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

by S. W. Clarke

  “I’m stitching my cloak, of course.”

  “Why are you doing it, then?”

  “Because my cat’s a genius.”

  He shook his head, returning his attention to his book. “You know, I don’t even care that much.”

  I nodded at him. “What book’s that?”

  “Oh”—he lowered it, cheeks reddening—“this is a history of everflame.”

  My eyebrow raised. “Intrigued by your past, eh?”

  “Don’t say it so loud. There’s people downstairs.”

  I flicked a hand over my shoulder. “They can’t hear us. We’re practically whispering.”

  “Well, do you know what’s interesting? For as rare as everflame is, it’s even rarer among men.”

  I went on stitching. “If it’s a family trait, why didn’t your parents talk to you about it?”

  “They just…didn’t. And my grandmother wanted me to cultivate it, but when my parents wouldn’t let her, she cut them off. Thinks I’m wasting my gift, as you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I stabbed down with the needle harder than I needed to, thinking about Farina North. “I’m not saying she’s right, Aidan, but I do think it’s worth making up your mind about whether you want to cultivate your ability, one way or the other. This is the best time to do it, here at the academy.”

  He tapped the book. “Why do you think I’m reading this?”

  Well, that was an improvement.

  “Touche.” I spread out the robes with a sigh. “I’ve only managed one-and-a-half inches. This is going to be a hell worse than what I imagine Hell is like.”

  He leaned closer. “Are you doing box stitches?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  He shrugged. “Impressive. Those are a tough stitch. Durable, but you’ll end up with a solid cloak after you’re done.”

  I ran a hand across it. “That’s the plan.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  After months of training with Mariella, I finally understood her riddle.

  She was about to drench me again, and as I stood there under the late-winter sun, it clicked. I couldn’t power through the oncoming wave or try to overwhelm her with my fire.

  I had to evade it.

  Water flowed. Water ebbed. Water surged around.

  I backpedaled away, leapt left into a roll. When I found my feet, the second wave was already coming. I dashed left again, closing the distance even as I evaded.

  By the time I’d dodged the third wave, I was close enough. Fire burst into life in my fist as I rushed the last yard. I had to stop myself right before I caught her in the face—before I burned her.

  She turned, eyes wide, surprised. We stared at one another, and I grinned. “The power of water is the way you defeat water.” I threw my arms out, breathing hard. “I have to be water to defeat water.”

  She gave an approving nod. “You have to be water to defeat water.”

  I blew out air. “That seems like the most obvious thing in the world.”

  “Simple truths often feel that way after they’re realized.” She smiled at me. “But they take as long as they must take to learn.”

  I gestured between us. “Let’s say we fight in the trials. Now that you know that I know the secret to fighting water, you’re just going to change it up.”

  “Perhaps.” She tilted her head, crossing toward the blanket she’d brought with her. She unrolled it, sat down, patted for me to join her. When I had, she conjured up two steaming goblets of hot cocoa, marshmallows already floating at the top. “But even if I were to fight differently, I’m still fundamentally bound to my element.”

  I sat with the goblet between both hands, staring out through the trees. “Explain, please.”

  She conjured a ball of water in one palm, gazed down at it. “I must always fight with water. I might freeze it, and I might liquify it. But the general properties of it don’t change beyond that. Water flows, water ebbs. You must never let it extinguish your flame. You must not let it capture you.”

  “If the water extinguishes my flame, I can always light it again.”

  She smiled, sipping her cocoa. “But what if I were to freeze the water on your skin?”

  I shrugged. “The new flame could burn right through it.”

  Her eyes trailed to me, coy. “So you think. Would you like to test that theory?”

  Actually, I did want to. When I extended my hand, conjuring a small flame in the palm, she directed her water through the air and into my hand. The flame hissed away, and the water pooled in its place. With the tiniest jerk of her fingers, the water froze solid.

  “Now,” she said, “relight it.”

  I tried to, but it was like flicking a lighter without any fluid. Tchk-tchk-tchk.

  So I set the goblet between my legs, conjured flame in the other hand. “Boom.”

  She wagged a finger. “Creative.” And then, with a jerk of the same finger, the ice reached from my left palm to my right.

  Just like that, I was bound by ice shackles.

  “Now what?” Mariella said with a self-satisfied smile.

  I struggled against the shackles; they didn’t budge, and my hands and wrists were quickly losing feeling. I tried to kick the ice apart with my boot, but it was completely solid.

  She leaned toward me. “This is how a water mage defeats fire. It may very well happen to you. Tell me, how will you escape?”

  I kept struggling, a thread of panic weaving its way in as my hands numbed. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

  With a yank like she was tugging on a marionette, the ice flowed away into liquid, resettling in her palm. “Water is patient. Water is thoughtful. Water is relentless. What is fire, Clementine?”

  I stared at her. “Fire is intense.”

  She gave a nod. “That’s a start.” Then she focused past me. “Oh, speaking of fire.”

  When I turned, Gabriel—the second-year from House Spark who’d been particularly friendly last year—was waving from far, far across the meadow. Was he waving at me?

  I began to wave back when Mariella stood up. “That’s all for today. I have another fire mage to see about.” She winked at me, struck through the trees away from the pond with sudden abandon, laughing and calling out in French.

  “Huh.” I took another sip of my cocoa. When she reached Gabriel, she threw her arms around him, kissing his face. “Good for the Frenchies.”

  Meanwhile, I was still mulling over what Mariella had asked me about fire.

  Fire was intense. It was tempestuous. It was unpredictable.

  Just like the Spitfire. Just like me, I supposed, since the Spitfire was a part of me.

  So to defeat ice shackles, I just had to be intense? I wasn’t sure how that translated into beating Mariella, or any other water mage.

  When I showed up in the common room for Rathmore’s class an hour later, I was still thinking about it.

  He came in after me, began removing his robes in the typical silence we’d fallen into at the start of our lessons. One day, either I hadn’t greeted him, or he hadn’t greeted me. And the other person hadn’t, either, and so that became our new way.

  Silence, until he stepped up. “Let’s begin.”

  Loki wasn’t with us today. He joined us every other day, and on the days it was just me and Rathmore I had grown to deeply miss that cat’s snark.

  By now we had progressed to full-on sparring. Long ago I’d stopped rushing him like a child, trying to get a hit in. Ever since I’d bloodied his lip, he’d stopped clasping his hands behind his back.

  Now, we fought.

  Today, I would use the water strategy.

  I evaded his first attack, then his second, then his third. Every time, I moved incrementally closer, until I finally ended the distance with an arc of flame to his back.

  He barely managed to turn in time to dissipate the flame. He surged through it, striking out with a fiery fist, which I dodged. “Someone taught you to fight water.”

  “M
aybe.” I leapt back, began the same evasive approach all over again. The second time, I managed to rip a hole in the chest of his shirt.

  He stopped, glanced down at the flaming tear. He patted it out. “Your form’s sloppy when you get so close—you get overexcited. You could have burned more than my favorite shirt if you’d wanted.”

  Irritation struck me like an adder. “Can’t you just let me…” I began, but caught myself. Closed my mouth.

  Rathmore glanced up at me, eyebrows rising. “Let you what? Have a win?”

  I kept my mouth shut until the adder slithered back into its dim spot. I had to stop arguing. Deflecting. Explaining. “No. I’d never want you to let me have a win. I’d rather get it right.”

  It hadn’t been easy—I’d ground the conciliatory words out—but once they hit the air, my chest unclenched.

  Rathmore’s expression shifted, eyes warming a degree. “Good. Again.”

  March lapsed into April, and April into the first of May—which meant only one month remained before the trials. One month until I had to find the deceiver’s rod. Every day it felt like my anxiety mounted on itself, until my shoulders were weighed down with the heaviness of that single, encompassing feeling.

  Meanwhile, I went on training with Eva, Jericho, Torsten, Mariella, Farrow, and Rathmore. I went on jogging in the meadow. I went on practicing barrel-turns on Noir’s back. I went on developing my connection with Loki in Rathmore’s class. And I went on stitching my cloak.

  It took months before I beat my first element.

  Air.

  When Eva hit the ground, she stared up at me with wide eyes. “Gods, Clem, that was a real firestorm. Where did you learn that?”

  I shrugged, reaching out a hand. “From you.”

  She grinned, accepting the help up. “I tell you air amplifies fire, and you take it to the nth degree.”

  “You know me.”

  Her eyes dropped to my wrist. “Where’d that bruise come from?”

  “I don’t know. Could have been Torsten, could have been Rathmore. Hell, maybe it was Noir.”

  Her hand pressed my shirt sleeve up, then the other. She stepped back, evaluating my legs. “Gods, you’ve got scratches and bruises all over.”

  “Once you’ve got so many, they don’t really bother you anymore.”

  She gave me a pained look. “You could have just asked me for healing. Training this hard without healing isn’t a real long-term strategy.”

  But I wasn’t thinking long-term. As far as I was concerned, my life began and ended with the trials. It was the only way I knew to be: single-minded.

  Of course, that was why I had Eva. Before we left the meadow, she set both hands on me and healed all my aches and pains. Relief like morphine poured through my limbs. As it did, my eyes fluttered. “You could create an addict with one hit of that.”

  She laughed, sent her hand through the crook of my arm. “Have you eaten? You need to eat, too.”

  When we got to the dining hall, we sat down next to Aidan, who predictably had his face in a book.

  “Ah.” He looked straight at me, clapping the book shut. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “That’s the last thing I want to hear from you.” I scooped up chocolate mousse from my plate, pressed it into my mouth to evade conversation.

  “Why? I’m harmless.”

  I pointed my spoon at him. “Sure, Everflame.”

  He shot me a Not so loud look. Actually, given how understated Aidan was, it was more like a If you say that again I will actually burn you alive look.

  “Sorry.” I swallowed the mousse. “Anyway, what is it?”

  “Fire riding. What’s the deal?”

  I groaned. “He won’t teach me.” My eyes flicked to Rathmore, who sat at the faculty table in deep conversation with the same young fae professor as always. If they weren’t dating, they’d certainly become friends forever by now.

  The thought of it screwed up my mouth, drove my spoon deeper into my mousse.

  Aidan eyed me. “Clem?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why won’t he teach you?”

  “He says it’s considered a dark art. That I have to know myself through and through to avoid it corrupting me.”

  “Really?” Eva evaluated Rathmore with new eyes. “So he thinks you don’t know yourself.”

  Now I was getting it from both of them.

  “Well,” Aidan said, “do you, Clementine?”

  I glanced up at him. “Does anyone really know themselves at our age?”

  Eva and Aidan exchanged a glance. Then she shrugged, nodded. He did, too.

  I gestured between them. “You mean to say you both know yourselves?”

  “I know enough about myself,” Eva said. “I know I’m a good person. That’s all I need to know.”

  “You are, too,” Aidan said to me. “It’s obvious you are, Clem.”

  I felt myself drawing in like a flower at night, the petals curling toward the bud. And right here in the dining hall, all the thoughts I’d been thrusting back, digging in my feet against, crowded up to the fore of my brain.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I was a good person.

  If I had been a good person, maybe my mother and sister wouldn’t have left me. Maybe I would have found a good family to adopt me after all those years in the foster system.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have been abducted that night by the forces of evil.

  I didn’t know what learning a dark art would do to me, what it would bring out of me. My friends didn’t even know about the Spitfire. They didn’t know what I was capable of.

  And then, in a strange moment of awareness, I met eyes with Liara Youngblood from across the dining hall. I could see it all in her face: the hatred of witches. The loathing she felt for me. Her wish that I would be gone forever from this place, and maybe from the face of the earth.

  My chest tightened, my fingers curled, and with a suddenness that surprised even me, I pushed up from the table. My mousse trembled on my plate. “I have to go.”

  Aidan stared up. “Go where?”

  “Somewhere else.” I paused. “I’m going to go stitch.”

  Before they could respond, I turned and left the dining hall to find my needle and thread and make angry, self-reflective box stitches for the rest of the night.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I didn’t make it as far as the needle and thread. I only made it as far as our dorm, staggered into the bathroom. There, alone, I lay on my side and struggled for the next fifteen minutes just to breathe. Just to stop the tingling in my hands and the stars in my eyes and convince myself the world wasn’t pressing in like a dark shroud.

  My time was running out. I had to prove myself to Callum Rathmore. I had to prove myself to myself.

  I was good. I was incorruptible.

  Wasn’t I?

  At some point on the bathroom floor, I realized this wasn’t just about fire riding and dark arts. This was deep-rooted, a terror more than a concern. It verged on a belief: I wasn’t good. Maybe I wasn’t even decent.

  Once the memories of my old life had surfaced in the dining hall, I couldn’t make them leave. The irony was, of course, that the opposite was true of my secret, deep-down fear—that I had done something to make my mother leave.

  Why else would she have taken Tamzin and gone without me?

  I had convinced myself with a cover story about her having to flee, or being abducted. I had preserved my heart for so many years, but it was now—here, having to provide some proof of my incorruptibility—that it was all being dredged out of the muck.

  Maybe she hadn’t fled.

  Maybe she hadn’t been abducted.

  Maybe I just wasn’t good enough for my own mother to love me, the fire witch.

  The panic passed, but the pain didn’t. Not that night, and not the next day. When I allowed that last thought to surface—about my mother and her love—I was sitting alone in the meadow the following afternoon, watch
ing a class of fae pass through the air like a school of minnows, Professor Fernwhirl at the center of them.

  And because I was alone and unnoticed, that was when I allowed myself to cry.

  There was, of course, no definitive proof of my goodness. I couldn’t find it in the stitching. I couldn’t find it in riding Noir. I definitely couldn’t find it my motives for entering the guardian trials in the first place.

  A week passed in this state. I kept on with my day-to-day, but with a certain remove from the world, as though Eva and I jogged through the meadow with a pane of glass separating us. Or as though Mariella’s water drenched someone else, and it wasn’t my skin with goosebumps, but the shell of Clementine.

  It wasn’t my fingers manipulating the needle and thread, but a disembodied young woman seated in the common room in front of the fireplace, hunched over with the slender shard of metal passing in and out, in and out, manipulating the veil by tiny, invisible increments.

  It was with this frustration at the fore of my mind that I brought Loki into the common room for another session with Rathmore.

  I set Loki down as Callum stood, sloughing off his cloak and robes into the armchair he’d been seated in. When he approached me, he stopped. His head tilted.

  “What?” I said, setting my cloak on the hanger.

  “You’re upset.”

  “He’s more perceptive than I gave the guy credit for,” Loki observed.

  “I’m not upset,” I snapped, barreling past my surprise that Rathmore had noticed, that he’d even bothered to point it out. “Let’s get started.”

  Actually, I’d been looking forward to this. Finally I could take out a little bit of my frustration on the man who’d been an irretrievable thorn in my side since this year began.

  That was why my heart tumbled over itself every time I saw him. That was why my breath quickened.

  Because he caused me problems.

  With a dismissive finger, I shot a spritz of fire at Loki. It took across his fur, covering him in dancing fire. He got into a fighting stance in front of me.