Chapter 20 Repercussions
Repercussions
Present Day
Malcroix Mansion
Malcroix Bones Academy
Ashoulder hit into me, hard, making me gasp before I turned my head, meeting the cold, furious eyes of a mage a few years older than me, one I’d never even spoken to before.
When I opened my mouth to say something, he cut me off.
“Cunt. Hope you’re happy.”
The mage walking next to him spit at me, and I barely managed to push it off with a spell so that it hit the carpeted floor instead. I stared at the two of them, half in disbelief. The red-haired mage glared back, unapologetic.
“We’ll likely lose the cup this year, thanks to you,” he growled. “Bitch.”
Another of his friends raised his hand in a mudra, and I caught it, just in time.
I saw the swirl of magic coil around his peacock primal’s feathers right before he would have structured it enough to throw it in my direction.
I instinctively yanked on my own magic, erecting a quick shield.
I’d already raised my hand to counterattack, when a burst of light slammed into the mage’s chest.
It knocked him violently into the wall, making his eyes bug out in shock.
He stood there, panting, and a number of Magicals around me came to a stop. They stared at me first, then seemed to be looking for the source of the spell.
I’d felt the magic flash by me, so I at least knew the direction it had come from.
When I glanced that way, I saw Draken standing there, eyes blazing.
“Try that shit again, and I’ll do more than give you a little shove,” Draken snarled, breathing hard.
“Attacking a witch without warning, all because she dared to complain for being drugged and assaulted?” He glared around at the mages standing there, and a few witches, too.
“What kind of waste-of-space wankers are you?”
A crowd had started to gather, drawn by the commotion.
Some were now glaring at Draken after his speech, although I couldn’t help noticing that most of the general venom and anger remained reserved for me. The short, dark-haired mage who’d been about to attack me pulled himself off the wall, breathing harder.
I realized I recognized from my flying course in first year.
He glared between me and Draken, his hands back up in attack position, the fury in his eyes darker when he realized he might be out-matched unless more witches and mages stepped in to help. So far, no one in the hall seemed eager to do that.
Draken’s hands also remained up, aimed at the same mage. His lion primal growled and paced angrily at his feet as his magical aura sparked with silver and gold.
“Come at me, then, you cowardly peacock fuck,” Draken snapped at the shorter mage. “Are you so eager to defend a rapist, you’re willing to end up in hospital for it?”
I lowered my own hand, but kept my shield up.
When neither of the two mages lowered theirs, I laid a hand on Draken’s arm, the one he wasn’t holding as high. I felt the hum of magical charge vibrate under my fingers.
“Draken, it’s okay,” I said quietly.
“It’s not okay. This whole damned campus has lost its mind, defending that piece of shit.” Draken’s eyes never left the mage in front of him, but he made his voice significantly louder, aiming it at more than just the Skyhunt fan with the peacock primal.
“Is Skyhunt so important to all of you that you’d let a violent predator roam free at the school?” Draken spat. “What in the darkest underworlds is the matter with you? Just how many witches should he have been able to assault before you’d stop defending him?”
I heard outraged mutters break out in the wider corridor as witches and mages reacted to Draken’s words.
I wanted to tell him he wasn’t helping me, that he was probably making this worse, and escalating the likelihood one or both of us would get ambushed, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
Draken was right. It was absolutely unbelievable how little anyone cared what Strangemore had done.
That, or they just didn’t care who he’d done it to.
It definitely mattered more that he was the best player on the Skulls, at least to the majority of the students at the school.
Almost like they’d heard me, another voice rang out, female that time.
“He wouldn’t have done it to a real witch,” she said.
I glanced in that direction, and saw another face I didn’t know.
I returned her smirk with a flat stare of my own.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I retorted, fighting my own flush of anger. “Maybe he’d just find a different excuse to do it to you.”
“We only have your word he did anything at all,” a blond mage retorted.
A redheaded witch standing next to him nodded vehemently, her eyes full of murder as she glared at me.
Maybe the growing crowd should have made me nervous, but I only got angrier as I glanced around, noting the sheer number of eyes on us.
Half the students had stopped now, whether because they hoped to see a fight or wanted to help start one.
Draken and I had been passing through one of the large arteries that led from the east wing of Malcroix Mansion into the main hall, where the coffee kiosk and bookshop lived.
We’d just left Theurgy 2.0, and, as it was only a minute after the bell rang, the corridor was jammed with students heading in both directions.
I could hear the mutters and curses behind hands as others realized who and what the fight was about and stopped to listen. I wondered how much it would take for the mage with the peacock primal to convince others to help him incinerate me where I stood.
The glares had mostly left Draken by now, and focused solely on me. The few I saw aimed at my friend seemed to hold pity more than anger, like they believed he’d been trapped under a chimaeric illusion and hadn’t yet realized it.
I’d just tugged on Draken’s sleeve, hoping to get him to continue with me towards the coffee shop before things escalated more, when another voice rang out.
I turned my head as soon as he spoke, mostly in disbelief.
There was no mistaking who it was.
“Personally, I’m quite content with the new arrangement,” he said loudly, drawing every eye to him.
“For once, our randy little mongrel did us all an extreme favor.” He smirked, winking at me.
“If I’d known she could pull it off so neatly, I would’ve paid the cunt to rid us of that obnoxious little showboat a long time ago. ”
Bones jumped gracefully down from where he’d been perched, on one of the window sills between two enormous stone columns. He landed lightly on his feet.
“I confess to being quite tired of having to listen to him go on and on about his idiotic parties in Ibiza and the Maldives in the locker room every morning at practice. Good bloody riddance, I say. Maybe now I can get some fucking peace.”
I met Bones’s gaze, and found his eyes back on me already.
He gave me a faintly warning look, there and gone, before his stare flickered to Draken.
His expression visibly darkened as he took a step closer, planted his feet, and held up a hand casually, palm towards the corridor’s ceiling.
The magic crackling around his fingers and palm was unmistakeable, and caused a number of students to step back, giving him space.
His reputation as a magical fighter definitely preceded him.
“Anyone feeling a strong urge to disagree with me?” he asked lazily.
His eyes fell meaningfully on the mage with the peacock, who promptly lowered his hands.
Draken turned to stare at Bones, his hands still held up towards Peacock.
“Piss off,” Draken spat. “No one asked your opinion, you royalist fuck.”
Bones snuffed out the magic in his fingers and aimed his stare at Draken.
“Now, now, Joran… don’t be rude,” he said, clucking his tongue. “For once, I’m defending your scrappy little pussycat. I thought you’d appreciate the support.”
I caught hold of Draken’s arm before he could say anything back, about to lead him away.
Before I could, Miranda bounded up to us, grinning and oblivious.
“I’ve got Alchemy next,” she announced, knocking her shoulder into mine.
“But I’ve got over an hour, and I’m absolutely starving.
I’m ready to go to the bestiary and attack wild beasts with my bare hands if I don’t get some food.
Do either of you have time to run back to the Valarian dining hall with me?
I can’t just do coffee, or I’ll pass out in an hour. ”
I nodded, fighting to keep the relief off my face. “I’ve nothing until two-thirty,” I told her. “I’ll go.”
Draken, who’d stood there a few seconds longer, his magic still geared up, even as the crowd began to disperse, finally lowered his hands. He looked almost annoyed, though, and I suspected it was because Bones had intervened.
I watched Draken scan faces in the crowd, likely looking for Bones even now. But the tall, platinum-haired mage had pulled another of his vanishing acts as soon as everyone else decided to ignore me for another day.
Unable to find him, Draken grunted, and finally turned to face me and Miranda.
Hearing our back and forth belatedly, he pulled out a pocket watch and glanced at it.
“I have Magical Ethics and Philosophy,” he said, his voice as annoyed as his expression. “I’ll have time to grab a coffee if the line’s not too long, but that’s it.”
“Magical Ethics?” I asked, surprised. “You didn’t take that last year?”
His bad mood finally seemed to break at my words.
He rolled his eyes, snorting a faint laugh.
“No, Miss ‘I Take 10 Classes Every Term Because I Have Some Kind of Masochistic Mental Disorder’… I didn’t take it last year,” he said teasingly, nudging me with an elbow.
“I didn’t get around to it, not with all the other requirements they cram onto your schedule first year.
This was the only time it was offered I could make work with everything else. ”
He frowned when a few other mages and witches paused to glare at us, at me, specifically, then pushed their way past.
“Bunch of idiots!” Draken said, raising his voice.