Chapter 5 Everly
The thing no one tells you about magical university is how much of it is just as much of a grind as regular university.
I still have to write essays. I still have to show up to lectures on time and take notes and raise my hand when I have a question, which is constantly, because I'm months behind everyone else and half the terminology still sounds made up to me.
There's still cafeteria food that ranges from acceptable to genuinely concerning, with the added bonus that for all I know it was magicked into existence.
There are still group projects with people who don't do their share, except here the slackers can literally make their pen write for them while they nap, which feels like it should be cheating but apparently isn't.
Tuesdays and Thursdays also mean I share a hallway with the Sanguis students heading to their Blood Theory seminar.
I see Ren Ashford sometimes, always surrounded by a quiet cluster of crimson-and-black clad students who part around him like he's the calm center of a slow-moving current.
He never looks at me. Not once. I've started to wonder if he even knows I exist.
That anonymity should be comforting, but it only makes me more wary. For all I know, a blood magic user as powerful as him can control me with my blood just like Brittany controls Herbert with his.
Wednesdays are Magical Theory with Warrick, who still watches me like I might explode at any moment, and Elemental Studies with Professor Parker, who is new this semester and seems completely unaware that I'm the campus freak show.
I like Parker. She assigns homework based on sensory observation—describe what lightning feels like before you see it, catalog the temperature shifts when death magic enters a room—and she doesn't seem to care that I can't do any of it on purpose yet.
"Awareness precedes control," she says, every single class, until the phrase starts appearing in my dreams.
Fridays are the worst. Fridays are combat training.
The Proving Grounds sit underneath the east wing of the main academic building, down a stone staircase that smells like sweat and iron and maybe a little bit like fear and pain.
The room itself is cavernous—vaulted ceilings disappearing into shadow, stone walls that are scorched and gouged from decades of students throwing magic at each other, and a floor of hard-packed dirt with fresh sand scattered on top, like someone's trying to cover old bloodstains.
They might actually be covering old bloodstains. I've decided not to ask. If I get too many answers, I might never come back to class.
Professor Marigny runs combat training with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely loves watching eighteen-year-olds throw each other across a room with their fists.
She's short, built like a fire hydrant, with grey-streaked hair cropped close to her skull and a voice so worn and enough from use that it could strip paint.
Her discipline is Tempest—she wears the blue and yellow—but she trains students from all four fraternities, and she doesn't play favorites.
Well. She doesn't play favorites with anyone who's actually in a fraternity.
"Grey! You're late."
"I'm three minutes early."
"For an experienced student, that's early. For someone who needs as much training as you, it's late." She points at the equipment rack along the far wall. "Grab a practice staff. The padded one. I don't want you impaling anyone."
I grab the staff—it's essentially a broomstick wrapped in leather padding—and join the loose circle of students on the sand.
There are about twenty of us in this session, a mix of fraternities, though the colors separate like oil and water.
Tempest blue clusters on one side, Mors silver on the other.
A few Sanguis students in crimson hover near the back.
The only Tumult purple belongs to a girl named Dahlia who seems to exist in a permanent state of mild confusion, like reality keeps shifting on her and she can't keep up.
I can relate.
"Today we're working on your defensive capabilities," Marigny announces, pacing the circle. "No magic allowed. Physical forms only. You get hit, you go down, you get back up. Simple."
A few groans from the students who clearly joined magical university expecting to never have to do a push-up.
"I know, I know. You all came here to throw lightning and summon ghosts, not learn how to block a punch.
But magic fails. Wands break. You run out of blood to fuel your fancy knife tricks.
" She looks directly at a Sanguis boy who's trying to hide behind the girl next to him.
"When that happens, the only thing between you and the floor is whether you can take a hit and keep standing. "
She starts pairing us off. I watch the assignments like a poker game, trying to read the odds, to figure out if I’m getting scarred today or just bruised.
Marigny usually puts students of similar experience together, which means I should get someone from the lower ranks—another first-year, maybe, someone who's also still learning the difference between a block and a flail.
"Grey. You're with Miranda Voss."
My stomach sinks.
Miranda Voss is Tempest. Third year. One of Atlas's inner circle—I've seen her at his table in the dining hall, laughing at his jokes, glaring at anyone who comes too close.
She's tall and lean with platinum hair buzzed on one side and sharp dark eyes that are already cutting into me as she steps forward.
"Great," she says, twirling her staff with the casual ease of someone who's been doing this for years. "The scholarship kid."
"Great," I say back. "The one with the personality of a wet sock."
Her eyes narrow. But Marigny is watching, so she just smiles—thin, sharp, not reaching her eyes—and takes her position across from me.
"Begin on my whistle," Marigny calls. "Defender holds the line. Attacker advances. We swap in five minutes."
I'm defending first. Which means Miranda is coming at me, and from the look on her face, she's planning to enjoy it.
The whistle blows.
Miranda doesn't ease into it. There's no warm-up, no testing jab, no courtesy of pretending this is a fair fight. She comes at me full force from the first second, her staff whipping through the air in strikes that are way too fast and way too hard for a training drill.
I manage to block the first one—barely—the impact jarring up my arms and making my teeth rattle. The second one catches me in the ribs. The third sweeps my legs and I hit the ground hard enough to see stars, sand puffing up around me.
"You're supposed to block those," Miranda says mildly.
I get up. She knocks me down again. And again. And again.
I can hear it happening around me—the sounds of the other students sparring, the crack of staffs colliding, Marigny barking corrections. Nobody else seems to be having this much trouble. Nobody else's partner seems to be actively trying to kill them.
"Rotate!" Marigny shouts.
Now I'm attacking. It should be better—I'm the one on the offensive now, right? Except Miranda's defense is airtight, and every time I swing, she redirects my staff and uses my own momentum to send me stumbling. I'm starting to get dizzy. My hands are shaking.
"What's wrong?" Miranda tilts her head. "I heard you tackled Atlas on a rooftop. This should be easy for you."
"That was spite-fueled," I grit out, swinging again. "I'm running on fumes right now. Though keep shit talking me, maybe I’ll find the energy to take you down too."
She smiles and sweeps my legs again.
This time I go down wrong. My arm catches on something as I fall—a rusted bracket sticking out of the base of the equipment rack that I've been backed into—and I feel it tear.
Not a scratch, not a scrape. A rip, elbow to mid-forearm, deep enough that I can see the white flash of something I really hope isn't bone before blood floods in and turns everything red.
The sound I make isn't a scream. It's more of a sharp, involuntary gasp that cuts through the noise of the room like a knife. Blood is sheeting down my arm, soaking into the sand, dripping off my fingertips.
Miranda steps back. To her credit, she looks startled—this wasn't what she intended, or at least not this badly. "Shit. Marigny—"
"Hold position," Marigny calls, already crossing the room. She takes one look at my arm and her expression tightens. "That needs healing. Where's—Ashford!"
She's looking over my head, toward the far side of the room, and I follow her gaze to where a small commotion has broken out.
A Mors boy—first year, I think, silver blazer too big on his thin frame—is sitting on the ground clutching his hand, looking pale. Scraped palm. He was partnered with a Sanguis girl who clearly pulled her swing too late.
And Ren Ashford is already there.
I watch him kneel beside the kid with a calm, unhurried grace.
His ritual knife appears from somewhere—small, elegant, a dark gem set in the hilt—and he pricks his own finger without flinching, then presses the spilled blood to the boy's scraped palm.
Red light pulses, brief and warm, and the skin knits together like it was never broken.
"There," Ren says softly, and the boy stares at his healed hand like it's a miracle. "You're fine."
He stands. Turns. And his eyes find me across the room.
I'm still on the ground. My arm is still bleeding—freely now, soaking through the sleeve of my training shirt, pooling in the sand beneath my elbow. I'm pressing my other hand against the wound and it's not helping, the blood squeezing between my fingers in hot pulses.
Ren looks at me. Directly at me. Those warm brown eyes take in the blood, the gash, the way I'm trying not to shake, and something crosses his face. Something I can't read—not fear, not anger, not the cold calculation I've gotten used to from Callum. Something that almost looks like pain.
Then he steps over me.