Chapter 1 Raven
Raven
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
It’s a terrible thing: wanting.
The envelope sits unopened in my hands. It’s heavy, not with the weight of its contents but with its purpose.
Acceptance or rejection? The letter will dictate my fate.
My name glitters in silvery ink on the envelope, the wax seal for Sibylline College of Magical Arts still intact and tempting me to break it.
It should be easy, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
But I can’t bring myself to do it. I’ve been waiting for this letter for what feels like my whole life, and now I’m not sure what to do with it.
I both want and don’t want to know what’s inside.
A purgatory of my own creation, and I’ve been trapped in it since the letter’s unexpected arrival.
It appeared in between the pages of a library book I had checked out. Sibylline has no need for the postal service, of course.
I texted the group chat right away, sending a single exclamation point.
I didn’t have to say anything more than that.
We all know when and where to meet. I’m still holding the letter tightly when I claim our bench on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, with its picturesque view of the Manhattan skyline in the umber summer evening.
People trying to capture the fading summer light with their phones walk past me, but all I can do is look at the letter in my hand.
A figure approaches. A dark-haired boy in a shabby but elegant tweed coat, hems and cuffs frayed from wear. A rare vintage find, like the wearer.
“Got yours, huh?” Atticus asks, flashing an envelope. It’s identical to mine, save for his name: Atticus Edward Garcia. My relief upon seeing my friend is only a brief respite from the anxiety churning in my gut.
“I didn’t want to open it alone,” I say as he takes a seat next to me.
“Me neither,” he says. A paper tray sits on his lap with three iced coffees from the nearby cafe.
“I don’t think I should have any caffeine. I’m shaking already,” I say.
“That’s why I got you an herbal iced tea.”
He knows me so well, even without his gift for reading people. He hands me my drink and a straw, and I accept it gratefully, though I don’t take a sip. My stomach might just hurl it back up.
“Dorian?” I ask.
“On his way.” Atticus sets down the tray with Dorian’s drink on the bench.
“Where’d you get the letter?” I ask.
He takes a long sip and sighs. “I was doing line work in my sketchbook, and poof”—he flicks his free hand, mimicking a firework—“there it was, replacing the pen in my hand.”
I nod, my insides still twisting with anticipation. I take a deep breath and set both the drink and my decision letter down to rub my throbbing temples. Meanwhile, Atticus at my side has one arm thrown over the back of the bench casually.
“How do you always seem so calm?” I ask. “Weeks of waiting, and you’re just…fine?”
Atticus watches joggers passing by on the promenade, appreciating the last vestiges of summer.
“Don’t let appearances fool you.” He talks around the straw in his mouth, lazily resting the tip of it against his teeth as he says, “Life’s a facade.
” He swivels his head and looks at me with his deep brown eyes.
“I read that on a fortune cookie somewhere.”
He manages to get a smile out of me, which is exactly what he wanted.
It does make me feel a little bit better now that he’s here.
When Atticus isn’t drawing for the architecture firm where his mom works as a clerk, he scribbles in his notebooks and on tabletops, and sometimes, when there is no other surface available, he makes do.
Ink covers his jeans. I can tell he’s nervous now, especially since he’s whipped out one of his fancy pens and started drawing crosshatches on his denim-covered thigh.
“If you must know, I’m terrified,” he says, not looking up from his work. Each stroke of the pen is a delicate, practiced flick, each line perfectly spaced.
I like watching him work. I like watching him most of the time, but especially now. I love the way the sunset makes his brown skin glow. His full lips part as he sighs, his eyes dancing over his work, as if he’s memorizing each line and shape he creates.
“If any of us gets in,” he says, glancing at me from behind his shaggy bangs, “it’ll definitely be you. You’re the best of us. Plus, you’re the only one of us who can afford it.”
“Money doesn’t matter,” I say, trying to downplay it.
“Raven, I love you with all my heart, but people with money always say money doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t take away from the fact that you’re a natural magician.”
A hot blush rises on my face. My parents would say we’re “comfortable,” which Atticus has pointed out is code to mean haven’t a care in the world, along with the “cottage” in the Hamptons (a ten-bedroom estate) and the London “attic” (a penthouse with river views).
Dorian and Atticus don’t have the same luxuries, and despite what many “comfortable” people want to believe, innate magical ability cannot be bought.
A small percentage of the population has innate magical ability, people like us.
Different. Special. Gifted. Everyone else can learn magic from spell books if they’re accepted into a magical college, but for us, magic is like breathing.
I sigh, knowing it’s best to drop the line of conversation, and notice a group of older tourists wearing matching backpacks, their expressions confused as they look around.
Their rapid-fire German makes my ears perk.
At first, I don’t understand what they’re saying.
Then something clicks, like a camera lens focusing, and all at once, I do.
The leader of the pack is staring at a map and shaking his head. “Ich—don’t know which way to go. Maybe we missed a turn?”
“Excuse me, do you need help?” I say in flawless German.
The tourists turn in my direction, then eyebrows shoot up. The man with the map stares at me, hopeful. “Oh! You speak German?”
I don’t have to look directly at Atticus to know he’s smiling. This is business as usual, even if he doesn’t understand a word we’re saying.
I answer them, providing the directions they need.
When I sit back down on the bench, Atticus is still smiling.
“Seeing you use your magic never gets old,” he says, chewing on the straw from his iced coffee. He waves his hand over my head, passing his fingers through the aura only he can see. It’s like he’s trying to touch an invisible cloud. “You’re shining.”
I’m what’s called a “situational polyglot,” confirmed when I was eight by a specialist who studies magical skills in children. Our high school, Wellington Prep, had a dedicated track for kids like us. That’s how I met Atticus and Dorian. We were the only kids in the program.
My whole life has been working toward this moment. The instant I heard about Sibylline’s existence, my entire universe shifted. Nonmagical nerds can have Harvard and Yale. There’s only one Ivy that counts for the magically inclined, and that’s Sibylline.
It’s not the only school in North America dedicated to the study of magic, but it is by far the oldest and best. Other magical schools teach rudimentary magic, or magic history.
They’ll help you pick up a minor spell here and there, but there is only one that instructs students in the mastery of the supernatural arts, one school with access to the oldest grimoires and the ancient wisdom they contain.
In magic, knowledge is everything, and Sibylline guards its secrets closely. I want to know it all.
The envelope tempts me from the bench, so I slide it under my book.
“You’re gifted,” he says when he sees me hide the envelope. “They’d be absolute idiots not to let you in.”
“Not really in my control, is it?”
The only problem is that getting into the most prestigious magical university in the country is one of the hardest things anyone can do.
The odds are not in my favor, with only a one-in-three-thousand chance, they say, 0.
03 percent. Might as well buy a lottery ticket while getting struck by lightning in the midst of a plane crash.
And it’s even worse for the three of us, not being the children of alumni.
There’s a rumor that Sibylline hasn’t accepted nonlegacy admissions in generations, but the Supreme Court of Magicians ruled that there was nothing discriminatory in Sibylline’s policies.
“I’m not special in the ways that seem to matter,” I say. Even in the magical world, pedigree means everything.
“Well, you’re special to me, so that matters,” says Atticus. There’s that heavy-lidded smile again.
My chest swells so much it aches. Having a crush on one of your best friends is a unique kind of agony that makes every atom of your being feel like screaming.
Atticus lifts his head, as if called to attention, and his gaze snags on something in the distance. He takes in the slightest breath. “He’s here,” he says.
I turn to see Dorian coming toward us on the promenade, wearing his signature navy wool peacoat despite the summer evening. Blond-haired, green-eyed, and straight-browed, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders.
When he spots us, he holds up his own envelope with a gloved hand. My stomach swoons at the sight of it, the anticipation before the drop on a roller coaster.
Atticus’s eyes light up when he sees him, and his smile widens. “You open it yet?”
“Didn’t even think to do it alone, Finch,” he says, calling Atticus by his nickname, as in the hero from To Kill a Mockingbird. Dorian’s voice is as buttery as the sunset sky. “I haven’t been this afraid to touch something in a long time.”
“If you touched it with a bare hand, could you intuit what’s inside?” I ask.