A University of Betrayal (The Blairville Legacies #2)

Chapter 2

Julie

Alone In This World

RealTunesStudio

Sometimes you can’t describe it, but when everything suddenly gets worse, when the rose-colored soap bubble bursts, then it’s already too late. You were floating, but fell the next moment.

I wish I had fallen after I slept with Erik. So often, I wished I could just let go, just like I could let go with him. His kiss, my first. His touch, so intense. Warm, rough hands on my sensitive skin, on my hips, my tits... his full lips...

It had felt perfect. Until that moment when I had lost control. And there was nothing worse, nothing more fatal, for a Quatura without a control stone than being at the mercy of her emotions.

I hadn’t paid attention to that with Erik. I had allowed feelings to take over, and that had been my mistake. He had managed to erase the right memories with his touch – for a moment. In an intense game of emotions and lust, he had given me control.

Then the brutal reminder that I wasn’t free, that I was living in Blairville, had come back... and with it, the cold. Up until that point, I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but no matter how hard I tried to make excuses, I kept coming back to the same painful conclusion: I was obsessed with control. Control made me survive.

Larghetto -Piano, Celestra, Strings

“Kendall’s Return”

Nicholas Britell

“She’s still unconscious. The only thing we know is that she survived it.”

Margot’s gaze lingered on me after she finished the sentence. It was only a fleeting glance, the kind she always gave me. Many words were hidden behind it, and to this day, what she didn’t say remained a mystery to me.

Then she picked up her wine glass and drank, looking at Amara.

“The bite has healed,” my aunt began, looking thoughtfully at the black candlesticks that adorned the richly laden table. “She’s strong.”

All I knew about Bayla Adams was that she had been attacked and badly injured by a feral Ruisangor on the night of October 31st.

“Apparently, stronger than many others within the Circle,” Amara continued and Ivy, who was still far too young for such matters, had to grin in my direction, whereupon Grace gave her a warning look.

“It’s time she officially becomes part of us.”

Amara looked at us all with a serious expression.

I could sense her concern, which had been drifting through this house like a thundercloud for three days. I didn’t know Amara like this because she usually managed to keep everything together with her calm nature. But if there was one thing she didn’t like at all, it was a change of plan – unknown events like this.

“That would require the rite of passage to work,” Margot remarked with unease.

“But it doesn’t,” Grace replied harshly. She had been tense the whole time. You could actually say that the whole house was suffering from the tension of its inhabitants. In moments like this, I sensed unfamiliarity. We had all known each other forever, yet it seemed as if I knew nothing about them. And they knew nothing about me.

“It will work.” Amara sighed as she put the glass down again. “Gloria and the Councils have already taken notice. They’re putting targeted pressure on us, which means we have to act. Bayla Adams will participate in the rite of passage again under your guidance.”

I looked in surprise at Amara as she looked back at Grace, who paused, stunned.

“I... I’m not even...”

“I wasn’t ready at your age either, and yet I had to do what was necessary to protect our Circle.”

Amara hadn’t said much about her youth, but we all knew that her and Margot’s mother had passed away at an early age, leaving Amara with a lot of responsibility. She had only been twenty years old.

“But...” Grace wanted to begin, but Amara interrupted her.

“Grace. You’re old enough.”

“It’s a rite of passage,” Grace blurted out indignantly.

“I had to lead my first rite of passage when I was seventeen.” Amara sounded impatient, probably because it wasn’t usual for Grace to argue when it came to the Circle. At least not in front of all of us at the dinner table.

“I’m so glad I’ll never have to do this,” Ivy snorted, putting down her fork. She was the only one finished, which was because Amara, Grace, and Margot usually led the conversations and I rarely got much down. Especially right now. My stomach was constantly tingling, and I was so focused on making sure my body didn’t unexpectedly take control of this strange magic inside me.

I looked down at my fingers, which were nervously playing with each other, their tips blue. Since the meeting with Erik, a slight shimmer had been growing beneath my skin whenever my body threatened to lose control. Magic coursing through my veins. An intoxicating feeling, but one that I couldn’t allow.

“Ivy, it is an honor to serve the goddess Moenia. Grace was given a special task with her calling,” Margot said calmly to her niece.

But Ivy was right. I couldn’t imagine anything harder than taking over the leadership of a Circle. So many duties, hardly any rest. You were the center of attention and weren’t allowed to make any mistakes, because one misstep could mean the downfall of the entire community. In other words, it was a position in which I would fail miserably.

“I don’t feel ready yet...” Grace tried again.

“You’re going to perform this ritual. And with that, I would like to end this discussion.” Amara did not allow anyone to argue with her when it came to decisions concerning the Circle. Never.

“Mum…”

I looked at Grace in surprise because she had never broken the sister rule before, even telling Ivy off when she didn’t follow it. But the fact that she was now addressing Amara familiarly and that as the predicted chosen one of the prophecy and as a future Domini...

“Grace. What’s wrong with you?” Amara asked, confused.

To be honest, it felt good when others from this family drew attention to themselves because it made people forget I was there.

Grace jumped up and stroked her brown corkscrew curls without success.

“If you’ll excuse me.” With these words, she stormed through the first floor and ran audibly up the stairs.

“Dear Lord.” Amara sighed and shook her head. Then she put the wine glass to her lips and downed the entire liquid. I had the urge to do the same, but the manners I had been taught forbade it. Besides, the wine, which had been lying in Moenia’s cellars for two hundred years, tasted miserably bitter.

“I hope she’s just having a bad day, otherwise we’ll be in trouble.”

“Why are you so worried, Mum?”

Amara looked at Ivy for a moment, but she was clearly too tired for discussions, so she ignored the personal address and answered Ivy’s question.

“You have to understand that if something happens to one of us, and we lose that person, it means we’ve failed to protect the Circle. We are like a body. If one organ is injured, it is difficult for the others to continue working.” She leaned back in her chair and looked at the window behind Margot, but it was dark outside, and I doubted that she could see even the slightest thing happening there. “Besides, Gloria is breathing down our necks. She’s just looking for ways to tighten the rules to guarantee the Councils more control over the town.”

“Doesn’t that also serve to protect us?”

I knew Ivy hadn’t meant the question entirely seriously. She was young, but not stupid, and noticed things others overlooked.

Amara laughed sarcastically before turning serious again. “Control is not protection. Control is power. And the one who has that power decides what to do with it, whether to use it for good or bad.”

My throat tightened.

I knew what she was implying, even if she didn’t say it. Nothing was more dangerous than going against the Councils. The Councils wielded great power in the role of the Circle’s opposition, pretending to restrict us so we didn’t do anything forbidden, but in reality, even Ivy sensed their dangerousness. Lots of rules and a uniform system. But the real problem was something else, a mission they were pursuing. They had seen a threat in the existence of the other species for centuries, and Gloria seemed to want to take it to the extreme.

I had long wondered how the Councils had gained so much power in a short time like this, but I had stopped when my lessons in Tempesta had begun. I wasn’t allowed to question the system, especially not as a student of Gloria Westcode, the head of the Councils. It just made you unnecessarily depressed to realize how trapped you were here.

“That’s why it’s important that we make no mistake and act as soon as something threatens us,” Amara continued.

“Like the Ruisangors?”

Ivy was good at bringing up topics that made others ache inside.

Over the last few days, there had been heated discussions between Amara and Gloria’s daughter, Amanda. She had conveyed that Amara was expected to take action, to push for stricter laws against the other species by signing new treaties and agreements. Amara had managed to negotiate compromises. The removal of the Bardots from our territory, more security at the university, whatever that meant... Nobody really talked about it, but you could tell that the Councils were taking their chances to push their interests forward.

“If Bayla wakes up, we shouldn’t have any problems,” Margot said quickly, but Ivy hit the mark again.

“What about the other girl?”

Silence.

The chances of Larissa still being alive were slim. Few people survived a serious Ruisangor bite, and the likelihood that they had taken Bayla’s friend as prey was just as plausible by now.

I had texted Larissa several times, but the messages hadn’t even gotten through, further lowering my hopes that she was still alive.

Ruisangors were ruthless, cold-hearted, and murderous. That was all I knew about them, but I wasn’t afraid of them. The thing I was most afraid of was myself.

“There’s still a lot to do at the town hall. If you’ll excuse me,” Amara interrupted the meal, visibly upset by recent events, and pushed her chair back before hurrying off across the dining room, still dressed in her dark brown business suit, causing the candles to flicker wildly.

You could see how much the responsibility was getting to her. Her attempts to hide it from us had failed. Even I sensed it somehow. Again, something I couldn’t be happy about inside, but I was. It hid my imperfection. A miserable hiding game, exhausting and tedious. I felt like a traitor. The black sheep of the family who had to keep dyeing her wool white to avoid being discovered. Like a proliferating foreign body.

“Don’t you like your food?” Margot interrupted the silence, which always made me so uncomfortable because it increased the chance of being spoken to, like now.

I stared at her, overwhelmed because I wasn’t used to her talking to me. Since I actively avoided her, she accepted my decision as if she didn’t care about me. I knew it deep down, but had suppressed it for years until it came up, and from then on, I had kept my distance. Margot was part of the circle as Servus, a sister out of formality, nothing more.

“I’m not that hungry,” I stuttered and stood up a little too quickly, not wanting to give this ridiculous small talk another chance.

“Where are you going, Julie?” Ivy asked, eyeing me intensely.

She took after Amara a lot. Not only were there signs that she carried earth magic, but she often radiated the same determination and calmness as her mother. You got the feeling that you could tell her anything, that you could open up. It was almost deceptive because I knew how fatal it could be to open up to others. And she was a goddamn child.

“I will... check on Grace,” I finally said, nodding to her and Margot before I actually decided to check on my cousin.

Cellar

Jay Varton

I knocked cautiously on the wooden door decorated with Victorian patterns, but no one answered.

Sometimes I doubted my hearing, and if I hadn’t known that Grace was always silent when someone knocked, I would have gone to my room and surrendered to my endless spiral of thoughts. Instead, I slipped through the slightly open crack of the door into the room, where a tense Grace was hunched over her desk, studying old tomes on earth magic.

She hated it. She never said so, but the reluctance with which she always reached for those books was impossible for even me to miss.

I looked around, but the room was unchanged, full of plants, shelves of vials filled with dried herbs, covered with faded labels with their contents written in black ink. Then there was the crystal collection among all the books on the shelves, coal drawings of earth magic runes that all worked at the same time, one against dust, another against intruders, and then there was the one for dreams, all combined with the right minerals that allowed them to work.

I was always amazed at what Earth Quatura were capable of, and what they could do with herbs and elemental symbols made from crystal pigments. The fact that simply using different minerals for the same symbol had a different effect also made this magic so complex. I was not surprised that the Earth Quatura were assigned the task of Domini.

“What do you want, Julie?”

I bit the tip of my tongue.

“Are you still mad at me for going home without you? I mean... the Halloween party...”

I pressed my shaking hands together behind my back.

Grace turned to me.

“Jesu s, Julie, it’s not always about you.”

I winced.

It was never about me. I made sure of that. Yet, our recent conflicts had been about me.

Hesitantly, I tried a different approach. “You can tell me if there’s anything.”

I knew I was asking her to do something I had never completely given her myself and probably never would be able to, but Grace wasn’t afraid to be honest with me.

“I can’t believe you can’t show a bit of understanding for my situation. Not you, not Margot, and certainly not my own mother! Everything is so sudden, and I’m carrying this burden on my shoulders.” She looked at me with an unclear expression. Her make-up was a little smeared, as if she had been crying. “You know what the funny thing is? I didn’t choose it. If I’d had the choice, I would never have gotten into this position.” She ruffled her hair and turned back to the table to close the book and then take it to one of the many shelves. “What I’m reading here is far too much knowledge.” She shoved the book between all the other thick handbooks. “I admire her every goddamn day, how she manages it all, all the responsibility she balances on her little finger.” She made a gesture with her hand, then went back to the desk and put her writing materials in the leather pencil case that had belonged to our grandmother. “But that’s not me. That’s my mother. And just because she managed to take over an entire community so young doesn’t mean I’ll be able to.” She then lifted up the book for the introduction to business studies for first-year students. “Just like this ridiculous university degree.” She slammed the book into the corner, making a noise that made me wince again. “I hate it!” she said out loud. Then she dropped onto her bed and started to cry.

In situations like this, I feel extremely helpless. I was unable to empathize with others, let alone show any real compassion. All it did was evoke a certain nervousness, an awkwardness.

Nevertheless, I walked over to Grace, sat down carefully and put my hand on her back, just as Amara often did with Ivy when she hurt herself while playing and then cried.

Grace flinched, and I withdrew my hand.

“God, Julie, you’re freezing.”

I quickly hid my hands between my thighs and said sheepishly, “I’m probably still a bit sick.”

Luckily, she didn’t elaborate but started playing with the green crystal on her neck. It glowed slightly, which was due to the fact that she was very emotional at the moment and was storing some of her excess magic in it. Without the control stone, uncontrollable things would have happened now, just as they had with me.

“I just need a break.” Grace sounded exhausted, just like Amara had earlier when she’d gotten up and left. “But I can’t afford to take it like others here.”

I knew she meant me, but I left it at that, not letting it get to me.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I finally asked with caution.

“The only thing I expect from you is that you understand me, Julie.” Grace looked at me now, her gaze so emotional that I found it hard to understand the meaning behind her facial expressions. “There will come a time when I will be your Domini, and then I will want you by my side as my closest advisor.”

Her words made me feel like I was doing her wrong, lying to her, even betraying her. I wasn’t the close friend she always thought I was. All I knew at that moment was that I was dangerous. My new magic was consuming me, and it was only a matter of time before something would happen that would scare Grace.

I would have loved to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t. I would do my best to protect her, to be by her side, just as she wanted. And I knew at that moment that I had to be submissive. Not for the goddamn Circle, but for Grace.

Alone In This World

RealTunesStudio

I sat on the floorboards of my room and wrapped the book about the Gorgon sister Medusa in plain brown wrapping paper, simply because we had nothing else. The reason I did it was because of the chat with Erik and my feelings of remorse, which only made the uncontrollable magic inside me even more uncontrollable.

After I had put distance between this far too beautiful reality and my real one last night, Erik had texted me directly, and I hadn’t dared to reply until this morning.

Normally, I rarely felt the urge to destroy things, but when I read this message, I felt like throwing my phone out of the window.

I regretted nothing of what we had done. Not a single kiss, not a single touch, not that I’d had my first time with him. The memory alone was enough to send a tingle down the inside of my thighs.

But I couldn’t give him false hope, so I had sent the second most painful message of my existence.

It had taken Erik a while to reply. And I had tried to take away the pain that my own messages caused me with another. The two fresh red lines on my wrist were still shimmering.

Feelings that I had been too blind to see until that moment when Erik and I had faced each other for the first time.

He deserved better. Someone who was allowed to return his feelings. And nothing hurt more than knowing that I would never be that someone. I was a Quatura, and anything like relationships with people that went beyond mere sexual intercourse was strictly forbidden.

J: Whatever you feel, I don’t feel it.

No answer from him. Four new cuts.

Maybe I was simply wrapping up this book to repress what had happened, to save something that could no longer be saved, and to somehow apologize. But no thousand books in the world would make up for what I had destroyed between us.

After all, Erik’s birthday was coming up soon. I didn’t know how old he would be and whether this address in Vancouver was still valid, but I would send it, as I always did. A number on the package would eventually send it to his correct address, just the way his book packages had always reached me.

The irony that we both lived in Blairville only made my heart clench harder. I had taken another dose of Gloria’s liquid Salma to dull my emotions, but it didn’t really help. It was like a protective wall built around my heart, but anything to do with Erik quickly found a way through this facade.

I carefully slipped the letter into the last open gap in the package before closing it for good.

I would have to scar my whole body for this letter, and it wouldn’t be enough because it would take away my pain, but not Erik’s.

Why had the gods sent me someone who was good for me, only for me to destroy him?

No. There were no gods. There was only me, and I was responsible for all my suffering. All the suffering that had ever happened to me was a consequence of emotions I had allowed, emotions that had made me weak or a hopeless dreamer.

I forced myself to focus on the soft brown ribbon, but my gaze kept slipping to my wrist. This time, however, I managed to look down at the plain silver bracelet Grace had made for me. It contained wolfsbane extract, which helped against Senseque and was often combined with silver against Ruisangors. Holding it to their neck should be enough to shock or even burn them, but I doubted I would ever need it.

I usually wore the silver bracelet Grace had given me for my birthday two years ago, but I hadn’t been able to find it this morning.

I forced myself to take my eyes off my arm and looked down at the package in front of my knees.

I wouldn’t blame Erik if he burned it. And I would welcome it if the gods returned to me all the suffering, I had given him.

My eyes automatically wandered from the package to my bookshelf and I stood up, headed for the right half of the shelf, and pulled out the first book Erik had sent me. It was a collection of texts by Plato with a fine leather cover, something very simple and yet so important to me.

I opened the first page and read Erik’s spidery note.

My Charis,

I thought of you when I was in the second-hand bookshop in my town today. This collection has a beautiful cover, and I’ve always wanted to send you books anyway. I hope you can do something with it.

Erik

It had been silly of me to bring up those old memories. It was as if Gloria’s drug had completely lost its effect.

I hastily slammed the book shut and shoved it back into the gap before any more ice crystals could wander across the cover.

I went to my bed and sat down next to my sleeping golden retriever puppy.

He had visibly grown over the last two weeks, and I had taken him more and more into my heart.

In situations where I thought the destructive magic coursing through my veins would burst out of me at any moment, it helped to run my fingers through his pleasantly soft fur. Sometimes I even started talking to the dog, but only when we were alone.

Buddy made me feel less lonely, and it had always been the case that I seemed to get on better with animals than with people.

Bang .

I startled and looked at the window pane, where something black was sliding down.

“What the...” I whispered and stroked Buddy’s fur reassuringly, as he was also startled.

I stood up and walked to the window, glancing out over the Victorian tower roofs of Moenia.

My breath caught when I spotted the many ravens circling above the mansion and darting dangerously close to my window.

There had always been many ravens here, as if the Blair family crest attracted them, but today there were especially many, mainly outside my window.

Buddy jumped off the bed, but quickly discovered something to distract him from the moment of shock. The package on the floor.

My heart leapt uncomfortably.

I had to send it before I changed my mind.