed arms, staring at them like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. If that didn’t ward them off, I started asking them about the sharpness of their cutlery. That always did the trick.

  After the age of thirteen, my cat became my home. He was the only creature on Earth who trusted me not to be too dangerous. He was the only reason I survived those five years in the system. And when I escaped, I had a chance to be someone else. Someone different. Someone better.

  And now?

  Now Callum Rathmore was staring at me with that same look I’d seen hundreds of times from those couples, from my own counselor, from every adult in my life. Distrust. Wariness. Frustration.

  It sent me right back into that place. I was thirteen again, feeling helpless to be anyone else but the “dangerous” girl everyone believed me to be.

  My fingers clenched, the nails digging into my palms. “No.”

  Rathmore’s thick eyebrows rose, his chin lowering a degree. “What was that?”

  “I’m not who you think I am.” My voice had a rare low steel in it. “You meet me once and you think you can label me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  His eyes flicked to my fists, back up to my face. His expression said, You aren’t exactly making a case otherwise. But when his lips parted, he said, “It’s the human condition, Cole.”

  The heat guttering up my neck pressed away logic and recognition, but I managed to sputter through it, “What are you talking about? The human condition?”

  “You’ve labeled me already,” he said. “Maybe I’m arrogant. Maybe I’m too severe. Maybe I’m a pretentious ass.”

  I exhaled, lips parting at the last one. Had he read my mind?

  “It’s the human condition to apply labels,” he went on. “It’s a survival strategy. It makes us feel in control.”

  What a crock. “So it makes you feel in control to think I’m too dangerous to train with the others?”

  “No, Cole,” he said without any anger or severity. His voice had lapsed into an even cadence. “I’m always in control. And I don’t think you’re too dangerous—I know it.”

  I didn’t care if he was a professor; I was about to haul off with my fire. I could feel the Spitfire in my chest, sparking with the desire to spread to my limbs, to my fingertips, to consume me in flame.

  If I let it come out, I wouldn’t be able to contain it.

  “There it is,” he said, eyes flashing. He took a step toward me. “That’s what Maeve warned me about.”

  I couldn’t even process the two questions that surged into my mind. First, he knew the Spitfire was inside me. Second, the headmistress had warned him about it.

  Those were pressed to the back; the Spitfire took precedence, and it was a primitive creature. One of instinct and will and power.

  “Take another step closer, and I’ll end you,” I growled, hardly comprehending the words my tongue and lips were forming. All I knew was they felt right. True. Just.

  He didn’t move, but a thread of satisfaction wound its way through his features, turning his lips up. He felt in control; he knew he could take me if I were to attack him.

  “There’s the fire witch inside you,” he rasped. “And that’s what we’ll cultivate. That’s what you’ll learn to wield.”

  He was right: I did think he was arrogant. I hated how he smiled at me. How little fear he felt in the face of my anger. How his lips curled in pleasure at my reddened neck and cheeks and the creature inside me bucking to flare her way to the surface.

  I wanted to sear his pretty hair off.

  My hand had begun to rise, the whole arm tingling with the promise of flames, when the common room door opened.

  Rathmore’s eyes didn’t leave mine. And the Spitfire wouldn’t let me take my eyes off him.

  But a voice sailed into my ear and right to the dulled, rational part of my brain. “Clementine?”

  It was Aidan.

  Aidan North, your friend.

  He trusts you. He doesn’t think you’re dangerous.

  My arm stopped, halfway to horizontal. Halfway to its destination. The breath I’d been holding released, anger and fire sliding out my throat with my exhalation.

  The Spitfire was still there. But so was Rational Clem, stronger now with Aidan’s presence.

  It took every bit of my willpower to force my eyes off Callum. That was the first step, and when I’d achieved it—when my gaze found Aidan standing in the doorway with his satchel slung innocently over one shoulder, his brown eyes wide behind his glasses and his hair freshly cut for the ne
w year, I knew I’d won my battle.

  I hadn’t let the Spitfire out. I hadn’t given Callum Rathmore what now, in retrospect, I sensed he’d wanted.

  My hand lowered, and I took a deep, deep breath. “Hey, North,” I whispered.

  As soon as the Spitfire receded, the fireplace died down to a simmer. The room cooled off at once, and Callum Rathmore’s intensity subsided. I couldn’t tell whose fervor had kicked the fire up to such a degree, and which of us it was responding to now.

  He swiped a bead of sweat from his temple with the back of his hand, turned toward Aidan. This was the moment when we would have to explain ourselves, and the obvious standoff Aidan had walked in on.

  Before either of us could speak, Aidan came forward. “I’m sorry to be late, Professor Rathmore. It’s not that I don’t respect you. Quite the opposite, sir. I’ve been so much looking forward to meeting you.”

  Sir?

  That was the first time I’d heard Aidan call anyone sir, and Rathmore was hardly older than us.

  Rathmore ran a hand down his robes, straightening them. “And why are you late?”

  The birthmark on Aidan’s neck reddened above his collar. “It was something I couldn’t get out of. It won’t happen again.”

  Through everything swirling in the air, my interest was piqued. Aidan was never late, and he was always upfront. Which meant his reason was a good one. But why did he have to hide it?

  Rathmore gave an audible exhale. “I have someone to see. North, you’ll be in the beginner class. Cole, meet me here at noon tomorrow.”

  He started past Aidan, who cleared his throat. “Sir, my schedule?”

  Rathmore didn’t stop, didn’t look back. “On the end table, there.” He gestured with one vague hand toward the sofa as he passed through the door and out onto the grounds.

  Which left me and Aidan alone.

  Aidan’s head shifted toward me, eyes wide as platters. I expected some comment on the tension in the air, on why Rathmore and I were alone. Instead, he said, “That was Callum Rathmore.”

  I shot out my hands, threw my head back. “What is it with you people and Callum Rathmore?” I cried to the high ceiling. “Whatever. I’m going to the infirmary.” I grabbed my satchel and started toward the doorway.