2. Asha
Asha
The good news is I’m not naked.
The bad news is, instead of a silk gown suitable for a goddess, I’m wearing some kind of ragged black dress that looks like I was banished through time and space from a different realm.
Funny, that.
I reach for the dark on instinct, like I have every hour of my life, but there’s nothing there to answer.
No channels. No thread. No realm is humming under my feet, ready to do something unspeakable on my behalf.
Just a wet courtyard, a body that fits me like a borrowed coat two sizes too small, and a man in black who has already lost interest in whether I can stand.
“Up,” he says, and turns, walking away, fully expecting me to follow.
I could refuse. I think about refusing for exactly as long as it takes to understand that lying in the rain in protest is not the look of a goddess, it’s the look of a fool, and I’m nobody’s fool.
So I get up. This body shakes while doing it, and I despise it for that.
I stumble after him in shoes that are plain and ugly, because the only other option is staying out here with the gargoyles who are whispering secrets in a language I should understand but don’t.
One of them laughs.
At me.
“Fucker,” I mutter and stick my middle finger up.
He returns it and carries on whispering to his identical pal on the parapet.
Moving my hand in front of my face, I examine the delicateness of it. Fragile bones, neat fingernails, no blemishes. An all new body that has been created and wraps up the goddess in a tight package.
I hate it.
My blonde hair is long, wet and straggly. I pick up a few strands and glare at it. My lustrous honey blond hair is gone, and in its place is this dirty blonde wig that makes my scalp itch. I scratch at it and tug, hoping it comes off.
It doesn’t.
“Ouch,” I mutter, rubbing my scalp as I enter the fanciest building and immediately feel like I’ve been swallowed and not in a good way.
Black stone goes up forever. That whispers, too.
The corridors breathe. A staircase shifts a half-turn.
This is old stone with an appetite, and it watches me come in, patient, a building that’s eaten before and will again.
I’ve built dread into architecture myself.
I know the trick, but knowing it doesn’t stop the skin on my new arms from creeping.
He leads me to a front desk where a female waits behind it with black wings, green eyes and skin that appears translucent if you stare at it for long enough. She gives me a raking over once, head to horrible dress to my plain, uncomfortable shoes, then writes something before I’ve said a word.
“This creature was found in the courtyard,” the man says. “Process her, then she’s mine to place.”
“Designation?” the female asks.
“Anomaly,” he says, and the word lands on me like a brand. “Until proven otherwise.”
“I have a designation,” I snap. “It’s the one they used to carve over doorways so people knew whose mercy they were about to be under. Would you like it? I’ll spell it slowly.”
“Please do,” the female drawls, brandishing her pen mockingly.
I open my mouth to give her my name. I feel it rise up the back of my throat where it’s lived for five hundred years.
But no sound comes out except a choking noise. The word turns to ash on my tongue, fine and bitter, packing my mouth, gritting between my teeth. I try again. The realm I’m standing in won’t hold what I am, and it shoves the word back down my throat in pieces every time I reach for it.
The female waits, pen poised, supremely unbothered by the goddess choking on cinders in front of her.
“Well? Cat got your tongue?”
“Fuck you,” I splutter, spitting ash and then it falls into place. “Asha,” I say. It comes out clean. Of course it does. It’s small enough to fit.
She writes it down. “Asha,” she repeats, like it’s nothing, because to her it is. “Lower or Upper, Headmaster?”
Headmaster? I give the black-eyed male another look. Interesting.
He meets my stare for long enough that I have the brief, insane comfort of being seen by something that might actually be old enough to count.
“Upper,” he says.
The woman’s pen scribbles it down.
“And Upper would be?” I inquire sweetly with enough venom laced in it to count.
Or at least it would to anyone else.
“I’m assuming from the look of you, you fit into the final year here at SilverGate.”
“SilverGate?” I frown. “SilverGate?”
“That is what I said.”
SilverGate. Not unlike StormGate, yet clearly inferior. “And you would be?” I ask.
“Eldris Blackridge. Headmaster.”
“We still need a designation,” the female states.
Blackridge stares at me. “Show me something.”
“What?”
“Your power.”
The corner of my mouth quirks up. “You want power? I’ll show you power.”
I have unmade cities with less effort than it will take to show him even a glimpse of who I am.
What comes out is wrong.
It isn’t weak. It isn’t a trickle where there used to be a flood. It’s the flood, the death and the blood of an entire realm, trying to pour itself through a narrow little channel that was never built to carry it.
It’s a whimper rather than a roar.
A little, bitty blue orb instead of an inferno made to raze this fucking place to the ground.
The woman purses her lips and scribbles something down.
“Hm,” Blackridge says. “Low-level witch.”
Low-level witch? I’m insulted more than I have ever been. “You’ve got it all wrong,” I hiss.
“No, I don’t think I do,” Blackridge replies. “You will remain in Upper Class, but you will need to catch up. Fast.”
“Or what?”
“Or you will die.”
My mouth drops open. “What is this place?”
“SilverGate Academy,” he says, turning on his heel and walking away. “And you are the newest anomaly case, Miss Asha.”
I stare after him, rainwater still drying on my skin, and seriously consider setting the desk on fire out of principle.
But I can’t. My magic is incompatible with this realm. It runs on a different frequency. I can feel the wrongness buzzing under my skin.
A machine whirs to life, and the female plucks a piece of paper from a beige plastic box. “Your timetable.”
“What? You expect me to attend lessons?”
“This is a university, dear. They’re lectures, not lessons.”
“Well, that’s all right then,” I mutter and pick up the timetable, scanning the lectures for something that might help me get out of this dump and back to StormGate. Advanced Elemental Magic, Combat Theory, Inter-Realm Ethics, Applied Warding, Ritual Structures, Familiar Bonding.
I look up. “You’ve got to be joking.”
The winged bitch behind the desk slides a black key across the desk. It has a silver tag stamped with a number and a letter I don’t recognise. “Upperclassman tower is to the right. You are on the second floor, third door on your left. Do try not to die before supper. It creates paperwork.”
“I’ll strive to keep your evening free, whatever your name is.”
“Ryla,” she says sourly. “But I doubt you’re capable of striving for anything useful.”
I smile at her. “Keep pushing, and I’ll prove you wrong.”
She doesn’t even blink. The bored look she gives me is enough for me to take my tattered pride and back away with my timetable and key.
The front hall opens before me in a spread of black stairs, vaulted arches and too many doors.
Students move through it in clusters. Wings.
Horns. Eyes that catch the light wrong. Human faces, monster personalities.
Every head turns. Not because I’m impressive, but because I’m soaked, furious, dressed like a grave mistake, and clearly not one of them.
I lift my chin and walk anyway.
If they want a show, they can pay for it in blood later.
The right-hand stair curls up into the tower, wide enough for groups of students to mill around aimlessly. They split around one male coming down. I see why when he reaches the last step.
Tall. Dark hair. Pale eyes with no softness in them at all. He wears black like Blackridge does, but on him it looks less official and more like a warning. His gaze lands on me, drops to the key in my hand, then lifts back to my face.
Assessment.
Dismissal.
Mild irritation that works both ways.
He stops in front of me. “You’re blocking the stairs.”
“I’m not even on the stairs yet.”
“You’re in my way.”
I smile without warmth. “Then go around.”
A few students nearby go quiet.
His eyes narrow a fraction. “New blood.”
“Observant. Your parents must be so proud.”
His gaze drops to my lips before slowly dragging back up to meet my gaze. “That mouth could be put to much better use.”
“Like cursing you to wear your insides on the outside?” I ask in that sweet voice that is anything but.
His eyebrow goes up slightly. “Vicious. There’s more to you than meets the eye, little witch.”
“Not a witch,” I grit out.
“Sure smells like it from here.”
Smells? “Fuck you,” I mutter for lack of a better comeback. “Move.”
He steps aside, but it’s mocking.
I take the stairs with as much dignity as this pathetic body can manage and refuse to look back.
That doesn’t stop me from feeling his gaze on me.
Fine. Let him watch me walk away. If all I’ve got in this realm is a bad dress, a weak spark and my natural charm, I’ll use all three.
The second floor opens into a circular landing lined with narrow windows and black doors, each marked in silver.
Voices drift from behind them. Laughter.
Arguing. Music. Every sound needles at me.
This place is alive with power I don’t understand, and I can’t tell whether it wants to spit me out or swallow me whole.
Third door on the left.
I jam the key in harder than necessary and push inside.
The room is not entirely offensive.
That’s the nicest thing I can say about it.
A fireplace burns low at the far wall beneath a carved mantel.
The bed is an enormous four-poster that looks too inviting right now.
A tall wardrobe stands between two windows looking out over the rain-slick courtyard.
Shelves hold books, candles and a skull with silver runes carved into it sits on a desk in the far corner.
The door clicks shut behind me, and I stand very still.
Then I march to the desk and drop my timetable and key on it.
I need information. I need control. I need my power to stop behaving like it’s been stuffed into a child’s toy.
I hold up one hand and call to my power again.
The stupid blue light hovers above my palm, bright and obedient in the most insulting way possible.
I glare at it.
It wobbles.
“Fuck you,” I mutter again. “Everyone can just fuck off.”
I flop down on the bed and realise immediately it’s the most comfortable I’ve been in a while.
I kick off the horrible shoes, pull off the ragged dress.
I curl up naked under the covers, closing my eyes and hoping that this is all a bad dream, and when I wake up, I’ll be back to beheading people who sneeze too close to me.