Chapter Thirty-Three - Light
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Light
AFTER DINNER, I headed to my dorm room, tossing my books into a mess on my bed. Nick told me he would find out. The time ticked too slowly when I hadn’t heard from him. I knew he had more classes at the end of the day, having seen him lecturing when walking through the halls.
I focused on my books, trying to distract myself of the passing time in an unnerving silence. My eye caught onto Nick’s gray jacket that I hadn’t moved from the foot of my bed since our night at his hotel. I sighed.
My phone vibrated, it nearly fumbled out of my grasp with how fast I brought it up to my face.
A frown creased my brows, my lip pulled into my mouth before remembering the fresh coat of dark red lipstick I just put on.
CALEB: I need to talk to you .
ME: What’s up?
CALEB: It’s important. Meet me by the lake?
ME: It’s almost 8. There’s that curfew thing.
CALEB: We can be quick. It’ll be just you and me.
ME: Why not meet me on campus?
CALEB: Please? You won’t get in trouble. I’ll be on the council soon, I have sway. I really need to talk to you.
My mind spun with what could have been so important. Caleb did have a troubled side to him he kept hidden, if he wanted to open up, I wanted to be there for him. Briefly, I wondered if it was because he was mad when he saw me so close to the Basic Magic professor.
Of course, paranoia snuck in, it hadn’t really left. I wondered if his parents could have found out and how much he even knew about them. If he heard something, would he want to warn me? With everything that happened, it could have been vital to find out, even more if he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. At least if it was just us, I could trust his parents wouldn’t be there.
I stared at my phone. It really wasn’t long before curfew.
With all the mud near the lake from the rain, I decided on ankle-high black boots. The chill in the air was increasing each day it got closer to winter, so I grabbed my heavy A.V.A. sweater.
I shoved my phone in my back pocket and headed for the front of the academy. It was darker than recent nights with the sun setting earlier. The thick clouds loomed above, even the stars didn’t shine through. Coming up to the black iron gates, the front of the campus was notably empty with the upcoming curfew.
There were no portals outside the gate, no message from Caleb.
“Great,” I murmured, staring down at my boots, which weren’t the best for running. At least I had jeans on. “I’ll be quick,” I tried to assure myself. The lake wasn’t too far.
My hair had fallen out of a messy bun by the time the wide branches coming from the tall oak trees surrounding the lake came into view.
Scanning the trees, the ground got more damp the closer I got to the lake. It was too dark to make out anything around me, I couldn’t see anyone out here. A soft breeze passed me, increasing the night’s chill.
I called Caleb and got no answer while walking the edge of the water. After a few moments, I started heading back up to the academy. A flicker of magic rushed over the back of my arms before a large, swirling portal materialized behind me.
“See. There she is.” Christina’s unmistakable voice could be heard, even while it was hard to tell who showed up under the darkness of the trees. “I saw her leave right before curfew. She doesn’t know our world and clearly isn’t ready.”
I pressed the call button on my phone screen again. My head shot up when a vibration came from Christina’s bag.
“You took Caleb’s phone?” The words left me in a whisper, already knowing, laced with hidden anger about how fed up I was with her.
I squinted in the dark to see Chancellor Lastrada walking up behind Christina .
“He left it with me after spending the evening studying in my room. He’s seen what everyone else is learning about you. You should have stayed in the Unenchanted,” Christina said. The tension in her voice made it clear how deeply I had been getting under her skin. Her attempts weren’t working, she was at the end of her rope. It was hard to tell, but I knew her face was beet red with anger.
The chancellor threw a light orb into the air above us. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, dear. Harper comes from one of the most elite families, just as Caleb Thorne does. This will not help you. Hurry back, you’re out past curfew.”
The light above showed me just how much Christina’s eyes widened. She glared at me and turned to head back through the portal. Lastrada cast away the portal, within a second it was gone.
“Powerful families arrange marriages, as I’m sure you’ve learned. You have great magic to learn with, and more options than you know are in your future,” the chancellor spoke softly. I joined her, walking a comfortable pace by the lake, heading back toward Ares-Valentine.
I grimaced at the ground before looking ahead to avoid the way I could feel her eyes on me, that assessing stare. My eyes settled on a dark gazebo on the path ahead that had once been filled with students at the lake party, it was so empty now. I could never get used to their weird system to marry for power. I definitely didn’t want to be a part of that, but I stayed silent.
Lastrada continued, “Struggling to fit in is normal for your background. I urge you to stay within the council regulations and abide by our law under all circumstances, including the new regulations.”
She stopped walking, I stopped with her. My phone vibrated in my pocket with a call, but I didn’t want to risk checking it while I might have been dodging breaking the rules for the second time today.
She held out a hand. “Come. We’ll get you back before anyone’s noticed.” She cast a portal behind her.
An itch started at the back of my neck. My phone went off again. A cold chill ran through my body. I glanced around, feeling something off.
Finding nothing amiss, I nodded, reaching for her hand.
My head blared with a sudden splitting pain crashing against my mind. Relentless and fast. My steps faltered, my knees nearly gave out.
The realization of what she was doing to me hit as fast as her magic did. Lastrada hit a wall. I tried to force memories in front of it. It had worked once, but she was too powerful. Reactively, I accidentally pushed into her mind, not knowing what I was doing. She blocked it immediately. Her hand dropped from me, but it didn’t affect her connection to me. She ripped at my walls.
Panic, all too similar, ran up my body, slithering, tightening around me.
The fire potion lingered, just enough as a spark, trying to draw out my magic. Shadows poured from me instead, pushing her off me before I felt those claws fully take hold of me for the second time today. I knew how fast I had to be after just having it done, and was completely fed up with people trying to get into my mind. It was luck that my walls had stayed up nonstop since Trevor did it to me earlier.
Faster than I could react, light rose up from the ground in sharp threads. My stomach felt like it was in my throat when I looked down, seeing it exactly the same as a few nights ago.
“What are you doing?” I asked, nearly screaming.
“Stop opposing me, and you’ll have everything you’ve wished for.” Her voice held a different sound to it, like it was morphing, trying to be sickly sweet but coming off all wrong. Lastrada kept trying to force her way into my mind. Light burned the fabric of my jeans as it crept up my legs, holding me in place. She held out a hand behind her, pouring more magic into the portal to keep it open.
The fear rising in me was choking. Eyes stared back at me that felt like they saw straight through me. Those eyes. I knew then that I had seen them before, so long ago, surrounded by a small arch of fire that left the scars I wore. I stared at my hands, wanting shadows to protect me, but nothing happened.
The sharp claws finally broke into my mind, scraping the surface, and I tried with my life to pull my walls back up. Tears poured from my eyes while I felt paralyzed. She looked through my memories at the graveyard, searching further. My mind felt like it was tearing, a burning pain leaving me dizzy.
Shadows covered my vision. Shouts called out, and the claws released me.
I fell to the ground, grabbing my head. Taking a shaky breath, my hands dug into the damp ground below me .
“Harper,” a voice called out from farther away. I turned to the figure I knew I’d see. I could barely focus on him and keep myself from collapsing completely with the ache in my head. Nick’s eyes widened on me. His face turned to rage as he faced Lastrada.
Tendrils of shadows coiled around her, trying to pull her down. With a swift flick of her wrist, light burst forth, slicing through the magic trying to bind her. Nick didn’t stop throwing more magic. Her focus was completely on stopping his relentless incoming attacks.
“Chancellor?” Trevor’s voice shouted in an angered question. Within the dark, I caught a glimpse of him walking up behind Nick.
“She attacked Harper,” Nick said to him.
I swayed, trying to stand. “She’s in the society,” I shouted.
Trevor pulled water from the lake. It rose in a wave, landing between Lastrada and me, separating us while she focused on Nick. It gave me the chance to get a few steps away, I headed for the gazebo. My steps fumbled, waiting for the fog to clear my mind and the pain to recede.
Looking behind me, the water turned to mist, and Nick was shielding her strikes of light. Trevor came at her with ice, creating hesitation with some of her attacks.
I drew all the water magic I could hold, trying to solidify it, trying to pull from the lake behind her. The distant memories of screams in my head caused my heart to pound so loud it was all I could hear. It strummed in my ears while he focused on her attacks and how easily she thwarted them. I put everything into building the water magic, forcing it at her feet at the same time that Nick’s blast of shadows barreled toward her.
She stumbled back at the hit to her shield, but it forced her back just enough. The force of both of our hits had her falling back into the portal she created.
Nick crossed over to me in a run, through the trees.
“Did you know she was one of them?” I heard him ask Trevor, while Trevor ran after him.
“No, most stay cloaked,” he responded.
Before Nick could reach me, multiple swirls of forming portals appeared at the far edge of the open field, materializing in a long row. Not as many as in the graveyard, there were around seven of them. The academy was up the hill, with us settled between it and Deimos. We had to get out of here.
“Behind you,” I shouted to them.
Nick stopped before he could get to me. He turned around, seeing all the portals. Hooded cloaks poured out of them.
Trevor managed to get closer to me, but we were all too separated. Nick looked back at me from further ahead, he started forming a portal beside me. Magic started falling from the sky across the field as the figures, separated by yards, slowly started grouping up together. His portal failed, evaporating into the air. He switched to working on dissolving the attacks hurtling for us, unable to cast his own to fight back with so many.
“Don’t kill them, we need their magic,” one of the voices traveled through the night. The voice was so similar to the distortion I heard forming in Lastrada’s voice just moments ago. I stared at the center figure stepping forward, and I knew it was her, though now a black cloak covered her small frame.
I swallowed hard, focusing almost too slowly on whatever magic I could see to try to dissolve it before it got to us. We were outnumbered.
I wanted to reach for my phone, call someone to us, but the academy was on lockdown this late. No one would be coming. Too much started pouring down on us.