Chapter 3 #2
"You need something, and tea is what I have." She's already up, moving to the small cabinet near the window. "What happened?"
I sit on the couch and look at the ceiling. "Ryder used me as a failed demonstration in front of his entire class. Thane burned my bag and everything in it. And Caspian Thorne used vampiric thrall on me in a hallway and then laughed about my physiological response."
Sage comes back with a second cup and sits down beside me. She doesn't say I'm sorry or that's awful or any of the other things that would require me to do something with the sympathy. She just hands me the cup.
"Okay," she says. "So you've officially met the three worst people in the academy on the same morning. That's efficient."
"Is that what they are? The worst people?"
"They're the most powerful people." She wraps both hands around her own cup.
"Which at Nocturne usually means the same thing.
" She pauses. "The four houses have been at war with each other in one form or another since the academy was founded.
Not open war, nothing that would give the council grounds to intervene.
Political war. Social war. The kind where someone burns your belongings and calls it an accident, or fails you in front of your classmates and calls it pedagogy. "
"And Caspian's thrall?"
"Vampires use thrall on non-vampires the way dragons use fire on flammable things.
Because they can, and because it establishes something.
" She looks at me sideways. "The fact that you're in all four houses makes you either the most valuable person here or the most dangerous target.
Possibly both. Each house wants leverage over the others, and you walking through all four doors gives them ideas. "
"Ideas about using me as leverage."
"Or as a weapon. Or as proof of something.
" She shrugs, but it's not careless. "Reaper house has Ashford, who is technically faculty but has more political weight than most of the students.
Dragon house has Valorix, who is literally a prince and whose father has been sending letters to the Headmaster since last semester about something no one will explain.
Vampire house has Thorne, whose family has been on the council for longer than the academy has existed.
" She takes a sip of her tea. "And witch house has the Fairmont legacy, which is you, which is a very specific kind of problem for everyone. "
"Because I'm a null."
"Because you're a null who got sorted in, which means the rules everyone has been playing by don't apply to you the way they thought they did." She meets my eyes. "That scares people. Scared people do stupid, cruel things and call it self-preservation."
I drink my tea. It tastes like something herbal and slightly bitter, with a warmth that sits differently than the warmth Caspian manufactured, actual and earned rather than pushed into me from outside.
"The boy who was watching you study last night," I say. "When I came back from the bathroom. He was in the corridor."
Sage's expression shifts. "Malik Stone. He's a shadow mage. Second year."
"He was standing in the corridor outside our door at two in the morning."
"He's often nearby." She chooses her words.
"I don't know exactly why. He showed up at the beginning of last semester and has been in the general vicinity of wherever I am ever since.
He's never said anything threatening, and he's helped me twice when things went sideways in wards practice.
" A pause. "I haven't decided what to make of him. "
"Has he told you why he's always around?"
"I haven't asked." She looks at her cup. "Some things I'm letting exist without an explanation for a while."
I think about that. I think about Ryder writing Source.
Conduit. Vessel. on a board and looking at me like I was none of them.
About Thane's precise, surgical fire moving through my borrowed books.
About Caspian's laugh in the corridor and the warmth he pushed into me without asking, and the way he watched my face while it happened.
"How do you survive it?" I ask. "The house politics. The power dynamics. The people who treat cruelty like a language they were born speaking."
Sage considers the question seriously, the way she considers most things.
"You stop expecting it to be fair," she says finally.
"And you find the two or three people in the building who aren't trying to use you for something, and you keep them close, and you get through the days one at a time.
" She looks at me. "Also, you learn to fight.
Not magic fighting. Actual, physical, I will make this difficult for you fighting.
Malik's been teaching me some of it. I can show you what I know. "
Outside the common room window, the afternoon light is going gray and thin over the academy's stone rooflines.
Somewhere across the building, in the east wing, the scorched courtyard is getting darker.
The ember behind my ribs has been quiet all afternoon, sitting low and steady, not pulling at anything.
"Yes," I say. "Show me."
Sage nods like she expected that answer, and reaches for her book, and I drink the rest of my tea in the particular quiet of a room where someone has decided you're worth keeping around. It's a small thing. I'm choosing to notice it anyway.