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

by S. W. Clarke

  The claws were skittering behind me again. We couldn’t stand here. “She needs you right now. And I need to do this—you know I do.”

  Liara’s face lit as lightning carved an arc away from her body toward the nearest wall. “Need to do what?”

  “I have to take a different path,” I said, already in motion. “Loki will guide you out. He’ll protect you.”

  I couldn’t wait any longer; they disappeared as I launched myself down the right path. I fell into a run, both of them calling my name, their voices already growing fainter with the vines and high walls between us.

  The skittering sounded behind me, the cackling. I sprinted with the key in one hand, fire billowing out of my free hand. In my periphery, one scrabbled along the wall, its leggy form moving sidelong like an enormous, coal-dark crab.

  In the gray light, I could make out the faintest outline of the path ahead of me. It was enough to navigate by—and soon it would be enough to fail the trial by.

  I pressed on, the key guiding me, sparing my lungs and my legs nothing. I would spend it all just to get to the rod.

  As long as I failed the trial after I got it. As long as I retrieved it, I won.

  Far ahead, the path seemed to widen out into an indistinguishable place. I couldn’t see what lay behind the walls, except that the closer I got, the more obvious it was that they simply stopped.

  And the air between them appeared to shimmer.

  The key vibrated in my hand, a constant motion. Green light emanated between my clenched fingers.

  This was it. This was the place.

  It was what the boggans were guarding.

  I was thirty feet away. Twenty feet. Fifteen.

  Just before I reached the shimmering wall of air, a screech sounded above me. A thud hit my back, and I went down hard.

  Claws scraped at my back, lancing through my cloak and shirt. The adrenaline masked the pain I knew I should feel. It was what gave me the strength to roll over, gain sight of the awful creature above me.

  “Fire witch,” it hissed between unmoving incisors.

  boggan.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  I recognized it all: the wide grimace, the daggered teeth. I could see in its black orbs the determination to kill me before I’d ever enter the labyrinth’s secret place.

  “The fire witch is forbidden,” it hissed, scrabbling to get its fingers around my throat. “Forbidden!”

  I struggled with it, pressing its hands away from my throat, wriggling under its sinewy strength. If I could just for a second blast it with my fire, I’d be able to fend it off. I could feel the baser instincts rising in me—the Spitfire’s head lifting with simple ease, ready to spread through my chest and limbs until I became a creature of flame.

  Until I became it.

  It was the easiest, quickest way to get rid of the boggan. And I wanted it; between the struggle and the boggan’s effect, I wanted it like an addict craves that very next hit. An animalistic desperation had come over me; when it came to fight and flight, I was all punches and kicks. Always had been. In a fight, my nails became knives. My knuckles became brass.

  The Spitfire’s head lifted farther, its wings spreading. Fire tickled my fingertips, waiting to fly.

  And then, from nowhere, Rathmore’s voice whispered into my addled brain.

  Remember yourself.

  I had to remember myself. I couldn’t fall to my instincts. That was how fire would consume me.

  And with that thought, Rational Clem lit another path in my head. A way that didn’t involve my anger, the Spitfire itself. Things had changed since I’d come to the academy. My enemies weren’t bullies and bosses. They were tougher, more brutal, savvier in a fight.

  Now, they were boggans trying to kill me.

  So I had to be savvier, too. Like Torsten had taught me. Like Rathmore had taught me.

  One second. All I needed was one second.

  I forced my body to stop. Stop struggling. Stop fighting. Just be still, inasmuch as that was possible for someone like me. At the very least, I let its fingers go where they wanted.

  And they went. Those cold hands enclosed my throat with abrupt force, choking off my air. It was the worst feeling in the world, that gradual tightening, the loss of control over that one crucial function.

  But you’ve got him now, Clem. You’ve got him.

  After all, my hands were free.

  Before I lost consciousness, I threw up both of them—the key still clutched in my right—and fire rippled from my chest, up my arms, flaring with a roar from my hands.

  The space between us was engulfed by it, and the shriek that followed was all I needed to hear.

  The fingers released my throat, and air poured in, inflating my chest in a wave. Daggers stabbed at my airway where the fingers had pressed down.

  I rolled onto my stomach with a groan, pulled my way out from under the burning boggan toward the shimmering wall of air. The key still vibrated in my hand, glowing brighter now in the morning light.

  It was what gave me the drive to find purchase with my boots, push myself up to my hands and knees. I staggered through only half-upright, passing through the space with the feeling of a cool breeze washing over me.

  And when I had, the boggan’s shrieks were muted to almost nonexistence. Here, quiet reigned. Only the wind passed through the vines’ leaves, and ahead, a soft tinkling of water.

  I stopped, straightening. When I turned my face to look behind, the boggan writhed not two feet away, his voice as faraway and tinny as if we were a mile apart.

  Farther off, other boggans had appeared, their exaggerated grimaces a horror as they stared at me, clinging to the vines and perching atop the walls.

  But they didn’t try to enter.

  This was an enchantment, of the sort Umbra used to separate the academy from the rest of the world. But who had created this one?

  I turned back around, the key tight in my hand. Ahead, the path faded into an enshrouded darkness, the vines enclosing the space tight. I could feel it: this was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  I came forward, passing under the thatch of vines into new darkness. A heady, fragrant scent enveloped me, and I glimpsed red blooms on the vines, their petals tight and snug like fresh roses.

  When it grew too dark, I lit a flame in my free hand. The space before me came illuminated: vines tight and overgrown, all surrounding a regular door. It wasn’t overlarge, it wasn’t ornate or carved.

  It was just a dark wood door with a keyhole and a knob.

  First I tried the knob. Twisted, found it predictably locked. And then, out of habit, I knocked.

  No answer. Not even a sound when I pressed my ear to it to listen.

  So the solution was obvious. It had been obvious from the moment I’d seen the door.

  I inserted the vibrating, glowing liar’s key into the keyhole.

  The mechanism clicked at once, and it unlocked with a buttery ease. When I pulled the key back out, I kept the flames high and ready in my left hand.

  I turned the knob until the door opened, and then I pressed it in with the toe of my boot.

  A wave of uncomfortable warmth washed over me, the sound of a fire crackling, but I couldn’t make out from where. Maybe it was my own hand; it was hard to tell, because I’d focused entirely on the enclosed, windowless space before me.

  A red-haired young woman stood at the center of a bare earthen room, staring down at a plinth with a black rod laid on its surface. The second piece. The deceiver’s rod. She wore a long cloak clasped at her throat, her curly hair veiling her face. “Hello, Clementine,” she murmured.

  I knew that voice.

  When she looked up, the flame flickered into nothing in my hand. My gut cinched tight, and I stood in the doorway in an uncharacteristic non-motion, with no real words.

  What was there to say?

  The woman standing over the rod was me.

  She half-smiled. That was my half-smile. “Coming or goin
g?”

  Her voice didn’t resonate like it should have in that small room. It carried a certain wispiness, as though she wasn’t fully there.

  I remained at the threshold, the key still vibrating in my hand—desiring to be near the other piece. I stared.

  Other Clementine swept a hand overtop the rod, down the length of it without touching it. “You’re here for this. Don’t pretend like you’d turn back. I know you.”

  She was right. Of course she was.

  I took two steps forward, onto the stone floor. My boots tapped in the space, which I could only take in passively. The room was maybe eight by ten feet, about as big as my childhood bedroom. It smelled of earth and those blooms from the vines.

  But my eyes wouldn’t leave her. I couldn’t stop staring.

  She was exactly my age, but her hair had been let wild, the curls large and free around her face. Underneath her green cloak, I thought I spotted my own school uniform and boots.

  That wasn’t what made me stare.

  It was the way her green eyes danced, verging on smug. It was the curl of her lips, as though she knew the jokes in my head. It was the elegant ease with which her fingers caressed the air above the deceiver’s rod.

  She was me, but not me.

  She was the version of me I’d dreamed of—but never really believed—I could be.

  She was Brazenly Confident Clementine.

  The door creaked closed behind me, capturing us both in the small room. Darkness consumed the space before a flame lit in my palm, and in hers.

  Twin flames, identical, lighting both our faces from below. Neither of us speaking.

  Her face tilted as she observed me. “Your familiar isn’t with you.”

  “You should know why, if you’re me.”

  Her smile deepened. “What makes you think I’m you?”

  “Oh, you know. Being identical in every way.”

  An eyebrow lifted. Now I knew how I looked when my eyebrow went up. “I could be your twin. What of that?”

  I was more or less convinced I’d hit my head when the boggan knocked me over, and I was very egotistically hallucinating myself. My confident self. Which was why I didn’t bother wasting any more time.

  I took two steps forward, up to the rod.

  As I drew nearer to the other Clementine, she gazed at me with impassive, unwavering eyes. “Ah, always the impulsive one,” she murmured. “The rod will not belong to you unless you fulfill its core tenet.”

  “A deception will secure the deceiver’s rod,” I recited. “I know the prophecy.”

  “Well done. And what deception have you committed?”

  I shrugged. “Lots. I entered the guardian trials planning to take this rod out of the labyrinth, for one thing.”

  “Hmm.” The flame began to move in her hand, her face moving gently with it. Her boots tapped across the floor as she passed around the plinth. “I don’t think so.”

  I forced myself to remain where I was, only following her with my eyes. “What the hell do you mean, you don’t think so? You’re me.”

  She came around the far side of the plinth. “I’m here to ensure the rod enters the right hands. Whatever I may be to you, that is my purpose.”

  “I am the right hands,” I ground out. “I have the liar’s key. See here.”

  In the darkness, the key glowed a vivid green as I kept it tight in my grip. Otherwise it would fly out of my hand toward the rod.

  Her face angled down. “Yes, I see. And in order to bind the key to you, you lied.”

  “I lied,” I said without pride, without any real affectation. This was a simple fact now. “And I’ve committed a deception.”

  She huffed, her flame sweeping out toward the rod. “If you are so certain, then take it. Should you be the right hand, the piece will allow you to take it away.”

  I took her up on that. I stepped right up to the plinth, leaned over until my flame was close enough to observe the rod. It was black, perfectly molded, about two feet long and maybe two fingers’ width around, hollow in the center. And it glowed green, responding to the key.

  I brought the key forward, allowing it to pull my hand to its desired place. And as I did, I found a carved-out spot right at the center of the rod in the shape of the key itself.

  I set the key inside, and it slotted with unreproducible precision, almost singing as the two pieces of metal met.

  The weapon was no longer in four parts. Now, the key and the rod made a single piece.

  “Well done,” Other Clementine murmured by my shoulder. “Now comes your test.”

  I swallowed through a tight throat, rubbing my fingers together. I leaned over, both hands erupting into flame to illuminate the space they moved through. My hands came down together, sliding under the rod at either end.

  It lifted with ease, a light piece of metal in both hands. When I straightened, I sucked in air.

  “Why, look over there.” Clementine’s fiery finger pointed to the far side of the room, opposite to where I’d entered by. “Do you know what that is, my dear?”

  I stared past the rod, saw nothing in the darkness.

  She sighed, snapped her fingers. A small coin of flame flipped through the air, caught, and spread to illuminate a golden webbing on the far side of the space. “Do you see it now?”

  “What is it?” I said.

  “It’s a leyline. Cut it right, and you can walk right through to the other side of the labyrinth, where Umbra waits.”

  “I don’t know where the other side of the labyrinth is.”

  Her boots tapped around the plinth as she crossed to the flaming leyline. “But I do.” With one fiery finger, she drew a straight line through the air, parting the veil with an easy stroke. Her red curls fell over her shoulder as she tugged the veil a little aside to reveal the labyrinth. “Simply turn one corner and you’re out.”

  I gripped the rod. Even I wasn’t so cocky to think I could part the veil like that simply by hallucinating a confident version of myself. “That’s cheating.”

  Other Clementine’s face turned back to me, shadows flickering across her cheeks and eyes. “Precisely.”

  I took a step forward. “I don’t need to pass the trial, as long as I have the rod.”

  “If you attempt to leave here by the way you came, the rod will return to its resting place. Of that I can assure you.”

  A deception will secure the rod.

  I needed to test this.

  I took three steps back to the door I’d entered by. I still had the rod. Four steps. Five. Six.

  When I reached the doorknob, I froze.

  My hand was empty.

  Other Clementine broke into a loud, carrying laugh. “Back on the plinth it goes!”

  So it was true. She was right.

  I had lied to bind the key. Now I had to deceive to keep the rod; it was clear enough from her face there was no other way.

  I came forward, my heart brushing feathery and panicked against the inside of my chest. This felt like more than lying. It felt like more than cheating my way through the third guardian trial.

  Because as the conviction filled me, the Spitfire lifted its head in my chest. Sent tendrils of impulsive, delicious fire through my veins.

  The dangerous creature inside me was pleased.

  When I gripped the rod, lifted it up, I set my jaw against the trembling in my chin. “Move aside.”

  Other Clementine released a long, satisfied sigh. “I knew you were the one.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  When Umbra caught sight of me at the labyrinth’s edge, her eyebrows went up in the golden dawn. “Clementine Cole.”

  I walked slowly toward her, every step tweaking the boggan wounds on my back and arms. “Hey, Headmistress.”

  Her eyes flitted over my body. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’d rather have blood to bleed than not.” I forced a half-smile. “Where are the others?”

  “I’ve already sent them through. You�
�re the last one.”

  I ran the back of my hand across my forehead, pushing back my escaped hair. “Are they all right?”

  She gave a nod.

  “Did you see Loki?” I asked.

  “Yes, but not with you.”

  A small mechanism in my chest allowed itself to untether, and I could breathe a little freer. Loki had made it.

  She evaluated me in silence, both hands clasping her staff before her. “You got into it with a boggan. Or two.”

  I made myself meet her eyes, kept my fingers purposely loose. “They really don’t like fire witches.”

  She made a noise in her throat, something that sounded like judgment or assent. “That they do not. And yet here you are. Congratulations, Clementine Cole. You’ve passed the third trial.”

  Then she turned away, began walking through a copse of trees. Wherever we were, the forest seemed to go on forever.

  I followed. “But it’s dawn.”

  She didn’t pause, her cloak rippling behind her. “Yes, and?”

  “If we don’t escape by dawn, we fail.”

  She stopped, considering the space before her. Nodded once, then turned to me. “Do you know who makes the rules of the trials, child?”

  I came to stand near her. “Uh, you?”

  “Yes, me. I decide on what makes a guardian.” She tilted her head. “And what do you suppose I look for?”

  I glanced around us as though I could pick answers from the air. “Positive traits, I would guess.”

  She smiled faintly. “And what positive traits do you imagine are embodied by sending your familiar to guide a fellow student through the labyrinth whilst being chased by crazed boggans?”

  So Liara had told her.

  I didn’t answer.

  She came closer to me, catching my eye and holding it. One hand landed on my shoulder. “You, Clementine, acted as a guardian before you even received the designation. No one this year deserves it more than you.”

  Pain—separate from the pain of the boggan wounds—pierced my chest as we stood before one another. I wondered if there would ever come a time in my life when I could accept an honor without compunction, without the weaseling voice inside me telling me the wrong person was being honored.