by Everly Frost
I do, however, take note of their positions. Just like the students who sit at the same tables for every meal, the officers stand in the same positions around the room. Predictability is good. It will let me plan.
I reluctantly put down the ice pack to pick up my cutlery and begin eating. I have so many questions I want to ask Lucinda, Ashley and Bree—how did they find out about their powers, and have they ever tried to escape?—but I need to take it slow.
“Did your families bring you here?” I ask, trying not to sound too nosy.
Bree gives me a sad smile. “My parents tried to keep me with them, but the Magnate wouldn’t let them. Believe it or not, my family didn’t hate or fear me, but I’m in the minority.”
“My father was an alcoholic,” Ashley says, her face carefully blank, as if she doesn’t care. “He started drinking after Mom left. He used to beat on me every day. Coming here is no different for me.”
I cast a questioning glance at Lucinda. She’s quiet for a moment before she says, “Mom tried to hide me, but Dad found out and brought me here. They’re both wolf shifters, so you can imagine the fights they got into over me. Mom told Dad she’d kill him if he betrayed me. None of us has any contact with our families, so I don’t know what happened between them after I got here.” She shrugs her shoulders—a brave show of nonchalance, but it’s obvious her family’s history hurts her.
Ashley’s emerald eyes glisten. I imagine in a normal world, the girls would hug each other right now, but displays of physical affection are rare here. Heightened emotions from the students attracts violent reactions from the compliance officers.
Ashley quickly deflects the conversation away from Lucinda, who is quiet after revealing so much about her parents. “What about you, Peyton?”
“My parents and my brother brought me here. They couldn’t wait to be rid of me.” I point to the cut above my forehead. I don’t know what it looks like, but it still hurts. “My brother did this on the way here. I used to want their love, but now I’m just angry at them. Pretty much all the time. I’m hoping for the day my anger becomes indifference. I’d prefer not to care.”
My declaration falls into silence.
A deeper silence than I was expecting.
Bree and Ashley are suddenly tense and focused on something above my left shoulder. I half-turn to find Striker paused behind me. He’s carrying his empty plastic plate. It looks like he was on the way out. He must have inhaled his food to finish eating so fast.
I can’t read his expression when he says, “Your brother hit you?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t tell me you care, Draven.”
The corner of his mouth twitches up. “Not at all. I was just marveling at the fact that he must have the weakest right hook in the world.”
Placing his empty plate on the table, he leans down, both hands planted on either side of me so that he traps me against the edge of it. My instinct is to lean away from him, press farther into the table’s edge and keep a scant inch of open space between us, but I don’t budge. If he wants to menace me, he can damn well make contact.
He says, “I never pictured you with such a lame-ass brother.”
I give him a quizzical smile. “Well, since I’m glad he didn’t do more damage, I’m not sorry my brother’s right hook is a disappointment to you, Draven.”
He considers the cut above my eye. “Put some ice on that, Price.”
He removes his hands and straightens, scooping up his plate and pitching it into the trash can at the side of the room before he leaves.
Normal conversation resumes around us.
I shrug and turn back to the girls. They release a breath and give me surprised looks.
“What?” I ask.
They glance at each other before Lucinda says, “You go head to head with Draven even when you should be afraid.”
“Maybe I am… afraid.” I consider my half-eaten food, suddenly not very hungry. “But if I’m going to die here, I may as well fight back while I can.”
I raise my eyes to theirs. They don’t contradict me. We’re all on borrowed time.
Lucinda is the first to confirm it. “We’re all waiting for the flicker fit that finishes us. If I could control my power…” She folds her hands on the table after she shrugs.
“What makes you think you can’t?” I ask.
She stares at me. “Because I can’t.”
A surge of annoyance flows through me and I’m worried I’m channeling Striker’s aggression, but I have to challenge her beliefs. I keep my voice low. “You threw a wand today and it disarmed a teacher. You must have done something to make that happen.”
“I…” She looks helplessly at the other two girls, as if they can help her, but they rapidly shake their heads. “I don’t know. I just wanted it to happen.”
“You wanted to create a pitchfork that would trap her wand?”
“Yeah.”
“And it did.”
“Okay.” She’s still staring at me. “What are you trying to say?”
I eyeball her, leaning forward. “Maybe that’s all it takes. You want it to happen, so it happens. That’s instinctive magic, isn’t it? Only the most powerful witches can access it.”
“But I…” She swallows. “I’m not powerful. If I were powerful, I wouldn’t be trapped here.”
I give her a fierce frown. “Why were you apologizing to the practicing post today?”
“What?” Her question is a sharp whisper.
The other girls lean in, but their foreheads are creased, as if they’re confused, especially Ashley. She was standing the closest to Lucinda today, but I can’t be the only one who heard it.
“Today, when you hit the post, you kept saying sorry over and over. Why?”
Lucinda’s mouth drops open. “I wasn’t.”
“You were. I heard you.”
She’s suddenly pale, her voice lowering to a bare whisper. “I wasn’t saying it aloud.”
Wait… what? Now I’m confused. I lean away from her, trying to gather my thoughts. Was I mistaken? I remember thinking it was a really strange thing to say and do. Maybe I took too many hits to my head and got muddled. My thoughts were in turmoil after my conversation with Striker…
I begin to protest. “But—”
Lucinda’s hand darts out to grab my arm. She gives me a firm shake of her head. Her brown eyes fill with worry. It takes me a moment to realize she’s worried for me, not herself. “We can’t have this conversation here.”
My gaze shifts to the compliance officers. The noise of the students around us is loud enough that I don’t think the officers can hear us, but they’re certainly watching carefully. Ashley’s guard leans toward us in a way that shows he’s interested in our conversation, which makes me nervous.
“I’ve eaten enough anyway,” Lucinda says, a little more loudly. “We should show you around the girls’ floor.”
Bree and Ashley nod, their chairs scraping back as they gather up their nearly empty plates and dump them into the trash. The number of disposable plates that pile up after every meal makes me cringe, but the teachers don’t give us reusable options.
I follow Lucinda while Ashley and Bree bring up the rear. Four compliance officers peel off the wall and follow us, including pale-eyed Collin.
We climb the stairs to the third floor in silence and then Lucinda leads me along the corridor. Each door opens to bedrooms on the left and right sides of the corridor.
“There are ten rooms on each side,” she explains. “Twenty in total, although there are only fourteen of us right now. Mine is three doors down.” She taps the ice chest positioned close to the front of the corridor and points to the small linen cupboard on the wall above it. “You can find cloths up there and ice in here. Ladies?”
They each retrieve a cloth and pack it full of ice, holding their bundles to various parts of their bodies. Ashley simply fists hers, her palms red from pummeling the practicing post today.
“Some
times we fall asleep with ice packs all over us,” Lucinda continues. “I don’t think you would have met the working staff yet—there’s a cook and two other women who do the laundry.”
“I thought Ms. Sparrow magicked the food.”
“Hah! It looks that way, doesn’t it? She likes to take credit for work that isn’t her own, but she’s just the delivery service.”
Lucinda’s room is sparsely furnished like mine, but she’s taped various colorful hand-drawn pictures to the walls. “I can’t draw to save myself, but it helps make this room feel like home,” she says when she catches me looking at them.
“You’re right, they’re terrible,” I say, widening my eyes at her in an exaggerated gesture.
She laughs. “You don’t pull your punches, do you? No wonder you give back as good as you get when Draven gets in your face.”
I haven’t forgotten why we came up here. I raise an eyebrow at her. She inclines her head at the door to her room and scoops up the freshly folded towel at the base of her bed along with some clothing. “This way.”
Outside, I find Bree and Ashley waiting for us. They’re also carrying towels and pajamas. They set off quietly for the bathroom at the end of the corridor, gathering me up and taking me with them.
I’m not sure what to expect when we enter the communal shower room. There’s a small entrance first with a second door leading into a changing room. The girls dump their clothing on the benches that line the room but hang their towels on hooks just inside the third room. It’s wide open with showerheads positioned at intervals around all three sides opposite.
I thought I was badly off with a bathroom that doesn’t lock. The other girls have to share. At least the compliance officers didn’t follow us in here.
I hover in the opening between the change and shower rooms. Lucinda places a finger to her lips and then turns on several of the showers before drawing me into the center of the tiled area. “This is the only place we aren’t followed. The white noise drowns out our voices and should stop them using magic to overhear us.”
“Should,” Bree emphasizes. “As in, we hope it does.”
“So far, it seems to,” Ashley adds.
Bree laughs. “You’d think they’d be smart enough to employ female compliance officers. The guys leave us alone in here, but apparently, they walk right into the guys’ bathroom.” She shudders visibly.
It just highlights to me the privilege of Striker’s existence.
Before I can think any more about Striker, Lucinda pins me in her gaze. “Explain to me how you can hear my thoughts.”
I give Lucinda the only honest answer I can. “I don’t know. I honestly thought you were talking aloud.”
The look she gives me conveys her disbelief.
I try again. “I think I made it clear that I hate liars. I’m not making this up.”
“Oh, I know you’re not,” she says. “But I wasn’t talking aloud.”
I chew hard on my lip, feeling like we’re going around in circles. “Maybe it would help if you told me why?” I ask. “You hated hitting that post and it wasn’t because it hurts your hands.”
Lucinda glances at the others. She looks worried that they’ll judge her, but both have open expressions. It makes me wonder how many times they actually talk to each other about their powers, whether there are things they’re afraid to admit to each other and speak aloud.
“It wasn’t that I hated hitting the post,” Lucinda says. “I wasn’t even thinking loud thoughts about it. It was just… a feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“I hate it when wood breaks.”
I eye her carefully. “But you broke your wand this morning.”
“I didn’t break it,” she protests. “I changed it. And it was willing. I didn’t force it to become anything it didn’t want to be.”
Her hands fly to her face, pressing to her temples. “Oh… I’m talking about wood as if it has feelings. I must be losing it.” She wobbles a little side to side. “I’ve finally lost it.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t think you have.”
Water rushes around our bare feet into the drain at the center of the room. With the amount of time we spend in gym class, our feet are bare more often than we wear shoes. It’s a wild feeling to have the water rush around my toes and head in all sorts of chaotic directions. The white noise is calming to my mind in ways I haven’t felt for a while.
Actually… their company is calming to me. I’ve spent my life either alone or surrounded by people who actively hate me. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by people like me who, even if they aren’t exactly my friends, don’t wish me dead.
“My father and brother are fire mages,” I say. “They can sense a hot day coming from the moment dawn breaks. They can sit in front of a camp fire for hours watching the flames burn, coaxing the flames across their arms like putty in their palms. Putting out the flames makes them uncomfortable just like abusing wood makes you uncomfortable.”
“What are you saying?” Lucinda asks, the crease in her forehead deepening.
I study her eyes, the nearly imperceptible rings inside her brown irises, so many rings that they blur unless I’m looking for them. They’re just like the rings inside a tree trunk that form as it ages, influenced by events in its life.
“I’m saying that maybe the teachers got it wrong. Maybe you’re not a witch. What you feel would make complete sense if you were an earth mage. Or something even more powerful… like… a dryad.”
I watch her reaction carefully. She frowns at the suggestion of an earth mage, but her expression lifts when I mention a dryad.
“A tree spirit?” she asks. “They’re incredibly rare.”
I nod. “But it would explain why you turned your wand pink and how you manipulated it to trap Ms. Sparrow’s wand. It would also explain why it hurts you that we punch practicing posts made from tree trunks. You’re—”
“Remembering when they were alive.” She gasps. “This changes everything. If I’m a dryad, I’ve been doing everything all wrong. The wrong magic, the wrong techniques, the wrong lessons.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. “Lucinda, you don’t need someone to teach you who you are.”
“I need to test this.” She nods to herself and then to me. “I’m going to figure this out. I’ll go out early tomorrow morning and see if I can… I don’t know… talk to the forest or… something.”
She blushes and presses her hands to her cheeks before she reaches for my hands, grasping them in hers. It’s the most startling contact, her hands clasping mine in a way that seeks my reassurance.
“Will you come with me?” she asks, her expression hopeful.
“Sure,” I say, trying not to react to the painful trust in her eyes. “You’ll need my protection from Draven. He goes for a run every morning. I’ll make sure he doesn’t disturb you.”
“You won’t be able to avoid your compliance officers,” Bree says with a grimace.
“Then we’ll pretend to be out for a run too,” I say. “They’ll most likely stand around watching us. Draven can’t be the only student allowed to jog in the mornings.”
Lucinda gives me wide eyes. “Don’t expect me to do more than a lap. I’m not a runner.”
“Neither am I.” I shrug. “But I plan to become one.”
I plan to run out of here as far and fast as I can one day. If I can… I’ll take Ashley, Bree, and Lucinda with me.
The far door opens and several other girls appear in the entrance. I step back from Lucinda. The other girls will think it’s weird that we’re all standing around in here so it’s time to go. “See you tomorrow morning. I’ll be near the combat ring at five o’clock.”
I spin in the water without waiting for an acknowledgement. It won’t bother me if she doesn’t end up showing in the morning. Well, maybe it will a little. It’s nice to feel like I have friends.
I stride from the bathroom, pick up another cloth full of ice, and head back u
pstairs, resolutely ignoring the fact that I still don’t know how I sensed Lucinda’s thoughts.
16. Striker Draven
Peyton doesn’t return to her room for a long time. I finish working out and then shower, slinging a towel around my waist before I exit into the corridor. If she’s not back in her room by now, it’s time to worry.
I’m grateful my beast has gone back to sleep or he’d choke on his own self-righteous laughter right now. I’d have to tell him to shut up again. I’m not worried about her. I’m not going soft. I don’t care if she’s dead. I just don’t want my sleep interrupted if there’s some drama tonight, that’s all.
I stop short in the corridor when she appears at the end of it.
Her hair is some sort of bird’s nest now and her long legs are splattered with water, her bare feet padding along the wooden floor. She’s clutching an ice pack pressed to her cheek. It’s the spot where my left hook caught her unawares.
A burn starts deep in my chest.
I find myself asking a question I don’t want to answer.
If someone hurt my sister like I hurt Peyton…?
Yeah, I’d fucking kill him.
Collin follows close behind her but gives me a nod when he sees me before he heads away again. I’ve proven I can be trusted to beat her up and push her around, so they’ll leave her with me. No matter what Lady Tirelli says.
Although I’m focused on her, Peyton is fixated on the windows. She veers toward them, peering into the dark before quickly swerving back into the center of the walkway.
Her rapid swing away from the edge makes me wonder if she’s afraid of heights. It would make levitating more alarming to her. Still, there’s nothing to see but endless trees out there. We’re in the middle of a forest that stretches for miles with no end in sight. Lady Tirelli wouldn’t be so reckless as to build this place within running distance of civilization.