Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Asher
I’ve just settled into my seat at the back of the Divination classroom when Cole gets up from behind his desk. “We’ll be doing direct partner readings today. I’m picking the pairs. You know the drill by now.”
Several of my classmates stifle groans. My stomach knots for a different reason.
My brother’s demeanor is as cool and caustic as he usually acts in professor mode, but I know he hates the direct partner exercises at least as much as his students do.
He’s vented to me at home about the “absurd” rules enforced by the academy’s administration, demanding that the junior and senior Divination class carry out a session at least once a month.
And that he secretly records the sessions too. I can’t stop my gaze from darting toward the corners of the room, wondering where the concealed camera has been set up.
What the hell does the administration want with that? It isn’t as if our readings usually expose more than superficial embarrassments.
There’s only so far Cole is willing to push back against their demands, though. He doesn’t want to jeopardize my position at the school by risking his own.
The knowledge that he’s enduring yet another torment on my behalf sits heavy in my gut as he calls one pair of students and then another and another to sit in the two chairs he’s placed in the middle of our semi-circle.
Each pair faces each other, their knees only a few inches apart. They go back and forth for several turns, reading each other’s personal ephemera and trying to pick out some detail they can share.
Most of the offerings are pretty mundane. What the other person ate for breakfast. How they got to school. Who they were chatting with on the green. How they felt during the class before this one. What they doodled in their notebook.
Occasionally, one person objects that their partner got it wrong. Mostly, they just nod in acknowledgment and take their own turn.
But everyone knows that higher marks go to more insightful divinations. If you can discern something your partner would want to hide from you—and the rest of the class—you’ll see a nice boost to your grade. So as each pair warms up, the exchange becomes increasingly tense.
Cadance Hathaway narrows her eyes at Kenneth Hearst. “You got a good dressing down last night—some lady telling you off.” Her cheeks are still pink from his last remarks about the zit she dabbed concealer over this morning and the bit of magical sabotage she inflicted on her neighbor in science class.
She doesn’t guess who the lady might have been, even though we’d all assume it’s Kenneth’s mother. If she makes an extra speculation and it happens to be wrong, he can reject the entire statement and she gets no points.
His expression ticks, a flush spreading up his pale neck to match his ruddy hair. As much as he looks like he’d prefer to argue, he gives a quick dip of his head.
Cole claps his hands. “And you’re done. Decent showing from both of you. Back to your seats.”
His gaze sweeps over the rest of the room, and his jaw tightens. I brace myself, but I’m still not prepared for the next names out of his mouth.
“We have time for one more pair: Elodie Devine and Asher Raith.”
Across the room, Elodie’s tanned face remains carefully blank, but I catch the momentary tensing of her shoulders. As she rises from her desk, I peel myself off my chair.
My still-knotted stomach has sunk to somewhere around the level of my knees.
Why is Cole throwing us together? I know he heard the murmurs that rippled through the halls after she shouted at me the other day.
Knowing my brother, he might be purposefully provoking her. Hoping to rub her unfairness in her face. Or simply looking to give me an opportunity to take her down a peg.
But I don’t want to.
I sink into the chair opposite her. Elodie tugs her blazer straight and crosses her legs at the ankle while studiously avoiding looking at my face. Everyone must be able to see how little she likes having to work with me.
Shame stings the back of my throat, even though I have no idea what I’ve done to offend her.
Maybe this is a chance to find out. To get some idea what’s bothering her about me—and about whatever else she’s been dealing with lately.
If I glean something vulnerable, I don’t have to announce it to the class. I just want to understand.
Cole positions himself behind his desk, his penetrating eyes fixed on Elodie. “Begin. Miss Devine, why don’t you go first?”
The trace of a sneer in his tone tells me he’s definitely out to stick one to her. Doesn’t it occur to him that facing her discomfort is equally uncomfortable to me?
Elodie’s gaze flicks over my body without meeting my eyes. I’m suddenly, starkly aware of her knees just a couple of inches from me, as if a waft of heat has leapt between us. My skin only gets tighter.
She speaks faster than I expected, the words tart. “You’re wishing your brother didn’t make us go through this stupid exercise.”
Somehow our already silent classmates fall into an even deeper hush, their breaths held as they watch for their professor’s reaction. It’s obvious Elodie is using the assignment to express her own displeasure.
A harsher note comes into Cole’s voice. “If you can’t be bothered to follow the guidelines of the exercise—”
My own lungs have clenched, but I cut off his threat with a bob of my head, trying not to feel like a traitor while I do it.
I don’t believe for a second that Elodie read anything that specific about my feelings—I suspect she didn’t even try—but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. I’m not going to let him castigate her for something that’s true.
Cole cuts himself off. I don’t dare look his way.
He inhales sharply. “Fine. Your turn, Mr. Raith.”
There’s no way around it. I will my nerves to settle and study Elodie with more care than she appeared to give me. She’s continuing to avoid my eyes, her gaze drifting in the vicinity of my shoulders.
As with every person, creature, and object, quivers of ephemera resonate off her. I concentrate more intently, expecting the sensation to expand and deepen.
Instead, it’s as if my mind bounces off a thin shell. A protective barrier blocks me reading from most of the energy on the other side.
She’s shielding against me. I can only recognize the sensation because of the private lessons I’ve gotten from my brother.
Shielding isn’t taught at Luminary, at least not before grad school, and it’s definitely against the rules for this exercise.
Doesn’t she care if Cole notices? She’s kept the effect subtle, more like a flexible membrane than a thick wall, but if I can pick up on it, he sure as hell could too.
But then, she didn’t seem all that concerned about pissing him off during her turn.
Those thoughts pass through my head in the space of a few seconds, and then the barrier fades. Glimmers of ephemera reach my searching awareness.
I think she noticed me reacting to her shield and thinned it so it’s less obvious. Which suggests even more skill than I’ve gained through my practice with Cole.
Maybe it isn’t surprising. Given her family’s status, why wouldn’t they have taught her how to guard herself well?
I just don’t know what it is that she’s guarding so carefully right now.
Time is ticking away, and my brother can’t show too much favoritism by letting me dawdle forever. I skim through the impressions that have filtered through and pick the first one that gives me a clear image. “Your pen went dry earlier this morning.”
Elodie gives a slight nod and takes her turn without prompting. “Our professor drove you most of the way to school today.”
He usually insists on it, since we need to arrive around the same time but he often has to stay much later than I do. I insist on him letting me out of the car before we’re in sight of my peers. So much for that.
As I acknowledge her statement, Cole folds his arms over his chest. I scan the energies seeping through Elodie’s shield as quickly as I can, hunting for anything that might explain her shift in attitude.
Fragments float up, scattered and indistinct. A single word in a voice I don’t recognize here; a flash of color there. I’m struggling to find even a mundane observation to put forward, let alone anything more insightful.
At this rate, all my classmates are thinking I’m even more of an idiot than they already believed.
I grasp on to one vivid if small impression. “There was coffee brewing in your kitchen.”
I can’t even say for sure when that was. If I was anyone other than Cole’s brother, he’d be lambasting me for this weak performance.
Another nod from Elodie, then barely a pause. “You have something in a black bag in your bedroom closet.”
My training sword.
I restrain a wince, but Elodie mustn’t have been able to get a clear idea of the bag’s contents. And its presence shouldn’t be that startling anyway. Lots of people keep training equipment at home.
I’m already studying her as I indicate yes, but I can’t sense anything clearer than before. The grass on the green—pretty much everyone crosses it in the morning. The graze of the breeze against her cheek, sometime recently. A glimmer of purple—seeing her hair in the mirror?
None of that feels like enough.
A possible tactic creeps into my mind. If I can’t push through her shield… maybe I can shake her enough to disrupt her magic.
Something about my presence is stirring up emotions she doesn’t want to feel. I don’t like the idea of upsetting anyone, but a little jab might be worth it if it helps me see what’s wrong.
I propel the words from my mouth. “You feel ill when you look in my eyes.”
A grimace tugs at Elodie’s lips—and her gaze flicks up to catch mine in instinctive reaction to my declaration. I can’t say I made it up, because in the instant before she jerks her eyes away again, a hint of a sickly cast does touch her light brown skin.
And a few sharper fragments slip through her protective shell. A burning sensation in her back. Puddles rippling on pavement. Red splattered across the dark gray. A gust of a sharply metallic scent—
Is that blood?
I miss whether Elodie answers my assessment—or maybe she doesn’t at all. The barrier thickens, jarring me out of the burst of impressions I sensed, and she’s already launching into her next reading.
“You fed a dog yesterday.”
At the corner of my vision, my brother’s head jerks toward me. My pulse hiccups.
There’ll be a lecture coming tonight.
How is she finding every detail he could possibly have a problem with?
The only bit of sense I could make of the jumbled impressions I caught a moment ago pops from my mouth. “You hurt your back.”
Sometime, I have no idea when or how. Cole would never let a reading that vague slide for anyone else.
It doesn’t matter, because an emotion that seems to match my own panic flickers through Elodie’s expression.
Her voice hardens. “You spend every day wishing your brother would back off and let you live your own life without having to worry about what he’d do if he found out.”
The jitter of panic rises to a blare. I barely hear Cole’s voice, taut and icy: “Enough!”
Our professor spins on Elodie. “You seem to have missed the point of this exercise. It’s not to invent commentary to fit your personal vendettas. I’ll have to—”
“I’m not inventing—” Elodie starts to break in, and then her gaze snags with mine for only the second time in this conversation.
I don’t know what she sees on my face, but her protest falters.
She’d have every right to insist that I confirm or deny, and then I’d have to decide whether to lie. Whether it’s worth the risk that Cole would be able to tell I am.
Instead, she ducks her head. She speaks tersely but clearly. “I’m obviously not in the right headspace for doing readings right now. I apologize for my behavior.”
She’s implying that she made it up. To spare me? But why, after everything…?
She’s angry with my brother, but all at once I’m not sure that her reaction to me has anything to do with dislike.
An urge twines through my muscles to reach out and grasp her gloved hand in mine.
Cole strides around his desk, casting a glower across the rest of the students. “We’re done here. Get to your next classes.” He shifts his glower to Elodie. “Except for you. In my office. Now.”
As Elodie grudgingly gets to her feet, my heart leaps to my throat.
I scramble up too. “Cole, it’s really—”
He waves me off, already ushering Elodie toward the door. “I’ll take care of this, Asher. You don’t need to worry about it.”
As I watch him shadow her out the door, a strange twinge forms in my chest.
Why is every part of me suddenly clamoring to race over there and pull her away from him?