18. Chapter 17

Ihardly pay attention to Sofie"s lectures during our next visit to the library. Fearing what comes at training. Our punishment for my so-called outburst. Whispers trail me in the hallways of students calling it by that name . Let them say what they want. Nothing I do will change their opinions now.

Although I will say, it was hardly a fight and more of an ambush, one that left marks from the claws that tore through my neck. I reach up and rub at them with the palm of my hand. Almost gone, thanks to the elixir that Agnus dropped at my door last night.

Ava walks me to the arena after mealtime. I have a feeling she will be meeting me here every day, looping her arm around mine as she does now. We all stand around a very calm Madam Christoph as we wait for her to deal us our punishment, her hands once again on her knees as she sits in meditation. This is more sinister in some way, void of emotion, never letting us know her next move. Her stillness gives me time to study her face. One that, when rested, could be almost pretty. Until she opens her wild eyes and her lips curl into that mischievous grin that shows all her perfect, almost sharp-looking teeth.

Once we have all assembled, she scans us from left to right. Just when I think she is going to say something, she silently gets up and walks away, leaving us. No one says a word, one person even sits down as if the day is done. The small woman saunters off, she never turns her head or looks down at her feet, she only walks out into the trees as if she has walked the path a million times before.

This is enough to pique my curiosity. Just like I used to follow my sisters to their secret lovers and Cedric to where he left injured animals, I grab Ava by the elbow and pull her in the direction of Madam Christoph. I watch the woman disappear behind the large trunk of a sarro tree, its long, spindly branches almost touching the ground in a cascade of light green. I push them to the side, to see where she emerges again.

Ava and I trail her from afar, footsteps sound behind us and I turn to see the rest of class has followed us as well. Cora pretends to be uninterested but follows anyway. Soon, past all the trees, damp leaves the size of my head and grass that comes up to our knees, the ground evens out.

The sound of water lapping onto shore catches my attention first, but I get distracted by the large wooden structures in front of us, overrun by vines and weeds like it has not been used in a very long time. Dirty water has washed up from the lake and pools under the splintered oak of an old obstacle course.

Beyond the course, the lake"s edges are thick with cattails and rocky at the start. Not the soft sand that I am used to. At its center, a red flag, and a blue flag, atop a platform that floats in the middle, marking the end of the course. It is not a short distance. If you aren"t a skilled swimmer, it will be hard to reach.

I"m already planning my route when Madam Christoph shouts from somewhere above us. I scold myself for taking my eyes off of her. "Split into two teams." She sits upon a perch that overlooks the course, the perfect place to see all the action below. Everyone begins to move around me, I notice that all Cora"s friends stand closer to her and the only person who stands near me is Ava.

There"s already a full team at Cora"s side before I can even take a step. As we walk to the group that needs two more to fill their team, they cross their arms but do not protest. They do not look at me though, they are all looking at Ava. One even teases her, a large boy with pointed features and freckles that cover the entirety of his face. "Don"t try to fly again, little bird." He says to her, holding out his arms to mimic wings.

I have no time to ask her about what that means before Madam Christoph"s voice echoes above us once more. "Above the high beams and below the low ones, under the vines, across the planks, and up the wall, swim to the platform and raise the flag. Easy." She smirks as she sits back in her chair. Easy is right, too easy. There is a catch. I just don"t know what it is yet.

We stand in two lines, the red team on the left, the blue team, my team on the right. Cora purposely positions herself fourth in line, the same as me. An arrogant dark-haired boy that always finds a way to strip out of his shirt stands first at the front of our line. He looks over to the girl with long black braids and deep brown skin as she stands first on the opposite team and gives her a wink. To which she just rolls her eyes and crouches down in preparation. You can tell that her physical strength is nothing to underestimate.

Ava is third. She stands in front of me, her shoulders shake and her hands fidget at her sides, but she doesn"t turn around. I want to ask her what"s wrong, what the meaning behind those words meant but she clearly doesn"t want to talk about it, nor do we have time. My heart pounds and I swear I can hear Ava"s steadily growing heartbeat coming from her own chest.

A loud whistle comes from above us, where Madam Christoph sits. The girl wastes no time as she hurls herself forward. She is strong. You can see the muscles in her arms and legs as she jumps from the last high beam and is on the ground, crawling with ease underneath the vines, her small figure giving her plenty of room between the sharp thorns and her back. I make sure to peek at Madam Christoph, who seems almost uninterested in the race before her. Even yawning as she crosses her legs lazily.

The boy also makes the beams look easy, but the hard part comes when his large body barely fits beneath the latter and the thorns scrape at his flesh. He doesn"t so much as flinch or slow down. Instead, he continues, pulling himself up out of the mud at the end and immediately going into a dead sprint towards a large wall. Red lines of blood fall down his back, mixed with sweat and dirty water, I cringe thinking of the pain that will eventually come later after the adrenaline leaves his body.

The girl"s long hair swings back and forth as she, too, runs for the wall and grabs hold of the rope that falls from the top. They both begin to pull themselves up.

The boy, Ezra, his friends shout, has a head start up the rope. He turns to look at his competition. He holds his hand out to the girl with a huge, toothy smile. He"s quite handsome if it were not for the cocky aura that surrounds him. She reaches for him, but at the last second, he pulls his hand away, sending her crashing to the ground onto her back. She curses loudly after retrieving the air that was forced from her lungs.

When I look up at Madam Christoph her face is curled into a cat-like grin, as if she is enjoying the pain that the fall must have caused the girl, this makes my stomach flip. Something is wrong. I think to myself.

Cora laughs, her team follows suit. Christoph"s smile drops and her eyes shift from Cora back to the course. "All members of your assigned teams must make it to the platform. We will do the exercise every day until you do. "Madam Christoph informs us in a bored, no-nonsense sort of mocking voice. Like she is using all her strength not to roll her eyes as she changes the rules to fit her game, letting us know that she can and will.

"Grab the rope, girl," Cora shouts, her laughter now gone as she realized the consequence. As the girl pulls herself up, another whistle blows, sending the next person in each line plummeting toward the wooden forms. Their start is not so smooth. They have a different reaction to the beams. One girl stands atop one for a long time, her shoulder falling and rising in heavy breaths before letting out a horrifying scream. She lowers herself down onto the beam and holds on for dear life, her arms and legs wrapped around the wood as she hangs from it like a child.

The other girl who went for our team makes it to the horizontal ladder of thorns and dives underneath but stops as she hits the water. She lay there, paralyzed for a moment, her eyes wide and unmoving. Just when I think she isn"t going to move, she flails her arms wildly as she swats at the air and water around her, her hands getting caught in the vines. She wiggles her way out through a narrow spot on the side of the ladder, taking the thorns that are now embedded into her skin with her. When she pulls out a silver knife that she seems to have stolen from the dining hall and begins to cut at the vines around her in a frenzy, I look up at Madam Christoph, who sits with her hand on her chin, concealing a laugh at the mayhem before her.

What in the House of Hades is going on?The next whistle blows. Ezra is now running back towards us, confusion and pain, and fear written all over his face. Only wet up to waist from trying to make it to the platform. His face white as a ghost. "There"s something in the water," he says between breaths.

Ava looks at him in disbelief and her already shaking shoulders are moving up and down in sobs now. She is supposed to be running, the whistle was blown, she needs to move. Ava"s opponent has already made it to the first obstacle. I push her to the side and send her to the back of the line heading into the chaos myself. Cora curses as she watches me leave without her.

The first few obstacles are easy but when my concentration goes from my own steps to the person in front of me to see how close I"ve gotten, things seem to shift. The beam I was about to jump down from has grown in size. The ground looks the same as when I peered off of the edge of a small waterfall that only leaks from the mountains in mid-summer near House Luz. My chest heaves as I look at the now impossible height to drop from. My mind can"t make sense of it. I climbed up here just moments ago, a short distance to the top. A distance that I had climbed many times before in my lifetime.

Behind me, someone shouts a command for me to keep moving, but I can"t, won"t, not without a broken leg or worse. I twist my head to look at the line behind me. Cora shouts something indistinguishable, but I pay no mind to her. My head feels heavy. Horrified faces look back at me.

The girl that went first is now in the fetal position, her hair slung over her face, soaking wet from the lake, being comforted by her teammates. Minus Cora, who only looks at me as I stand atop the beam, my arms outstretched as I balance myself against the breeze. Something"s not right. I tell myself words that I already knew.

My eyes go from the crowd of terrified students to Madam Christoph, who pins me with wild eyes, and a curled grin spreads across her face. She raises her hand without taking her eyes from me, sticks her thumb and pointer finger up to her lips, and lets out another whistle that I hardly hear over what"s going on inside my head.

As her attention wavered, the illusions dissipate, revealing the truth surrounding me. My perspective changes once more, and the fog that once surrounded my thoughts clears. I look down, and there is the ground, only mere feet below me. I jump down with ease, but do not move forward as I collect my thoughts. Mind tricks. I conclude. Her new target, pinned beneath the gaze of our instructor, now lies helpless on the ground. But I"m fine. And the boy gaining distance on me has no look of fear in his eyes. Mind tricks. I almost say out loud.

If I"m going to beat Madam Christoph, I need to make sure that her concentration is elsewhere. To prove my theory, I listen to whistle after whistle. Watching her shift her attention to a different person.

Just like the distance to the ground changed when she took her eyes away from me and onto the girl holding her knees to her chest, fear blossomed on her face and Madam Christoph looks away again, satisfied. It"s not a race.

So, there I stand, frozen, but of my own free will this time. I let the next pair go ahead of me and I take my time through the course, they all stop at different places as their own minds see a false reality. Slowly I make my way over each obstacle, not caring about my speed. I find myself at a giant wall at the end, listening to the lake"s water rushing onto shore just beyond.

There I wait for my next opponent to come to the wall first so that I may climb with ease. No one comes, not a single person, whistle after whistle, no one moves. Madam Christoph looks bored, her legs apart and her back resting against the wood, she is no longer paying attention to us at all. All around me, sobs, shrieks of terror, frenzy, chaos. But her, she is calm, her job is done.

"Get off the course, Katsia," Ava shrieks from the long distance. All members of your assigned team must make it to the platform. Madam Christoph"s voice sounds in my head.It"s no use to continue if no one else will. We need a plan. They need to understand that there are no real dangers, only dangers of the mind. The students who made no effort to move from their spot in line most likely have almost no idea of what has happened.

The ones who have made it back to the start have hardly recovered from their panic to be able to tell them of the horrors that they endured.

Cora tends to those who were injured, nothing serious, but the scrapes and bruises that were once on their bodies are gone with the wave of her hand. Interesting. She tries to hide the exhaustion on her face after she is done with her mending, but her body sags and her brows pinch together as if she has given herself a headache. Her gift could be useful for what I"m sure we are about to endure for the next few days, maybe even weeks, if we all can"t work together. Although I doubt I will be getting much attention from the healer.

Between sparring and basic defense, Madam Christoph ends the day at the course. Mealtime is when we talk of strategies, to get us to the platform, all of us. The days turn into weeks, and even though we are getting closer, it"s still not a victory, and I"m not sure if it ever will be. I"m beginning to think that Madam Christoph knows very well that it"s impossible. Cat and mouse, Ava and I call it, she"s playing with her food. It"s just a matter of time before she eats us, right?

Everyone uses some part of their gift to help us along the way. Ava has pulled the thorns away from our bodies and Cora helps with minor wounds. Others have found ways in which to incorporate their gifts, some of them help and others only slow us down.

Ezra has a high tolerance for pain. Now I understand why he didn"t flinch as blood was falling down his back after an entanglement with the vines. A girl named Jane is almost undetectable if you are not looking right at her, making me wonder how many times she has been standing right next to me that I have not noticed. She rarely gets caught by Madam Christoph"s mind tricks, lucky her.

Others have gifts that are best suited for the classroom. The boy with glasses, Will, his memory is so good that he can recite a whole history book without looking at the pages. He hardly opens his books during class, most likely because he already knows the material. Besides, he is too busy counting the strands of hair that lay upon Ava"s head. Or at least it seems like it with the amount of time he spends staring at her. Ava is, as usual, unaware.

One girl who sits alone. Her name starts with an M, but I cannot remember what it is. She sits with her head down and her eyes closed. Her stringy brown hair could use a washing, and her daily punishment for wrinkled clothes seems not to have taken.

Ava swears she can hear our thoughts. Something about her never having said her job for King Aron was in the gardens, but that is pure paranoia. Ava never stops talking. No matter who is around, I wouldn"t be surprised if the girl- Mira? Mia? just overheard her blabber.

The elements are what make magic possible in the first place. Sofies teachings are starting to make sense as one boy swirls wind with the movement of his arms. Just as Ava has been blessed with the gift of Stone. These gifts are said to come directly from the Gods. While other gifts are only a mutation of the four elements.

Late at night, I stay awake to think of all these gifts surrounding me, ones that do not claw and scratch at you. Ones that do not whisk you away without permission. What kind of fucked up mutation are the Shadows? I think as I stare at the ceiling of my room. It does not matter, they are gone. Not a whisper or a wink from them. Not since I arrived.

I kick the covers from my legs and swing them over the bed.The hallways are usually calm at night, maybe a person or two tiptoeing to another room in a not-so-secret romance, or at least not a secret to me. It"s where I distract myself from the thoughts that plague my mind at night.

Wandering is what I have always done while others are in bed. At House Luz, it was easy to avoid the guests that stayed for the parties that went on late into the night. They were always too drunk or preoccupied to be bothered by me. Asleep in their beds or lazily drinking the remainder of their wine while having boring, run-on conversations with the man or lady of their choice. In hopes that they would not have to sleep alone that night. Tonight is no different. I pair my boots with my sleeping gown and make my way down the hall.

I run my fingers along the cold, perfectly dusted statues of Goddesses that sit on either side of the library"s entrance. They are older than the ones that filled the Luz castle. They hold more meaning, too. It"s more about the art, the history of it all.

Father"s were always meant to send a message that he could afford more have more than others. I wonder what happened to those statues after the passing of Hansel Luz. It feels like so long ago. I shake my head to keep the memory of my Father from coming to the surface.

I move across the large room. The lights are dimmed at night but perfect for reading. I"ve had Ava explain to me how the school works many times. The magic that flows through Spartus. The same as the castle that she once worked at. Apparently, the whole Kingdom ran on such magic. When there was more to spare, I suppose.

I know I should catch up on reading but sometimes I disregard Sofie"s list and choose a book from the same shelf of fiction for myself. Then I find a place to sit, which there is no shortage of. Other times just hearing the echo of my boots against tile, knowing that no one else is near is enough.

I move across the library, doing just that, listening to the sounds of my steps, staring up at its stained-glass windows that line the ceiling. They are not as intriguing in the daytime. Besides, I don"t mind listening to Sofie"s lectures. She"s an infinite library of knowledge all on her own, no books needed. Perhaps that"s what her gift is, the eye that occupies the space on the back of her head, knowledge.

My eyes do not peel away from the glass above me as I walk. I don"t need to watch where I am going. I"ve memorized every pedestal that holds a worn book at its center, every marble statue, each priceless piece of silver armor, and every table and chair.

The windows above tell a story, I realized many nights ago. I"ve never asked of the true story it depicts because whatever it is, it"s not as good as the one I"ve made up in my head. A man on the first frame of glass and a woman on the opposite end.

They look as if they are pushing magic from their palms towards the center. The woman"s hair is in locks of fire red. While the man holds a two-pronged pitchfork. His face glowing from the crown that circles his head.

Each step casts a different color onto my face as I decipher the different magic of each piece between the lovers. Dark and light. Life and death.

Blue, then green, yellow- "What are we looking at?" Red. The color that falls over the dark-haired man"s features. The Raven. My heart jumps into my throat.

I"ve been caught. What"s worse is that I didn"t even notice that he was standing there. He had to have come from behind, through the same doors as I did, but there were no footsteps. Surely, I had not let myself get distracted enough to let him pass by me. I guess I should not pride myself so much on paying attention to details as I once did at House Luz.

His black hair is pushed back neatly. His brows cast a shadow over his cheeks, making his eyes seem to disappear somewhere into two masses of black. He wears what I saw him in the first time, across from me in the carriage, all black and no pins or anything to tell me of who he is. He places his hands behind his back as he stands before me.

All I can do is stare, think I tell myself. "I-I could not sleep" I tell him clumsily. I could have lied but I"d promised myself after the jail that I would be better. That I would tell the truth to myself and others. To avoid the mess that comes from lies.

"Agnus could get you a tea for that." He retorts, his voice low.

I hope he cannot hear the hammering of my heart against its cage. "I prefer reading," I say honestly. "To put me to sleep." I can"t see his eyes, but I search them still. My head slightly tilted upwards at him, not as far up as I have to move my head to see into Kirian"s eyes.

"Your studies cannot be that boring as to put you to sleep." he leans forward slightly, the red light illuminates half of his face. He looks down at the book in my hand, not a part of my studies at all. A smile, or at least what I think is a smile, tugs at the corner of his mouth.

"It"s not the books that put me to sleep." I almost take a step away but refrain. This man scares me, but I do not want him to know that. "It"s the… emptiness." I decide on the word last minute.

His incredibly dark features, worsened by the red that cascades onto him, brightens when he takes a step forward and into the yellow light that shines down through the glass. The same yellow that is on me. Too close. Again, I do not move, do not show my rising fear.

"Are you not afraid?" He tilts his head to one side. I swallow hard. What is he suggesting?

Of course, I am afraid. I can"t remember a day that I was not afraid. Of Father, of Cedric and Medla, of the Shadows. I will not show him how afraid I truly am. I will never show anyone that again, I promise to myself. "Should I be?" I try to say with as much confidence as possible. The lights that were already far off seem to dim further as he watches me.

He snickers under his breath and tilts his head back up to look beyond me, over my head, towards the dormitories. "Let"s see. A girl with no power in a school filled with magic users that could…" He pauses for a moment, his mouth twitches upward. The smile doesn"t quite fit his features. He crafts his next words carefully, words that are meant to get under my skin, and they do. "Steal the air from your lungs, tear you limb from limb, bury you ten feet under without so much as breaking a sweat." He lists easily. My brows raise, surprised at the unmistakable pleasure he gets from making me squirm. But Madam Christoph has done as much as rip the fear right out of me or at least taught me how to ignore it for a short period of time.

I make sure to even my breathing before I give my answer. "If it is death that I should be afraid of, then no. I am not afraid." His smile drops. He searches my face for a moment too long. "And if this is meant to scare me." I have to stop mid-sentence to swallow again, "If you are meant to scare me, then I am not afraid of that either."

He finally takes his eyes off me, and the cloud that had been covering the light of the moon must have moved because the room brightens again. "Stay as long as you want." He barely misses me with his shoulder as he walks past. The herbal smell of lavender overwhelms my senses as it wafts into my face from the quick movement.

I release a much-needed breath. When his footsteps fade from earshot, I am left with the actual feeling of emptiness, the one that I so gladly welcomed before in this library, now felt heavier with his words on my mind. No power. Not that having my gift would help. The Shadows were suffocating. They only pulled me along for the ride.

Maybe, here, I could have found their true purpose. I have thought all my life that I did not want them, I tried to hide from them, and I guess they have finally listened. Perhaps I got exactly what I asked for. One of the reasons for coming here, to rid of my gift. This is what I have dreamed of, wished for.