Chapter 51 #2
“The buddy system isn’t working,” she said when the room quieted enough for her voice to carry. She didn’t look at me. “They don’t care if there are witnesses. Lady Helene tripped me in the colonnade yesterday. Right in front of Mage-Instructor Halvaren. He looked right at me and kept walking.”
Murmurs of agreement. Hands shot into the air, and stories tumbled over each other.
“Lord Ethmond spilled ink on my notes. Three people saw him do it. Mage-Instructor Halvaren said I should have been more careful with my belongings.”
“Lady Beatrix told the entire Advanced Charms lecture that my accent made me sound like a braying donkey. Everyone laughed, even Mage-Instructor Primula.”
“Bernardo de Espola ‘accidentally’ slammed a door on Rhea’s hand and broke two of her fingers. Julissa called it an unfortunate accident when Rhea lodged a complaint, and fined her five denarii for ‘creating a disturbance in class.’”
Each story landed like a stone, piling up into a wall of frustration and helplessness that weighed down our spirits.
It didn’t matter that we’d paired up. Or that we documented every incident and reported it. None of it mattered, because the assistant chatelaine and the academy authorities had decided that the rules didn’t apply to the aristocratic students.
“Julissa threatened to fine me, too,” Tomas said, his voice quavering. “She said I had to ‘stop fomenting unrest with baseless allegations.’” His expression twisted with bitterness.
Elio leaped to his feet, eyes blazing.
“This is bullshit,” he said. “Absolute bullshit. Julissa isn’t even pretending to be impartial anymore.”
Every eye in the room turned to me.
I didn’t know what to say that would make this better. I wanted more than anything to run away, crawl into my bed, and sleep for a week.
But they were all looking at me with hope in their eyes.
“I’ll figure something out,” I said.
The words left my mouth before my brain had time to catch up.
Silence. Then a scatter of relieved murmurs. Shoulders loosened. Faces brightened. Just like that, the weight shifted—from their shoulders to mine.
Wonderful. I had no idea what I was going to do when I couldn’t even protect Juno and Mira.
But I had promised. And I’d grown up in a place where you kept your promises or you died trying.
“Give me until the end of the week,” I added. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “I’ll come up with a new plan.”
They believed in me. I could see it in their faces.
I didn’t deserve that trust. Not when I was making it up as I went along and the only thing I knew for certain was that we were running out of options.
∞∞∞
Elio
I waited until the common room had emptied before I spoke to Talisa about the thing preying on my mind.
I reached for her hand and laced our fingers together.
“Danila’s worried about me,” I said.
Talisa’s eyes widened.
‘Worried’ undersold the tongue-lashing my sister had given me this afternoon when she cornered me in my room.
Elio, stop making enemies of the people who sign our family’s import contracts!
You know our parents do business with half the noble families in the capital.
Lady Cresta’s father buys our spices. Lord Bernardo’s uncle gives us our biggest silk and velvet orders.
Lord Ormond’s mother, Duchess Violetta, invests heavily in our trading fleets to the Southern Continent. Do you want our parents to go bankrupt?
“Let me guess.” Talisa’s shoulders slumped. “She wants you to stop attending meetings.”
“More or less.” I shrugged. “She framed it as concern for my future. And she’s worried about what might happen to the family business if the wrong people decide the Ferraros are more trouble than they’re worth.”
The words tasted bitter. Family loyalty had been drilled into me since I could talk. Protect the Ferraro name. Grow the luxury import business my grandfather had founded. Cultivate our aristocratic patrons, who kept us fed, and clothed, and wealthy.
Danila wasn’t wrong to worry about what mattered. But what mattered to me had become complicated.
Talisa was quiet for a long moment. Then: “I don’t want to make trouble between you and your family, Elio. They love you and they want what’s best for you.”
“I know,” I said. “But I love you, too.” Trickster be damned, that had just slipped out! I added hastily, “I want what’s best for you.And for everyone in the Open Hand.”
I braced myself for her reaction to my untimely confession.
She stared at me for a moment, then her lips parted in wonder and she glowed.
“I—I love you, too, Elio!” she said with one of her sweet smiles and an even sweeter kiss.
At that moment, I would have done anything for her, even walked into a Dragon’s aerie and faced down one of the monstrous beasts bare-handed.
“I’m worried that if I stay here,” Talisa said, when we parted lips a blissful interval later, “I’m putting everyone in danger. The Open Hand. Your family. Mira and Juno. Everyone who stands near me has become a target. What if the next dead body I find isn’t a magical construct? What if—”
“Stop it.” I cupped her face in my hands.
Her skin was warm under my palms, but my chest ached at the dark circles under her eyes.
“You can’t leave, not now. People are joining the Open Hand in droves because you inspire them.
Because you stood up for the way the commoners here are treated.
Because you won the Aurelian Trials with a partner who’d never cast a combat spell in his life. ”
Dammit, I didn’t meant to make her cry!
I brushed away her tears with my thumbs and leaned in and kissed her, longer and deeper and slower this time.
When we broke apart, her forehead rested against mine.
“The Custodes,” she said. I could almost hear her thinking. “They thrive on secrecy. On intimidation. On keeping their victims isolated and afraid. That’s their power.”
I nodded. “So we take that away from them.”
“How?”
“Make them look ridiculous.” The idea had been forming since I’d stood in Talisa’s room and glimpsed three fake corpses on the floor.
“Bullies can’t stand mockery, Talisa. It’s the one thing they have no defense against. You can threaten them, and they’ll threaten back harder.
You can outsmart them, and they’ll just change the rules.
But make them the butt of a joke that everyone is laughing at?
That undermines their power and can destroy them. ”
Her eyes narrowed. I knew she was testing the idea against what she’d learned about how things worked at the academy.
“Like when we dispelled everyone’s beauty charms and removed their makeup at the Dominion Day banquet,” she said.
“Exactly like that.” I grinned. Remembering the consternation we’d caused—and the fact that no one had ever discovered who was behind the prank—made me feel good. “We target members of the Custodes Sanguinis and make sure everyone knows they’re not actually omnipotent and untouchable.”
“If anyone finds out we’re using magic to prank the Custodians, Julissa will jump at the chance to expel us,” Talisa warned, but her eyes were bright with excitement now instead of dulled with fatigue and defeat.
“Which is why we’ll need help from the older students in the Circle.”
“Dante,” she said immediately. “Mavia. Varrix to help us with the planning—he’s very good at analysis and strategy, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Oh, I’d definitely noticed. I nodded. “One more thing: we have a lot of new members. Chances are some of them are spying for the Custodians. We have to limit this to people we know and trust.”
She grinned, and the sight made my heart soar. “The Custodians won’t take this lightly.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, my fingers lingering against her cheek. “But if we’re sneaky enough, they won’t see us coming.”
This was going to be a dangerous game. Danila would box my ears if she found out.
But I couldn’t wait to exact some payback from those silver-ring bastards.