Chapter 31 #2
One afternoon the sun shone over the thin veil of snow that still blanketed much of the grounds, warming the air slightly as Myth and I sailed over the forest. Ahead, Scarlett lay low in the saddle, her blond hair whipping out behind her as she urged her dragon to zig-zag, hoping to cut me off.
We’d moved on from basic maneuvers to more advanced flying techniques.
Today, we were charged with collecting a small cage that Bryce had placed somewhere in the forest. Inside the cage was a dead rabbit, a reward for whichever dragon found it first.
Myth cut left, then right, trying to get around Scarlett’s dragon, Riva.
“Come on, boy,” I urged, remembering the way Scarlett had laughed when the dung had hit me.
I’d slipped him another emerald today, wanting to test if it affected his flight.
So far, we couldn’t figure out what the stones changed when Myth ate them—or why he chose to eat them in the first place.
I jerked the handles on the saddle upward, then rolled to the right.
I left my stomach behind, but as we shot upward, we rolled so that we flew directly above Riva, my head dangling down close to Scarlett’s.
She swatted at my braid as it tapped against her face, but before she could grab it, I curled myself up and Myth righted himself, angling straight down, forcing Riva to halt in midair.
Her wingbeats sent a wave of air around us, but in a heartbeat, we were too far away to distinguish Scarlett’s shouted curses.
I smiled as we plummeted toward the forest floor. The cage was somewhere nearby, and Myth was salivating at the scent of rabbit. A few branches slapped my arms and legs as we broke through the trees.
“There!” I shouted, knowing Myth had smelled the cage long before I’d seen it.
He dipped low and scooped the cage up in his claws.
Scarlett and Riva burst into the clearing a moment later, my classmate’s face purple with rage.
Bryce congratulated me as I dismounted in the yard by the lair. Myth swallowed the rabbit quickly, and I shook my head at him the way my mother used to when I ate too fast.
Rush stood in line with the rest of our class, his arms crossed, a faint smile on his face.
Reading the extra books, on top of all the classwork, was taxing but also invigorating.
Somehow, the drive I put toward investigating magic spilled over into my history assignments as well, even chemistry, which seemed the only subject likely to shed light on how magic could be bottled or distilled from flame.
My grades in those subjects, as a result, went up.
“And the top score on this essay goes to…Arivelle Miro.” Professor Enplencourt beamed as she floated toward me, dropping my most recent essay on my desk.
It had been six weeks since Rush and I had started our extra reading, and my obsession with history—real history—had risen like a dragon on a strong breeze. Looked like it was paying off.
The rest of the students leaped up to shuffle through the papers in stacks on the table at the front of the room.
Vanya clapped and hugged me, but I received several scowls from the Sapphire students who were accustomed to receiving the top score.
Walt looked particularly put out as he slipped his essay from the stack of excellent papers.
I didn’t even bother containing my smile as I stared out the window at the bright, cold day, looking forward to our riding lesson later.
Clarence squeezed my shoulder and gave me a hearty grin as he walked by. “Well done, Ari.”
Prescott flicked Clarence’s ear and chuckled as Clarence scurried away, one hand clasped to his head.
Then he slapped his hands on my desk and looked me in the eyes.
“You beat my boy, here.” He jerked his head toward Rush, who was sauntering down the aisle toward the stacks of papers at the front.
“I’ll allow it only because this idiot has been barely keeping up with our reading lately.
Maybe this will wake him up.” He quirked his brows at us before heading back to his seat.
With Prescott, I never knew if he was being mean or being nice. His words felt like a threat, but in a way, they also felt like a compliment. I decided to take them as the latter.
That night, however, I found Scarlett rummaging through my things in my room.
“Hey!” I shouted, storming into the room.
Scarlett dropped the book in her hands, which fell softly onto my bed. In her hand was one of Rush’s folded notes. My heart skipped.
“That’s mine.” I made to snatch it from her, but she jerked her arm away.
“Looks like it belongs to Rush.”
She knew his handwriting? Then again, so did I, but it was because he’d been sending me notes for weeks.
In his last note, Rush had said, in his cryptic way, we should meet at the lair to finally hash out everything we’d learned and make a concrete plan for how to ensure I had a chance at winning the final race.
If Scarlett had read that note, I doubted she understood what time to make a map of tonight’s race meant.
Map, of course, meant plan. And we were meeting tonight, obviously, just before dawn, as before.
My heart pounded, not only because of the note she held and the secrets it possessed, but because I had been waiting to meet with Rush for weeks, to finally talk in person about all we’d learned about magic, which to be fair wasn’t a lot.
But it was more than we’d had six weeks ago.
“I found that book in the library,” I said with a shrug. “If it has his notes in it, it’s because he left them there.”
Scarlett humphed and eyed the scrap of paper. She tilted her head as she read one of the lines. “‘Tonight’s race.’ What does that mean, bottomdweller? There isn’t a night race tonight.”
I lifted my hands at my sides. “I don’t know. How do you even know that’s Rush’s? It could be years old, stuffed in there a decade ago by some former student.”
At the use of his nickname, Scarlett tensed almost imperceptibly. She crinkled the note and stormed from the room. “We’ll just see about that.”
I grabbed the book, grateful she hadn’t taken it. If she thought the note was the valuable thing, she was missing the true treasure.
Eager to spill my theories and plans to Rush, I went to bed in my uniform skirt and shirt, keeping the cover pulled up to my chin so Vanya wouldn’t ask questions.
But I never got the chance to sneak out of my room.
As I was going back over my mental notes about dragonfire, the door to our dorm slipped quietly open. When I sat up on my elbow, I yelped. Luther stormed toward me, a pistol aimed at my chest.