The Fae & The Fallen: Gifted Fae Academy - Year One

by Brittni Chenelle

  24

  Kaito

  I must’ve picked up my phone a hundred times to message my parents and tell them I’d turned things around, but every time I tried, I saw the last message my dad sent me, the disappointment ringing through every cold word of it. Why get their hopes up only to let them down again? Once I became Fae, they’d be proud. I was sure of it.

  Since I arrived at GFA, I had no luck connecting to the internet. It seemed like all I could do was call or text and download ebooks from the library. It wasn’t so bad when I was in the hospital, but now I was out and desperate to know what was going on outside the walls of the school. I made a mental note to ask Carter about it as I headed to Blue House.

  I had almost made it back, while partially dreading Carter’s remarks, when a very specific shade of blue caught my eye. I spun to investigate and my body pulsed. Round glasses, blue hair, and a sharply pointed nose. The bus stop guy. He was a few yards away, but I could have sworn it was the same guy I’d seen last week at the bus station, the one with the tattoo that matched the mark at the scene Reina described. It most likely circulated the news and internet by now, so why wasn’t this creepy guy in jail? He was chatting up a girl with purple hair tied into two ponytails. Mind your business, Kai. I planned to hurry past, but he turned to me and shot me the same malevolent smile he’d given me the day Raphael Mazarin died.

  “You,” I called without thinking.

  He grinned as I approached, dismissing the purple-haired girl with a wave. “Kaito Nakamaru,” he said with a nod.

  I gripped his gloved wrist and yanked his sleeve up to check his arm for the tattoo. He yanked his arm back in alarm, but it was too late. I’d already gotten a good look; his arm was completely blank.

  “What the hell?” he spat.

  “I-I-I’m sorry,” I said, my mind fogged with confusion. “I thought I saw you at the bus station the other day, like a week ago.”

  “So what, crazy? You think I stole your lunch money or something? You have issues. Besides, I’ve been on campus for the last few months since I wasn’t offered an internship this year,” he said as he pulled his sleeve over his exposed arm. “Man, how bad did Oden rock you?”

  I shook my head. “My bad, man. I’m a little off today.” It was a piss poor excuse.

  He nodded. “Well, no worries, bro. It happens. I’m Zane Blaque, by the way.”

  Zane Blaque? I hadn’t heard of him, which meant it must’ve been true that he hadn’t scored an internship worth media attention or even done well at the Varsity Tournament last year. What was wrong with me? I literally just got out of the infirmary and I was going around picking fights?

  I smiled sheepishly. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Not a problem. See you around,” he said graciously and headed back toward the class hall.

  I pulled out my phone and mindlessly tried to connect to the internet, hoping to dig up a little more information about Zane Blaque, but when I reached Blue House, I still hadn’t been able to connect.

  Carter stood, moving to his desk to get his guitar. “You’re alive,” he said, pushing a handful of blonde curls from his eyes.

  “Surprise.”

  “I heard they’re calling you a Noble now. Mission accomplished.” He sat on his bed and began to strum something mellow.

  “You don’t seem happy about that,” I said, but the calm of Carter’s gift soothed me.

  He shrugged.

  I sat on my bed, noting how much harder the mattress was than the one in the infirmary. “By the way, how did you hear about the whole Noble thing? I can’t seem to get onto the internet.”

  “Ah, yeah. The school barrier blocks the connection. They say it’s to help us focus and keep our minds off the status and stuff and on our studies and to keep the privacy of the school, but there was a breach using the connection like ten years back by some bum looking to cause trouble.”

  “Fuck, this place is like a prison.”

  His fingers danced over the guitar strings and I laid back on my bed.

  “There are a few ways around it. You can leave campus, but the area around the school isn’t the best. There’s a fort where some students go to hook up. That gets wifi, but it’s slow and spotty. Or if you’re friends with Briara, her gift has some kind of workaround, but she’s a total psychopath—voodoo witchcraft and such.”

  I stared at the ceiling and let myself float in the grasp of Carter’s music. I felt a rush of gratitude that I’d been assigned him as a roommate.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked, cutting through my serenity.

  “Shoot.”

  He paused, finishing the chord progression before he timed his question with the next. “Why is being Elite so important to you?”

  I sighed. He wasn’t going to let this go. “Because it's a one-way ticket to a great apprenticeship and ultimately to becoming Fae. Why isn't it important to you?”

  He strummed a little louder so we could still feel every note as we spoke. He looked out our window, and when his next question came, I wasn’t sure it was directed at me. “Is it really heroic if they pay you a million dollars to do it?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but my answer caught. He had a point. “If you don’t want to be Fae, what are you even doing here?” I asked.

  “I mean, of course I do. Everyone does and everyone has their reasons. Just think about it. Have you actually thought of your reason for trying to become Fae? Is it money? Status, perhaps? I wonder why your new friends want to be Fae. How many of us are actually trying to help people?”

  My fingers tapped to the rhythm. “Did those guys do something to you?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, man, I think I just… don’t like what they represent.”

  “And what I represent.”

  He leaned back against the wall without missing a note. “Nah, man. You’re cool. I just hope they don’t turn you into one of them. I hope you find a good reason before you sort of adopt one of theirs. The last thing we need is a new generation of camera-obsessed Fae.”

  I suppose I understood where he was coming from. Still, without the Fae, society would have collapsed ages ago. Why shouldn’t they be paid well to risk their lives for us? “Don't be so naive. The system may be broken, but that's the way the world works.”

  He sighed his disapproval. “Personally, I think it's a Fae's job to fix what's broken in the world. Don't you?”

  I didn't know what he expected me to say. "Whatever, man."

  25

  Reina

  Miranda stood in front of my dorm room with a smirk that said she knew something I didn’t.

  “I’ll let you settle in,” she said. “Cheer up,” she added.

  I forced a half smile and opened the door to find myself smack in the middle of some bizarre ritual. My nose was assaulted with a spicy aroma I couldn’t place. The layout of the dorm was plain enough, but the left side of the room was draped with black webbed fabric and littered with lit candles. It looked like Halloween threw up in there. On the free bed, the one that was supposedly mine, stood a girl with two purple pigtails tied up with black ribbon. She was wearing a school uniform but her blazer was slung over her bed—a pop of red in a sea of black. It looked like she was burning scraps of paper and releasing them into the air above my mattress.

  “Uh… hi,” I said sheepishly.

  She spun, nearly losing her balance. “Oh good, you’re here,” she said, “I thought I’d smudge the place for you before you got here. I thought I felt something nasty pass through earlier.”

  “Smudge?”

  She looked more confused than I was. “Yeah. Smudge, to rid this room of evil spirits.”

  I nodded. “Oh. Of course,” I said, too tired to inquire further. “Thank you. I’m Reina, by the way.”

  “Briara,” she said, hopping off the bed. She threw her arms around me and held me like a long-lost relative.

  “What’s that smell?” I asked as a strong w
hiff of spice hit my nose.

  She pulled away. “Sage. You have so much to learn.”

  I walked over to my bed, collapsing onto the bare mattress. I didn’t believe any of that spirit stuff, but I wasn’t going to let something so harmless bother me. One less thing to worry about. I was too tired for pleasantries and too emotionally drained from my hospital stay to put together more than a couple of words.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I groaned. “I have to pee.”

  “The bathroom is at the end of the hall.”

  I dragged myself back up and out the door, slogging toward our floor’s communal bathroom. As I walked, I sorted through my odd first impression of my new roommate. Rituals and spirits. Eh, she had her own style. Miranda’s smirk insinuated I was in for a ride, but she should have considered I was a tad offbeat myself. It wasn’t until I returned to my room that my opinion of Briara was cemented. While I was gone, she’d put a spare set of black sheets and blankets on my bed. I felt a wave of regret for not hugging her more sincerely the first time, but I hugged her again this time with every ounce of gratitude I could muster because my drowsy mind could not find the words.

  She patted my back and watched me lay on my new bed, pleased with her work as I snuggled in, gripping my charm. I felt something hard beneath my pillow and reached under to find the smooth object. I held it up to the candlelight. It was some kind of crystal or stone. I looked over at Briara and she shrugged. I smiled as I shoved it back under my pillow. It couldn’t hurt.

  When I awoke, I felt like a new person. The bulk of the year’s sea of suppressed sorrow had ebbed, I found myself feeling grateful that I’d gotten time with my parents at all and that they’d continued to guide me. Wherever they were, they must’ve pulled some serious strings to get me into GFA.

  “Ah. You’re awake.” I sat up, and Briara sat on her bed, sipping a cup of tea that steamed in front of her face.

  “Oh, you have a heat gift?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Hot pot.” She pointed to a silver pot that had a black base and a wire that was plugged in beside her laptop. “I can mess with radio waves, you know, if I’m touching something already connectable.”

  My eyes widened. “Can you, like, intercept messages?”

  “Really? That’s where your mind goes first? Most people here call me wifi girl because I’m the only one on campus who can connect.”

  “Oh,” I said, brushing the sleep from my eyes. “But that’s so cool, though. You must be one of the most powerful students here.”

  She shrugged. “So glad you think so. But that’s not the general consensus. Elites are chosen mostly by flash. I’ll easily get an apprenticeship, but I’ll likely be in some office intercepting waves instead of smashing bad guys like Oden Gates.”

  I moved back to lean against my wall. “Briara, right? Can I apologize for yesterday? And possibly thank you for… just everything?”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said. “I put your class schedule on your desk, there.”

  I jolted forward. “Class? Fuck!” I hopped out of bed. “Oh my god, I’m going to be late on my first day.”

  “Uh... Reina, it’s Sunday.” There was a yarn spider web pinned to the wall above her bed and a sudden memory of her seance slipped through. I smiled to myself and exhaled my panic.

  “Do you want to hang out today?”

  She lowered her teacup. “Really? I didn’t freak you out last night with all my… you know… ritual?”

  I scoffed. “As far as I’m concerned, your ritual was being exceedingly kind and forgiving of my poor manners.”

  She walked across the room and sat at the edge of my bed, her face turned away like she was trying not to say something. “May I ask what your gift is?”

  “You can, but I don’t know what it is yet.”

  She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t figured out what my gift is. Ms. Yarrow said—”

  “You’ve met Ms. Yarrow?”

  I nodded.

  “Beautiful, right?”

  I chuckled. “Stunning.”

  “So they let you in without knowing? I have to admit your schedule is… a little strange. Even for a sophomore, you have too many studies. They probably don’t think you’ll learn much in regular class without a gift. What about the new guy?”

  “His gift is levitation,” I said, Kai’s kiss shooting back into my mind.

  She spit her tea, snapping my attention back to her. “Sorry,” she said with a grin. “Everyone knows his gift. I guess I was asking how well you know him.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat, burying an ache in my chest. “Hardly.”

  26

  Kaito

  I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t get Zane Blaque out of my head. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I wasn’t mistaken. He was the guy I saw at the bus station, the one whose tattoo was somehow linked to the death of Raphael Mazarin. It didn’t make him a killer per se, but his chilling smile had me convinced he was involved. That theory was shot to hell when a few minutes after I’d last seen him, rumors began to circulate that another Fae was found dead on the far side of Ancetol. The only teleportation gifts were through Gemini Gates. So, unless he had a twin across town, he was most certainly innocent. Still, it couldn’t hurt to look into the guy.

  A knock at my door halted Carter’s guitar, which had become such a fixture in my life in a few short days that I felt uncomfortable in the silence. I even felt myself craving the calming effect of his gift. I opened my door to find Prince Finn Warsham. It was hard not to be starstruck. I didn’t care much about his title, but last year in the Varsity Games, he’d picked up a spear and pinned his opponent to the wall, just two inches from the finish line. Two inches. I knew specifically because after the games they measured the exact spot. He’d swept the round but didn’t fare as well in the other events. Still, that moment had always stuck with me as the most exciting of the Games that year. Now that I was at GFA, I’d get my chance to compete in next year's games which was the biggest perk GFA had to offer.

  I stared blankly. “Uh… Your Highness?”

  He grimaced. “Just Finn, please.”

  Quan Levout stepped between us, wrapping his arms around me. I froze while he gave me a tight squeeze, nearly pulling me off my feet as his lime-colored hair tickled my chin.

  “Uh… okay,” I mumbled.

  Quan dropped me and stepped back, beaming. “Man, you were awesome in that fight. Oden’s arm was pretty messed up. You were just like BAM BOOM! And he was all like whaaaa?”

  Finn rolled his eyes. “Oden wanted me to check to make sure you’re going to the fort this afternoon.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Carter knows,” he said, nodding to my seemingly uninterested roommate. “Bruh, will you show the new guy to the spot?” he said, his voice smooth and low.

  “You got it, man,” Carter said without looking up.

  Carter was a homebody and therefore seemed a little apprehensive about leaving the dorm to help me get on the internet, so these guys were my best shot. “Do either of you know how I can get online?”

  Quan nodded. “You trying to check your new status? It’s all over the internet, man. You’re officially one of us. No doubt you’ll get a sick internship next summer.”

  He rattled on and I turned to Finn for help.

  Finn shrugged. “There’s wifi at the fort, but we don’t go out there until nightfall. If you want to get online now, Quan’s really the only one with a workaround for security into Pink House.”

  “I’ll hook you up, man! It’s going to be so dope. I’ll, like, get you in and then you can, like, make me fly and shit in front of Miranda and you know, like, she’ll be all into me and whatnot.”

  I rubbed my hands together, mimicking his enthusiasm. “Let’s do this.”

  Quan’s eyes lit and I followed them outside, giving Carter a quick nod before I went. Quan
pulled me to the side of the girls’ dorm, away from the front entrance and security desk. He pulled off his gloves and slid them into his pockets. He took a nervous breath before he reached for my hand.

  “Are you afraid?” I asked, trying to read him.

  He laughed. “No man. I mean, you’re cool and we’re friends and stuff. You wouldn’t… you know, like toss me around or anything.”

  It amused me, but the moment he took my hand I regretted not giving his gift more thought before it was upon me. I felt my form shift along with his. My body bent and contorted in his power. I felt my hair reach my lower back and new unbalanced weight on my chest. Before my eyes, Quan changed into the girl I’d seen earlier with Zane Blaque. He now had a delicate face with purple pigtails, his skin paler, his waist smaller until there wasn’t a trace left of his real self. I was suddenly wracked with anxiety when I realized he’d transformed me into Reina. This was so messed up. Panicked, I tried to yank my hand away, but he tightened his grip.

  “Relax, man,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Pick someone else for me to be. Anyone else,” I said, but Reina’s voice came out. “It’s too weird to be Reina.” I patted my new body, unable to reconcile its appearance with how I felt. “And I don’t think her ass is this big.”

  Quan held up his phone and Reina’s black lace underwear moved across the screen.

  My eyes bulged. “How did you find out about that?”

  He laughed. “As soon as she got in, this video went viral on campus. I’m pretty sure every guy here has it saved to their phone.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. “This is so pervy.”

  Quan smirked. “You have no idea.”

  I yanked my hand out of his and wiped it on my pant leg. “Hard no on this mission.”

  He grinned. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t do it.”