Ruthless Magic

  He nodded, and I called into being a barrier of magic around us, along with a whisper of heat and a protective surface that should deflect an initial attack. Then I dimmed the light I’d conjured.

  Finn shifted to lie on the floor, resting his head on his open hand. I eased down onto my back, but even with the numbing ’chantment, my torn muscles throbbed against the hard floor.

  I rolled onto my side, facing him, and closed my eyes. My nerves buzzed. How long were we going to be trapped down here before the storm let up?

  “Dragon-Tamer?” Finn said after a few minutes.

  “Yes?” I replied.

  He hesitated so long I thought he’d changed his mind about whatever he’d been going to say. Then he said, low and careful and more serious than I’d ever heard him, “You know, I’d be terrified out of my mind if you weren’t here with me.”

  My eyes popped open. His features were hazy in the muted light, but he was close enough that I could see him looking back at me. His attention and the implied compliment sent a giddy quiver through my body. But at the same time, the self-deprecation in his statement niggled at me. Didn’t he know he’d been there for me as much as I’d been there for him today?

  “We make a pretty good team,” I said.

  “Other than the parts where I get blasted away by magic or wind or what have you, and you have to save the day?”

  “Yes,” I said, unable to keep the dryness from my voice. “Other than that.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but I couldn’t close my eyes as long as his were fixed on my face. The silence stretched. Then Finn leaned forward, reaching toward me as if to touch my cheek.

  My heart leapt—and I saw him in the midst of the Academy library’s glow, where he belonged so well, where I didn’t at all. My body went rigid, jerking back from his fingers.

  Finn pulled his arm back and rolled over to look at the ceiling. His mouth worked with an embarrassed twitch. A flush too deep for the dim light to hide crept over his face and neck.

  My own skin felt as if it were burning. I swallowed thickly.

  “Apologies,” Finn said. “Very bad timing.” His tone slipped into the self-mocking lilt he took on so naturally. “Not that I’m assuming such advances would have gone over well under other circumstances, of course. I understand my ears are a little on the pointy side, and let’s not get started on my knees. My fashion sense, well— Also, I may have the tendency to babble on in awkward situations.”

  A smile tugged at my mouth despite myself. “Finn, I—”

  I’d wanted him to do it. A very large part of me was kicking myself right now because I could have been finding out right now what it was like to kiss him.

  But…

  If we’d met in the library and not here shut away from everything else that matters to you, I wanted to say to him, would you have looked at me that way even for a second? Do you mean this, for real, or is it only an impulse that’ll slip away the second we’re back in the real world with your parents and granduncle and whoever else looking on? Because I can’t do that. I already care too much for it not to hurt when you wake up.

  I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know if he could even tell me the truth and not just what he’d like to believe about himself. How could I trust my old daydreams when they’d come to life in the middle of this nightmare?

  But I didn’t want him thinking things about me that weren’t true either.

  “You’re not babbling,” I said. “I’m not upset. It wasn’t— You weren’t wrong.” I wasn’t sure he’d understand, but any other way I could express it might sound like an invitation.

  He turned his head. “Clearly I wasn’t exactly right,” he said tentatively. “You pulled away.”

  I couldn’t exactly deny it. “I did.”

  “Then... I’m confused.”

  Emotion squeezed my chest. It seemed to take more effort than I’d expended all day to murmur, “So am I.”

  Finn’s expression relaxed. He shifted onto his side again, keeping a careful distance. “In that case, at least we can be confused together. If you don’t mind the company.”

  A pleased little spark lit up inside me, one I couldn’t quite bear to smother. “I don’t mind,” I said. Then, because I felt I should offer a larger token than that, I scooted toward him. Close enough that when I tipped my head, my forehead could graze his chest.

  I closed my eyes again. Finn’s breath tickled over me. It was warmer like this.

  He touched my waist gingerly, and when I didn’t move away, he rested his palm there and tucked his head down until his chin settled against my hair. His chest rose and fell. He stayed there, not asking for more, just sharing the moment with me. And in that moment, despite the horrors waiting for us above and perhaps even here, I felt safer than I had since I’d declared for the Exam.

  I must have drifted off, because that feeling was the last thing I remembered before I startled awake to the peal of my alert ’chantment.

  Chapter Eleven

  Finn

  If I’d ever dreamed about waking up next to a girl I was falling for, those imaginings had not included joints turned stiff against a cold concrete floor or a gigantic room of terrors waiting above us. I definitely would have skipped the nerve-scattering blare of magical alarms.

  My heart jumped. Rocío was already pulling away from me—there and then gone, the movement leaving me as raw as if she’d scraped my skin.

  “The storm’s over,” she said.

  I scrambled to my feet after her. The thin shirt I’d chosen in consideration of the summer heat was now thoroughly wrinkled from the damp and our impromptu sleep. Shoving my fingers through my wayward hair, I felt abruptly, ridiculously self-conscious. Rocío’s hair and clothes were rumpled too, but to me that didn’t diminish her in the slightest.

  She extended her hand with a small smile I couldn’t read. The simple gesture was enough to light me up inside.

  I’d barely known this girl two days. I’d had attraction spark and fizzle out in that timeline before, but this didn’t feel like a spark. It felt like a brilliant aria twining through me from sternum to gut, giddy but bone-deep.

  It felt like magic.

  Why shouldn’t it? Those two days had been long enough for me to know Rocío was awfully magical herself.

  After the confidences I’d shared with her down here, she knew things about me that no one else but Prisha did.

  Panic jabbed my stomach at the thought of Prisha. We needed to get back to the others—to confirm they were still around for us to get back to. I took Rocío’s hand with what I hoped was a casual air. She was already murmuring to the whisper of energy around us, her expression tight with concentration.

  It occurred to me that I ought to contribute to the casting. I’d always struggled with even the simplest forms of teleportation, but I could at least—

  Magic rushed through me, sending my thoughts soaring away, and we shot back to the vast gray space where the storm had battered us.

  Rocío let go of my hand with a shaky breath. My fingers closed around the air.

  The sky or ceiling far overhead had returned to its pre-storm pallor, lit with a vague glow. The fog had retreated to a hazy blur beyond the nearest trees and buildings. I couldn’t tell whether we were even inside or outside anymore. The terrain all around was that same flat, spongy floor.

  The stretch of trees where I’d found my radio stood to my right, their branchless torsos hunched. In the other direction, no more than a five-minute walk away, the precarious-looking buildings were still upright, looking not particularly worse for wear. Relief swept through me.

  “Let’s hope we catch up with them,” I said, setting off toward the buildings. Even if Prisha and the others were unharmed, they’d have no idea what had become of us.

  A distant thunderclap echoed across the landscape, and my legs stalled, my hand dipping to my pocket. Whatever the noise’s source, it was back beyond the trees, not near the buildings
. A test one of the other examinee groups was facing? It shouldn’t affect us, that far off, Fates willing.

  “Finn,” Rocío said, “what are you reaching for?”

  My fingers jerked away from my hip. “What?” I said with feigned confusion.

  She hesitated, studying me with those thoughtful eyes, and my gut twisted. She knew I was lying. After I’d claimed to respect her, after all my gestures of honest admiration, she was going to think it’d all been a charade.

  “You’re carrying something,” she said. “Something that makes you nervous, but you think of it whenever you might have to defend yourself.”

  Had my movements been that conspicuous? The damned dissolving rod made me twitchy even capped.

  “My sister gave me something after I declared. It’s a— Well, a weapon,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to conceal it, exactly. I just... feel odd about it. It must be from the Confed’s military division. Having seen what it can do, I find it hard not to be nervous having it on me. But at least I have it if circumstances take a particularly bad turn.”

  “Oh,” Rocío said. Her eyes had widened. There was no way she’d have ever had access to a military-grade weapon. That was precisely why Margo had given it to me, right? She’d meant to tip the scales more in my favor—as if they weren’t already tipped enough.

  An uncomfortable heat crept up under my skin. How could Rocío ever respect me when I kept getting by on other people’s coattails—including hers? I’d admired her from the moment I’d seen her dragon, before I’d even set eyes on her, and the best she’d seen me cast was a basic communication spell I’d scarcely maintained long enough to convey a single image.

  “Is it dangerous just to have it on you?” Rocío asked as we hurried on toward the muted shadows of the buildings.

  I shook my head quickly. “No. It’d be impossible to trigger it accidentally. But I’m not exactly in the habit of toting weaponry.”

  “Okay,” she said, and then fell silent. The two feet of space between us might as well have expanded into a gulf. I hadn’t a clue how to reach across it.

  The buildings loomed in front of us. The closest of the structures was about as big as a couple of brownstones melded into one. I spotted a doorless entrance cut in the side. Prisha’s voice traveled out from it. “We have to at least check,” she was saying.

  A grin sprang to my face. I sped up to a jog, loping to the entrance and through. The large room I came into looked as purposefully vague as the rest of this testing space felt. It held no furniture or fixtures, only seamless walls in a white that looked slightly dingy, a set of stairs in the far corner that were a matching shade—and four figures clustered in the middle of the room, who all whirled at the thump of my feet.

  A relieved laugh slipped from Prisha’s lips. She leapt forward and grabbed me in a hug. I returned the embrace as tightly as I dared, taking care not to bump the makeshift bandage on her shoulder.

  She looked fine. They all looked fine. That was the best I could have asked for.

  “I assume you all missed us,” I teased. Rocío stepped through the entrance behind me. Judith and Desmond were beaming. Lacey’s expression was guarded, but after a moment it eased with a smile.

  Prisha gave my arm another squeeze. “Don’t you dare scare me like that again,” she said, a joke and a threat all at once.

  “I’m glad to see you too,” I said. “Between the storm and Desmond’s ’chantment, I was a tiny bit concerned.”

  “We survived,” Judith said with a grimace that suggested it hadn’t been the most enjoyable night.

  “Where were you?” Lacey asked. She stood favoring her sprained ankle. The minor numbing ’chantment I’d put on it yesterday would have been broken in Judith’s trap, of course, but one of the others could have cast a new one.

  When she noticed my glance, she pulled her posture straighter. Maybe she’d refused to ask.

  “We got caught in the storm,” Rocío said, “so we had to find shelter somewhere else.”

  I couldn’t help noticing she’d moved farther from me in a manner that felt deliberate. I circled my thumb over my fingertips, and the magic quivered into stillness between us. Purposefully or not, she was setting herself apart from me.

  “Do you think—” she began.

  With a faint pop, a thin metal table materialized in the middle of the room. It was laid out with a platter of muffins, another of fruit, and a row of water bottles. My stomach flipped as if it meant to jump right out of my body. Breakfast.

  We dashed toward the food, but everyone glanced at Rocío and muttered a quick testing ’chantment before digging in. For a few minutes, the only sound in the room was the smacking of lips and the gulping of water.

  We’d learned our lesson well. There was no guarantee we’d be allowed to enjoy this meal at leisure.

  As our stomachs became fuller and no catastrophe descended on us, I started to relax. Apparently the examiners were capable of granting us a kindness, however slight. “It’s a regular Saturnalia feast!” I remarked. “Nunc est bibendum.”

  Judith snickered. Prisha elbowed me with a roll of her eyes. The others looked blank. I winced inwardly. I hadn’t even considered the reference might not connect outside the Academy set.

  Prisha bit into an apple and pulled a face. “Ugh, skin,” she said. “Now I remember why I never eat these things.” She gave the fruit platter an accusatory stare.

  “Allow me?” Desmond said.

  Prisha raised her eyebrows and passed the apple to him.

  Desmond sang a bluesy lyric and tapped the top of the fruit. The skin sloughed off it in a perfect spiral that settled in a pile on the table. He nudged the naked apple back toward her.

  “Wow,” Prisha said. “You put my peeling skills to shame.”

  “It’s mathematical,” Desmond said with a sliver of a grin. “I hated the skin when I was a kid, but my mom insisted it was healthier to leave it on, so I very quickly figured out a way to get around it by myself. She could hide the peeler, but she wasn’t prepared to outmaneuver a mage in the making.”

  “Are your parents Dull?” Prisha said, perking up. “I love that—they have no clue how to keep up.”

  “My mom is,” Desmond said. “My dad’s Dampered. He’s still ace at finding things. That’s how they met. My mom lost an earring her boyfriend had given her, and my dad saw her looking and offered to help. After two hours of following the trail through the city and getting to know each other, they tracked it down, and she had a new boyfriend.” His grin widened.

  He was a capable mage, undeniably. Not stunning, but then, how much of his concentration was he expending on whatever castings he must use to supplement his vision? The Circle should have given him credit for that.

  There was so much that should have counted with them that clearly didn’t.

  My gaze slid to Rocío. My eyes caught hers—and then hers darted away. Her mouth was set in a pensive line.

  I had the impulse to crack some joke that would bring a smile to her face, but my mind went blank. Before I could recover my wit, footsteps thudded outside the doorway. I turned, my fingers dropping to my pocket before I checked myself.

  Mark hauled himself through the building’s entrance. His mohawk lay limp against the shaved side of his head, and a deep purple bruise ran from just under his eye to the corner of his jaw.

  “Hey,” he said in a rasp. “I’m back.”

  The rest of us had tensed. “Now you decide you want to be a joiner?” Judith said, frowning at him. “What, because we’ve got the food?”

  “It was my ’chantment that set him off before,” I said, to be fair.

  Mark grimaced. “Look, things did get a little... messy. But coming back to the group wasn’t my idea. I got a message saying I had to find you all if I was going to pass the next ‘assignment.’ That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be incredibly glad for your company,” Prisha said dryly.

  He glowered
at her. “I’ll help where I can while we have to work together. I just— I’ve got different reasons for being here than you do. More reasons. Okay?” His jaw twitched. “So I’d rather depend on myself when I can. It’s safer than trusting the rest of you to get the job done for me.”

  “That sounds reasonable to me,” Desmond said quietly.

  “Maybe, but he doesn’t need to talk about us like that.” Lacey stepped forward. “You didn’t help us before. Why should we let you back in with us now?”

  She looked a little ridiculous staring down our rebel punk in her girlish dress, her nub of a pale chin raised. Still, I had to give her points for speaking her mind.

  Mark must have too, because he ducked his head. “Honestly,” he said, the rasp coming back into his voice, “I did you a favor. The ’chantment I cast... Let’s just say I’d feel a lot worse if you’d all had to deal with it too.”

  The sentiment sounded genuine. Seeing the way his gaze roved to the table and held there, I wondered if the examiners had provided him with any sustenance while he’d been on his own yesterday. The guy might be starving.

  “I expect the examiners won’t look kindly on the rest of us going against their orders,” I said, “based on past experience and all. If they want us together, we can figure out a way to coexist.” I motioned toward the plate of muffins. “Banana, carrot, or bran?”

  “Carrot,” Mark said with a near-delirious gleam in his eye.

  I tossed him the muffin, but my throw went a little wide. He rapped out a quick casting as he extended his hand. The muffin veered toward him—and burst apart with an electric crackle.

  Mark eyed the torn pieces that had scattered over the floor while the rest of us stared at him. His jaw twitched again, and he clenched it. “I guess I’d better get one myself,” he said. He kicked a chunk of muffin aside and ambled over to the table.

  Lacey had blanched. “What was that?”