Chapter 12 Rivals #2
“I’ll admit your knowledge is compelling.
Your argument was powerful. I can see ambition in your eyes.
I know you want this, and I know you would do well, but that doesn’t change the fact that the best way to keep you safe is to avoid this altogether.
You’ll be perfectly happy with linguistic magic with the rest of the Rhetoric scholars once you learn how to cast in your second year.
Celestial magic is nothing more than a medium for the same power. ”
“You don’t know what’s best for me. I do. I need this.”
“Whatever you think this will fix, I promise it will only make things worse.”
She seethes. If he won’t be her mentor, she’ll make him her hostage. Pointing at his chest, she says, “If you don’t help me, I’ll tell people what you are.”
She tells herself she’s not blackmailing him—she’s simply giving him an ultimatum. This is not a threat; it’s persuasion. It’s an ironclad argument. It’s—
It’s rhetoric.
He laughs, but fear sparks in his eyes. “Claudia, everyone here knows about your application to Astrologia. They all think you’re a silly star-obsessed girl who’s not bright enough to understand the truth. If you start rattling off about celestial magic, no one will believe you.”
Wrath flares in her fists. She wants to wrap her hands around his neck and squeeze. “It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe me, because Odette’s killer will. And then they’ll come for you.”
“They would come for both of us, foolish girl. They would burn you, too.”
She gives a half shrug. “Let them. Either you train me, or we’ll both die. Your choice.” The words taste sour on her tongue. She can’t believe she’s making her own devil’s bargain for the sake of satisfying the first.
Color drains from his face. “You are a nightmare.”
The comment should hurt, but it only makes her smile.
Dorian would be proud.
“I’ll meet you in front of the Astrologia wing at midnight. Don’t be late.”
Bishop, ever dedicated to his hunts, is waiting with another diary entry when Claudia gets back to her bedroom. Before she reads, she feeds him a juicy, long-legged spider she found on the floor of the Treaty. He lunges for it, snatching it from her hand and swallowing fast.
“Good boy,” she says, then picks up the diary entry.
October 29th
The architecture of Starlake is not too dissimilar to Cygnus itself.
Starlake is no cathedral, but it is sharp and grand and secret.
It bends and twists in odd places, sits impossibly level upon uneven terrain.
It looks as if it was not made by entirely mortal means.
There is magic in its bones, eyes in its walls.
I don’t know whose magic, whose eyes, but while we were there, I felt it everywhere, in every room.
In the sitting room, Cassius was draped like a blanket over the chaise, and Marcherie curled like a cat at my side.
Alistair was in the kitchen mixing some strange brew with herbs he stole from Cygnus’s greenhouse.
It smelled, to put it kindly, like shit.
He balanced four cups across his palms and served us all.
The smell was far worse up close, like shit AND death. Deathshit.
- What poison is this? Cassius asked.
- It’s tea made from mushrooms.
- It doesn’t smell like mushrooms.
- You don’t have to like it. You only have to drink it.
Alistair gulped it down with grace and poise, wiped the corners of his mouth with his pointer finger, and smiled. He made it look easy.
It! Was! Not!
- I have a good feeling about this, Marcherie said.
- Do not confuse hope with intuition, Cassius said.
- Open your heart, Cassius. Let a little hope in. It will be good for you, she told him.
And oh, after, after we all drank it down, it was glorious.
All of us, we shed our clothes and skin and the entirety of our mortal selves.
We entered into the sublime, naked and wanting.
We became one another. We leapt from the estate and the moon descended upon us.
I kissed Marcherie and tasted the ocean.
Alistair licked the dirt and grew flowers in the pit of his stomach.
Marcherie’s voice halved and doubled and tripled, tangled in harmonies with herself.
Cassius was different from us all. On his knees, he begged the stars to break his curse.
- Can you hear me? he cried. Can you undo what you have done to me?
A star floated down toward him, catching on the wind like a feather, and just before falling into his grasp, it erupted. Like a dandelion, little white wishes exploded into the air.
He never got to touch the star. The look on his face then… I wondered if he had hoped too hard, if he had taken a lethal dose of it. Something in him died that night, and when we awoke in the morning, all bloody and bruised, we awoke alone.
No god.
No answers.
It did not work.
It was all for nothing.
Claudia checks her gold timepiece. Three hours to go until she gets to see the Astrologia wing for the first time.
Perched on her balcony in the dwindling light, she sips Earl Grey tea and rereads the diary entries she’s found.
She rewards herself at the end of each page with big bites of a stale cinnamon scone; she doesn’t feel like walking all the way back to the Treaty for a new one.
The courtyard below is lovely, bottomed by a lick of red leaves.
She wishes she had the artistic ability to paint it.
Perhaps she should be like Odette and keep a diary, if only to remember it all.
She retrieves an empty journal and returns outside just as Cassius steps out onto the balcony below hers.
Until now, she hadn’t realized her room was on top of his.
She’ll start being a whole lot louder—stomping on the floor, dropping stacks of books, maybe even rearranging furniture.
She can’t wait to disturb him. With his balcony positioned a bit to the left, Claudia only has to lean over her railing to look directly at him standing in the center.
The distance between her and her rival is only about ten or twelve feet.
She can clearly see the vibrant blue of his eyes when he looks up at her.
Claudia gives a polite wave. Cassius nods his chin almost imperceptibly.
His robes are undone and he’s not wearing a shirt underneath.
She can see teases of his sculpted torso.
They’re the only ones here, and their eye contact persists while a breeze carries fiery leaves through the air.
“Nice weather,” Claudia calls down to him.
“Not particularly.”
“I was just making conversation.”
“I’m not interested in conversing.”
She rolls her eyes and retreats from the balustrade. They’ll never get along, will they? She shouldn’t care. She doesn’t care. But she does want to know—
“Do you still think I killed Odette?” she says, leaning over the edge again. Her wild curls wave in the wind.
“Sometimes,” he says without looking up. “Other times, I think you’re not nearly clever enough to get away with it.”
She tears a blank page from her journal, balls it up, and throws it at him. He winces when it hits his nose. He glares up at her, and she smiles.
“How right you are,” she says mockingly. “I’m just a silly girl who wouldn’t know where to begin when it comes to murder.”
Why is she taunting him about this? If anything, she should encourage his underestimation of her. Damn her pride, she can’t help but want to prove him wrong, even if it would mean revealing what haunts her every day: She is a killer.
“It has nothing to do with your gender. I imagine the killer would have had to be much smarter than Odette, and you aren’t.” He looks down. “Even as she declined toward the end.”
She crosses her arms, but she lets go of her retort with a sigh. Ever curious about her predecessor, Claudia ignores the insult and asks, “What happened toward the end?”
He pauses, seemingly unsure of how—or if—he should answer. His gaze drifts to the sky and his sharp jaw tightens. “She was seeing things.”
“Seeing what?”
He wipes any expression off his face and runs his hand through his wavy black hair. “I’m not discussing this with you.” He stands, stretches, and salutes up to her. “See you around, Star Girl.”
For a second, she leans down as far as she can, trying to keep him in her eyeline. Staring at his back, she can’t help but notice his charmingly messy hair, the impressive width of his shoulders, and, lower, his perfectly sculpted—
She nearly falls over the ledge.
Pulling herself back, she buries her face in her hands and groans. She cannot be attracted to Cassius MacLeod, of all people. He’s the one she needs to destroy.