Chapter 3
CADENCE
“You got a girlfriend and you didn’t tell me? Me? Your one and only very best friend in the world?”
“She’s not my girlfriend!” I protested hotly, and Rosie gave me a look like I’d claimed I met the five Founders.
The Great Hall was getting busier now as we came into regular morning time, and I loved a crowd—nothing better to disappear into when I was mortified over having just been rubbing myself all over a gorgeous woman in the middle of the hall, not to mention making her friend hate me at the same time.
I’d managed to escape after a meal and tea, but I felt like the tall diviner girl Lumi still had her eyes on me from anywhere and everywhere.
“I don’t know about you,” Rosie said, hands on her hips, “but I don’t dry hump just anyone.”
“Rosie,” I half-screeched, voice ashen. “We were not dry humping. It was Knot!”
“Not dry humping? It sure looked like it.”
“No—Knot.” I presented him, where he poked one little flowered stem up like a curious head, looking completely unchagrined. “He just up and tied us together!”
“Uh-huh.” She broke out grinning. “She’s so cute. Congratulations.”
“No—no! No…” I slumped, hanging my head. “Oh, saints, Rosie, please don’t tell the rest of the galeria about this. It’s so embarrassing. I mean it. I’m about to tell you something you cannot repeat to anyone, and if you do, then I’ll… die. Just that. I’ll just die.”
She drew her wand, a dainty little thing of pale golden wood, and she held it up between us. “Wand oath?”
“Wand oath. I really appreciate it, Rosie…” I crossed my wand with hers, and they both shimmered a faint glow that settled like pixie dust over our wand hands. Rosie beamed, putting her wand back.
“Okay, let’s get to a quiet place. Unless you’d rather do it after class?”
“Let’s go now, after class I, uh… I’ve gotta run somewhere with… someone…”
She stopped, turning to me with her hands on her hips again, grinning. “That girl?”
“No! No…” I tented my hands in front of me, bouncing awkwardly on the balls of my feet. “Um… maybe yes. But it’s not like that.”
“Mm-hm…” She looked at me skeptically the whole time as we got outside, up a stairway around the corner, and settled onto a quiet terrace where we could see the district of Dragon’s Walk with its ornate architecture and cute little Juliette balconies in the pathway leading up to the grand courtyard in front of the Great Hall.
Once we were both settled on the terrace, I sank into a seat while Rosie stayed standing, leaning on the rail, but she wasn’t much taller than me even so—Rosie was all of four eleven, with a full, curvy figure and pink hair just above her shoulders.
She looked about as scary and dangerous as a hamster, but knowing her from my first day at Starfall, living in the room right next to mine in our galeria, I knew she was anything but.
It hadn’t surprised me one bit when she’d gotten into the duelist’s circuit, nor when she’d started doing well collecting other duelist’s tokens.
That said, I mostly just didn’t want to be on her bad side because she was my best friend.
I had a habit of staying in a library or in the galeria common areas or a greenhouse studying for too long, going late into the night and forgetting to eat, and she always made sure to bring me snacks and remind me to sleep.
In return, I helped her with her runology homework. I still had no idea why she’d taken a runology class again in the spring semester, but she wasn’t enjoying it any more than she had been in the fall.
“So,” I said, drawing my wand and holding it, just idly looking at it, something to keep my hands busy. “That girl, Summer—she wants my help with finding a rare ingredient for a special potion project she’s doing.”
“Okay. Normal so far.”
“She fell from the sky and landed on my table after I plucked a magic flower and wished to find true love.”
“Okay, less normal.” She turned on me, and I buried my face in my hands.
“Oh, Rosie, don’t look at me.”
“You plucked a magic flower and made a wish?”
“That weird flower I’d been trying to identify.
I found an old source naming it as a skyblossom—said it would make your wish come true if you picked the right petal and curse you if you picked the wrong one.
I thought it was fey tricks, but I was also tired of the flower and decided to just set it aside, so I, um…
well, I, uh.” I hunched my shoulders, mumbling.
“I’ve felt really… lonely… since Natalie left.
It’s so dumb to admit to, but I’ve never gotten over that and I miss her, but more than that, I miss being with someone.
I miss being in love. So I wished for… um, true love. ”
“And as soon as you did, Summer fell from the sky and landed on your table, and now you’re dry humping her.”
“Somehow it’s weirder.” I described everything—the interaction in the greenhouse, Knot taking to her and coiling up on her, the lumini landing between us, the agreement to help with her alchemy class project of an extension of the Arcane Conduit potion.
Walking out of the greenhouse together and the way luminis had been just about dancing hearts in the air the whole way back.
Rosie was absolutely glowing by the time I talked about our goodbye at the path into the Citadel, and how she’d given me her number, and…
“And she winked at you?” Rosie repeated, and I put my hands over my face.
“I mean, just, you know, playing around, having fun.”
“Girl, you just got your names written in the stars together. Why didn’t you tell me you had a magical wish-granting flower?”
“You don’t think it actually worked, do you?” I said in a desperate whisper. “It’s just a coincidence—thinking about true love and so I’m seeing it everywhere.”
She laughed loudly, grabbing my hand and tugging me up to my feet, and I stumbled out of the chair as she took both of my hands, squeezing. “Invite me to your wedding.”
“Wedding—” I felt my face burn, and I scowled. “I met her twelve hours ago!”
“Correction. She was delivered to you by the ley lines twelve hours ago, to be your true love! Oh my god, I’m so happy for you.
Natalie sucked. I’ve hated seeing how dead you look in the eyes since then.
I’m going to get Kali to help me do some digging, some spying, find out if Summer is a good person, but I’m sure your fated true love isn’t a wartcat. ”
“Saints and—stars—Rosie!” I pulled my hands away and covered my face again.
“You can’t be serious. There’s no way a flower like that is real.
Maybe I got cursed! Maybe… maybe I’m destined for heartbreak.
Maybe the curse is that a beautiful woman shows up and gets close to me and then leaves me just like Natalie did. ”
“Then Kali and I will Shatter her. Easy.”
“Also, please don’t tell Kali about this.”
She groaned.
“Wand oath,” I reminded her.
“Can I just tell her you met this girl and say it seems like you’re interested and ask her for help finding what we can?”
I swallowed. I should have said no, but… but I… I wanted information on Summer. Just out of… academic curiosity. I was a scholarly type. I loved having knowledge. That was all it was. “Sure,” I said, and she lit up.
*
I paid a whole lot of attention during classes.
I was lying. I paid no attention whatsoever.
It was rare for me not to pay attention in classes—I was the type to show up with all my notes in perfect order and sit in the front of class, raise my hand for every question and have the professors ask anyone other than Cadence.
So it was probably a bad sign that I was sitting kicking my feet under the desk staring out the window and daydreaming.
I was sick with nerves and excitement in equal measure when I finished classes, and I just about ran the whole way back to my dorm to get changed. I went with something a little bit… cuter than I should have for a practical excursion, but I wanted… well.
It was instantly a problem, because Kali wasn’t the only one Rosie had told the shorter, approved version of the story—all five other members of my galeria were out in the common area when I got back out, sprawled across the couch and the chairs, Rosie sitting on the table kicking her feet under it gossiping to the others, Kali playing with Viv’s hair while the latter was lying against her side on the couch because the two were playing a year-long game of will-they-or-won’t-they, Opal and Drake arguing about something irrelevant like they always did, but everyone stopped to look at me when I stepped out from the hallway and into the common room, freezing up with my face flushed.
“Oh, cute!” Rosie said, hands clasped at her chest. “I was getting us together to make sure you’re dressed for a date, but you beat us to it.”
“Rosie. You asked if you could tell Kali.”
“I did! And Kali told the others.”
Viv, dressed in all-black with black hair and black eyeliner and a dark look by default, waved me off. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not worried about anyone’s love lives.”
Lovely. Everybody else did, though, judging by how they gushed, and I had to insist to everyone that I’d only just met her, which went over at least a little better because Rosie had at least kept her promise not to tell anybody about the skyblossom wish.
I was still flustered and dying of embarrassment by the time I got out of there, and I clearly didn’t do a good job pulling myself together before I met Summer at the wyvern cars in the Crescent District up at the top of the Citadel, because she looked concerned when she saw me.
“Hey,” she said, striding across the plaza to meet me.
The crowds around us faded into the background when I saw her there, dressed in a field jacket that gleamed softly with enchantments, cool and practical and a little androgynous.
Also—was it just me or were the lyre flowers hanging low on the side of the plaza still in fuller bloom than they normally would be by this time of year?
The pink heart shapes of the flowers framed her like a laurel wreath as she came up to me and said, “Is everything okay?”
I couldn’t very well just tell her what was happening.
I blushed, looking at her jacket collar when I couldn’t meet her eyes.
“Fine, everything’s fine.” That didn’t come across believably.
I bounced on the balls of my feet. “Um… is your friend coming along? She really didn’t seem to like me, is all. ”
She relaxed, a soft look in her eyes. “Oh, she doesn’t mean any harm. She’s just… oh, god.” She scratched her head, looking away. “I wouldn’t know how to describe it.”
“Well, we’ve got a wyvern car trip, so…” I shrugged. “Tell me on the way?”
She smiled radiantly. “Will do.”