Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Elodie
The academy’s security lights cast a streaky yellow glow across the darkened green. I stand close to my friends, hugging myself and wishing I’d brought my blazer or sweater today.
Captain Ross only sprang on us this afternoon that our next intensive seminar was going to take place after school as soon as evening set in. We’ve spent the last couple hours “warming up” our bodies and our magic, preparing to face the challenges he’s cooked up.
Right now, the campus looks like it’d make a better setting for a séance than a combat session. Maybe he’s going to have us spar with unsettled spirits?
The captain casts his gaze over our assembled group with an air of satisfaction.
“All the skills in the world won’t matter if you can’t use them outside the classroom, so today’s main lesson will engage you on a much broader scale.
We’re dividing you into several groups and giving each an area of the neighborhood to explore.
Each area will present its own threats and challenges.
I’ll be monitoring how you do via video and giving feedback afterward. ”
One of the 16th years frowns. “What if there are drabs around?”
Professor Jovak pipes up from his usual spot next to Captain Ross. “We’ve put in place measures to discourage any non-lucents from entering the areas we’re using for training. But of course you shouldn’t use magic so flashy it could catch attention from afar.”
Ross nods. “Discretion should always be used where it’s viable. Nothing you encounter today will require a spectacle in response. Matching your effort to the threat is essential, especially when you don’t know what additional dangers you might face after.”
“That’s not ominous at all,” Cadance mutters with an amused glance toward me. I force a soft chuckle at her joke.
Salvatore shifts restlessly on his feet where he’s planted himself several paces to my left. I can’t imagine he likes the idea of me wandering off into the darkness, even though these sessions are supposed to be completely regulated and safe.
My pulse still thrums with the passion he wrapped around me in the condo’s bedroom last night, holding me tight and summoning every ounce of pleasure he could out of the melding of our bodies, as if we were there to celebrate me rather than him.
I thought he might be more hesitant about me after he’d had time to think through what I admitted this weekend, but he still doesn’t seem at all fazed.
My imagined other Salvatore makes a scoffing sound. “When has anything ever fazed me?”
He has a point there.
As Captain Ross starts reading off the “teams,” another figure at my right looks my way. Byron keeps his usual confident stance, but his jaw works like he’s chewing over the situation.
I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to him since this weekend. Radiants only know what’s been going through his head.
Is he still relieved to think I’m not the same Elodie who undermined and sniped at him? Or have all the other implications sunk in?
I don’t really understand the levels of lucent society he’s meant to be living at. My obviously blight glim means any kids we have will be drab.
I’m a wildcard in a life he’s preferred to keep strictly disciplined.
I hear my name and yank my attention back to Ross. He rattles off a few other names I’m only vaguely familiar with and finishes with “Asher Raith.”
The group I’ve been assigned to gathers on a patch of lawn he motions to. Besides Asher, I don’t know any of the other students outside of past supplementary seminars and passing them in the halls. I think they’re all at least a couple of years younger.
Did Ross stick me with them because he’s planning to go easy on the lower years? Because he wants to keep me out of the worst trouble?
I should be glad for that, but the implied condescension sets my teeth on edge. Does he think that little of my abilities?
The arrival of Professor Jovak next to our group seems to support the coddling theory. He smiles at all of us and dips his head specifically to me. “I’ll be observing your group directly, ready to intervene if necessary. I know your father doesn’t want any chances taken with your safety.”
I suppress a grimace. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate your diligence.”
And I’ll look like a wimp to the younger seniors.
Asher catches my gaze with a flicker of sympathy. He’s placed himself at the edge of the group, a careful distance from me, to maintain the fiction there’s no friendship—let alone anything more—between us. But the sight of him nearby no longer brings the same twist of anxiety into my gut.
He knows now. He knows what he means to me, how much he means to me.
He knows how afraid I’ve been of hurting him.
They all know, and disaster hasn’t crashed down on my head. Maybe I can carve out some small space in this new world where my glim doesn’t make me a monster.
If I survive long enough, that is.
I guess I can hope this training will give me a leg up in that department.
Captain Ross addresses our group. “Team 3, head to the Beacon Prep campus. Explore but remain within the school grounds.”
A couple of the younger students with me groan. They murmur to each other as we start the trek south.
Are they worried poor-people cooties will rub off on them?
My gaze slides over the shadowy academy buildings and halts on an unexpected figure. A broad-shouldered woman with most of her frizzy hair pulled back in a bun is watching us pass Anpao Hall, where most of the junior classes are held.
She’s only watching in that first second I notice her, though. Then she goes back to rubbing her sponge over a window.
Maintenance staff. I didn’t realize they stayed this late, but the administration probably wants them disrupting the students as little as possible.
We walk up the low hill next to the Khepri Building for Graduate Studies and down the path on the other side to the road that separates Luminary’s campus from Beacon’s.
In the thickening gloom, the preparatory’s buildings look even more like a prison. A haunted one, for good measure.
Only a sporadic half of the security lights still work, some of them stuttering on and off. The boxy concrete buildings blend into the cracked pavement of the walkways around the patchy lawns.
I don’t risk another glance at Asher, though I’m constantly aware of his presence through gentle twinges of our bond. I never had to attend Beacon in either of my lives, but he spent the first several years of his magical schooling there.
How does he feel coming back like this, for an elevated training exercise that’s treating the grounds like a hostile landscape? While our schoolmates complain and cringe at needing to step onto the grounds at all?
He appears to be at peace with our destination, keeping pace with the rest of us with his usual easy stride, his head raised and alert. None of us knows when the challenges will start.
We’re just crossing the street when I sense another of my matches trailing behind us. I take a surreptitious peek over my shoulder but don’t see anyone on the path over the hill.
It’s not another group simply heading in a similar direction, then. He’s split off from whoever he’s meant to be working with, wrapped in some kind of concealing spell.
My first thought is Salvatore. It’d be just like the mafia heir to give this assignment the middle finger and stick close to me instead. But my awareness of the presence heightens as he draws closer, with a more measured vibe than Salvatore ever gives off.
Byron has stealthily followed me.
I barely have time to absorb that realization before a blare of ephemera rocks me on my feet.
As my nerves jangle with the piercing pain, one of the younger girls yelps. The guy next to her wraps his arms across his chest.
Captain Ross must have set up some of his shocker machines in the areas he sent us into.
I pull deep and center myself as well as I can, sinking into the strategies that got me through our first training session.
The blast tapers off with no chiding comment from Professor Jovak, so I guess we’ve all performed adequately—and Byron didn’t give himself away. I resist the urge to glance over my shoulder again.
Is the Worth heir simply being extra protective now that he knows my enemies have succeeded in killing one Elodie already? Did he see a reason to be concerned for my immediate safety, clear enough that it was worth the risk of ducking out on his assigned group?
We proceed across the uneven terrain of Beacon Prep’s main yard with more trepidation than at first. The younger students’ gazes dart this way and that as if they expect a horde of werewolves and vampires to emerge from the gloom.
All of the windows on the school buildings are dark. No one stays at Beacon this late. All we’ve got for illumination are the intermittent security lights and the glowing squares dotted along the twin apartment towers the next block over.
The cool breeze lifts, licking through my hair, and I shiver. With even breaths, I tune the chill out like I did the shocker’s effects.
I have all I need. I have all I need.
Our feet rustle over the scruffy grass. One of the boys squints through the dusk and makes a face. “What are we even supposed to be doing? Just wandering aimlessly? I—”
He takes one more step forward, and the ground erupts beneath him.
More yelps ring out as the boy and the girl closest to him teeter and tumble with the lurching of the earth. Ridges jut to waist height around a crumbling chasm.
With a hitch of my pulse, I scramble forward automatically. Asher’s already leaping in too, calling out suggestions for them to steady themselves.
A waft of affection slips through my distress.
My once-best friend might not have been able to heal me from fatal stab wounds, but Ross won’t throw anything too vicious at us. Any bumps and bruises the two younger students have sustained, he’ll easily soothe. Asher has always studied healing magic nearly as avidly as void defense strategies.
Let’s see if I can give him a lighter workload.