Chapter 28

28

Walking out of the room with Hoarfrost watching, I felt like I’d stepped into a different world. Sweat trickled down my neck and spine and my heart beat so hard I felt it bruising my insides.

I waited with the rest of the first-year students in the auditorium to see whether or not we’d made it through to the final round of testing. No sense in a practical exam for everyone if you didn’t pass the oral part.

Fifty of us gathered between the rows of seats, too anxious to sit, biting our nails, staring at the stage and waiting for the results to pop up.

“It’s going to be fine,” Mike soothed, running a hand between my shoulder blades. Shivers rose where he touched me although I wasn’t sure if it was exhilaration from his attention or dread for what I’d see in the results.

“You didn’t have to sit through an agonizing hour with someone who hates you,” I answered. Apparently only an hour had passed during my exam with Hoarfrost instead of an eternity. Go figure.

“Hoarfrost can’t fail you because of personal feelings.” This was Melia trying to be helpful. “It’s against the academy’s code.”

“Wanna bet?” I’d told the two of them about the threats Hoarfrost made in the beginning of the semester. They knew. How could they blithely—

Someone gasped and my gaze snapped back to the stage, watching as the paper materialized. Then the weight of fifty students plus their friends and mentors crushed me forward.

I searched for my name amongst the rest of them, going down the list alphabetically. What I could see through the shoulders and necks of everyone else, anyway.

Abershire.

Adenine.

Auros.

Alderidge.

Then I stopped dead, and would have fallen over if Mike hadn’t been standing behind to catch me.

Top marks. My final grade for the first two exams came to 90%.

Hoarfrosthad given me top marks.

What in the—

Melia shook me into a standing position. “What did I tell you?” she crowed. “I knew you would make it through! You were so worried. For nothing.”

But I couldn’t hear her, not properly. Not with my pulse exploding in my ears and drowning out the rest of the cheers and screams.

Top marks?

How is this possible?

* * *

I spent the next several minutes wondering what Hoarfrost had been thinking in giving me a nearly perfect grade for my oral exam. I mean, considering his personal feelings toward me. Was this a way for him to knock me off my stride? To be nothing but hateful until the end and suddenly turn nice?

I wasn’t about to find out, either.

The afternoon loomed large ahead and with it the final leg of our examinations—the practical. The professors gathered the few of us who’d made it through the first two rounds on the first floor of the castle. Mike and I passed between several people standing around and stepped through the narrow, arched entrance into the classroom. A teacher stood near the door to direct traffic and guided the two of us to a small table with a pewter cauldron.

The potion master at the front of the room was a teacher I’d seen before but had only had class with a few times. She rubbed her hands together in gleeful anticipation.

She stood slightly taller than me, leaner, her narrow chest cinched into a tight leather vest. Although her left hand was bare, she wore a thick leather glove on the right, a blue glass bottle clenched in her fingers. Short birch-gray hair, clear green eyes, and a no-nonsense attitude.

She waited until her assistant led each student to their table before addressing the class.

“Look at the lucky few,” she started with a smile. “I can’t wait to see how you perform in my class next semester. The best of the best, eh? I guess we’ll see. I’m Professor Larch, for those of you who don’t remember me from January.”

“What do you think she has in her hand?” Mike asked out of the corner of his mouth.

I shook my head, not wanting to speak in case I jinxed myself. I never claimed to be the best at potions. In fact, the few practice classes we’d had, well, they hadn’t ended well for me. At least I’d never blown off my own eyebrows, like some of my other half-human classmates, but I never claimed to be good.

Maybe I could convince the potion to make itself? It was worth a shot.

“For those of you wondering,” Professor Larch said with a pointed look toward Mike, “this is the Eius Repellere. It’s a one-use concoction to repel anyone or anything from you without harm and can be used on upwards of twenty people at a time. It’s extremely effective. And extremely complex to make. This is your final test, boys and girls. Your final test to determine whether you are Halfling Academy first-year all-stars. We take only the best into the second year. And trust me, what you’ll be doing today? It only gets harder from here.”

The potion master snapped the fingers of her free hand and a scroll appeared on every desktop.

“These,” she continued, “are the instructions on how to make the Eius Repellere, with certain ingredients left out. It’s up to you to not only fill in the blanks but follow the precise instructions and let your magic guide you toward the correct answer. Let me tell you, I know plenty of full-blooded Fae who can’t get this one right. It’s quite advanced.”

Persephone, seated at the front table, raised her hand and batted golden eyelashes at Professor Larch. “Then how do you expect us to make it?”

“I don’t.” The potion master fixed Persephone with a look, not unkind but not yielding. “I expect you to do your best and I’ll judge you on how far you get. It’s not meant to be completed to perfection. It’s meant to weed out those of you who simply can’t hack it.” She shook her head at the few gasps her statement roused. “This is a hard truth many people will not tell you, but the king doesn’t want the weak to come to Faerie. It’s that simple. It’s my job to help him discern those of you worthy enough to advance. Like I said. Simple.”

A shiver ran through me. Yes, simple. A simple and terrifying truth.

It wasn’t long before Professor Larch set us off with a sharp whistle, and around me the rest of the first-years got to work. A bevy of ingredients were stored at the front of the classroom on wide oak shelves and I hurried with the rest of the class to gather what we needed for the preliminary potion. Mike was hot on my heels, watching what I did. Watching what I grabbed.

Fine with me. I’d rather he study me and keep up than get cut too early.

Time ticked by and one by one, students were pulled from their desks. There were some mini explosions, smoke rising from the cauldrons. We were not witches. We were Fae. That didn’t mean we were above learning the basics, potion making among them, and many of our kind chose to amplify their own magic with ingredients given to us by the earth.

So while I understood why I needed to learn this, the added pressure of needing to make it across the finish line wore on me. My teeth clenched. My fingers turned stiff to the point where I made rookie mistakes and burned myself more often than not.

The blanks on the recipe threw me off my game. When I wasn’t sure what herb to choose, or what crystal to throw in, I used my intuition.

You can do this. You got this.

It was a pep talk I didn’t believe but one that served me well as one by one the rest of the students were tapped out by Professor Larch. Leaving only Mike and me.

Down to the wire. Holy crap.

I stared into Mike’s guileless eyes and knew he would do whatever it took to win. We were both safe, sure, but this final showdown belonged to the two of us.

“You’re going down, Alderidge,” he boasted in a whisper only to me.

“Oh, you think so, Thornwood? Well, let’s just see who the last man standing will be.”

He pretended outrage. “Do you really think you’re going to beat me?”

I knew he still had the artifact, the one he’d been using to bolster his magic this semester. Which made it even more imperative for me to win. To prove to him he didn’t need an artifact. He was good enough on his own, and with a little more work, he could have the world on a string. If I could do it, then he could too.

And maybe I needed to prove it to myself as well. A half fae, half shifter who everyone said didn’t belong. Wouldn’t it be something to beat the full-blooded Crown Prince of Faerie himself?

We worked tirelessly, feeding the potion with new ingredients. Trying to keep up with the timeline of effects we knew would unfold with each new formula. Whispering words of power to achieve the desired result.

A little bit more and I would have it. I called my magic up from the depths and sent it toward the cauldron a little at a time, trying not to push too hard, too fast.

I was lucky it came down to me and Mike. Somehow, maybe because of all the terrible luck and messed up things the universe had thrown my way in life, I’d earned him as a friend. He was myfriend, and he had feelings for me. What else could I ask for? Whatever barriers came up between us, we worked to knock them back down, handling whatever fear or mistrust or anything else arose.

I glanced down at my cauldron, the potion cold and steam rising from the brew.

“Do you really think you can do better than me?” Mike was still taunting.

I stiffened my spine and held my shoulders a little straighter. “Hell yes I can.”

My answer didn’t bother him. If anything, I’d said the right thing.

The candles lighting the room dripped wax over the edge of the candelabras, and somewhere a teacher was counting down the minutes until the finish line. We must be doing something right if Professor Larch hadn’t pulled either of us yet. I kept adding ingredients, trying to remember the pages and pages of instructions along with this potion, letting my magic guide the way.

My memory. Not as bad as it used to be, although Melia had been wrong. I couldn’t make myself have a better memory with cognitive manipulation. It seemed the only person my magic didn’t work on was me.

“Only a few more minutes before they call the exam,” Mike said with a grin when I turned to glance at him. His cauldron had lacy frost decorating the sides and steam the color of a sunset. “I see you’re sweating hard trying to keep up with me. What’s the matter, Tavi? You a little tired? Working against the master getting to you?”

My hands clasped to my throat. “Your ego is choking me. How about you watch what you’re doing and leave the finessing to the professionals?”

He chuckled and grabbed a piece of moonstone, holding it over the boiling liquid.

Turning my back on him, I moved to the last six inches of the scroll and the final ingredients. If I could do better than him here, today, without having to resort to cheating…

It would be a major boost. Mentally and emotionally.

Mike chuckled again when I turned my back to him. “Trying to play it safe now, huh? You don’t want me to see what you’re doing?”

I shrugged. “Gratitude for you. Huh?” Let him stew.

Professor Larch hovered around us, keeping a constant watch on us with her eyes narrowed, murmuring under her breath. Knowing it would come down to the smallest details unless Mike messed up big time.

We finally reached the three hour mark, or so Larch called out, and I was tired. I was ready to stop. Then the gong tolled.

Mike and I held up our hands.

“And time, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Time for me to see how you’ve done. Our last two. You both did well enough I let you use the whole time. Be proud of that alone.”

I was too anxious to know the results to muster any kind of response for her.

She walked between us, tipping both of our cauldrons toward her for inspection. Keeping silent while she examined. Her lips pursed.

“Well,” she said after a time, clucking her tongue. “It seems we have a winner on our hands. Not unexpected, I might add. I’ve heard wonderful things about this student and their give ’em hell attitude this semester.”

Mike shifted to lean his elbow on the table, his blond hair the only spot of color when his face went pale. Like a stray sunbeam captured and given physical form. I felt like a worm next to him. Exhausted, sweaty, and definitely not in possession of exceptional Fae beauty. Whatever happened, I had my friend back.

I felt Persephone’s eyes drilling into me, as though telling me I’d better not be the winner, or else.

“Damn good execution. Excellent instincts when it comes to the missing ingredients. Textbook texture. A few wrong turns here and there, nothing to detract too badly from the final product.”

Larch brought over her own potion and poured a little bit into a beaker, making sure to keep her bare hand away from it. The liquid sloshed ponderously until it reached the edge of the glass.

She poured a bit from mine into a similar beaker. Then Mike’s, comparing the three of them side by side and beckoning us to lean closer. “Do you see what I see?” she asked.

Mike shook his head. “Not really.”

My mouth had gone too dry to answer her.

“Miss Alderidge, congratulations,” Larch said at last. “Full marks for you. And Mr. Thornwood, you did good. A close second. You’ll receive full marks as well. You should both be extremely proud of yourselves. I know I am.”

Mike gave me a stunned look, falling silent. Then broke into a wide grin.

“I guess you showed me after all,” he said. “You’re the winner, Tavi.”