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

by S. W. Clarke

I rolled over, found her haloed above me, the sun bold behind her head. “I’ve never had a wall of ice spikes come at me. Hard to turn off the self-preservation instinct.”

  She grinned, reached out to help me up. When she had, I realized that this close, she was small. Maybe six inches shorter than me and fine-boned. “Understood. But whoever you fight in the second trial won’t let up the way I’ve just done. Diving for cover with me isn’t the way; you’ll only get wet.”

  I nodded, much as I wanted to respond with some explanation. Ever since Rathmore had told me how hard I was to teach, I’d been trying not to deflect, to explain, to argue.

  Biting my tongue was maybe the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.

  Mariella did show me the full power of water. She buffeted me with wave after wave, extinguishing my flames every time. She avoided my blows with infuriating ease, sliding away like she had wings. But she was just a human, and exceptionally good with her element.

  No matter how many times I came at her, I never managed to get close. And I always ended up with wet, freezing hands.

  After an hour, we took a break. She sat down on her knees beside the pond, patting the space beside her. “It’s time.”

  I came to a cross-legged seat by her. “Time for what?”

  “To appreciate what water gives.”

  In my best effort to be respectful, I cleared my throat. “And how do we do that?”

  She stared out over the pond. “Simply by reflecting on its virtues. On the ways in which we use it throughout the day: for cleaning our skin, for nurturing our organs, for enabling the world’s vast ecosystems.”

  When her eyes closed, I sat for a moment in awkward stillness, trying not to disturb her. Jericho had warned me about this; I had gone in knowing what to expect. And yet I still found it nearly impossible to sit still with her. To stop my mind from jerking me into the past and future.

  Meanwhile, Mariella sat like she’d been carved from rock, her face monastically beautiful and serene. Her eyes lidded and unseeing.

  At the end of ten minutes, she drew in air. Turned to me. “I feel recentered. Let’s continue, shall we?”

  “Let’s.” I picked myself up, feeling as full of frenetic as ever. “What now?”

  She stepped away, turning to face me. “I’ll go on teaching you the way to defeat water.”

  “I thought you were showing me the power of water.”

  A small smile appeared. “What if they’re one and the same?”

  Before I had a chance to contemplate that, she had drawn water from the air into her hands, lowered her chin, and given me the look.

  I knew that look by now.

  With flames dancing over my hands, I came at her. And once again, I ended up flameless, staggering, and wet. Meanwhile, Mariella stood five feet off, the picture of serenity.

  By the time an hour of that had passed, and I stood shivering and damp, she glanced up at the sky. “Ah, lunchtime.”

  “W-wait,” I said. “You didn’t tell me how to beat water.”

  “Haven’t I?” She winked at me, turning away. “Remember what I said earlier: the way to defeat water is also the power of water.”

  “What does that even mean?” I called after her, but she was already disappearing through the trees toward the dining hall.

  If there was one thing I’d never enjoyed, it was a riddle. Those required thoughtfulness, contemplation, dedication. All of which were antithetical traits to fire.

  Training with Torsten was far simpler. As I’d learned from Mariella, earth is weakest to fire.

  He and I met in a clearing in the forest, not far from where the boggan hibernated in his cave. Why? “Because of the rocks,” Torsten said. “Lots of rocks.”

  I came to the clearing expecting two hours of sparring and the same vagueness I’d received from Mariella. Maybe this was the magical way, to be shown rather than told how my element could defeat another.

  Nope. What I got was Torsten being Torsten.

  When we met in the afternoon, he rubbed his hands together. “All right, beating earth is simple. You simply burn through whatever I throw at you and keep coming.”

  I blinked, still in the process of unfastening my robes. “We haven’t even started yet.”

  He was already inspecting a small boulder, picking it up to test its weight. “Well, better to know how to defeat me before we start than after, eh?”

  Eva, you picked a good one. “Torsten, I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  He grinned, then hauled off and threw the rock at me. “Burn this!”

  I didn’t have time to contemplate, to think. I threw out both hands, shot out a jet of flame. The rock disintegrated in midair, rained to the ground in pieces.

  He nodded down at the mess of rock, hands on hips. “Good. Fine work.”

  Then the earth rose under my left foot, setting me off balance. I dropped onto my right hip, found a shard of earth jutting two feet into the air where I’d been standing. I stared. “What the hell is that?”

  Torsten burst into laughter. “You do make things more fun, Clementine.”

  I watched as the earth receded back to flatness. Then glared at Torsten. “You did that, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. You think we only throw rocks?” He swept his arms out. “The whole of the earth is our element. Anywhere you see dirt is our domain.”

  I raised to one elbow, my hip crying out. “How am I supposed to burn through your attacks when you can just send the earth after me?”

  He came over, helped me up. “By being light on your feet. You can’t trust the earth versus an earth mage, Clementine. And the Shade has many who wield earth magic among her army.”

  I rubbed my hip. “There’s no way to predict when you’re going to move the earth like that.”

  “Isn’t there?” He pointed at his own legs. “Every earth mage has a dominant leg, just like we have a dominant hand. It’s on you to figure out which leg is dominant and follow its movements. If you’ve got a keen eye, it’ll be telegraphed when we’re going to move the earth.”

  “Oh.” I glanced at his legs, trying not to be awkward about it. I failed. “That’s easier than I thought.”

  He smiled. “Except we earth mages know that’s our weakest point, so we go to great lengths to hide it.” We came back to stand in the center of the clearing. “Which is why you need to pay attention to the earth’s vibrations, too.”

  I backed up, widened my stance. “How?”

  “We can’t manipulate the earth without a vibration. The earth will tell you when it’s about to move, if you pay attention to what you feel under your feet. You’ll only get about a half second’s warning.”

  A half second. That was better than no seconds. I nodded. “All right, let’s do it again.”

  Torsten lifted a small rock into the palm of his hand, tossed it and caught it. “I’ll go easy on you this time.”

  “No. Go hard.” My hands lit with flame. “Go harder on me than you want to.”

  He laughed again. “You’ll wish you hadn’t said that.” Without pausing, he threw the rock at me like a baseball pitcher. It rocketed toward me, but that wasn’t what I needed to focus on.

  The earth. I had to focus on its vibrations.

  In the same moment he threw the rock, I felt it. The smallest spasm, like a cat’s purring under my right boot.

  I had to coordinate this. My left hand went out, counterbalancing as my right leg lifted. I stepped back as the earth shot up, and my flame blasted out toward the rock, obliterating it just a few feet from my face.

  I stood with a hammering heart, the earth jutting up in front of me and pieces of rock hitting the ground between me and Torsten.

  I’d done it.

  “Good!” he called from across the clearing. “Good, Clementine.”

  Then my left foot began to sink into the earth, and before I knew it, I was submerged to the ankle as though standing in quicksand.

  Across the way, Torsten burs
t into riotous laughter. This time he doubled over, wiping tears from his eyes. “Don’t forget the left foot! Gods, you fall for every trick in the earth mage book. You’re a delight, Clementine.”

  I tried and failed to yank my foot from the now-solid earth. “Glad to be of service.” I yanked again. “When you’re done laughing, maybe you could let me out of the ground.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  My sessions with Torsten often ended up running into the evening. Afterward, I’d usually shower before heading to dinner; no one liked a sweaty fire witch.

  It was on one of those nights on the cusp of March that I came into the dorm and found Eva crying.

  She sat at her desk with her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. And when I came in, she went to great trouble to compose herself as fast as she could—but it wasn’t nearly fast enough.

  She turned around, her face all blotchy. She had a big red spot on her chin, and two on her left cheek. A fourth lay smack-dab at the center of her forehead like a religious mark.

  “Eva?” I dropped my bag. “What’s happened?”

  She stood, waving me off. “Nothing. How was your time with Torsten?”

  Before she could pass into the bathroom, I stepped in front of her. “You’ve got…wounds on your face. You were crying.”

  She stopped, wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes found the floor and stayed there. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Hey”—I set both hands lightly on her shoulders—“what about us looking out for each other?”

  I didn’t know if it was my words or my touch that did it, but the dam broke. Eva leaned into me with a sob, her arms wrapping around me. This wasn’t what I was used to—not for a long, long time. It brought on memories of childhood. Of how my mother used to hug me. Of how I used to hug my sister.

  We did those things. We weren’t some witchy, distant family. We were kind and warm toward each other.

  I hadn’t thought about that in years.

  And it was in thinking about that I found my arms wrapping around Eva in more than just an awkward, light touch. I really embraced her, and I wanted to. “What’s going on?” I said, petting her hair.

  “I’m so ashamed,” she mumbled into my shirt. “I’m tired of being so ashamed.”

  “What could you possibly have to be ashamed of?”

  She leaned away, finally met my eyes. Hers were rimmed red, tears gleaming down to her chin. “Of this. My wounds, as you called them.”

  I almost flinched. “Eva…”

  “I know you didn’t mean it like that.” She pulled away, swung around toward her bed. She sat on it in a slump. “And neither did Terry, when he called me ‘blemishless.’”

  “Terry the gamer?” I sat close beside her. “Where did those marks come from?”

  She lifted her eyes, stared at herself in the mirror across the room. “They came from me,” she whispered. At which point her face crumpled, and she seemed to be fighting off another sob. “I did it to myself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She ran a hand down her cheek, eyes still on herself in the mirror. “It’s so awful. I can’t stop doing it, every day. I do it unconsciously most of the time, without really thinking.”

  “Do what?”

  “Pick. I pick at every imperfection, every blemish until it becomes...this.”

  “But you don’t have any imperfections. Your skin is perfect.”

  She sighed, shook her head. “That’s only because I use my healing magic to get rid of the damage I’ve done.”

  God, humans would pay a boatload for some of that magic.

  I tilted my head. “But what’s there to pick at if you’ve already healed yourself?”

  She circled a hand over her face. “I can find anything. Any small thing and dig at it for hours.”

  I felt so insensitive. So clueless. “But…why?”

  “It’s a thing I’ve done since I was ten. I remember my parents taking me to a beach, and I poured sand into my hair. I loved the sensation of digging it out of my scalp.” When she looked at me, anxiety pulled her eyebrows together. “That’s weird, isn’t it? I know it is.”

  I clasped my hands, played with my fingers in my lap. This was a moment, I knew, when Eva was trusting me with something deep. Something important. And if I failed her now, she might not ever go this direction again.

  I had to handle this right. But that old familiar avoidance was tugging at me, and an uncomfortable sensation swelled in my chest. This was too close. This was too intimate.

  Eva wanted to let me in. But if she let me in, then I’d have to let her in. And once that happened, if she ever rejected me—abandoned me—it would be so painful.

  But this was promising to look out for each other. This right here.

  It still terrified me.

  I stared at my lap. “Weird? You’re talking to the girl who has conversations with her cat.”

  Eva snorted. When I glanced up, she was smiling at me through her tear streaks. “You make a good point.”

  And then, just like that, I did it. I went for it.

  I upturned one hand, pointed at my wrist. My finger traced an old, straight scar. “I did this when I was fourteen.”

  “Oh.” Eva gazed down at it, touched her finger to the scar. “You were in a lot of pain.”

  My throat thickened, closed up. It was hard to keep my hand still, to let her touch the spot I had once sliced open. I just nodded.

  She lowered her hand, inhaled deeply. “Ever since I was a girl, I wanted to be like my mom and dad. I wanted to be a guardian, to live up to their legacy. I was a perfect student, a six-year-old fae who bit her nails every day in school.” She paused. “It isn’t the same kind of pain, but the fear, the worry…”

  “I think I understand,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine. “When I failed the trials last May, I was so ashamed, I almost didn’t go back home that summer.”

  “But you seemed fine afterward. You wanted to go to that coffeehouse in Vienna.”

  She shrugged. “I pretended for a while. Then the full weight of it hit me a few hours later, when I was alone.”

  I slid an arm over her shoulders. This time, it came more easily than the first hug. “We’re going to enter the trials together. And even if I don’t make it, you will.”

  “But you’re the one who has to make it, Clem.”

  “Let’s put it this way: I’m not worried about you.”

  She sighed. “You can’t know. I failed the first trial.”

  “I know, because I know you.” This wasn’t the Clem I knew speaking right now. But the words came out of me soft and heartfelt and easy. “You’re smart and dedicated. You’re the most capable person I know.”

  I met eyes with her in the mirror, and she blinked gratefully. “You don’t think less of me for picking at my face?”

  “No,” I said. “I think exactly the same of you as I did before. Skin-picking or no, you’re just Evanora to me.”

  And it was absolutely true.

  In mid-March, I had an epiphany.

  In my Tangible Manipulations class, one of the boys had managed to climb into his fully-finished baggie. Only his boot stuck out, and Professor Goodbarrel and pointed and laughed with uproarious bellows.

  Actually, we’d all been laughing. And then Loki’s tail flicked me, and we met eyes, and it hit me like an anvil.

  I stared at the single boot sticking out of the baggie. “Loki,” I whispered, “how did I not see it before?”

  The cat yawned. “Frankly, I don’t know. It was obvious.”

  I ignored him, pulling my cloak off the hanger in the corner. I sat down in front of my needle and spools and began the slow, tedious process of manipulating the veil.

  By the end of that class, I had managed only about an inch. Professor Goodbarrel came up, leaned over to inspect. “Oh, very clever, Clementine. Quite a big project you’ve moved on to, though.”

  I didn’t look up, didn’t stop
working. “Do you think I can finish it before May?”

  “May?” He paused. “I suppose. You’ll probably have to work at it a few hours a day from now until then, though. The baggie itself would take a master manipulator at least a few weeks.”

  I gritted my teeth. “But it’s doable.”

  “I think so. May I ask why you’ve set a deadline?”

  I glanced up, forced a smile. “The end of the school year is in May. That’s when our class ends.”

  A twinkle entered his eye. “Ah, so it does.” He leaned closer, pointed to one of my stitches. “This one’s far less efficient than the box stitch. How about I teach you it?”

  I sat back. “By all means.”

  And so as the rest of the class filtered out, Goodbarrel and I were left working together on the box stitch. He didn’t leave me until he was sure I had it, which was almost a half hour later. Meanwhile, Loki fell deeply asleep.

  “There you go,” he said, sitting back. “You’ve done it. And now it’s time for Vickery’s quiche. My favorite night of the week.” He tapped the cloak. “You can take the manipulation kit back to your dorm. I imagine you’ll need it if you want to finish your project before May.”

  When we got up to leave, I picked up Loki. Watched as Goodbarrel went to get his cloak and his scarf. “Professor?”

  He paused, turned back. “Yes, Clementine?”

  “You’re good at what you do.” I grabbed my cloak and left before he could respond. Giving compliments was much easier than watching people receive them, and the saccharine awkwardness that sometimes ensued.

  Later that night, Aidan and I hung out together on the second floor of the common room. He read a book in an armchair opposite me while I went on box-stitching my robes. Meanwhile, Loki sprawled on his back on the plush rug between us, all four paws up in the air.

  Aidan glanced at me overtop his book. “You look like Miss Stitch over there.”

  I lifted my eyes, staring at him under my lashes. “That sounds uncomplimentary.”

  He laughed. “You don’t know Miss Stitch?”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “She was on mages’ TV when I was a kid. Sort of like the Mary Poppins of sitcom television.” Then, “What are you doing, anyway?”