Spark of Sorcery (The Firestone Academy Book 2), page 22
This evening, she has me scrubbing the floorboards. Usually they are spotless and gleaming. Tonight, they’re covered in mud and other questionable stains I’m pretty sure she added for effect.
I’m not used to scrubbing floors anymore, and it doesn’t take long for my hands to sting from the scalding-hot water, that mysteriously never seems to cool.
It’s clear the sacred promise is preventing her from torturing me outright like she’d like to. It’s not stopping her completely though. She’s finding other ways, testing the boundaries of that promise.
I stare down at my raw hands as I scrub the stained cloth over a patch of ingrained dirt.
Beaufort and the others believe this idea that I’m their fated mate.
Wouldn’t that be my ticket out of Slate Quarter? Three shadow weavers as powerful as the Princes would want their fated mate with them – not languishing in the worst Quarter of the realm. It’s not as if they’d lower themselves to visit me there. Does that mean I’ll be coming to Onyx Quarter with them?
Inwardly, I laugh at my own naivety.
Of course not. This will all turn out to be a game. A way to raise my hopes, only for them to be crushed cruelly.
“I said,” Madame says, strolling towards me and stopping right in front of me. I stare down at her boots. Polished, expensive leather. Her feet bent in an ugly angle to accommodate the three-inch heel. “We all know which Quarter you’re heading back to, don’t we Slate girl?”
I lift my head, my gaze skirting up her voluptuous body to her twisted face.
“I guess that will depend on my performance in the next few trials.”
Madame glowers down at me. “I don’t know who helped you in that maze or how,” she hisses, “but you won’t be so lucky next time. I’ll be sure of that. You’ll be on your own and we all know how that will go.” She glances down at the floor. “Can’t even remove a bit of mud from the floor. Pathetic.”
She swings back her foot and kicks over the boiling hot bucket of water. I have to scurry backwards to ensure I’m not scalded.
“You can leave once it’s all clean.” She swings around and saunters towards the door. As she does, I wish with all my heart I had the power to make her slip in those stupid shoes and land on her ass on the wet floor.
As I’m thinking about it, I can hardly believe my eyes.
Her foot slides, her legs slip from underneath her, and she falls backwards, crashing with a thump on her backside.
Did … did I do that?
I stare down at my hands.
Impossible.
It was just a coincidence.
Madame Bardin screeches, tugging off the offending boot and hurling it in my direction. I duck as it sails over my head and hits the far wall with force.
“You silly little bitch,” she says, “can’t you do anything right? It’s a simple job and yet you …”
But I don’t hear the rest of her words, because I’m somewhere else entirely. Dark and cold.
But safe.
Safe.
Where no one can hurt me.
I don’t know how long I stay there but when I jerk back to myself with a sudden inhale of air, I’m in the classroom alone, Madame and her boots gone and the water puddled on the floor stone cold.
How long was I out?
I shake myself, squinting at the window. It’s pitch black outside. I’ve probably missed dinner and Blaze will be flapping around my room like a wild thing, desperate to get outside for his evening flight.
I groan. My body is stiff and cold. In fact, I’m shivering. Or am I shaking?
I rub my frigid hand down my face. It was her words – so similar to Muriel’s as I kneeled before her. It was all too familiar and triggered something inside me, some response.
The Madame is right, after all. I am broken and it makes no sense that I would be the fated mate of the Princes. No sense that the stone – that Blaze – would call me like he did. I’m damaged and messed up. Incapable even of avenging my sister’s death.
I pick up the rag and, quickly as I can, scrub away the remaining patch of dirt and mop up the water, before hurrying back to my room.
At dinner the next day, I explain to Fly and Clare about what happened – leaving out the part where, for one ridiculous moment, I thought I’d been the one to make Madame fall.
“Sounds like you had a panic attack,” Clare says, blinking behind her glasses. “Which isn’t surprising. The Madame is pretty foreboding.”
“A panic attack?”
“Uh huh,” Clare says.
“Soldiers have them all the time back in Iron Quarter, Cupcake,” Fly says, resting his hand on mine. “Of course, they don’t call them that back home.” He rolls his eyes. “It’s usually because they’ve been through some traumatic event.”
“Or just struggling to cope,” Clare pipes up.
“I’m not struggling,” I say, poking at the crust of my soggy pie.
“You lost your sister, though. That must have been traumatic,” Fly says softly.
I nod. But I know that isn’t the reason for what happened last night.
It was Muriel. It was what Muriel did to me.
Fly squeezes my hand. “Anyway, I have a feeling all the detentions will end once the Princes return.”
“Yeah, although I don’t like having to rely on them being around not to fall apart.”
“There’s nothing wrong with relying on people,” Fly says. “Or trusting them.”
I nod. Deep inside, I know he’s right. It’s just hard to unlearn years and years of behavior that has kept me safe, if alone and unhappy.
Clare sighs and looks off toward the boy she’s been mooning over. “I’d happily rely on them.”
“Have you asked him yet?” I ask. It’s been weeks and she still hasn’t plucked up the courage, inventing new and ever ridiculous excuses not to every time I raise the topic.
Her gaze flicks to Fly, her cheeks redden, and she shakes her head.
Fly’s eyes narrow. “Ask who what?”
Clare lays her forehead on the table and folds her arms over her head.
“She wants to ask that boy over there if he’d like to have dinner with her.”
“So why doesn’t she?”
“Too scared,” Clare says, her voice muffled.
“Don’t be dumb,” Fly says, taking a hold of her hand and attempting to yank her to her feet. They spend a few minutes tussling. “Jeez, you’re stronger than you look. Also, everyone is starting to look.”
Immediately, Clare stops resisting and lets Fly pull her to her feet.
“Let’s go talk to him,” Fly suggests.
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll think of something,” Fly says, not releasing her arm and dragging her towards the boy’s table.
I watch transfixed from the safety of our table, both cringing on Clare’s behalf and willing her forward. Fly begins the conversation and at first Clare shuffles on her feet, her face the color of a tomato, saying very little. But the boy she likes smiles at her with genuine affection and soon she’s speaking, in fact she’s so engrossed in her conversation she doesn’t notice Fly slip away.
He returns to the table with a triumphant little bow.
“Wowsers,” I mutter, “that was quick work.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m blessed with the art of small talk. It’s a talent.”
“And yet you have so few friends,” I tease.
“That’s because my stupid Quarter doesn’t appreciate talents like mine. Maybe I should embark on a career as a matchmaker or something.”
“Is that a thing?”
“It should be. I could set up a little service here, offer up my skills – for a fee of course.”
“I don’t think you want to get yourself mixed up in the drama of other people’s love lives.”
“Oh, yes I do!”
“You’re crazy!”
“Well, duh,” he says. “Why else would I be friends with you?” I give him the finger and he blows me a kiss. “Now, are you scuttling off to your room again to be a loner or are you actually going to spend the evening with me and Clare for once?”
I motion towards our friend who is now sitting around the table with the boy in question – his friends all having made themselves scarce. “I don’t think she’s going to be hanging out with you tonight. Or ever again,” I add, spotting some serious footsie business happening under the table.
“The girl is on the way to losing her V card,” Fly says, then focuses back on me. “This makes it even more imperative that you hang out with me. I’m not spending my Saturday evening alone.”
“I’m sure you could find that redhead–”
“Cupcake!” He looks at me earnestly. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too. I’m not doing this to be a bitch.”
“Then, why?” He pouts at me and I realize I have been a bitch. Fly deserves to know the truth. I also need to trust people more, didn’t he just say that?
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll show what’s been keeping me tied to my room–”
“Tied to your room, or tied up in your room?” he asks. The memory of Beaufort restraining me in his bed using his shadow magic floats right to the front of my mind, but I bat it away. Not helpful. “Just promise you won’t freak out.”
“Jeez, Cupcake,” he says, intrigued, “what the hell is it?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Briony
“A dragon!” Fly shrieks, backing towards the door, with his hands flattened against either cheek. “But … how? … what? … A dragon?”
“You said you wouldn’t freak out,” I say, trying my best to stop Blaze from dive bombing Fly and smothering him with kisses.
“Ahhh,” Fly wails, spinning around in circles, “he’s trying to eat me!”
“He’s not trying to eat you! He’s just trying to kiss you.”
“With his sharp little mouth!”
“He likes you!” I clap my hands. “Seriously, Blaze, give him some space.”
“Yes,” Fly says, “give me some space, please.”
Blaze goes for one last dive bomb, dragging his rough little tongue right down Fly’s cheek and making him shriek again, then zooms off, landing on my bed, gaze flitting between me and my friend, tongue hanging from the side of his mouth and panting. He reminds me of a dog and in the few weeks I’ve had him he’s grown to the size of a small one.
Fly rubs at his eyes and mumbles to himself, “I must be seeing things, hallucinating. Or maybe I’m dreaming. Dragons don’t exist, do they? They died out like hundreds of years ago.”
I shrug and sit down on the bed beside Blaze, letting him climb into my lap and tickling under his chin. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
From the other side of the room, Fly examines both of us, eyes narrowed. “He seems surprisingly tame. In fact, he looks like he likes you.”
“He does,” I say, then make a kissy face at Blaze. “You love me, don’t you?” The dragon raises his head and licks my chin.
“What does he eat?”
“Woodland animals … and … erm … rats and mice.”
“Ew, gross.” Fly places his fist over his mouth, then wipes at his face with the sleeve of his blazer. “Are you sure he’s not dangerous?”
“No, he’s lovely,” I say beaming. If truth be told, maybe I’ve been a little bit desperate, waiting for an opportunity to show Blaze off. He’s a hard secret to keep. A lot harder than a stone. “Come on, he won’t bite.” I pat the mattress beside me and cautiously Fly approaches, lowering himself down carefully onto the bed.
Blaze watches him but he’s enjoying the chin tickles too much to attempt another love-bombing.
“I’m so confused,” Fly says, “when the hell did you get a dragon?”
“He hatched about three and a half weeks ago.”
“Hatched?” Fly says.
I tell him about finding the stone and keeping it hidden all this time. I explain about how the stone started to crack the day of the maze trial and how placing the stone by the fire caused it to hatch open completely.
“This is so weird,” Fly says, shaking his head in bewilderment. “How did a dragon survive in that stone all that time? And why didn’t he hatch sooner?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Thorne thinks that–”
“Thorne? Thorne Cadieux?”
“Do we know any other Thornes?”
“You told Thorne about your secret dragon but not me. Do all the Princes know?”
“No, only Thorne, and now you, know. You’re the only two people I’ve told.”
“But you told Thorne before me,” he points out. “What happened to hoes before bros, bestie?”
“He hatched the night I was meant to be at the Princes,” I say, then quickly change the subject because I don’t want to explain why I now trust Thorne Cadieux more than anyone else in this academy. “Fox may also suspect. He keeps complaining that I smell like lizard.”
“Fox?” Fly lifts an eyebrow.
“Oh, Professor Tudor.”
“On a first-name basis are we now?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek.
“Err, yeah, I guess.” That weird interaction with the professor a few weeks ago is another thing I haven’t told my friend about. Mainly because I’m still trying to unscramble the whole thing myself – half convinced I imagined most of it. Why would the professor want to touch me? Why does the idea of it have strange sensations stirring in my belly?
Fly leans in and sniffs me. “You smell the same as always. I don’t know what the hell the professor is going on about.”
“Who does when it comes to the professor?” I mutter.
“I don’t know, you seem to have a better understanding of him than most.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask, with alarm.
“You’re similar, maybe it’s your shared background or something.”
“I am nothing like the professor!”
“You are! Moody, mysterious, secretive.” He points to the dragon in my lap. “You’d make a great couple.” He laughs.
“He kissed me!” I blurt out. It seems once one secret has leaked out, it’s hard to keep any others.
“He what?!” Fly shrieks his voice soaring several octaves higher than it was one second ago.
“Actually, he didn’t kiss me.” I shake my head vigorously.
Fly shakes his head too. “Huh?”
“He nearly kissed me. Or at least it felt like he was going to kiss me but then he stopped himself.”
“You’re sure?”
I pinch my friend on the thigh. “I may not have a heap of experience but I do know what it’s like when someone is going to kiss you.”
“Then why didn’t he?”
“I’m his student!” I point out.
“Meh,” Fly says. “Did you want him to kiss you? The man literally terrifies the pants off me. But if he tried to kiss me, I think I’d wilt like a violet in the heat. I’d be unable to resist all that dark, moody, broody, masculine energy.”
“Yeah,” I say, butterflies stirring in my belly just thinking about it. “But I’m meant to be with the Princes.”
Fly rolls his eyes. “Just because you’re with one person – or three – doesn’t stop you from admiring other people, doesn’t prevent you from developing little crushes.”
“But I don’t admire Professor Tudor and I don’t have a crush,” I say decisively and I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince myself or my friend.
“So what exactly is your plan with this dragon, Cupcake?” Fly asks, as Blaze curls up and starts to snore.
“I usually take him for an evening fly about around this time. You can come if you want–”
“No, I mean what’s your plan in the long run, Cupcake?”
“I … I don’t exactly know yet.”
“Don’t dragons grow really big, like really really fucking big?”
“I suppose so,” I say, peering down at Blaze.
“What does Thorne say?” Fly says a little bitterly.
“He thinks I should hand him in. He thinks I’m going to be in big trouble when they find out I have a dragon and haven’t told them about it.”
“Obviously.” He gazes at the sleeping dragon. “I wonder what they’ll do with him.”
“I don’t know,” I stroke Blaze’s head. “But I don’t think it will be good,” I say, thinking of my sister.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thorne
The old general, her face weathered with age and too many battles to count, walks along the line, inspecting each one of us in turn.
She reaches me at the end and nods.
“You did good today, real good. Now go back, get cleaned up and heal yourselves. We’ll be back out here again for night exercises. And then I think it’s about time we got you back to the academy. You’ll be starting the journey back the day after tomorrow.” She salutes. “Dismissed.”
I lift my bare hand to my forehead and salute in return, just like all the other shadow weavers from the academy lined up alongside me.
It’s only with this movement, I feel the slight tremble in my arm.
Adrenaline, anger and fear pulsate through my body, my shadow magic roars in my ears and I’m dizzy and sick.
As the general walks away, I lower my arm and stare down at my hand, flexing and curling my fingers. Around me the others are talking excitedly about the prospect of returning to the academy.
I spit on the ground, then pull my gloves from my belt and slip them back over my hands.
At once that feeling of suffocation, of imprisonment, encases me. I close my eyes.
“Fuck me, we did more than good today, boys.” I open my eyes to find Dray slapping the shoulder of my other bond brother. They are both waiting for me, standing a couple of meters away.
“Thorne, you were awesome,” Dray continues, “the way you sliced the head off that demon’s shoulders. Oh man, it was fucking incredible.”
He may be impressed, smiling at me even, but he makes no attempt to move closer. He does not slap me on the shoulder. He’s been more wary of me since the full moon. Keeping his distance, careful not to come too close.
