Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
May
Gideon
Arcana loved to hear her own voice. It was a nice voice—don’t get me wrong. It was just when I had to listen to her talk for hours without an interruption that it started to grate at my ear drums.
But I made myself sit…and listen…and maybe even learn.
I didn’t subject myself to learning inside the same classrooms the other witches at the Academy did—I couldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to the instructor or the material. I’d tried before to attend class, just like every other witch here at the Academy, but it hadn’t gone well.
There’d been pushing, screeching, and all-out fighting to sit in the chair next to me, behind me, and in front of me.
The witches who had snagged spots near mine had spent the entirety of the class attempting to play footsie, pretending to fall into or onto me, and as soon as the instructor had dismissed class, they’d swarmed me, which ended in me running down the halls and locking the door to my dorm before they could catch up to me.
So instead, I was here, sitting on the dirt floor outside the classroom, my back against the brick wall as I listened to the instruction.
This was an air magic class where the witches were being instructed to shoot their air magic across the room, blowing an object off some sort of elevated surface.
There was no table or object in this empty hallway, so I dug into the pocket of my green pants—the same color that every other witch here wore.
It was like the Academy was begging life, something green, to enter this brown underground wasteland. They weren’t succeeding.
I tossed a balled-up napkin from breakfast onto the floor in front of me. It rolled before hitting the brick wall, across from where I was sitting.
“Extend your arm, pointing your index and middle fingers from your dominant hand at your target…” Arcana directed.
I did as instructed, pointing my two fingers at the napkin two feet in front of me.
“Harness your magic, let it flow down your arm, grow in your fingers…”
My magic tingled down my arm, and I pinched my index and middle fingers together, trying to reserve my magic for the release command.
“And…release!” Arcana’s words sent a shiver through my body, the magic flowing from my chest down my arm and into my fingertips.
There was no stopping it, no altering its course.
Flames shot out of my fingers, immediately burning the napkin.
Black cinders floated a few feet into the air before falling onto the floor.
“Good, good!” Arcana shouted.
I breathed heavily, sitting in the dirt, in the hallway catching my breath.
I had fire magic, just as every male witch had. I wasn’t particularly powerful, many of the witches here could best me with their powers even if I used my fire magic against them.
But here, at the Academy and the Coven, I was powerful because of my sex, how rare it was. And that made me a target.
I had a bullseye on my back, and every witch here was an arrow.
I tried not to show my face. I kept to the shadows, attending classes when I wanted to…
from the hallway. My food was delivered nightly to my door or, if I was feeling particularly stir crazy, I’d sneak down to the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed, the Coven witches who worked there preparing me a plate of whatever was left from dinner.
Mostly, I wandered the Academy at night, preferring loneliness to getting mauled by the witches down here.
They were hungry…more so as I’d become older.
This year had been the worst—and now that it was early summer, the Autumnal Equinox was approaching quickly.
Just a few short months and I’d be forced to pick a partner.
A film coated my mouth as I thought about the next months.
I spit onto the floor, right in front of a shiny black boot.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that I’d missed hearing Arcana dismiss class early.
“Gideon?”
Ah, fuck.
“It’s Gideon?”
“He’s here?”
I pushed myself up onto my feet, walking as fast as I could down the hallway lined with classrooms, back toward the main area of the Academy—the dome.
A stampede of heels clicked behind me, their breaths growing ragged the farther they followed me.
“Shh! Don’t scare him away!”
They tried to be quiet, sneaky, as they followed me, like I didn’t notice the noise their shoes and bodies made. My room was on the ground floor. I just needed to get there and lock the door.
The hallway was long, and soon witches began exiting classrooms on both sides as their classes dismissed, stopping for a moment, watching me speed walk by with slacked jaws before joining the growing mob behind me.
“Gideon!” someone yelled out.
Noise meant an increase in intensity. Everyone down here fed off one another. One yell turned into ten, which turned into fifty in a matter of seconds. Chaos was incoming.
That was what I got for trying to learn, trying to attend a class where I practiced my magic.
Being the only male witch at the Academy might have seemed like a dream—the books I’d read had princes vying for princesses and knights going to battle for their partners—but here, the attention wasn’t a dream, it was a literal nightmare.
The witches here didn’t want to get to know me, they wanted me for my…maleness. It didn’t matter if I’d sprouted five extra toes or another head—they wanted the clout, the prestige of being the partner of the newest male witch.
My walk turned into a run, which turned into a sprint. I was running down the hallway, bursting through the doors into the dome, the witches’ hot breath on the back of my neck.
Their hands grabbed at my clothes, my jacket tugging back away from my shoulders, my arms being pulled backward as the sleeves rolled down my arms.
Once the jacket released my wrists, I was free for a moment. My feet dug into the dirt ground, pushing off as I tried to gain speed toward my room. I glanced behind me once, the faces of desperate witches surrounding me.
I put my key code into the door of my room, the accepting beep releasing its first decibel before I turned the handle, slipping through the door and closing it behind me. I flipped the latch—the extra one that didn’t automatically lock every time the door closed.
My back against the door, I felt the witches’ fists pound on the wood, my head bouncing up and down with the tremors.
That had been way too close. It’d be a while before they calmed down, before they left the door of the room they knew I was hiding in.
Still, soon, they’d leave. In my experience this stand-off usually lasted a day, and then they’d get hungry, sleepy, or bored.
This would all be over soon—both the witches pounding on my door and my time here at the Academy.
The Autumnal Equinox was quickly approaching.
Either I’d pick a partner or escape. My hope was on the latter.