Page 10 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

A Different Life

Everything went pitch black, then sharply light.

By the time I finished blinking into that sudden illumination, my feet stood solidly on a red-carpeted floor, and Aunt Ankha stood in front of me, tapping her foot, her sweater-clad arms folded across her narrow chest. Two, dark blue, inhumanly shining eyes in a silvery coat stared at me from behind my aunt’s legs.

It was a wolf, made of pale silver and blue light.

Apparently, my new, strange vision wasn’t confined to the gymnasium space above.

I stared at the wolf, then at my aunt’s face.

The hard angles of Ankha’s fleshless features hadn’t changed.

Her own dark-blue eyes held the same impatience, the same annoyance, the same coldness.

But now a wolf with an eerily similar face crouched behind her, clearly meshing with the silver cloud of light faintly outlining my aunt’s form.

Somehow, despite the perfect beauty of the silver wolf and its deep blue eyes, it didn’t soften Ankha’s energy at all.

If anything, it made me even more leery of her.

“Well?” Ankha demanded.

She tapped her foot, and the wolf’s tail swished back and forth, more like a cat’s than a dog’s friendly wag. It watched me like it was assessing for weaknesses.

I glanced around the room.

A round table stood a few feet away, topped by a crystal decanter filled with some amber liquid.

Three matching glasses had been left on the same doily.

Paintings on the walls depicted fantastical battle scenes with armor-clad combatants.

In the one nearest to the door, soldiers rode white and black dragons the size of horses, shooting flaming arrows from longbows at what looked like winged demons.

When I didn’t speak, Ankha let out an annoyed huff.

“Well?” she repeated, exasperated. “How did you do?”

I looked at my aunt. I tried very hard not to stare at the creature glaring at me from behind her legs.

“How on earth would I know that?” I asked.

“Magique,” my aunt corrected. “We don’t call it ‘Earth’ here.”

I bit my lip, tried to decide if I should pursue that, or one of the hundreds of other things I’d wanted to ask. In the end, my frustration and anger won out.

“Are you going to tell me what… this…” I waved angrily around me. “…even is? You said you’d explain as soon as you could. Can you now? Or am I supposed to blunder around in the dark here for a few hours more?”

None of the hardness in Ankha’s expression lessened.

“Yes, I can speak to you now,” she said. “But will I? When you ask like that?”

I folded my arms and stared back.

When I didn’t say anything, Ankha gave another annoyed exhale.

“The block on your magic’s been lifted,” she explained shortly. “More importantly, you’re here now, in Magique, and you’ve completed your test. So yes, we can speak.” She exhaled another huff of breath. “Did they tell you when results would be communicated?”

I fought another stab of anger, but nodded after a slight pause.

“Today,” I said.

“Good.” Ankha nodded approvingly. “That means your inspector doesn’t expect anyone to dispute the results, nor will he contest them himself.

The outcome was incontrovertible, in other words.

” Her eyes flickered up and down my body.

“I’m guessing that means it went well. But it could equally mean you failed it so badly, there was no question in his mind that you’d be sent back. ”

I felt my confusion return, only to revert quickly to annoyance.

“I’d like to go back now, if it’s all the same,” I said. “I’d like to be there before Archie gets off school. Before, really. I still need to bake him a cake.”

The older woman blinked at me in surprise.

Her surprise quickly turned to a harder irritation.

“Back?” Ankha’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “You mean back to that dismal outpost where I’ve been banished for eight years? You want to go back to that horrid, Overworld school, surrounded by animals and perverts?” She scoffed. “Whatever for?”

I stared at her in disbelief. “Perverts? What’re you on about? Archie’s there?”

“Arcturus,” Ankha corrected. “And no. You will not be returning.”

My jaw hardened. “I told you, I?”

“And I just said no,” Ankha cut in, her voice even more warning.

“As for your brother, you’ll just have to wait until he’s of age himself, and takes his own test.” She sniffed.

“Well, unless you failed. Then, everything I just said is moot. In either case, we aren’t going anywhere until the results are communicated to us officially. In writing.”

I refolded my arms more tightly over my chest. “And if I ‘passed’? Just how long do you plan to keep me here, then?”

Ankha’s eyes grew a visible fire.

“Forever,” she snapped. “Assuming you displayed enough magical potential, this is your home now, girl.”

My entire body stiffened.

I shook my head, once.

“No.”

“No?”

“Absolutely not. Not without Archie. No.”

Ankha stared back at me, unmoved.

A faint, cynical smile lifted her thin lips.

“It’s cute that you think you have any control over such a decision.

You may be legally of age, but that won’t protect you from Magical law.

Further, while you may come into some gold, assuming your bloodline is accepted, you still have no education, no training, no magical rank, no job, and no connections…

and you won’t have any of those things, either, until you’ve completed at least a basic level of schooling.

More to the point, if you’re declared Magical, you’re legally required to stay here, at least until the Magus Imperius and the Council of Ancients decrees otherwise…

and I wouldn’t hold your breath as to that happening anytime soon. ”

Her voice grew hard as steel.

“In all likelihood, you’re not going anywhere,” she said, a faint satisfaction in her voice. “And you should be grateful to the divinities for it. If returning to that dying world and its wars and disease is what you really want, pray to the gods you failed that test.”

Ankha sniffed.

“The most likely scenario is they’ve discerned at least some magic in you.

Your mother was a powerful agent of the Praecuri, and a renowned witch in her own right, even apart from our family name.

The chances of you not getting a least a spark of her talent is unlikely… despite who your father was.”

My hackles rose instantly, but my aunt wasn’t finished.

“They’ll send you to Kravenari Middle, or Dark Moon School of London, or perhaps the other one in Scotland, and train you in the basics.” She sniffed. “It’ll be challenging, I promise you, even if you are the oldest Magical in your class.”

I opened my mouth, but Ankha raised a warning hand.

“Maybe you’ll even skip a year, if you’re half the Magical your mother was,” she added coldly.

“But whether you do or not, once you experience what it’s like away from that dead-eyed, corpse-filled land that spawned you, you’ll be happier for it, believe me.

You’ll be begging my pardon for your ingratitude, long before you grace the hallowed doors of Malcroix Bones. ”

I blinked. “Malcroix what?”

“A higher-magic academy,” she snapped. “A real school, niece.”

I gritted my teeth. “I’m going to university next year. Oxford, most likely, or?”

Ankha scoffed.

“Maybe in a different life,” she retorted.

“I’m graduating in less than two months!” I protested.

“You’ll never darken the doors of that school again, or any other populated by Overworlder filth.

” Ankha raised a warning finger, stepping deeper and more threateningly into my space.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. Valuing those empty halls of half-learning over the wisdom of your ancestors? It’s appalling.

I won’t listen to it! Why, I only put you in that ridiculous, Overworlder school to keep you out of trouble, and to keep you in my house, as I was legally required to have you there by the Council.

I would never have let you go away to some human university.

You would have stayed in my house as long as I was legally responsible for you… whether you liked it or not!”

I opened my mouth, closed it.

Ankha continued to glare at me, her dark blue eyes an open threat.

“That’ll be the last of these childish tantrums, too,” she added coldly.

“You’ll do as you’re told. At least until you’ve failed the test formally, or been accepted to a Magical school.

After that, you’ll be someone else’s problem.

You can do whatever you want then,” she sneered.

Her expression closed. “Now come. They’ve assigned us a place for the night.

We’ll want to be there when they deliver the results. ”

My aunt’s fingers closed like iron bands around my arm, but that time, I wrenched free. I was done being led around like a dog, although I followed angrily when Ankha merely scoffed and marched towards the room’s door.

This conversation isn’t over, I told myself coldly.

The words weren’t convincing though, even to me.

Something about it did feel over.

Something about all of this felt final already.

I tried to shake the feeling, but it wouldn’t go away.