by Mana Sol
No. I had to shut up and take her disdain like an idiot. No doubt she would use it against me if I told her the truth, maybe tell everyone I was a pompous human who thought I was better than everyone else because of my particular concentration. And then there was Addison and Genie, too. If it weren’t for the sideways comments from Addison earlier, I wouldn’t think twice about slamming down my accomplishments in front of everyone to deter disrespect, but now I wondered. What? Was it so bad? Did I come off as overbearing, egotistical? Drunk on my own obnoxious pride?
…Maybe. I had come here, and the first thing I’d done was size up both girls and measure how much ‘competition’ they would be. Anyone who did that to me, I would instantly distrust. If I wanted to have allies on my side, I needed to do better. And that started with not being a jackass.
So I said nothing, and we filed out of the room after Ravonne and Zedekiel. They guided us to several other rooms in the Alchemy Wing before moving on to the adjacent area, and then the next until finally, they stopped in front of - what was this? An enormous archway lifting high over our heads, and beyond that, a set of heavy stone doors. That didn’t seem like it was leading to another wing of the Academy. Did it go outside? A courtyard?
“Zed,” the fae girl said as she examined something on her wrist. “I want to go and see my friends. This is a waste of time.”
“And you want me to cover for you.”
It was the first time I’d heard him talk, and despite my every effort to never look straight at him and take in the appearance I knew would suck anyone in like a spell - because that was what Nephilim did, damn it - I couldn’t help it. The instant my eyes settled on him squarely, my heart skipped a beat.
He was beautiful. Dark hair, wavy and thick, swept back and long enough to cover most of his ears. Blue, blue eyes that were positively angelic, with the sharpest cheekbones and a regal scowl. I noticed again how broad his shoulders were, and under the black and red of his uniform - which was already flattering - I could imagine every rippling muscle and the shining Nephilim markings that no doubt curled over his skin…
Stop. Stop. I looked away, pretending to examine the sigils now flowing over the stone wall and leading out to the external doors. Addison wasn’t even pretending to resist, but that was her choice if she wanted to be obvious about it. At least Genie seemed unaffected. She looked more interested in his buttons than anything else. Was she a small rodent? Did everything even remotely shiny distract her like that?
“Surely our Archangel can handle something like this…Please? You know I appreciate you. You look so good today, too, hm…”
“Fine,” he said after the fae girl sent him a completely fake, pleading look. Fae didn’t plead; they took what they wanted without begging. They could pretend, though, and that seemed enough for ‘Zed.’ “Get out of here. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Thanks, sweetie. You’re the best. Come over tonight and see me?”
My stomach lurched. Another Nephilim trait, I thought bitterly. It made humans jealous, easily and for no reason. At least I wasn’t naturally prone to possessiveness or envy which would have made it worse, but Addison looked like she wanted to plant her fist in Ravonne’s face with no concern for the consequences. I casually stepped forward as if to get a better look at the gargoyle carving sitting at the top of the nearby pillar, inserting myself between the girls just in case. I could handle myself, but it was obvious Addy needed some help. And Genie - well. She was staring at the wall now, following the slow progress of a floating sigil in the stones with open-mouthed fascination. Again, I wondered if maybe she had a few screws loose, but at least the Nephilim aura hadn’t sucked her in. One victim was more than enough.
At least Zedekiel didn’t answer Ravonne’s flirtatious question, though, and instead gestured at us to follow him. “The Arena,” he said shortly. “Where you’ll put your combat magic to the test.”
5
I didn’t know combat magic. I was a Thaumaturgist, a spell crafter. I worked with numbers, symbols, magic arrays - I wasn’t meant to enter direct combat, ever. I hoped Zedekiel the Nephilim was only speaking of it in a roundabout way and not suggesting we were all to actually fight. Not me, at least. Maybe Genie the pyromaniac since she solved at least some of her problems by setting them on fire, and maybe Addison who looked like she wouldn’t mind punching out a certain female fae this very second. But spell crafters were the foundation, the rock, out of the way but holding everyone steady. They did their best job on the sidelines, anchoring others, not standing in the middle of a savage fight for survival and tripping everyone who got too close. And the fact of the matter - even though I knew better than to say it aloud - was that those of my specialty were too valuable to throw into the fray. There were only a few of us to support the entire Citadel’s fighting force, and one lost meant an entire battalion blind on the field.
That was true of all Thaumaturgists. Maybe I was only a student, but among the Arcane Institutes peppering the Citadel, there were probably only a couple dozen of us in training all totaled. We were too rare. And Jupiter Gate Academy in particular? While it had produced some of the finest Thaumaturgists in known history (which was admittedly lacking since the Cataclysm), it couldn’t possibly boast but a third of us, maybe a fourth. And besides Jupiter Gate steadily losing its monopoly on Thaumaturgists over the decades, rumor was that there were fewer and fewer apt candidates every year.
They wouldn’t put me in a fight. Couldn’t, not even for their little Arena games. The other Institutes had war drills, too, and those were dangerous even for hardier species. How much more so for humans? If any one of our scholarship trio ended the year maimed or dead, the publicity blowback alone would be… I narrowed my eyes. The publicity. Was I thinking about it the wrong way? If Addison, Genie, or I ended up in pieces while attending normal Jupiter Gate Academy functions, would the school use that as evidence we didn’t belong here? Was it deliberate?
My pulse hammered in my neck. I had to be twice as good and twice as brave as any other student here to get half the recognition. Thaumaturgist or not, if I tried to beg off, they would use it against me. If not the faculty, then surely the other students. My former school had always exempted me from anything like this - hadn’t even let me participate in general physical education on days when the curricular activities were ‘too strenuous.’ So when the time came, how was I supposed to…?
Zedekiel led us down the large amphitheater-style stone steps toward the massive grassy pit, and my eyes darted around from one end of the oval structure to the other. There weren’t nearly enough students in the academy to fill all these stone benches, but come the annual War Games, I knew they would be crammed full with spectators from all over the Citadel. Non-human spectators, at least. Our kind stayed well away from these affluent parts for lots of reasons.
“Are we going to be taking part in the War Games in the spring?” I asked. My voice was level, calm. I couldn’t betray any fear or misgivings in front of this boy. For that matter, I didn’t want to betray them in front of the girls, either. He turned, and the stiff grass rustled under his feet as he looked me up and down. The goosebumps that rose over every inch of my skin under his cold gaze felt like millions of small hooks piercing me through, and I had to stop myself from swallowing hard as I held his stare.
“Why?” His left eyebrow went up, a graceful, derisive arch that had my breath catching in my throat. Nephilim aura, was he doing it on purpose or was I just that susceptible -? “Are you afraid?” he asked.
Instinct told me not to lie. The way I was almost shivering in his presence, he would see through the deception in an instant. “Being afraid’s good for a survival instinct.” I looked away from him and sent a pointed stare down the length of the Arena pit. I hoped he didn’t realize it was because I was avoiding his eyes. “And if I weren’t afraid, wouldn’t you think I’m cocky for it?”
He watched me for a heart-stopping moment longer, and it killed me how one look coul
d make me feel like I was about to burst into flames. This was why I avoided Nephilim. Other people, even the most staunchly guarded and pro-human, craned their necks for better looks if they were ever blessed enough to be in the presence of the angel-touched, but not me. I knew better.
Not Addison, though. One glance at her told me I’d have to train up her resilience to these kinds of things. Her inappropriate fascination with vampires earlier, and now this? No. For both our sakes, she was going to have to get over it.
“So, what?” She puckered her lips in a luscious pout that had even me staring. Forget the otherworldly beauty of any of the other races; Addison was a prime example that humans could achieve similar heights, and she was definitely putting it to use as her eyes bore right back into his. Even her tongue flitted out to wet her bottom lip. “Are you going to make us demonstrate or something? Spar and whatever?”
“We don’t spar without approval. And you’re not ready to be down here at all.”
“You brought us here, though.”
“Because you’re being oriented.” His glare chilled even more. “And now that you’ve been here once, I suggest you make it your mission this year to avoid it from now on if you don’t want to leave in pieces.”
“I’m into combat magic. I’m an Augmenting-type, I know my way around a few bruisings.”
“You would be on the receiving end. You don’t belong here, and you would go down too fast to even learn anything.”
“Excuse me?” Addy’s smile disappeared. Could it be? Had she thrown off his passive allure already? Just with a few disdainful words, too. “I worked my ass off to get where I am. And I’m as good as anyone else here. So say that again.”
A small snort escaped his nose. “You wouldn’t last -”
“Are we moving on, then?” I cut in - and too late, I saw that had been a mistake. I’d only meant to stop the brewing argument before it could escalate to something decidedly more physical, but his frigid blue gaze snapped over to me, nearly sparking. All that held me in place was the innate sensation that if I moved, if I showed weakness here, he might devour me alive.
“We’ll move on when I say we move on,” he said. “A word of advice. The less you speak, the longer you’ll make it here. Goes for all of you.” His glare swept over all three of us until stopping to linger on Genie, who stared back with an inscrutable expression. Her smile had disappeared, too, and I held my breath, hoping this wasn’t the moment she revealed the other side of her capable of combusting people out of nowhere. “This isn’t the world you know. You shouldn’t have left yours. Now you’re going to have to live by the rules here… and you won’t get away with breaking them. We’re not as lenient in the Inner Citadel.”
A not-so-veiled threat. And he was right. Out there in the Tenements, Genie had gotten off burning a non-human with the explanation that she’d been acting in self-defense, but even then, despite the perfect justification, half the Citadel had been in a frenzy as they argued whether to throw her into prison or execute her. Here? If she did something, there was no one on her side. Addison? Me? Sure, I was liking Genie more and more purely by virtue of what she symbolized to our hostile guests, but there was nothing we’d be able to do to protect her. And we’d been warned. Bad things happened in the halls of Jupiter Gate to those who didn’t conform, even those of the ‘fairer’ races, and one wrong step could mean the end of us in every way.
“We understand that,” I said, daring to break the silence because if not, this simmering would grow to a boil. Couldn’t let that happen, not like this. Not so soon. “We’ll take care to respect the academy’s rules. We’re here to learn.” Again, his eyes landed on me, and they felt like glacial hooks piercing every part of my body. My chest felt tight and my mouth dry, but this was as good a time as any to fine-tune my poker face. I gestured back up the stone steps. “Should I go first?”
I held my breath. Don’t, I thought fervently, though I preferred to think I was begging fate rather than a Nephilim. Don’t…
“Go,” he said, and scarcely before the lone word had left his lips, I whipped around and led the way.
6
“You know, it’s really weird,” Addison chirped with a too-wide smile and her head tilted almost ninety degrees. Her fists were planted on her hips, too, with shoulders squared so firmly there could be no mistake her current happiness was entirely false. But I suspected if that weren’t obvious, we would have been missing the point. I pulled in my bottom lip, hoping against hope she wouldn’t say anything rash. We had just made it to the end of our silent (and lightning-fast) tour without incident; surely she could hold out for the last few seconds before we left for our dorms.
Or not.
“You wouldn’t say a word to us before Ravonne left and let her do all the talking,” she continued. “Then after she left, the only time you said more than about three words in a row was when you were busy threatening us in the pit. Hm. So, honestly, you should have just cut the tour short and gone home. We wouldn’t have been bothered.”
She was definitely bothered. I reeled in a quiet breath between my teeth as my thoughts rattled around in my head, searching desperately for a way to defuse the situation once more. It hadn’t been but a quarter-hour since we’d left the Arena if those ghostly clocks arranged at intervals along the hallway were correct, and Addison had almost exploded three times since then, stopping only when I nudged her hard in her side or stepped on her foot. Better that she get angry at me than at Zedekiel. Professor Octavius had called him a Form Representative, and while I didn’t know exactly what that entailed, I could only assume it meant the Nephilim could make life miserable for us. His fae girlfriend (or whatever she was to him) already hated us. It would be nice if we could keep Zedekiel’s opinion tempered to cool disregard instead of feeding the flames and multiplying our problems even more.
But Addison didn’t deal well with cool disregard. After leaving the Arena, he’d sped up his pace until we were all but jogging to keep up with him, and he hadn’t even paused by the entrances of the other wings while curtly explaining what they were. He’d simply strode past them like we were window shopping. Clearly, he had no interest in being here anymore, if he ever had. Even Ravonne had at least offered the courtesy of showing us around a room or two from each wing before she flew the coop; Zedekiel did no such thing.
Which, I assumed, was just one reason Addy looked like she wanted to stab him a dozen times with a smile. That, and the fact that he remained entirely unaffected by it, too. God. I could only hope we would never run into him again after today. The only upside of all this was that her former admiration for him had vaporized. Good. We wouldn’t have to have that conversation later.
“…I wasn’t worried about whether you’d feel ‘bothered’,” the Nephilim replied after a long, long silence. He stared at her, eyebrows arched just enough to convey maximum scorn with minimum effort. “My job was to show you around. Now it’s done, and so are we.”
“Yeah, it’s a good thing we are. I don’t want to get disciplined before the semester even starts because I punched out an asshole.”
“An asshole?”
“Did I stutter?”
Oh, piss - this was exactly what I’d been dreading. I should have just herded her and Genie away while I had the chance. “Like you said, tour’s over,” I interrupted. “We’ll head back now. Thanks for all your help.” They both looked like they wanted to punch me now, with Addy’s eyes nearly popping out of her head as she stared at me. Well, she would thank me later for not letting her combust. And since I had a feeling I should continue to stand between them like a living bulwark, I motioned at Genie with a stiff smile. She could pull her own weight here instead of humming under her breath and looking around dreamily. “You remember the way back?” I asked. “Can’t seem to remember. If you could lead the way…”
She smiled back, completely at ease and oblivious to the crackling tension threatening to erupt around her. “The way back?” she repeat
ed. “The way back where?”
God. “To our rooms. Do you remember?”
“Oh, sure. I never get lost. Follow me~”
I sent Addison a warning look before giving her a friendly push on her arm, gesturing for her to follow the other girl. Please, I begged inwardly. An ‘incident’ with any of us would reflect badly on all of us, and I so did not need this kind of attention on my first day here. Why couldn’t the other scholarship transfers have been more like me… “We’ve got a lot to unpack, so we should get going, Addy.”
“But -”
“Lots and lots to unpack. Come on. Let’s go.”
Thank God. She turned with an angry but resigned snort and began stomping away. I blew out my cheeks, utterly relieved, before moving forward to follow suit - and gasped when something yanked me back by the shoulder. Then the world spun, fast as lightning, and I stared up into blue eyes that looked like they wanted nothing less than to murder me outright.
“You have a bad habit of interrupting me,” Zedekiel said, and his voice flowed through my ears like cool quicksilver. My jaw nearly dropped, and suddenly my brain felt as if it were melting under the force of - oh, no. Nephilim aura. I couldn’t break his gaze, and he was going to feather me down right here until I was just a drooling thrall - “I don’t know how things are where you come from, but over here, you respect your superiors. That’s what I am to you, Blair Kaine. You don’t interrupt me, I don’t have to discipline you.”
Discipline? The word swam through my muddled consciousness slowly at first, then surfaced like a shark fin breaking the water’s surface. “Discipline?” I asked aloud, something sparking inside me like flint to tinder. “Excuse me?”