by Everly Frost
I jog inside the Academy building through the back entrance—a wide wooden door—and head for the stairs.
Rounding the corner to the steps, I jolt to a stop as the Headmistress comes down them. I quickly scrunch the ruined material in my fist and position it behind my back.
“Draven,” she says, casting a haughty look down her nose at me. She loves to play like she’s in control, but I know who her boss is. Osprey doesn’t control a damn thing. “Our new student is verified as an Unknown.”
I consider her with disinterest, but inside, I’m suddenly anything but calm. Furious doesn’t even begin to describe the fiery feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Unknowns are too rare to be true.
The new girl is either a magnificent liar or Osprey is losing her touch. No doubt she left the verification to Colby and Collin. Those two brainless brutes wouldn’t know their right hands from their left. I ignore the dissenting voice in the back of my mind reminding me that the newcomer screamed like she was being ripped apart.
There’s also a third option—in addition to liar and incompetence—but I’m not ready to consider it yet.
Headmistress Osprey’s heels click on the wooden floor as she maneuvers around me. “Due to her status, she will sleep in the attic.”
“What?” My objection is sharp. The attic is my space. The compliance officers don’t venture up there anymore, but if the new girl is housed there, they’ll swarm all over it again. “Like hell she will.”
Osprey arches an eyebrow at me. “Unknowns must be kept apart from the other students. You know that, Draven. Otherwise, you would sleep on the fourth floor with the other male students.”
She takes a step forward, her hand hovering around her curved wand, a clear threat. I ignore it. She’s forgotten that I don’t fear her magic.
“Peyton Price will sleep in the room next to yours,” she says, her tone allowing no further objection.
Fucking third option confirmed. They’re using the new girl to get to me. It’s not the first time they’ve used another student to mess with me, and it probably won’t be the last. I’ve held out, never revealed my power. For all intents and purposes, I don’t know what I am. This is yet another complicated ploy to force my hand.
I grit my teeth and lean forward with a growl. “Well, she’d better be prepared for hell, then.”
Osprey gives me a broad smile that would chill anyone else to the bone. “I’m counting on it, Draven.”
Her response should worry me, but I’ve given up trying to interpret her intentions. She’s a practiced liar. I take the stairs two at a time, pausing on the landing when a shout from one of the compliance officers rings out below.
I lean back around the corner of the staircase to see what’s going on just as a compliance officer races up to Osprey.
“There’s a problem in the pit,” he says. “The beast broke the gate. We need reinforcements.”
A scowl darkens her face. “Call the officers from the dining room.”
“But the students—”
“They will behave. We can’t let the creature escape.”
Osprey hurries away with the officer.
Ignoring the shouts from below, then the bang of a door that leaves the building in silence again, I head for the bathroom at the end of the fourth-floor corridor instead of the one in the attic, intent on a quick shower. The other students are being held in the dining room so I won’t be disturbed. If I go up to the attic right now, I’ll just as likely throw the new girl through the glass windows as anything else.
I need to cool down. A sarcastic laugh builds inside my chest. For me, cooling down is impossible. Just like escaping from this place.
3. Peyton Price
I exit my room cautiously on my way to the bathroom before dinner, surprised to find the compliance twins gone. I listen for a moment, but the silence tells me I’m alone.
Not sure if I should be worried about that, I hurry to the bathroom, determined to assess the damage to my forehead.
I’m dismayed to find that there isn’t a mirror. Just a shower, toilet, and sink. The door doesn’t lock, either, just like my bedroom. There’s no guarantee of privacy.
An oversized towel takes up the entire towel rack, making me wonder where I’ll hang mine. I quickly wash my hands and use the washcloth I was given to gently prod my forehead, feeling for the wound my brother gave me, trying to figure out how bad it is. It has to be superficial or I wouldn’t have stopped bleeding, even if it hurts like hell now.
Pain never makes me angry. Only sad. I cry when I’m in pain, no matter how hard I try not to. My tear ducts open up and pour like I’m a damn rainmaker. It’s a weakness I’ll have to conquer in this place.
It feels strange to change into my uniform to eat dinner so I remain in my jeans and sweatshirt. I finish washing up and hurry downstairs, my stomach rumbling. I look left and right at each floor, checking out the lower levels. Still no students. No compliance officers, either. Maybe they’re all at dinner. I take a moment to peer down the hallway on each level, making mental notes about the locations of the rooms along each.
On the lowest level, the sign on the half-open door tells me that the first room on the right belongs to Bloodwing’s Founder. There’s no name badge. Her name is kept secret. All I know is that she’s female. Curious, I peek inside her room. A vase filled with red roses sits on top of an otherwise empty desk. A painting hangs at the side. It must be her, but she looks younger than I would have expected. With radiant hazel eyes and masses of chocolate brown hair cascading across her shoulders, she wears a faint smile on her lips as if she’s pleased about something. An insignia is painted in delicate, flowing letters across the bottom right corner of the painting: Avery.
It’s probably the name of the painter, but it’s reminiscent of an aviary—a bird cage. Maybe the Founder is obsessed with birds. It would certainly explain why she chose to name this place “Bloodwing.”
The whole room feels vacant, not lived in. I assume I’ll meet her at some point, but obviously not today.
When I veer toward the front door, I find the entrance is empty too. The magic sealing it pushes me away like a physical force. I press a little into it, testing its strength. Every chance I get, I plan to test the security at Bloodwing.
Headmistress Osprey said the food hall was on this level, so I continue down the hallway, passing another staircase and a number of closed doors along the way. At the end of the hall is a door with Dining Room written in elaborate gold text on a wooden plaque, similar to the one in the entrance.
The whole place looks old world, almost quaint, but the silence is confusing.
I push on the door. Again, nothing decorates the walls except a lone clock. Wooden chairs. Clean, wooden floor. Nothing metallic as far as I can see. A corridor of sorts extends down the middle of the room, dividing six elegant mahogany tables into groups of three.
About thirty young men and women sit around the room, their plastic plates and cutlery a distinct contrast to the earthy surroundings.
As soon as I step into the room, they turn to look at me. The minimum age for attendance at Bloodwing is twenty years. I couldn’t find an explanation why. It drove my parents nuts that they had to wait two years after I finished high school. They wanted to send me here as soon as they heard Bloodwing had been established. Most of the students in the room look a little older than me, but not by much. I guess they don’t live long after they arrive.
Girls sit silently at the tables on the left. Guys sit on the right. They’re all dressed in neat uniforms—white collared shirts and black pants for the guys, red plaid skirts for the girls. Everyone wears a black tie.
An older woman stands behind the counter, her wand raised. I expected to see some sort of kitchen, a buffet of sorts, pots of goopy cafeteria-style food at minimum. Every student has food on their plate already but I don’t see where it came from.
“Peyton Price is late,” the woman snaps. “You may all b
egin eating now.”
They were waiting for me? That might explain the death stares I’m getting.
The woman has the reddest hair I’ve ever seen, dyed that color, not natural. It washes out her pale features and makes the creases around her mouth more pronounced as she descends upon me.
A glance at the clock tells me it’s not 6 o’clock yet.
“Actually, I’m early.” Oh, my big mouth.
The redhead sucks in an angry breath. The nearest female student—the one sitting at the corner of the table on my left—drops her plastic fork on the floor. Her jaw drops with it.
Talking back on my first day must be unexpected.
I stand my ground as Redhead storms toward me, her heels beating the floor. She stops within arm’s reach. “Are you hungry, Peyton Price?”
I return her stare. I’ll only cry if she hurts me. Until then, I’m as emotionless as a stone. “I’ve gone without dinner before. Feel free to starve me.”
Her lips pinch. I wonder if she’s Headmistress Osprey’s little sister. Their mouths react in the same way. I check her name badge: Ms. Sparrow.
Her wand taps her open palm like a cane and she can’t decide where to beat me with it first. I prepare for a lashing and the pain that comes with it. Bring on the waterworks and my tough act will become a farce. Until then, I’ll maintain it to the bitter end.
A sudden wind whooshes around Ms. Sparrow’s body and a plastic plate zooms around her out of nowhere, sailing straight into my surprised hands. She taps the plate’s edge with her wand.
Sausages and mashed potatoes appear on it. Peas roll around at the edges, threatening to tip right off as I try to hold it horizontal. Damn bendy plastic.
“I leave the dining room at 6 o’clock each evening,” she says with a glare. “If I’m not here to feed you, you will starve.”
With that, she hurries away as if there’s somewhere she needs to be, her shoes clacking away. The door closes behind her and I’m alone with twenty-eight students.
What? No supervision? The compliance twins aren’t anywhere in sight. Headmistress Osprey said there were two compliance officers for each student, so where are they?
The four guys at the table on my right are all different shapes and sizes. So are the girls on my left and throughout the room. I guess magical repression doesn’t discriminate on the base of gender or physical appearance.
Hmm. Except for the table at the back. Three guys sit there who look like they’re compliance-officers-in-training: muscled, tall, broad-shouldered. The guy at the end of the table has messy, dark blond hair with a sweep in it and surprisingly intelligent-looking hazel eyes. Only the plastic forks in their hands indicate they’re students. Their cold, hard stares tell me to stay away.
I quickly check to make sure I’m not misreading anyone’s body language, hoping to see a hint of something less than immediate hatred.
My stomach sinks.
Once again, I am a pariah. All of them have had at least some magical manifestation. They know what their powers are; they just can’t call their power at will or control it. Really, they’re not much less dangerous than me or they wouldn’t be here, but I guess they don’t see it that way. Even among them, I am different. I can’t deny that their reaction stings. I had hoped they wouldn’t all hate me on sight.
Well, I’m not a shrinking violet.
I force myself to focus on the air above their heads as I speak. “I thought I’d be welcomed by my own kind. I guess not. Whoever doesn’t want to get dead when I spontaneously combust had better vacate a table so I can sit alone.”
The girls at the table nearest me on the left immediately stand up, juggling their plastic plates and dispersing themselves through the room without a backward glance. One of them drops a trail of peas when her plate bends, but she doesn’t look back.
The girl at the corner stands, too, but she shuffles a couple of chairs across, inclining her head at the chair she vacated. I hate sitting in warm chairs, but I won’t snub her gesture since it’s the first welcome I’ve had. She has long, straight caramel-brown hair, and warm, brown eyes. She isn’t exactly smiling, but she isn’t glaring, either.
She says, “I’m Lucinda.”
If she was listening to Redhead, then she already knows my name, but I introduce myself anyway. “I’m—”
A flash of light ripples through the air, a short burst. I blink rapidly, not sure what’s happening. Uncertainty makes me freeze to the spot as I try to clear my vision of the bright spots in it.
Lucinda’s eyes pop wide and her focus shifts to the back table. One of the big guys at the back—the one with the messy, blond hair—stands up so suddenly that his chair tips back with a loud bang that makes me jump.
He grips the table, shuddering so hard, he knocks his plate across its surface. The whole lot flies into the guy opposite him, who is too busy shielding his eyes to react to the splatter of food across his chest.
Lucinda jumps out of her seat, her face draining pale. “Oh, no. Joseph’s having a flicker fit.”
Another flash of light bursts through the room, emitting from Joseph’s entire body—head, shoulders, torso, arms, and legs—the brightest burst I’ve ever seen. It’s like fireworks, but at close range.
Lucinda drops into her seat and clutches her head as if she’s about to have a breakdown, curling down over her knees. “Oh, no, no, no!”
I’ve never seen a flicker fit. Never felt its effects. Every student in the room is doubled over, covering their eyes. I should be in pain too, and I don’t know why I’m not. The light is bright, but it doesn’t hurt.
The third burst of light is sharper than the first two, making the guys at Joseph’s table jolt back in their seats, shouting as they scramble to get away from him.
One of them yells through gritted teeth. “Joseph! You gotta stop, man, or they’ll come in here and kill you!”
“I… can’t…” He’s gripping the table so hard, he lifts it off the floor on that side, tipping it upward.
The light bursts more rapidly. Not fireworks anymore but like a strobe. Now that the initial blindness has worn off, every burst makes the room clearer for me, as if the shadows are gone and everything is bright.
I take a step forward. A stupid moth-to-the-flame move.
I bump right into a warm body that wasn’t there a second ago.
A deep, angry voice burns into me. “Get out of my way.”
I catch sight of startling amber eyes and black-as-night hair before two big hands shove me to the side, thumping my plastic plate right into my chest. Food smooshes across my stomach as I crash into the corner of the table. Pain explodes through my hip, shooting down my leg. I bounce, hit nothing but air, then smack into the side of the chair. It topples as I fall to the floor, landing on my tailbone with a full view of the walkway between the tables.
My surprised shout is a vague echo as I try to figure out which way is up. I hit so many objects on my way to the floor that I’m struggling to center myself. Pain spirals through me, but shock is my biggest enemy right now. I can’t seem to move, and I have a feeling I really need to get up.
The newcomer charges toward the back table, causing the guys near it to scatter.
His naked back is burned.
A red welt extends down each side.
It’s Striker Draven.
Droplets of water splatter down his back, as if he just got out of the shower.
He doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause, barreling into Joseph so hard that the table bucks and tips. Joseph clutches it so tightly that he drags it for a full two feet before he finally lets it go. It thuds onto its side, cracking against the floor.
Striker drives Joseph into the back wall with enough force to make Joseph’s head bounce. Striker’s fist follows, exploding into Joseph’s cheek with a brutality that makes me gasp. A second fist cracks into Joseph’s temple. He slumps, dropping across Striker’s waiting shoulder.
He hefts Joseph up and deposits him into
the nearest chair, sitting him upright. Then his angry glare lands on me.
He takes a step toward me, his fists clenched.
Oh, no.
I don’t need another fist in my face today. My brother’s was enough. I certainly don’t need one that has the power to knock a big guy like Joseph out cold. I’ve met enough guys like Striker to know that a perceived slight like simply getting in his way results in a disproportionately violent retaliation.
He stops when the doors burst open at both ends of the dining room. Compliance officers stream into the room with Headmistress Osprey at their head. They quickly line the walls, their wands out.
Striker immediately relaxes as if nothing happened, settling into the spot where he stands.
Nobody moves.
Headmistress Osprey takes one look at the upturned table and me sitting on the floor, food scattered around me. Her shrill voice cuts through my hearing. “What is the meaning of this?”
Get up, Peyton. I scramble to obey my mental command, but a boot descends over my outstretched thigh and a fist grips my hair.
Collin’s pale eyes enter my field of view, his breath an unwanted tickle across my cheek. He wrenches my head back so hard, I think he tore out some hair.
I can’t stop my cry of pain, clamping my lips together, squeezing shut my eyes. Why do scalps have to be so sensitive?
I didn’t cry when I hit the ground, but it’s impossible not to now. A sob tears out of me as pain shoots through my head.
Damn. There goes my tough act.
“Peyton Price,” Headmistress Osprey says, standing over me. “Explain yourself.”
Indignation rises like a tidal wave. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t—”
It was Joseph. He had a flicker fit. But the other guy’s shout still echoes in my ears: You gotta stop, man, or they’ll kill you.
Flicker fits are a precursor to an uncontrollable surge of power—the whole reason this place exists. They’re unpredictable and completely random. Minor flicker fits can stop after a single short burst, but big ones—ones like Joseph just had that make others double over in pain—end with a powerful explosion that kills everyone within a quarter mile radius. Someone put Joseph in this Academy because they’re afraid he’ll do exactly what he just did. If I tell Headmistress Osprey what happened… they will kill him.