by May Dawson
I roll my eyes. He throws his arm over my shoulders, squeezing me against his body. I freeze, my spine ramrod stiff, my hands in my lap. I don’t know if I should put my arm back around him or pull away. How do normal girls act? Oh God, I do not know how to Human.
“I can tease my friends, can’t I?” Cax asks no one in particular, even though I swear I feel chilled by the looks people give us as they walk past.
Airren pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand as if he’s exasperated by Cax.
“You look like such a dad when you do that,” I blurt out.
Oh my God.
I have really forgotten how to human. I’m so nervous today. Especially around these guys.
Airren’s beautiful eyes widen. Stelly stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
Then Airren grins. He has high cheekbones, and when he grins, those cheekbones are so sharp and beautiful they hurt to look at.
“Stop giving the dorm a show,” Airren tells Cax, who shrugs and slides his arm off my shoulders.
As much as I’ve been frozen and confused with Cax touching me, I feel cold when he’s gone.
“You love the drama, don’t you?”
“I do,” Cax confirms. “I’d be Tera’s friend no matter what, just for the fun of it.”
I cock my head at him, trying to make sense of the implications. He’s my friend for a reason. Just because Airren’s my RA? No, that’s too simple. I can’t buy that this merry little band has decided to adopt me for no reason.
“Hey, there’s Mycroft.” Airren nods hello.
Gorgeous, tall Mycroft looms at the end of the table. He can’t help looming; he must be at least 6 foot 6, broad-shouldered and chiseled. His black t-shirt clings to his muscled shoulders and narrow waist. His eyes are brown with golden flecks and seem to hold a deep warmth.
But those eyes are cool when they meet mine. Mycroft nods and takes a seat at the table. His broad shoulders round slightly as he leans over his plate, scooping food into his mouth with single-minded purpose.
Cax glances at him and rolls his eyes before he turns his gaze on me. “How are our favorite freshmen today?”
“Speak for yourself,” Airren says. “I’m committed to being unbiased.”
“Sure,” Cax says easily.
“I am not your favorite,” Stelly says to Cax. “Come on now. You locked me in closets on the regular when we were kids.”
“Aren’t you over that yet?” Cax asks.
“You locked me in closets! Why would I get over that?”
“Because I’m a great big brother now?”
Mycroft snorts. All eyes at the table swivel in his direction, but he ignores us and takes a long sip of his coffee.
“This one doesn’t really talk,” Cax explains to me, jerking a thumb at Mycroft.
“That’s because you use up all the words,” Mycroft says.
Stelly and the three boys seem to fall into easy banter. I let their chatter wash over me, finally able to forget about the mean faces beyond our table. My tight stomach eases enough that I can swallow the fluffy eggs and tender biscuits and bacon.
Their banter makes me feel lonely in the crowd. I’m not a part of it. They’ve clearly all known each other for years, and they fall into something warm and comfortable, and it makes me ache. But at least for now, they’re giving me cover from the bigger world of nasty looks and muttered snide comments.
I wish I knew why. They have to realize it’ll cost them something to keep sitting at the same table as me.
Mycroft checks his silver watch. “Tera, don’t you have History of Magic?”
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
“I’m the teaching assistant.” He pushes his plate away and stands, already slinging his dark brown leather messenger bag over his shoulder. “We can walk together so you don’t get lost.”
“Do I look like I’m going to get lost?” I ask lightly, trying to fit into their teasing banter.
Mycroft gives me a completely blank look. His big jaw is set, his lips pressed together. “Yes.”
I get up from my seat and throw my backpack over my shoulder. What if I don’t want to walk with you, Mycroft? What about that?
Just kidding. If there’s one thing I learned from my time Earthside, trying to keep myself unbruised and intact, it’s that any kind of crowd is better than being on your own.
“See you guys later,” I say to the table, as if they’re my friends, and they say it back.
Like I said. Any kind of crowd.
Chapter 8
I would never dare point this out to Mycroft, but girls stare at me as we walk together with gazes that could melt stone. When they aren’t trying to murder me with their eyes, they offer him bubbly hellos. Everyone we pass seems to say hello to Mycroft. He responds with the faintest nod. He’s just a warm, cuddly guy, I guess.
Mycroft turns to head up the stairs of a big stone building, and I hurry to follow him.
Over his shoulder, he tells me, “History and Lit.”
What? Right, that must be the department housed here.
A few students coming down the stairs smile and say, “Hi, Mycroft.”
He nods back. He is truly a sparkling conversationalist.
“I hope you’re not committing popularity suicide by being seen with me,” I tell him as we head up the wide, white stone steps. It’s strange how friendly everyone is to him when he doesn’t seem interested in being friendly back. What makes him so special?
He takes a quick step ahead of me and pulls the door open. I’m surprised when he steps to one side, holding it open for me. “I don’t care, Tera, so you shouldn’t care either.”
We walk down a long hallway with ancient wood floors and dark-stained wood framing the doorways. Between every few classrooms is an alcove with couches and bookcases and long tables. In the nooks, students read or practice their casting, their hands or wands dancing through the air. My heart lurches. I haven’t tried magic in years. It didn’t work Earthside. I learned that the hard way, trying desperately to cast as fingers closed around my throat.
Some crazy part of me wants to speak this fear out loud and have someone tell me it’s going to be all right—you were in the land without magic, Tera, but everything is going to be different here—but when I glance up at Mycroft’s impassive face, the words die on my lips.
Mycroft doesn’t seem like the type to offer me kind lies.
There are students standing around outside the door to my first class. A knot of girls with their books held against their chests glances at us and then lean in toward each other, speaking softly.
Mycroft opens that door for me too. I walk ahead of him into a small auditorium, with two dozen rows of seats stair-stepping toward the back of the room. Long windows at the side of the room fill it with gauzy morning light, brightening the old-fashioned wood and the forest green walls.
“I sit in the back,” he tells me before he takes quick strides up the stairs to the back of the classroom.
That did not sound like an invitation. I scoot into one of the rows, sitting at the end, and open up my near-empty backpack. I have a notebook, my pens, and the text for Casting 101.
My books were delivered to my room last night, in a brown paper bag from the campus bookstore. Stelly brought them in and threw them on my bed. I don’t know who bought my books for me; Lord knows I’ve got no cash to spend. The books are a small, strange mystery, and while I’m glad I’m prepared for class now, I don’t like mysteries. I woke up in the middle of the night worrying over it, over who’s done me a favor and what they’ll want in return.
The room fills up, but no one sits in my row. I flip through Casting without really reading it, just trying to look busy. The book is full of complex graphics, laid out as complicated mathematical vectors for harnessing the energy of matter through hand or wand motions. It makes magic look anything but magical.
“Good morning!” The woman standing at the front of the room is unusually tall, and her
blazer clings over her wide shoulders and shapeless waist. She wears a knee-length pleated skirt, revealing one tan, muscular leg and one metal leg. Her dark hair is pulled tightly back from her face, and her eyes are bright and keen. “I’m Professor Ruby Rose Radley. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I have asked my parents: why?”
There’s a faint rustle of amusement through the class, as students lean back, settling in. Her energy feels magnetic.
“I’ll be teaching your introduction to the history of magic. Our understanding of mathematics, science, and magic is deepened by understanding how those who came before us understood it. That’s why it’s a required class. Even though you didn’t have a choice about being here, we’ll have some fun along the way.” Her eyes catch at the top of the tiers. Mycroft comes down the stairs, stopping to hand stapled packages of papers to each row. “My TA is handing out the syllabus now. Please take one and pass across your row.”
Mycroft glances down my row, and his eyebrows rise slightly when he hands me one. Just one, because no one wants to sit near me. His gold-specked brown eyes meet mine, and my chin lifts in response before he continues down the aisle.
“For each class after this, I’ll ask you to read the relevant chapter in your textbook prior to coming to class, as well as an additional text, from The Secret Annals to Voices from the Savage Night.”
I run my fingers across the hard edge of Casting 101. Just pretend you’re a girl, an ordinary girl with no connection to the Savage Night. Except who is there with no connection to the Savage Night? Or the war that came after?
“Any questions on the syllabus? Yes?”
I’m barely paying attention when a girl in the front asks, “What’s the last part of history we’re going to talk about? Are we going into current events?”
Her voice is familiar, and then the boy behind her shifts slightly, and I see her short, dark bob. It’s Grace. Great.
Professor Radley rubs her hand across her leg and says, with humor, “Well obviously, the Savage Night conversation feels like current events to me. Especially when I wake up in the middle of the night and debate hopping to get a glass of water or not.”
There’s a soft murmur of surprised laughter from the class.
She lost her leg. In the Savage Night. Well, I probably shouldn’t hold out high hopes for an A in this class.
“So we’re going to talk about the fallout from the Savage Night?” Grace presses.
Grace glances over her shoulder at me, and Professor Radley’s gaze follows hers. The rest of the class twist in their seats. My cheeks heat. Professor Radley’s eyes meet mine, and even from here, there’s a challenge in those deep gray pools.
“Of course we are,” Radley says, and it sounds like a promise, to her and to me. “Magic has the potential to do great good or bad. Our class is as much Ethics as History. How many of you have taken a visit Earthside?”
A handful of people raise their hands, and I do too, a few seconds late. A visit. That’s a nice way of putting it.
“Dirtside?” Someone suggests in another row, and there’s another small ripple of amusement.
“Let’s be kind to our cousins,” Radley chides gently. “Without them, we wouldn’t have the ability to bring technology into our world where it serves the most good. For the record, the most good does not include your iPods.”
She illustrates her point: thanks to dirtside, we have split hospitals. On the side where electricity hums, doctors transplant an organ; on the other side, healing mages tweak matter to make sure the body takes the organ as its own, no medication needed. Absent-mindedly, I touch an old wound—a name raked into my skin—raised on the back of my shoulder. In Avalon, it could have been healed, if someone had been willing to help me.
“Are we going to read your essay on the Savage Night?” Miss My-Hand-Is-Always-In-The-Air asks.
“How many people had to read that in high school?” Radley asks. Hands shoot up, and she smiles. “I won’t do that to you again. But yes, we are going to talk about current events. The Savage Night keeps coming up, but I’m going to be clear here: that night is not what matters.”
The classroom goes dead silent. Radley kicks her metal foot into the side of the desk, making a thump.
“I’m entitled to my opinion,” she says, and the tension in the room eases. “I know many of you lost people that night, and in the ensuing battles. Another show of hands?”
Hands all around me rise into the air, quick and sure. I knit my hands on my textbook. Of course I lost people—I lost everyone I knew when they defeated my father—but I don’t count. Not in this world.
God, I wish people didn’t know who I was. How the hell does everyone seem to recognize me? I need the Witness Protection Program or something. I want to start over. I wouldn’t mind being Stelly, the Crier, Honorary Little Sister to the Crew of Handsome Men.
Radley nods. “So of course, we’re going to talk about current events. Donovan’s dream of abolishing technology from our world—and the next—and uniting Earth and Avalon didn’t die with him. They’ve gone to ground, but the rat army he raised is still scurrying down there. That’s what matters. History matters because it either infects or illuminates our present. ”
My lips part in surprise as Radley’s eyes lock on me again. I’ve been out of the loop ever since two guards dragged me past my father’s body. I assumed everyone involved with my father’s mission was wiped out.
“Let me ask the question everyone is dying to know, Ms. Donovan.” The warm humor in Radley’s voice doesn’t change the way my stomach tightens as everyone twists in their seats. “Do you have any evil plans to raise an army and take over Avalon?”
Everyone is staring at me. I stare back at her, my mind reeling. It should be an easy question to answer, damn it, but tears rise to my eyes in my panic.
Radley seems frozen up there, a smirk written across her lips. The people with their heads turned over their shoulders to me seem stopped in that pose too, their lips twisted in mockery or open in surprise.
Wait. The room is really frozen. I blink, but Radner doesn’t; the boy in front of me is frozen with his elbow hovering in mid-air, in the act of turning in his chair.
It takes powerful magic to freeze time. I rise from my chair, my legs shaking and wobbly. Something terrible must be coming.
“Sit,” Mycroft barks, settling into the chair beside me.
I stare at him, and he says impatiently, “Yes, I did this. Radley is going to be pissed, though, and it won’t hold long. And I’m going to blame you.”
“You’re going to blame me?” I demand.
“There it is.” He nods as if he’s pleased by the heat in my voice. His deep brown eyes are intent on mine. “Be angry, Tera. Anger’s not a great emotion to live with, but it’s a better one to show these people than your fear.”
“Why did you do this?” I ask, sweeping my hand to take in the classroom.
“Because you can’t get all weepy in this room,” he says bluntly. “You need to get strong in a hurry, and if you can’t be strong, you need to fake it.”
“But why? Why do you care?”
He stares at me, and I think he isn’t going to answer. Then he leans in slightly, close enough that I breathe in the scent of his aftershave. He smells good, a warm, dark spiciness, and I feel the sudden rise of an emotion that distracts me from my dread. He’s certainly not afraid of me.
“Just for the record, the magical world has as many bastards as the mundane one. It’s a point of pride to me to never let the bastards win.” He rubs his thumb across my cheekbone, catching a teardrop; the gesture is quick and familiar.
I pull back in my chair, my spine stiffening, even though I want to lean into his touch on my face. No one’s touched me kindly in a long time.
“In a second, I’m going to break the spell,” he says. “And you’re going to walk out of here. Okay?”
“And I can be angry,” I said.
“Sure,” he says lightly.
“Wrathful little blondie. Let’s see what kind of angry strut you’ve got.”
I’m pissed off at him too, but there’s no time to tell him that.
He snaps his fingers. The classroom lurches back into life; the people who’ve been out of time for a few seconds, losing part of their life, all touch their temples as if they’ve had a headache.
“What did you do?” Radley asks. There’s a different note in her voice that was so sure and smug before.
I stand up, throwing my backpack over my shoulder. Mycroft thinks he can decide how I should react? He’s getting a hell of a lot more than an angry strut. Because now I see Radley is scared. Deep down, she felt that way all along. She finds it painful to be in a room with me, just like I find it painful being here.
“I’m not wasting more time here today.” I jog down the stairs. “I’ll be at our next class, though. Maybe you’ll be ready to teach instead of bullying.”
“Go back to your seat,” she says firmly. By the time I reach the last stair, she’s taken a step back, bumping into the desk. She drops the book in her hands to the floor with a thump. Her hands rise to her sides, ready to cast.
“It’s amazing so many cowards were able to stop my father,” I say, then I sweep out of the room, letting the door slam shut behind me.
I run for the shelter of the library. I already know I’ll hide deep in the stacks and replay that conversation, feeling like a fool, embarrassed that I showed any emotion.
I might be making myself into the villain they see when they look at me.
But at least I didn’t cry.
Chapter 9
That afternoon, the door to my room swings open without anyone knocking. I don’t bother to look up from my bed, assuming it’s one of Stelly’s friends.
Then Airren says, “Holy hell, Tera Donovan.”
“Well, I’ll just be going.” Stelly swivels from her seat at the desk, already gathering up her notebook.