Chapter 29
One blustery afternoon, the Arcane Guild braved a crossing over Holyvere Academy’s expansive grounds toward the Botanical Conservatory.
Braced against the biting wind, their footfalls loud as each step crunched the frozen top layer of snow that seemed, from here, to blanket the world.
The initiates trailed after Scholar Khari’s broad-shouldered form—Audra felt as though they were a gaggle of ducklings, hurrying to catch up, lest they be left behind by their mother.
The conservatory featured multiple domed glass ceilings, filled with various greenhouses, nurseries, and laboratories.
Stepping inside, Audra couldn’t help but sigh when the air, thick with humidity and the singular scent of freshly tilled soil and vibrant, growing life, rushed to meet her.
Echinacea Guild initiates, with dirt-smudged smocks over their uniforms, milled from greenhouse to nursery and back with glass vials and plant clippings.
This might be the first time she’d been almost warm since landing on Zenaidan soil weeks before.
“Would that we could come here whenever we wanted. This must be the warmest place on academy grounds,” Lottie remarked from behind them.
“Don’t see Cersha,” Wilder muttered as she followed Audra into their designated greenhouse for today’s incramancy lesson, her head turning this way and that, looking for their friend. “I was hoping to see her here, since this is her new favorite place to be.”
Wilder and Audra shared a look.
It wasn’t just that the botany building was warmer than anywhere else on campus, though that might have been part of it; it was that Cersha had found a new group of friends and spent most days with them, breakfasts too, which Audra couldn’t fault her for.
Cersha was the only one of their original pod in Echinacea Guild; it was bound to happen.
Neither Wilder nor Audra had fought her transition from their group to her new one—but Callum had. He’d wanted them to stick together, insisting they couldn’t trust anyone else.
Audra understood why he wanted to keep his sister close—it had always just been the two of them, but he was like her in that he was marooned within Sabre Guild, by himself.
It would’ve made sense if he had naturally made friends within Sabre as Cersha had.
Audra would never admit this to him, but she wished he would make even one friend in Sabre.
Even Wilder and Audra had made a friend of Lottie; she wasn’t always around outside of lectures and lessons, but she was there enough that Audra had begun to consider her a true friend.
But then again, Audra was convinced there wasn’t anyone more stubborn than Callum.
He was so willful that he’d somehow convinced the academy not to place a trained blacksmith who ran his own shop at only twenty-three in the Forge Guild—the blacksmith guild.
Instead, he’d found himself in Sabre, which, by the ease with which he dominated Sabre’s combat drills and forms (which were far more advanced than the drills Arcane dealt with), he was clearly in the correct guild.
The redhead could swing a fucking sword; for how massive he was, it truly didn’t make sense how he managed to move with the speed of a man half his girth and height, all while wielding a weapon weighing more than Audra.
“Alright, enough idle chatter.” Scholar Khari’s voice rang through the greenhouse, settling the initiates at once.
Maybe it was because Khari was the quickest of all faculty to smile, the easiest with whom to broach questions or ask for help.
All Arcane regarded him in ways they didn’t the other scholars—they feared the others, yes, but it wasn’t respect that made them fall quiet when those scholars’ lectures were poised to begin.
Scholar Khari announced today’s lesson.
Audra wilted.
Arcane Guild must choose a sapling from the rack and scribe an incra into the dirt, close to the roots, one that would help the sapling flourish.
“I want to see at least one new leaf on every sapling.”
Everyone smiled. This would be an easy passing mark; it would raise all their scores.
For Audra? He was asking the impossible.
Growth, life, all the things she couldn’t do.
Audra feared this might be the theme for today—it had been on the syllabus for a week that they were visiting the botany building, but Mist, she’d held out hope for a miracle.
She thought to procure the most hearty-looking sapling, but she’d miscalculated her position among the initiates, and instead of being closest, allowed to pick first, she was one of the last. She was left with a paltry few to choose from.
Frustrated, she snatched up the one closest to her, staring down at it in her hands with distaste, her eyes burning with fury.
Damn it.
The sapling was weak, thin, clearly overwatered or underwatered; she didn’t know which. She’d struggled her entire life to keep a plant alive, but the thing was more gray than green, and it didn’t take a seasoned botanist to gauge that that clearly wasn’t the color it was supposed to be.
She, of course, could recite and draw perfectly a plethora of appropriate incras that fit the assignment. A dozen incras each existed for health, wellness, growth—even a level-three incra to multiply nutrients naturally found in most soils.
But she knew better than to carve any of them into the soil of this sad little plant.
It would only have disastrous effects.
She didn’t dare have her sapling decay in front of the entire guild, and she noticed with unease the few curious Echinacea initiates peeking through the interior windows, watching with interest. And she was embarrassed to admit this, even to herself: she especially didn’t want to let Khari down.
Not when he was putting so much time and effort into tutoring her privately.
Her intense glare of complete hatred for this little plant was torn away as Noel exclaimed in triumph.
Loud as a damned seagull squawk. Craving an audience, hoping that all eyes would turn toward him, to watch as his sapling—the first to change—doubled in size in a span of a breath, its roots shooting out, cracking the clay planter.
Dirt and clay shards leapt to the floor as the pot shattered, thickening roots wrapped lovingly around his hands, as though caressing him, thanking him for helping it grow.
Scholar Khari actually laughed in delight at the transformation and called out, his voice a warm, glowing ember, to an Echinacea initiate to fetch more soil and a bigger planter.
Audra hated Noel for it, the burn of jealousy writhing through her chest.
Why couldn’t she do what he did?
What about him made this so easy, so natural?
She turned her back and stared daggers at her weak, sorry excuse of a plant.
As the class progressed, none were as successful as Noel, of course; Lottie barely managed to coax a single pale leaf out of her little oak.
But as the lesson neared the end, and everyone gathered into groups to show off their little plants (which they had been permitted to keep and take back to their dorms), it became apparent that Audra was the only initiate who outright failed.
Wilder tried comforting her with her kind, rasping voice, urging her to keep practicing. “It will come with time,” she supplied gently.
Scholar Khari’s disappointment, however, was clear, palpable, and Audra worried for a moment that he would chastise her in front of the entire guild …
She could imagine what he’d say: Audra, why didn’t you prepare for this?
This was on the syllabus; this class trip was pinned on the bulletin board in the residence hall for weeks.
You should have practiced the incras. And what he couldn’t say …
He’d seen her master incras levels above this simple task.
She should be able to scribe this spell with her eyes closed.
The look on his face was hard to stomach—she wanted to tell him, was desperate to confide in him, that she had prepared more than any other student here, aside, maybe, from Noel.
Couldn’t he see? She was desperate to succeed. Was making herself sick with nerves. Barely sleeping, barely eating, spending all her time practicing and studying.
Thankfully, he didn’t voice his disappointment aloud, only marking the failure on his ledger, but it was clear as day on his face, and it stung.
Audra suddenly felt small and so damned alone.
She was as pitiful as this plant. Failing to thrive, failing to do its one damned job.
Despite being given enough soil and water and sunlight and a warm place in this wintry, hostile world.
She was weak and was going to fucking die anyway, just like this godsdamned plant.
And then, she made the mistake of locking gazes with Noel.
Haughty bastard, his brown eyes alight and flashing with glee.
Of course, he’d seen the wordless exchange between her and Scholar Khari; Noel knew she looked up to the incramancy scholar, that she desired to please Khari.
The keen-eyed fucking snake had witnessed the entire exchange: the disappointed shake of Khari’s head, the heaviness in the scholar’s sigh before directing his hard-earned attention to the next student’s thriving sapling.
Noel had seen it all.
The arrogant bastard flashed a vindictive grin, relishing in her failure.
She had no doubt he’d heard the rumors and adoration circulating through every guild in Holyvere Academy—Noel, the best in his guild …
possibly the best in all the guilds. It must be him the fae had searched for, hoped for, prayed for.
Noel must be the next Heir—the one to save not just the Zenaidan fae from the horrific demons, help them defeat the creatures for good … but he would restart the seasons, save the world.
The rumors hadn’t bothered her; in fact, it helped her if all eyes were on Wonder Boy; then no one looked her way. But it still hurt that he knew how much better he was than she. That he knew how much she hated failing. And that he took such sick enjoyment from it.
Audra’s nose began to sting, and she was afraid she would cry right here in this nursery filled with people.
Not because she gave a fuck what Noel of all people thought—if he were the Heir, good for him.
He’d been wealthy in Khaveah; he might as well be showered with riches here too.
But Audra had been born with this affliction, this need inside her to excel in all things, to please …
and she was just so godsdamned frustrated that she was continuously forced to fail because she couldn’t manage the simplest of damned incras.
Audra was just about to flash a rude gesture at Noel when Lottie dropped her sapling; the terra-cotta planter shattered against the floor, dark soil scattering across tile.
Everyone’s attention drew to the crash, Lottie’s mortified cry, as she scrambled to clean it up, save the sapling—she’d worked so hard to grow that tiny leaf.
Wilder, ever calm and ready to help, knelt beside Lottie, though Audra wasn’t sure if she was trying to put Lottie back together or the pot.
Audra averted her gaze, her own shame too much for her; she couldn’t handle Lottie’s too, so instead, she scrutinized her flimsy sapling, lingering on the looping twine ties that connected the stem to a wooden stake in the soil—the only reason the sapling stood upright and didn’t droop over the edge of the clay pot.
Sudden as a tempest, a fierce revulsion rushed through her, and she suddenly abhorred this scanty, pathetic sapling more than anyone had a right to hate an innocuous shrub.
But she did. She detested it. Was repulsed by it, to the point she wanted to gag, to shatter her own pot upon the ground.
No, that wouldn’t be enough. She wanted to scrawl the incra for growth just to drain its life force, to watch as it withered and died, while she relished its demise.
As her fingers clenched painfully around the clay planter a rush of heat flared through her body, her heart thrumming a chaotic beat against her chest.
Her vision blurred, a pale glowing symbol appearing in her minds eye, an incra she’d never seen before.
She shook her head, trying to clear the vision, tried to focus on steadying her breath, to calm the rhythm of her heart, the pulse pounding in her throat, at the base of her skull, but this was all too much; she was going to fail—she would be sent to the front lines—but then a darkness began to seep from her fingertips, she could feel it, a wild, unsolicited power—it sought breath, life—hungry for it, greedy for it.
The incra within her mind began to pulse pulse pulse pulse and she heard …
Drain the life from the sapling first, yes, drain the life from it, and then, why stop there? Noel is a scourge on this land, and so full of life, she could take it, have it for herself.
Eyes wild, Audra tried to rein it in, silently begging it to dissipate.
That powerful force resisted her will, but reluctantly, the energy …
the force … withdrew, settling for the greenery of floristic life.
It coalesced, swirling around the pitiful sapling.
Audra watched, wide-eyed and horrified, as the sapling began to wither, its stem wilting, leaves curling.
No, no, not here. Not where everyone can see!
She thrust the sapling back onto the shelf, pushing it toward the back row. Hopefully, no one would notice that this was the sapling she’d picked.
She hurried across the room, tugged her satchel from the hooks by the door, and fled.