Chapter 15
Courtney is getting on my last nerve.
She has made it clear as a diamond we aren’t friends anymore, yet she is more interested in me now than ever before.
Whether it’s a closet, the dorm, a bathroom, she drags me into secrecy and asks more whispered questions for her article.
Her exposé, as she calls it.
‘It isn’t ready,’ she tells me each time. ‘Soon. I just need a little more.’
More time or questions answered, I don’t know.
I just know that, in the meantime, I have started working on the redesign of my own mask.
I do what the Snakes do.
I play along.
Landon wants to live in my pocket, so I let him.
Serena wants to be my shadow, so I let her.
My mask is to lull the Snakes into a false sense of security with me, to ease Dray and Oliver—so they don’t watch me too closely.
I practice it now in the mess hall.
Landon’s grip is tight on a mug of hot chocolate as he loudly retells his latest win at snow-rugby. The game started back up over the second weekend of the semester, and he isn’t one of the aristos seniors to give up his passion for decking others in the name of sport.
But behind my smile, schemes are brewing; behind my eyes, wheels are turning.
Landon throws back his head with a howl of laughter at something Oliver said.
I tuned out, don’t know what he said, but I go along with it and let a smile linger on my face for a heartbeat.
Dray’s gaze latches onto me.
Even at the Snake’s table in the mess hall, I can’t let my smiles loiter too long.
It has to be believable.
It’s a fine line to walk, avoiding Dray’s suspicions while convincing him I’m starting to warm to the group again, or at least that I’m so desperate for their friendship again, to belong, that I’m starting to thaw.
A week of this bullshit and it’s eating at me already. The muscles of my cheeks ache a bit too much, and each smile and laugh feels more forced than the last.
It’s a relief when the bell rings and bursts the bubble around the table.
Movement rustles through the mess hall, bags being lifted off the floors, trays clattering, coffees sloshing down throats, chairs and benches scraping over the floorboards, conversations lifting quicker and faster now that time is cut short.
But Landon keeps on talking, all the way to class. It’s noisy. Not just him, but the clacks of Serena’s heeled boots down the corridor, the guttural laughter of Oliver following behind with Dray.
The seating arrangements have changed this semester.
Courtney and James rush ahead, and when we pour into the classroom, I find that they’ve snagged their usual table. At the back of the room, side-by-side, they strive to be as invisible as possible.
I used to sit at the table in front of them, sometimes with an empty seat beside me, sometimes another loner joining me.
Now, Serena loops her arm through mine before she leads me to the middle desk.
I don’t fight it.
I don’t meet Asta’s death glare.
I don’t look at Oliver’s sour face.
I drop into the chair as Serena sinks into hers beside me, graceful and silent, while I grunt and throw about my bag, rifling through it for the textbook.
Asta and Landon take the table in front of us, Oliver and Dray behind—which leaves Mildred.
She hesitates in the middle of the classroom for a beat, looking around, then back at Landon who keeps his cheek to her. Her jaw rolls before she moves for the other side of the room and drops into the chair beside Dragana.
Mildred hasn’t stepped to me since Landon tackled her, hasn’t so much as looked at me or curled her upper lip the way she does when I say something she doesn’t like or thinks is stupid.
Maybe she’s trying to get a grip on her friendships again, or Dray dished out some consequences for going against him—or maybe it’s what I said, and she doesn’t want to add any fuel to the rumours going around the academy that she’s into me.
Whatever the reason is, I just know she sulks. She hurts. And it brings a smile to my face before the geometry begins.
I don’t pay attention.
I scribble on the pages of my notebook, draw little dogs and houses, then tune out completely and I think I drift off with my head on the desk for a while.
None of it matters.
I handed in my essay last week.
I didn’t even finish it.
I wrote half of it before deciding it was all irrelevant.
Like what Dray said, ‘you would be better off spending your time on things that matter to you.’
Still, I got that essay back on Monday—and the grade gleamed up at me.
C+
A generous pass, considering I didn’t even finish the assignment. No notes on that, either. And not so different to the usual grades I earn myself with actual effort.
If only I figured it out earlier, that I didn’t have to do any of my assignments, ever, to get a passing grade.
I just get them.
It happens in Brews and Theory, too.
Same grade, same effort.
I decide now to never write another assignment again. All that time I’ve wasted over the years. All for this, the examinations, something I can’t even participate in.
The next day is reserved for the practice exams, the whole entire Thursday, and the thought alone is gruelling.
After breakfast, all the seniors are piling into the arched room deep in the basement, and unlike them, I will only be watching.
The hexagonal room is all wood, ceilings and walls and floors, and it’s far too dim with only lanterns bolted to the walls.
It was built to be the examination room, with stone statues of the gods lining the walls, because prints are the essence of the gods—and so it’s all very religious in here.
My mouth purses as I snag in the slow-moving line of students parting off to their designated seats.
I avoid the stares of the statues—those sorts of pale eyes that follow me around a room.
It’s the Dagda that ices me inside out.
His statue is tallest, looming across the room, reaching up to the curve of the ceiling.
His sculpted form is human-like, bulked with more muscles than possible, a neck thicker than my thigh, but in one strong grip, he wields a hammer coiled with tree roots, and in the other, a harp that drips with crimson blood.
Like the blood, his eyes are painted red.
Those eyes follow me to the seat with my name card.
Prickles rinse over my body, head to toe.
I arch my neck back and look up at the ceiling.
Beams disturb the detail of the painting, but by the gold, the helmet, the scarabs, and the sun in the centre, I know it is a depiction of Heka, the essence of magic, of life, the mother and the father, the beginning and the end.
Heka is not a god in the sense of the Dagda. Heka is not a form, not a soul or a spirit, not a conscious deity, not a he nor a she.
Heka is all.
Oliver drops down beside me with a drawn-out breath of reluctance, a sigh so gentle and civilised that it lowers my gaze from the ceiling.
He wears the fatigue of the semester, head-to-toe. His shirt is creased around the buttons and collar, his hair tousled and slightly frizzed. Dark circles dim his eyes, and his posture on the wooden pew is too sagged.
Forearms braced on his thighs, he drops his head—and looks half-asleep by the time Master Wealdwine starts calling out names.
The podium in the middle is poorly lit, but the alphabetical order of the seating means that I’m close enough that I can watch without straining my eyes and giving myself a headache.
First called up, Dragana and Zef drag themselves to the podium. Reluctance weighs down their shoes like bricks underwater.
All the reluctance in the world won’t get them out of this.
Breakfast sits heavy in my gut.
Zef and Dragana stand opposite each other on the podium, facing off with chewed mouths and flickering gazes.
Their nerves eat away at them as, slowly, loudly, Master Wealdwine pushes a trolley to the centre of the stage.
The clatter of the wheels over wooden boards rattles metal tools on the surface of the trolley, and it’s a jangling sound I feel in my bones.
Oliver curses under his breath.
The string of words sounds like a hiss before he draws back to sit upright, and he turns a scathing glare on the trolley.
Must be having migraines again.
Pushing himself too far.
Good.
Hope he pushes himself all the way into a coma.
There’s no pity in the side-glare I run him over with.
His upper lip curls at me, but before he can fully bare his teeth, I turn my cheek to him and watch as Wealdwine back-steps from the trolley.
It’s left there in the centre of the stage, a metre or so away from Dragana and Zef, but right in the middle point between the two.
Neither makes a move.
Master Wealdwine lifts a brass bell with a polished wooden handle—and just holds it up.
“Find the items with the essence of stardust.” Her gaze cuts between the two seniors. “And absorb.”
Absorption.
The first print in alphabetical order.
So that means alchemy is next.
I slide a look to Oliver, softer this time, more studious and less contorted with hate.
Those dark circles seem blacker now. The emerald of his eyes seems dimmer. I didn’t notice how pale and cracked his lips are.
My brow furrows.
My whisper is barely audible under the siege of noise from the stage. “Have you slept?”
The slight shake of his head is almost missable.
A ripple of laughter churns through the room.
My gaze swerves to the stage—just as Zef erupts in a flash of glitter.
His boots stumble backwards, his arms out as he looks down at his gleaming body, glitter falling from him like dust.
My mouth twists into a smile.
I swallow back the laugh brewing in my chest.
Beside me, Oliver is unflinching. His dull gaze remains totally unamused by Zef’s fumble.
But I’m alight with the joy.
I don’t forget who wrongs me.
And Zef operated as a lookout about two years ago. Saturdays mean busier corridors, more masters and students wandering the halls, and so Zef acted as Dray’s lookout as he dragged me up the dusty rug by the ankle, then threw me into a closet to be locked away for the rest of the weekend.
There’s always that kind of gentry.