Chapter 2
LUMI’S VISION
SUMMER
I woke up to a slap in the face.
“Ow—I got it, I got it,” I said, batting it away—a cheap flyswatter I’d gotten from a corner shop in the Citadel when a ritual had gone wrong in my first year and I’d been swatting enchanted dust bunnies for a week.
Only problem was that the magic had gotten caught up on the swatter too, and it had come to life and taken to looking after me by slapping me awake whenever I slept through my alarm, which was basically every morning.
I yawned, sitting up in bed, rubbing my eyes with my fists, and I sat there for a little too long still trying to shake off the sleepiness when another slap pulled me out of it.
“Hey—” I grabbed my wand off the nightstand, jumping to my feet, and the flyswatter took off, diving under a dresser.
“I’ll unenchant you!” I shouted, chasing it around the room until it wriggled the window open a crack and flew out.
I flung the window open and leaned out after it, hiding behind a tree branch that was too thin for it to hide behind, but my attention landed on the figure standing on the stone path below the window—my friend Lumi, wearing her Dragon House blazer with violet-and-red accents on top of a swishy, frilly dress, her long blonde hair up in an intricate knot I knew she’d never pull off without her enchanted hair supplies. She raised a hand in a wave.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice soft and sweet. “Swatty the Swatter is very sorry.”
“No he is not. Just because you’re a diviner doesn’t mean you know everything.”
She huffed, hands on her hips. “Well, it means I knew you’d be leaning out your window in the morning with good news! Are you coming to breakfast, or what? I’m going to starve to death.”
“Try to cling to life for ten minutes longer while I get changed and cleaned up a little.”
She pouted, looking away. “I’m going to starve and die, and it’s going to be your fault, Summer. It’s going to be written on my death certificate and it’ll be written on my tombstone too, here lies Lumi Silvervale, victim of—”
I shut the window. She was a diviner, she probably knew I’d shut the window before she finished anyway.
I operated at two speeds, zero or a hundred, and now that I’d shaken off the sleep, I got out of zero and made it to a hundred, swishing through my room getting ready, a Dragonfly potion to start the day off right and a few herbological compounds for my skincare routine.
My uniform responded to its enchantments and fitted itself onto me, shirt buttoning up and tie tying itself, blazer slipping onto me, and my shoes lined themselves up at the bathroom door on my way out, so I stepped into them and opened the window, hoisting myself up into the sill.
I pressed my brogues against the stone surface of the windowsill, and I gripped the cool lunar silver of my wand, pulling up a flicker of magic before I pushed off the window and jumped out into the cool, brisk morning air.
The air responded to my magic, cushioning under me and slowing my fall until I landed softly on the damp grass just in front of Lumi, and I stood up, brushing myself off. “So,” I said, “you look alive.”
“Barely,” she said, pouting.
“Well, good thing I’m quick. Ow—” I flinched when the swatter hit the side of my face again, and I grabbed it out of the air this time. “Do we have issues, Swatty?”
It drooped a little. I patted it.
“I was being hyperbolic. I’m not going to unenchant you. Thanks for waking me up. Now stop swatting me, I’m awake.”
It perked up again, lifting out of my hand, and I patted it and sent it back up to the window, which shut itself as the swatter flew back inside.
“So, good news?” Lumi said, and I grinned at her, settling in alongside her on the path. It was easy to forget it from the window up above her, but I always felt small standing next to Lumi, who towered at a full six feet of willowy frame.
“Well, your visions were right this time, because I do have good news.”
“My visions are always right.”
“Yeah… of course they are. Breakfast at the Great Hall?”
“Ugh, anywhere. I’m about to keel over and die.”
“Well, can’t have that.”
We started off through the gardens around Dragon House, the morning air crisp and cool around us, rolling down from the cliff faces of the hollow.
It was quiet this early in the morning, but the rich magic of the hollow was flush in the air, and the minor dragons that lived around the hollow were out in full force while the students slept.
We passed through a crowd of steel-scaled blackwings and had an audience of curious draconewts on a wrought-iron fence that separated the path from the cliff, jagged wings of bigger dragons cutting through the air above us as we walked, and I told Lumi how I’d found a lead for my potion design.
“I was creeping around in a greenhouse I didn’t actually have permission to be in,” I said, “and I poked the wrong bush a little bit, and, well, I sort of got Elery’s Cannoned through a tree and onto this girl’s table while she was having tea.
But it was like fate,” I said, talking animatedly with my hands while we walked.
“Her name’s Cadence, herbalist with Scorpion House.
She seems like she really knows her stuff.
Including where and how to get the highest-quality snapbush root.
We’re meeting up after class today to go have a look. ”
Lumi put a hand on her chest and looked at me like I’d said something scandalous. “Summer. Are you flirting with her?”
“What? No!” I stumbled on the loose stones kicked across the path.
I didn’t quite look at her, though—thinking about Cadence.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to think it, but she’d been sweet, charming, funny.
Or maybe it was just how romantic the whole atmosphere had been, randomly finding myself in the middle of an enchanted tea party with her while her snagweed cuddled up with me and a lumini landed on both of our hands at once.
“It’s about my alchemy,” I said. “I’ve got the arc-con extension sparked if this works out like I think it will. ”
“She’s not your true love. I already told you this.”
“No, I know that,” I said, awkwardly pleading now. “I’m not flirting with her, okay? Promise. We’re going to find ingredients together.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you sure there’s not some other bush she’s trying to help you find?”
“Oh my god, Lumi. Keep those thoughts on the inside.”
She threw her hands up. “I told you, your true love is going to show up in your life on the last day of classes! It’s going to be beautiful and romantic! I had a vision strong as dragonscale.”
“I know. I’m not trying to make anything happen with her.”
“Okay. But I’ll be scrying on what you’re doing out in the bushes to make sure you’re not getting frisky!”
I scowled. “Lumi, are you trying to see me naked?”
She waved me off. “I’m a diviner, I already have!”
“Oh… I wish I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t want to see it either. Okay, no scrying,” she said. “I promise. Not this time, anyway. Just remember, snapbush is the only bush you should be rummaging around underneath.”
“Ew.”
“Come on. I’m starving. I want blueberry pancakes.”
Well, at least blueberry pancakes could save me from that conversation.
The campus got a little livelier as we made our way out from the dorms of Dragon House and got to the metropolitan center of the Citadel, and the Great Hall was alive with activity when we got inside, people talking and chatting and laughing all around us as we walked, students in the colors of each of the five houses.
I met a few familiar faces—I had a compulsive friend-making problem, where I was terminally curious about everybody around me, and I ended up chatting with half of campus until I knew more than I wanted about a million different people.
Which meant that walking into the Great Hall was always an experience for me, stopping to greet people, hovering here and there for a chat, asking people I hadn’t seen in a week how their latest project was coming along, and Lumi broke off ahead of me to get her pancakes before she, quote, withered away to nothing and crumpled lifelessly to the cold, unfeeling earth. She’d live.
But maybe I should have taken after her a bit more, because by the time I got up to the serving tables, there was only one dragonberry cream muffin left on the shiny silver tray, and I hurried to grab it at the same time somebody else reached for it, and our hands met right over the muffin, and I looked over with startled surprise to where Cadence was looking at me with wide eyes, flushing a furious red.
“Oh… hey,” I said. “Good morning.”
“Hey—hi. Morning. Good morning, I mean,” she stammered. “Summer. Hi. It makes sense you’re a morning person, you seem, well… morning. Energetic. I don’t know.”
I laughed. “I’m absolutely not. I’m only an early person because my best friend is, and she’s very whiny when she doesn’t get what she wants. I had to get swatted awake,” I said, and she raised her eyebrows.
“Swatted?”
“Swatted.”
She nodded like she understood, but it soon wasn’t the most important thing going on: the snagweed she had coiled around her shoulder snaked suddenly down her arm, down to where our hands both rested over the muffin, and it lunged to coil around my wrist at the same time it held onto hers, locking our hands together, and Cadence gasped, tugging lightly on her hand. “Oh—Knot, no!”
I tried to tug my hand away, flustered. “What? Not no?”
“No—Knot!”
“Not no or no not?”
“Knot,” she insisted, tugging again.
“Oh, Knot.” I laughed, touching the snagweed with my other hand, relaxing. “Hey, Knot. Good morning.”
Cadence blushed furiously, ducking her head, hiding behind the curtains of long, chestnut-brown hair that fell over her face when she did. “I’m so sorry—you can have the muffin—”
“No—you can have it. I’m trying to do something to pay you back for your help today.
The literal least I can do is not take your muffin.
” I picked it up, moving my hand as much as I could with Knot, well, tying us up in a knot, and Cadence stiffened with a vaguely queasy look when a girl in Scorpion House colors came up to the table from the other side.
“Hey, Cadence,” she said, and she stopped, blinking fast at the scene before a massive smile broke out over her features. “Whoa. Am I interrupting something?”
“No—” Cadence said, tripping over herself to say it as fast as possible.
I handed her the muffin, but as soon as I turned towards her, Knot tugged on my wrist, and I stumbled to the side, pitching off-balance with a gasp and falling against her.
I fumbled, trying to catch myself, moving on instinct without considering how we were tied together, and I yanked Cadence’s hand towards me in the process, pulling her into me at the same time.
I dropped the muffin and thumped into Cadence, and I reached for my wand trying to get out before something snaked around me, Knot wrapping around the both of us and pulling taut, pressing us into one another, and I heard Cadence’s quick draw of breath, leaning her head back looking at me with her eyes so wide it was almost comical, her blush a full-face peachy hue now.
“Oh, wow,” Cadence’s friend said. “I’ll leave you to it. Have fun!”
“No—it’s not that,” Cadence blurted. “I-I don’t know what’s—I swear he never does this—can you not, Knot?”
I laughed, even as I felt myself flushing with awareness too—Lumi would kill me if she saw me like this—and I maneuvered my arms as best I could to pat Knot without groping Cadence in the process.
“Hey, Knot,” I laughed awkwardly. “It’s good to see you too!
I love a hug, but there’s better ways to get one—”
“I am so sorry,” Cadence said, wriggling against the vine. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
I mean, some part of my brain didn’t mind being pressed up against a cute girl like this, but—that wasn’t the most productive thing to think right now.
She was a little shorter than me, and I got the angle of her long, dark lashes fluttering out looking up at me, close enough I could see every one of the faint pinkish freckles over the tops of her cheeks, a cute little button nose and curtain bangs that gave her a dreamy, romantic sort of look.
But again—if Lumi knew I was checking her out from a distance of two inches, I’d be in big trouble.
“Do we think he wants the muffin?” I said, and she pouted.
“I think he wants attention.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want us fighting over the muffin. We could split it.”
She gave me a skeptical look before she turned to the side, and I followed her gaze to where the muffin was currently floating in a bowl of fruit juice, slowly disintegrating. “It’s… not to my taste right now.”
“Oh. Yeah. Mine neither,” I said. “My bad. Didn’t even notice I’d dropped it.”
She laughed—a small, quiet thing, and it made me laugh just as suddenly, and she laughed harder, breaking out into big, bright laughter that I found I couldn’t stop myself from catching.
She laughed harder still when I started laughing, and she snorted by mistake, eyes wide freezing up, but it made me laugh harder hearing it, laughing until I was wheezing, and she laughed again too, and I guess Knot was just looking for a little morning cheer, because he relaxed his hold on the two of us then.
Cadence and I stepped back from each other, laughing and wiping tears from our faces, as Knot coiled back up over her arms like nothing had happened.
“Maybe we should get something different,” I said, and she nodded, eyes still shining with tears of laughter.
“Maybe they have something else with dragonberry.”
“There are some croissants,” Lumi’s voice said from the side, and I looked over at where she stood next to a column with a big, colorful coffee drink, the kind that was more milkshake than coffee. “With cream and dragonberry preserves.”
“Oh, that sounds great,” I said, and then I realized the situation, my shoulders falling. I laughed nervously. “Um… hi, Lumi.”
“Hello, Summer,” she said, and I’d never seen someone pout as much as Lumi was pouting. I scratched my head, turning back to Cadence.
“Let’s get some croissants. T-together, with my friend.”