Chapter 16
There’s a thick blanket of snow covering the grounds outside and despite there still being three whole weeks until Winter Solstice, the Common Room chatter that’s still ringing in my ears is positively festive.
I close the door to my room behind me and let out a sigh. Time to try a ritual one more time.
I get the stuff from my desk drawer and go sit on my bed. This is something best done under the sky, preferably when it’s dusk and the moon and stars are just beginning to show.
But I haven’t been well ever since the mid-term exam. This whole thing with being a shifter seems to be making things surface, things from my past that I’ve worked very hard on putting behind me. So I’m feeling raw and tense all the time, and these past two weeks, I’ve been avoiding everyone and skipping classes under the pretense of being sick.
It’s been a relief, especially when it comes to special classes, so much so that I’ve been wondering whether I should just keep doing it. I mean, I can’t imagine my ‘professor’ having any objections.
Unless I want to blow my cover, it’s not like I can go skipping around the castle grounds doing rituals like nothing’s going on.
It’s tiresome, trying to do these rituals without ever making progress. The chances for the constellations to gift me with a power before I’ve shifted for the first time are next to nothing.
But nothing I’ve done to trigger shifting has worked so far. Maybe getting in touch with the constellations will be the thing that makes a difference.
Here’s to hoping, I think as I start preparing.
Today is the day I have a chance to establish a connection with Scorpio, so it’s a bowl of water I place in front of myself. This is not a constellation you’re advised to have anything to do with before you’ve gotten in touch with one of the gentler ones — Scorpio is not just powerful, it’s known for its dark side as well. Seductive. Manipulative. Destructive.
Unfortunately, it’s the only one I feel myself being drawn to. It’s not like I have endless opportunities before the first-term exam, and if I don’t pass it… Let’s just say it would take a miracle to prevent me from having to repeat the first year.
I take the candles as well, which are supposed to help me get into the right mindset. I place them around the bowl and light them up, so their flames are reflecting off the surface of the water in front of me.
I clasp my hands in my lap and I fix my eyes on the way the fire flickers in the water.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“You know, I really need something to happen today,” I say in a hushed voice.
Silence.
“If it doesn’t happen, then how am I supposed to think that this is not some sick joke?”
There’s another moment of silence that angers me.
“Really? So I’m actually supposed to be a shifter with no fucking powers?”
Silence.
Now feeling both angry and spiteful, I push even harder. I close my eyes shut and I push until images start swarming inside me — the book that chose me, the symbol on the cover of that book. Despite this dread building inside me, I keep pushing until I feel something break inside me.
It’s a ping from my phone that distracts me.
I let out a frustrated groan and knock the bowl over, spilling all the water.
I grab the phone and see it’s a text from Alaric. “You know, Anna, if you blow us off one more time… I’m afraid we’ll have to eat those nachos you left in Raven’s room.”
I drop my phone back on the bed and run my palms down my face.
Normal, why can’t you be normal about this?
“Be there in ten,” I type a reply, knowing they”re in the Junkyard and deciding to say fuck it to hiding in my room like this.
There’s this feeling of my entire body vibrating in this nauseating way, but I force myself to get up, I throw on my warmest hoodie and I walk out of my room.
***
I’m still so nauseous, but it’s making me feel better, sitting in the Junkyard with my friends, listening to Alaric explaining to Raven exactly why he won’t be watching the last season of The Clash of the Originals.
Just as I’m about to join in on the conversation, I feel this need to look in the direction of the entrance.
Where I see Bane standing in the archway, looking at me with narrowed eyes.
There’s a split second of silence before his voice carries over the distance between us. “My office, Novak.” He moves to walk away, but when he sees me still frozen in place, he stops to order, “Now.”
Great, this is just what I need right now. But I get up, watching him start moving down the hallway.
It doesn’t make me feel any better, when I catch the way Alaric’s looking at me.
“Bloody hell,” he says with a grimace that tells me he’s sorry for whatever’s about to happen.
I grit my teeth, throw them both a nod and rush out of the Junkyard.
It’s halfway down the hallway leading to the Entrance Hall that I catch up with Bane.
“Um, what is this regarding?” I ask his back.
“Keep walking,” he cuts me off without turning to look at me.
But it’s far from good, how I’m feeling right now, and his attitude is only making it worse, so I need to make this as quick and painless as possible.
“Alright alright,” I start amicably, walking around him to block his way. It makes my eyebrows pull down, when I see the dark circles around his eyes. I dismiss it, asking, “But why do we have to go all the way to Grimm Tower?”
“You’re right, we don’t,” he says coldly. He whips his phone out of his pocket and the next thing I know, he’s reciting my own email to me, a touch of mockery in his voice. “‘I would just like to let you know that I’ve fallen ill and won’t be able to come to class this week.’ Then, just today, you say you’re ‘still not feeling well enough to show up tomorrow.’”
He lowers his phone and drags his eyes down my body. “You don’t exactly look sick to me, Novak.”
“I’m making sure to drink plenty of fluids,” I say innocently.
“Students who aren’t well don’t hang out in the Junkyard.”
I shrug. “Well I’m a lot better now, so…”
He lets out a scoff. “You know, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t insult my intelligence.”
“Fine,” I reply, “I was only sick last week. Right now, I have a bad case of menstrual cramps.”
It startles me, when he leans in to take a whiff of me. “Liar,” he drawls, pinning me in place with a knowing stare.
I feel blood rush to my face. “You know, this is not exactly professional behavior,” I grit out and move to walk away.
He blocks my way. “Do I look like I give a shit?” he snaps. “There’s something going on and I’m not letting you leave until you tell me what it is.” With that, he folds his arms, waiting.
Ah, so this is a matter of ego. “Come on,” I grumble with a scoff, “this can’t be the first time someone’s skipped a class of yours.”
He gets in my face. “You lied about being sick. What makes you think you can be so nonchalant about it, huh?”
I take a step back, throwing him an incredulous look. “Um, the fact that you, the professor, couldn’t care less about any of this?”
Something flashes through his eyes. I see a muscle in his jaw twitch before he grits out, “This is a matter of my reputation, Novak. So if you don’t spill it, right this instant, I won’t just be forcing you to come to class tomorrow. You’ll be getting detention.”
“Detention?” I echo with a frustrated laugh. “Ugh, could you be more hypocritical?” And despite my better judgment, I can’t resist getting in his face, poison in my voice when I say, “Need I remind you I’m not some snot-faced student, and it was you yourself who said I’m a lost cause and you’d only be coming to these special classes because you have to?” I take a step back to throw daggers at him. “So why don’t you leave me alone and find someone else to fuck with?”
Once I’m done, he just keeps looking at me in wonder. My chest heaving with anger, I let out a scoff and move to push past him and back into the Junkyard.
“Get back here,” he orders in a low, pissed-off voice as I feel his fingers try to wrap around the wrist of my right hand.
The touch sends sparks flying through my skin, but I just tear my hand away and keep marching back into the Junkyard, where I find Alaric and Raven still sitting on the bench, staring at me as I approach.
I come to stand in front of them, but I can barely see them, that’s how out of it I am. My barriers are down and I can’t seem to get them up.
Gods, this… It’s not good.
“Anna,” I hear Alaric start hesitantly.
I force myself to truly look at him, only to find such surprise in his eyes. “Yeah?” I ask, all breathless.
It’s just as he opens his mouth to say something that it hits me. I grit my teeth. “Did you just use your hearing to eavesdrop on my conversation?”
He clamps his mouth shut.
For a second, I just look at him, feeling this violent anger rise to the surface. “I thought you were a powerless vampire,” I demand with cold suspicion in my voice.
He hesitates. “I’m not powerless,” he says, still reluctant, “I just choose not to use my powers.”
I have to close my eyes and take a deep breath so as not to lose my shit. Here I am, at my wit’s end because there seems to be nothing I can do to even get close to using my powers, while he…
“Are you alright, Anna?” I hear Raven ask.
I only manage to shake my head before Alaric cuts in. “The world is cruel enough,” I hear him explain, this unusual defensiveness in his voice. “It doesn’t need Originals making it even worse.”
I take another deep breath, but my chest is still heaving. I open my eyes. “Right,” I say mockingly. “That sure as hell isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
There’s a moment of silence before both him and Raven shoot me these looks filled with pity.
“What?” I grit out, having to fight not to raise my voice as my breathing turns even heavier. “Why the hell do you two think you have the right to look at me like that?”
Alaric just looks at me with unblinking eyes. After a moment of hesitation, I watch Raven get up and move towards me, making my eyebrows pull down. Before I can slink away, she’s already placed a delicate palm on my upper arm, as if to comfort me.
It’s with horror in my eyes that I look at her. She freezes as soon as she touches me, as soon as she feels it, too.
Something’s about to happen and I’m already failing to stop it.
I watch her eyes round, her body still frozen in place, as my mind starts flashing with a series of violent, murky images from her life seen through her own eyes.
There’s the cold, piercing stare of the old fae who came to my dying father’s court, charming him as she cursed his sons to forever remain in their shifted forms.
Then there’s the thickest fog of the oldest forest I’m running through, searching for what was taken from me — my brothers, my family, my everything.
Then there’s the pain searing into me when I finally find them and take their curse upon myself, only for them to leave me there for days that turn into years and years that turn into decades, as I lose every sense of what’s real, every sense of myself, every sense of love the way I used to know it.
When it stops, I’m breathless and her hand is still on my upper arm, but now her eyes are glassy and I can feel her body taking from mine — cleansing itself of coldness, discomfort and pain while poisoning mine with all of that and worse.
Just like they always do — take, take and take, until I’m just an empty shell of a person, sitting on the floor of that goddamn room with my legs pulled to my chest and my unseeing eyes fixed ahead.
The fear is not sudden, but it’s blinding.
As if in slow motion, I tear my arm away from her, needing to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.
It makes my eyes round, when I stumble back and see the burst of light shoot out of my body, her eyes clearing and rounding once again as the impact sends her frail body flying back and hitting the tree trunk behind.
There’s a moment of silence during which I just stand there in shock, watching her eyelids drop and her body slide down the trunk as Alaric rushes over to her with such panic in his movements. Throwing himself onto the ground, he slaps her into opening her eyes.
It’s with such anger that he turns to me, lifting himself into a crouch. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
There’s a whimpering ‘sorry’ trapped in my throat, but the shock and the violent torrent of emotions are rendering me mute and motionless.
For a moment that feels like an eternity, I just keep standing there. Then I turn on my heel and start running straight back to my room.