Chapter 3
Periwinkle
Shanty saunters from one side of the classroom to the other as she gives her lecture. The siren’s blue hair sways with her sleek hips.
“If you’re spending time in the mortal world, it’s inevitable that you’ll need to interact with humans now and then.
That’s why understanding the basics of politeness is so important.
In your pairs, the more established student should demonstrate to the newer student how you’d ask a human for minor assistance. ”
I glance over at Vim, the being Shanty paired me off with. Politeness hasn’t seemed to be one of her strong points in our past conversations.
Her scowl today is a little milder than usual, but I don’t think that means she’s softened to me. She’s just less sure what to make of me after the news of my victory on a mission for the headmaster—and whatever rumors are swirling about the strange new power I’ve displayed.
Vim squares her broad shoulders ominously but then pastes a vacant smile on her face. “Excuse me. Could you point me to the nearest corner store?”
She’s definitely better at being polite to me as an imaginary human than me as the being I actually am.
Shanty brushes past us with an approving pat of Vim’s back. “Good. Now, the other partner should take a turn. Think of something you’d need to find or know if you’re on your own in an unfamiliar setting. And experienced students, don’t make it too easy for them.”
I take a breath, and a ripple of emotion niggles at the back of my mind.
Part of me considers ignoring it, but a pang of guilt immediately follows that impulse. What if someone’s hurt or in trouble?
I let my focus on the task in front of me relax and open myself so the feelings sweep through me.
Someone’s irritated Hail, off on the other side of this school building. Jonah’s working through a difficult problem that’s making him stressed. He also has an annoying itch he can’t quite reach.
Mirage—er, I think he’s relieving himself in the bathroom, with some delight at the stream.
And Vim is staring at me with growing impatience.
I’m still getting the hang of balancing my own thoughts with the unpredictable flow of emotions from the men I accidentally marked.
It doesn’t seem right to neglect them—but it’s awfully hard to concentrate on pretend scenarios for my schoolwork when their very real presence follows me around like four nagging ghosts.
I scramble to get back on track. What would I need if I was showing myself in the human world?
Good emotions to feed on. Happiness and excitement, but nothing too extreme.
I offer Vim a warmer smile than she gave me. “Hey there. What do people around here do for fun?”
I taste the pleasure she takes in following Shanty’s instructions to be difficult. “Why are you asking me? I don’t know you.”
She starts to turn away, and my heart lurches. At the same time, a surge of mingled hunger and disgust smacks into me with the impression I know is Raze.
He’s going on a hunt, and he’s ashamed that he needs to kill to feed his body.
I can’t help him with that problem from a distance—and being aware of his insecurity without him sharing it voluntarily feels like an intrusion.
I bury my connection to him as deep as I can in my consciousness and yank my mind back to the being in front of me.
Vim has raised her eyebrows.
“I—I’m new in town,” I say hastily. “I didn’t mean to bother you. You looked like you might know a good place to hang out and meet people.”
“A decent start,” Shanty says from right behind me, so abruptly my pulse jumps. I didn’t notice her approaching. “You’ll want to sound more confident. And it’s usually better to let people know you’re new right away, even to apologize for asking for help, before you get to your question.”
As Vim’s lips curl with a trace of a sneer, I nod. “Yes, of course. I’ll remember that!”
Before we have to do any more mortal socializing practice, the bell rings to signal the end of class—my last class of the day. I start to relax, getting up out of my chair.
Then another burst of emotion jolts through my unintended bonds.
Mirage—he’s restless. Some students in the courtyard are totally asking to have a prank played on them, and suppressing the urge is making him feel stifled.
My stance has gone rigid as the sensation ripples through me. I recognize it and set it aside, knowing the fox shifter probably doesn’t want to be reminded of the ways I’ve inadvertently confined him.
Fen sidles up beside my desk. “Hey… Are you okay? You’ve seemed pretty distracted.”
I have to smile at her concern. The water nymph is the only real friend I’ve made at the academy other than the men I’m now treading on uncertain ground with.
“It’s just all the…” I wave my hand vaguely toward my chest, not wanting to talk about my unique situation out loud in front of our classmates.
I told Fen last night what’d happened, so she’ll be able to fill in the blanks.
“I don’t want to tune it out completely—and I can’t really—but it’s hard paying attention to everything at once. ”
“Of course it would be! I can’t even imagine.
” Fen links her arm with mine as we head out of the classroom.
“I was thinking—maybe we should look up mate bonds and all that stuff on the internet. There are computers in the library. A lot of the information on supernatural phenomena is pretty silly, but some humans have figured out useful facts. We’d at least get an idea of the possibilities. ”
My spirits lift at the thought of getting a better handle on the weirdness I accidentally created. “That’s a great idea. You don’t have to help—I could do the research on my own. If you were planning on doing something with Brine.”
I think I’ve managed to keep any sign of jealousy under wraps. I shouldn’t mind that Fen found another friend, someone who understands her unique challenges as a water-based shadowkind better than I can. And I don’t want to overstep and take up all her time.
“Oh, that’s fine. I want to see what we can find out! And we’ll hang out with her at dinner anyway.”
“Great.” I aim a grateful smile at her.
Most of the reform building students are glad to be done with classes and have no interest in taking on additional work. All but one seat by the two rows of computers are free.
Fen and I sit down at a machine, and I stare at the screen and then the keyboard. “I, um, haven’t actually used one of these before. I’ve seen people use them, but I’m not sure where to start.”
“Oh! Here, I’ll show you.” Fen clicks on one of the little pictures on the screen, which opens up a big white square that takes up most of the space. She taps the keyboard to type a couple of words into the narrow rectangle at the top of the square. Mate bonds.
A bunch of text pops up on the screen. Who says humans don’t use magic?
I peer at it avidly. “There’s all kinds of information about them!”
Fen cocks her head. “I’m not sure what all this is referring to.
Look, those two are talking about fae. This one mentions werewolves.
It looks like some of the pages are lists of books—made-up stories.
But then humans think that shadowkind are all kinds of made-up ‘monsters’, so something useful could come up there too. ”
She scrolls through the search results, clicking on one line of blue text and another so we can scan the write-ups they lead to. A lot of the “pages” include a whole bunch of words and names that I’ve never heard of before, so I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with my powers.
The farther we go, the deeper the puzzled furrow digs into Fen’s forehead. “Do you have some kind of special scent thing with the guys? Like their smell makes you feel… tingly or something?”
I remember Raze’s tart but musky scent. It’s delicious, but that’s not the part of him that’s really made me tingle.
No, that would be his hands… and lips… and tongue… and—
I can’t restrain a giggle. “I guess I notice how they smell when we’re close to each other, but there’s nothing magical about it. And the impression I get hasn’t changed since the connections formed.”
“Hmm. It seems like a lot of these bonds supposedly happen with animal shifters. You can’t shift into any kind of creature, can you?”
“As far as I can tell, I’m still human-ish looking even in shadowkind form, just shinier.”
Fen taps her mouth. “Raze and Mirage are shifters, aren’t they? And Hail is fae.”
“Yeah, but Jonah is human,” I point out. “And the bond marks came from me. I don’t even know what I am for us to search for that.”
“There’s a bunch of talk about fated mates. Was there, like, a magical vibe that drew you to all of them before the whole marking thing happened? Did you feel a jolt when you first saw them or a zap when you first touched them?”
That sounds painful. Who would want zappy bonds?
I shake my head. “Before I got to know them, I was friendly with them for the same reasons I’ve been friendly with everyone else, as much as I can. Nothing different happened. I started to like them more as I got to know them. Just like with you. Except…”
My hair flickers with a brief ruddy glow.
Fen grins at me. “Except you want to cuddle up with them.”
“Yeah. That part.” I squint at the screen. “It seems like in most human versions of how magical bonds work, they can decide to talk to each other in their heads and things like that. That seems a lot more useful than just getting hit with emotions all the time.”
“I guess it would be. Well, let’s see if we can find anything closer to your situation.”
A faint prickle spreads through my chest. I adjust my position, figuring it’s an effect of my frustration. “Definitely. Keep going.”
We read on through several more sites, none of which mention anything that sounds like what I’ve experienced.
“Did you have dreams about them before you met?” Fen asks in a tone that’s already skeptical.
“Not that either. I don’t dream much… When I do, it’s usually about food.” I grin despite the ache that’s now seeping down to my gut. “Does that mean I’m fated for delicious meals?”
Fen laughs. “Let’s hope so.” She moves on to the next site.
The prickling sensation keeps intensifying, seeping deeper through my torso and up to my throat. I find myself rubbing my sternum as if that will push the discomfort away.
What’s causing it? I don’t sense any unpleasant emotions emanating from my men. They all seem pretty calm at the moment, other than Raze with his apprehension about his hunt, but my impression of him has faded with distance.
All at once, pain spikes straight through my heart. I gasp, and my lungs clench up.
Fen jerks around. “Peri? What’s the matter?”
My voice comes out strained. “I… I don’t know… Something… It hurts…”
The pain expands as if I’m being ripped down the middle. My breath stalls in my throat; my vision blurs. I have the vague awareness of my body tipping over on the chair—
And then nothing.
My mind swims up through the darkness. There’s a soft surface underneath me. Voices murmur nearby.
It takes longer than it probably should for me to realize that it’s dark because my eyes are closed. Gentle light glows through my eyelids.
Currents of anxious and stressed emotions whirl inside me like a noxious stew.
I blink and stare up at a white ceiling. When I take my next breath, filling my lungs with air, only a faint ache lingers from the pain that hit me before.
A female shadowkind with small horns on either side of her forehead appears over me. “How are you feeling, Periwinkle?”
“I— Better, I guess. What happened?”
“You fainted in the library. This is the infirmary, for students who are sick. Although I’m not sensing any illness or physical damage in you right now.”
“That’s probably because we’re here.”
That’s Jonah’s voice—flat and tense.
I gird myself and push tentatively into a sitting position.
I’m perched on a small bed in a bright room a little larger than the dorm bedrooms. It holds a few other beds along the wall, cabinets, and a sink.
Fen stands by the foot of my bed, her hands twisted together nervously. All four of the men I marked have clustered around the woman who I suppose is a being with healing powers.
I press my hand to my temple. “I don’t understand. Everything started to hurt—just a little and then a lot.”
Raze’s voice comes out ragged. “I felt it too. I was running across the wild terrain nearby for my hunt, moving away from the school. It came up on me so suddenly I didn’t realize— I raced back as fast as I could.”
I frown at him. “You think I’m allergic to you hunting?”
Jonah clears his throat. “We think it’s because of how far apart you and he were. I noticed the same thing briefly yesterday, when I went for a jog… This just confirms what I suspected. If we move more than a couple of miles away from you, it hurts both of us.”
“Just fucking wonderful,” Hail mutters under his breath, his gaze even darker than usual. “She’s got us on a leash.”
Mirage shivers. “Two miles is a lot of room,” he says, but he doesn’t sound as if he really believes that.
Misery rolls through me in the wake of the pain. It feels like more than one serving—I can’t say how much of it is even mine.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Hail glowers at me. “Lot of good that does us.”
Raze whirls on him. “Leave her alone, you—”
At a squeak of the door, he falls silent.
Pearl has appeared in the doorway. After a glance at all of us, her usual cheerful demeanor dims.
“Hey,” she says tentatively. “We just got a call from Rollick. Another one of those weird rifts has popped up. He wants the team back together.”