Page 14 of A Curse So Cruel (Fated Mates of Shadowbone Academy #1)

“Yeah.” I pat a place beside me on the bed.

“Isn’t that how this goes? I mean, this is like textbook academy romance.

I go to a new academy, and my dorm mate turns into the best friend I never had…

” I trail off, a hopeful note in my voice.

“Which, thank god, because I could really use a friend right now, and it looks like you could, too.” I rub my chin.

“Wait, I think we’re supposed to hate each other first?

Can we speed through that part quickly?”

Kenzie stares at me like I’m crazy, which I probably am, but I’m rewarded when she gives me a slow smile.

“Well, luckily for you, creating another enemy is the last thing on my mind.” Moving to her side of the room, she grabs a water bottle I hadn’t spotted before.

As she lifts it to her mouth, her elbow bends, and she winces. I note the look of pain on her face.

“You’re hurt,” I point out, concerned at the way just drinking is making her look like she’s in agony.

She pulls the bottle away from her lips. “It’s nothing,” she replies dismissively.

When I continue to stare at her with concern, she adds, “Professor Knox was in a sour mood for our class tonight. Probably because of that guy they had to hunt down. The professor pushed us harder than usual while we were sparring, and Jordan was more than happy to satisfy the professor’s thirst for pain. ”

This piques my interest, and I try not to look too eager for information. “They had to hunt someone down?” I’m tempted to blurt out that I saw Knox and the others with Alexander, but that would open up too many questions, so I simply play dumb.

She shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah, they do that sometimes. His name was Alexander. He kept joking about visiting the human realm to go partying. He thought that since he’d mastered opening up shadow pathways on his own, he could get there and back without being detected.

No one believed him, but I guess he wasn’t playing around.

Not that he’ll be able to travel any shadow pathways now…

” She shudders when she says the last part, like she’s imagining what they’ve done to Alexander.

I don’t say anything, and after a moment, she places down her bottle and starts speaking again.

“But you don’t have to worry about that.

What you should be concerned about is that it’s dinner soon. ”

“Dinner?” I can’t even remember the last time I ate, and despite Alexander’s sad story, my stomach growls loudly.

Kenzie grins. “We’d better get you ready. You can’t go looking like that.”

“Me? Girl, I’m not sure if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, but you’re not exactly looking too hot right now, either.”

She’s still grinning at me when the academy ring on her finger glows and shadows cover her body, blocking her from sight.

The shadows disappear almost as quickly as they came, and I gape, staring at Kenzie’s now completely clean leather outfit.

Even the smear of blood is gone from her face, and there aren’t any loose hairs escaping from her braid.

She looks like she’s showered, changed, and even had time to apply a fresh layer of black around her eyes.

“How?” I point at her, demanding to know her secrets.

She taps the ring on her finger. “Yeah, I had that reaction the first time I saw it, too. It’s the rings.

While you’re human, they allow you to connect to the shadow magic around us.

As long as you wear the ring, you can create any outfit you can imagine, and have your hair done in any way.

It’ll remove any surface blood and dirt, but if you want a real good clean, you’ll have to use the communal showers. ”

“Huh,” I comment. “And here I thought the rings were trackers.”

She laughs. “I thought that, too, but they’re mostly a way for you to access the magic.

Humans can’t live in the shadow realm. Being here would slowly result in our bodies dying, so until we graduate, we get these.

When they make us immortal, we’re reshaped using the magic of the shadow realm, and we gain stronger powers.

We also get heightened physical abilities, too.

Basically, when we graduate, there’s some ceremony where they connect us to the magic of the shadow realm, and we don’t have to wear the rings anymore. ”

I nod like I understand, but I really don’t. I lift to my feet. “So in a nutshell, I can imagine myself dressed in anything, and it’ll magically appear?”

“As far as I’m aware,” she replies without missing a beat. “You simply need to visualize the outfit in your mind. Over time, you learn where you need the leather reinforced, and the types of pockets you need for your different weapons.”

I stop listening as I picture clothes in my mind and shadows explode around me.

The shadows slither against my skin, like they’re touching me everywhere, and there’s this weird tingling sensation.

And then just like when I had first put on the ring, the feeling becomes uncomfortable.

Except this time, the uncomfortable sensation doesn’t suddenly fade away.

It grows in intensity, those tingles now feeling like needles painfully puncturing my skin.

It feels…wrong. I feel wrong. A cry leaves my mouth, and I keel over, grabbing at my chest, which hurts the most.

“Shit. Shade?” Kenzie rushes over.

Before she reaches me, the sensation abruptly disappears, the shadows clearing away again.

“Ow, that hurt,” I moan, slowly straightening as I struggle to breathe normally. “You could have warned me.”

I expect Kenzie to laugh when she sees me. I had pictured myself wearing a new pair of ripped jeans and an oversized t-shirt that reads: MONSTER SMUT LOVER, complete with an image of a stack of books sporting horns and a tail. Just like the drawing I’ve doodled in my sketchbook countless times.

But she doesn’t laugh. No, she stands there, her face pale as she gapes at me.

I match her stare. “What?”

Clearing her throat, she gives me a tentative look. “Um, Shade, what is it that you were going for…?”

“It’s great, right?” I answer with a grin, but my grin slowly fades when her expression remains…weird.

Dropping my chin, I peer down at my clothes, and my eyes widen. Yeah, I’m not wearing a shirt. In fact, I don’t even know what I’m wearing.

I quickly shuffle over to the floor-length mirror attached to the wall, and I stare in horror at myself.

Instead of jeans and a t-shirt, strips of brown leather appear to have been roughly sewn together to create some sort of weird wrap around garment.

It reminds me of the outfits cavewomen used to wear, something I only know because when I first visited the library in the human realm, I had forced myself to flick through an ancient tome about the history of humans.

That’s not even the best part. Stuck to the leather in strange intervals like a child has had fun with a gluestick, are random patches of glossy, black feathers.

I suck in a breath, lifting my hands to my hair. I’d imagined a vibrant pink streaked through my chocolate waves, but instead, my hair looks like a birds’ nest with feathers tangled amidst the strands. Well, damn. I twist around to see the leather outfit only just covers my ass.

“What happened?” Kenzie asks me, her doe eyes still comically wide.

I give her a weak smile. “I have no idea.”

“That’s not what you pictured in your mind?”

I give her a look. “You think I would willingly choose to look like a half-plucked chicken?”

She covers her mouth, stifling her smile. “Well, I don’t know…but I’ve never heard of the rings doing anything like this. Are you sure you didn’t?—”

Before she finishes, shadows are sliding over me as I try again. This time, I attempt to picture exactly what Kenzie is wearing—a simple leather outfit that hugs my body, covering my arms and legs. Once again, it starts off okay, but then pain crackles through me as the magic goes wrong.

When the shadows clear again, Kenzie lets out a snort, and I reluctantly stare in the mirror. I’m still wearing a weird slab of leather that’s not at all molded to my body, though this one has straps over my shoulders, so I guess that’s a win.

“What do you think?” I ask Kenzie.

“Well…your hair looks a little…neater?”

I cock my head, staring at my reflection. “So it is.” On the bright side, my hair now looks less like a birds’ nest, and simply a little windblown with a few feathers protruding from the strands.

I decide to try one more time, but this time the pain is even worse. I’m gasping when the sensation fades, and my gaze shoots to the mirror.

Oh. My. God.

Kenzie’s laughter fills my ears as my eyes track over my bare skin, taking in the unevenly cut strips of black leather that are now only just covering my breasts and ass.

Black feathers are stuck to them making them look like some strange feather bikini.

Thankfully, my hair is even smoother, and I manage to pluck the feathers from the strands, combing my hair with my fingers until it’s mostly tidy again.

“Well, at least you look less like a cave dweller and more like…”

“A slutty crow shifter?” I finish for her.

She snorts, and I grin though inside I’m freaking out.

Something is definitely wrong with the magic, and my heart races as I think of the remnants of my curse that are still clinging to me.

Clearly, this must be a side effect. For a horrible moment, I wonder if I’ll turn back into a crow if I keep using the magic.

Don’t be silly, Shade. That’s not going to happen.

But my words are empty, because I can’t know that for sure.

I hardly know anything about shadow magic.

“Kenzie, are there any, you know, normal clothes around here that I can wear?” I ask. So much for pink hair. I try not to pout, because I had really been looking forward to that.

My roommate shakes her head. “Sorry, with the rings no one needs spare clothes. You can remove what you have on, but I don’t have anything else for you to wear.

The power we get from the rings is limited, and while I could take off my clothes and give you a set, who knows how long they’d last when I’m not wearing them.

The outfit could disappear in minutes or hours.

I just have no idea. You probably need to see Professor Lankin.

She teaches Shadow Basics, and she might be able to figure out why your magic is going wrong. ”

I weigh up my options. Explaining to one of the professors why I’m broken doesn’t seem like the best idea when I’ve just arrived here.

What if the guys don’t remember me because it was another professor who wiped my memory?

Before I can make up my mind, a soft, eerie melody sounds from the corridor outside our room, and Kenzie tenses like it’s a battle alarm.

“That’s the dinner bell. If we’re late, we’ll be punished. ”

“Punished?”

“Trust me,” she answers, “punctuality is taken very seriously around here.”

Great, I mumble internally, feeling like I’ve officially stumbled into a nightmare because being on time isn’t exactly a skill of mine.

I plaster a smile onto my face. “All righty, a breezy dinner it is then.” Honestly, I don’t really care about nudity, but I had hoped not to stand out so much. Oh well.

My roommate gives me a sympathetic look.

“You sure?” She says it like I have a choice in the matter, but going from what she’s said, I really don’t.

Not unless I want to risk getting punished.

At that thought, I think of the four stupidly attractive men who brought me here, but I quickly push them from my mind. Fantasizing won’t help me now.

“Yep,” I lie. “Show me to the food.”