CHAPTER 2 RAYA #2
That’s easy for you to say. I don’t lend voice to that less-than-fair remark.
Akari’s magic has always come so naturally to her, as steady as her nerve and as effortless as breathing.
She’s never had to work to wrestle it into submission, or watch her classmates flourish while she struggled to complete basic tests.
The only futures I’ve ever been able to see with any certainty are too small to matter, like where I might find a book in the archives or a friend in the city, how long a bout of sickness will linger or what the cooks are making for lunch.
Questions that only reveal an imminent, already decided path.
That won’t be enough to get me through my trials.
For that, I’ll have to accurately predict a more sprawling future—and Professor Lyons isn’t likely to accept anything short of perfection from the biggest disappointment in class.
Neither will my parents.
They risked their reputation by forcing him to give me another chance.
They need me to make good on the skill they promised.
Which is why I can’t just let Akari compel this urge away.
If my life is to take an unwanted turn, then the very least I can do is make an effort to steer the ship. And if I steer it right into the rocks, well . . . I’ll drown knowing that decision belonged to me.
*
Come the midnight bell, I’m still intent on asking the open question, regardless of the risk.
So, I wait for Akari to fall asleep.
Then I wait to confirm that she’s not faking.
Then I wait another hour just to be sure that this time, she won’t intercede.
You can yell at me tomorrow, I mouth a silent apology before shimmering, ignoring the decree that prohibits us from wisping through closed doors when we please.
What’s one more broken rule when I’m about to break the cardinal?
And besides, at the Academy—where the typics can’t perform their displeasure or lend voice to their fear—we tend to skirt this particular rule more than most. Back before Killen and I broke up, I was wisping out of my room and into his three nights a week.
You really shouldn’t be bothering him with this.
The guilt is a snake coiling knots between my ribs.
Before we got together, Killen and I had been good friends for years.
He was the first boy I ever liked. The first boy I ever kissed.
Along with several other firsts we gave each other, until I had to go and add first broken heart to the list. My choice, not his.
And all of my attempts to keep things amicable have been firmly rebuffed since.
Killen asked me to stay away from him and I should respect that.
I should find a different Shade to help me lift the spell inflicted by Saleen.
I should and I should and I should.
But I don’t.
My physicality melts away, the air turning to power as I harness the most primal part of my magic.
When we shimmer, we move like light and disappear like the darkness, transcending the color in our blood, and our specializations, and our guilds.
We become part of the Gray, one with the shadows in a way that’s difficult to describe but easy to maintain.
The one facet of my power that’s never given me any trouble.
I make no sound as I speed through corridor and wall, leave no trace in the ether other than a fine rippling of wind, all but invisible unless some eagle-eyed Shade were to make a point of looking.
Unlikely at this early hour. I learned that much back when I was sneaking off to meet Killen for a different kind of end.
That’s how I know the shortest route through the castle and that his roommate, a fellow Indigo called Damian, sleeps like the dead.
That’s how I know exactly how to get Killen’s help.
Despite the fact that he hates me.
His room is exactly the same as the last time I saw it: messy, but only on his side, the wall above his bed covered in dozens of the shadow-
dulled pictures he likes to take—a strange sort of hobby for a Blue.
Killen’s magic affords him the power to accelerate, to make processes happen at a greater speed.
Perhaps that’s why he’s always been more interested in freezing them in time, capturing the moment with a pre-spelled charm.
Studies of life at the Academy, mostly, but he also used to love taking pictures of me, and those used to command pride of place above his headboard—until the day he left them in a flaming pile at my feet, which he then proceeded to accelerate to ash.
I can only hope that his anger has abated since then.
That six months will have blunted the hurt.
“Killen,” I whisper, placing a firm hand over his mouth. “Killen, wake up.”
He jerks upright in the bed, his green eyes widening to perfect circles, the shock in them quickly giving way to confusion as he catches sight of me through the rippling dark.
“What the hells, Raya?” he hisses, batting me away. “What are you—? Did you wisp in here?” His sandy hair is mussed with sleep and sticking up at odd angles, his skin as flush and sun-kissed as I remember, warmth radiating from him like an indoor sun. Killen always did run hot.
“Would it have really been better if I’d knocked?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
“When people knock, I can ignore them.” Killen raises the sheet between us like a shield, distracting from his lack of shirt. “And you don’t get to wisp in here anymore, remember? You lost that right when you called things off.”
For absolutely no reason, is what Killen is too disconcerted to add—though the vision that showed him cheating on me with another girl would suggest otherwise.
Since when do you believe everything the future shows you? he’d spat when I confronted him about his prophesied betrayal. You’re wrong about your visions all the time, Raya, why are you so desperate to believe this one? Gods, why would you even ask the future if I was going to cheat?
Unlike me, Killen always knew how to ask the right questions.
Even when the answers would have only caused him more pain.
Because the truth is, I didn’t ask the future if he would cheat, I asked it if the two of us had a future, and that’s what it showed me in reply.
Not the blurry kind of vision that’s open to interpretation—this offering was crystal fucking clear, awash with both sights and feelings.
I’d tasted no shame in it, no hesitation, no guilt.
What Killen felt when he kissed the blond-haired girl with the roaming hands was love, and lust, and absolute need.
Which would have been the worst part if not for the fact that all I felt was relief.
That’s why I was so keen to believe it.
Because the thing about the future is that once you see it, you can change it, and if you change it, was it ever the future at all? Except for the fact it was. An inevitability, but at the same time, not an excuse to do nothing, and this vision was all the excuse I needed to call us quits.
“Look, I get that I’m the last person you want to see right now, but I need a spell.” I skip us past the pleasantries and get straight to the point.
“You need a spell,” he repeats, staring at me as though possessed. “In the middle of the night. From your ex.”
“From a Blue,” I correct. And as much as I’d rather not tell Killen this next part, he can’t rid me of Saleen’s compulsion if he doesn’t know it exists.
“I lost a bet and found myself at the wrong end of a Red.” Though I do massage the truth just a little, since he doesn’t need to know the whys that led to me being compelled.
“And you want the magic accelerated off?”
“I don’t like not being in control of my own mind.”
“Funny, because I don’t like doing favors for my ex-girlfriend.”
I had a feeling he might say that.
That’s why I came prepared.
“It’s not a favor if you’re getting something in return,” I say, tossing him a hefty purse.
“Pass.” A flash of embarrassment colors his cheeks, the heat glowing stark against the smokey shadows. “Go pay some other Blue.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I know you need it.” The words escape before I can stop them, twisting his hard-cut features into an angry mask, his embarrassment turning to offence.
“I don’t want your money, Raya,” he grits, stubborn as ever.
Killen never did like talking about money, or more precisely, talking about his family’s lack of money compared to the wealth of mine.
It used to drive me nuts when we were still together, because coin—or a lack thereof—does not a good Shade make.
Hells, Killen is a far better Shade than I’ve ever been.
Smart, meticulous, thorough, a natural hand at channeling his gift.
Which is why I didn’t just go to some other Blue; I came to the one I could trust to do the job well.
“Fine, but I’m going to leave it here whether you help me or not, so you can either have it for no reason, or for a spell.
Your choice,” I say, knowing full well that he’s less likely to accept a gift than a trade, choose charity over favor.
And for a long moment, I see the need to argue in his eyes, to tell me not to bother leaving the purse because he’ll only find a way to give it back.
But the truth of the matter is, he does need it.
He’s needed it ever since his father left and his mother grew too depressed to leave the house.
Killen can’t afford to let this much coin slip through his fingers.
No matter how much getting it from me might sting.
“Whatever.” He finally relents with a sigh, sending a sharp ache shooting through my ribs. I don’t like hurting Killen. I never liked hurting Killen—that’s why I stayed with him so long in the first place.
Because I did love him.
I loved his kind heart, and his crooked smile, and his unending capacity for compassion and grace.
I just didn’t love him the same way he loved me.
“Anything I should know about the spell I’m accelerating?” Killen asks, snapping me out of my regret.
“Just that it’s a compulsion spell with about a week’s worth of juice left.” I steal a quick glance at Damian, to ensure that we’re not being overheard.
“Relax, he’d sleep through an invasion.”
“Right, yeah. I remember.” It’s a stupid—stupid—thing to say, and it hangs awkwardly between us, like the memory of a life unmade.
I remember a lot of things about this room, and this bed, and all those nights we spent pretending Damian didn’t exist. I remember running my fingers through Killen’s hair and along his sun-kissed shoulders, stealing kisses between classes and getting sucked into conversations that stretched on for hours on end.
I remember that it wasn’t all bad, actually.
That even the wrong guy feels right, sometimes.
But most importantly, I remember that if it were up to Killen, we’d still be together—which is why I shouldn’t make things worse by giving that admission air.
Unlike with Saleen, I don’t have to brace myself for Killen’s spell.
A Blue’s power is the most curious of magics in that you can only feel it working if it’s used to accelerate a physical process within the body, otherwise, it’s all about watching the desired result unveil.
With just a flick of his hand, Killen could turn a light drizzle into a rainstorm, bake a loaf of bread the second it touches the oven, speed up the task of reading a book or filling a well.
He could even kill with it. I shudder as his eyes close in concentration, as he places two fingers at each of my temples and orders the color in his blood to wake.
If he felt like breaking the law, Killen could command my heart to beat right through my chest or force my blood to circulate so fast it wore a hole through my veins.
He could quite literally age me to death between heartbeats.
“Okay—that’s you sorted.”
But of course, Killen doesn’t do any of those things, and he pulls away before the static charge building between us grows thick enough to spark a blaze. “I designed the spell to affect any and all Red magic, so your mind should be fully yours again.”
“Thanks.” I silently probe for any hint of Saleen’s compulsion, testing to ensure the validity of Killen’s claim.
An open question . . . I want to ask an open question . . .
True to his word, the thought garners no resistance, my reckless endeavor freed of its magical cage.
Now you just have to go through with it.
I do Killen the courtesy of not lingering where I’m not wanted, though once I’m safely out in the hallway, the choice he made possible fills my stomach with lead.
Do I shimmer back to my room and forget about this terrible idea, or head towards the seeing tower and cast the biggest risk an Indigo can take?
All you need to do is pass your trials. Just .
. . focus on that. Akari’s voice sets a guilty flame to my bones.
It was no small thing for her to turn to Saleen for help, no victimless effort.
For while my split from Killen was welcome, her breakup with Saleen was a lesson in devastation, a pain made worse for the fact that Saleen wasted no time before very publicly making her way through a pretty parade of girls.
If I do this now—if I risk my future—I’d be spitting in the face of the kindness Akari did me, at great personal cost.
Go back to bed, Raya. I slow my shimmer as I reach the corridor’s decisive turn. Forget about the open question and go back to bed.
But I don’t go back to bed.
And I can’t forget about the open question because it feels like the only hope I have left, the only way to prove that I deserve to keep my magic.
So instead, I set my shoulders and shimmer off towards the seeing tower, making the decision with my gut instead of my head.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and this one will either ruin my prospects or improve them no end.
The only way to know for sure is to sink down to the cushions, reach for the color in my blood, and lace it around the four forbidden words that I should never ever think with magical intent.
What is my future?