Page 53 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Arrows

Thankfully, I didn’t have to get decked out in sports gear for the Skyhunt tournament.

After talking to Miranda (and enduring over an hour of grilling on Graham Strangemore and what made me change my mind about him), I settled on a scarf in the Malcroix Bones school colors of violet and green, printed with a series of Malcroix Crosses wrapped in gold ribbon, glinting with a charm that made them throw off gold sparkles.

The skull in the center had gold eyes that erupted with a flame effect.

I decided that was more than enough to show some school spirit.

I eventually told Jolie and Mir I’d asked Graham to the Myst?ria dance, as well.

Miranda was delighted.

Jolie raised an eyebrow, and didn’t comment.

Later, when we were alone, I asked Jolie if she knew Graham Strangemore, but she insisted she didn’t. She would only say that Strangemore “doesn’t seem like your type,” and “He’s a bit of a jock, isn’t he?” without really elaborating on why that was a problem.

Jolie did ask if Graham had given me the cat, which nearly made me spit out my tea. I assured my roommate that, while I couldn’t be sure exactly who gifted me Wraith, it definitely had not been Graham Strangemore.

Jolie seemed to accept that, and hadn’t brought up Strangemore again.

Still, I wondered about him.

The extent of his Skyhunt celebrity came as somewhat of a shock.

I’d known he played, of course. I’d known he was popular partly because he was good. It was one of those things around school that couldn’t be avoided, no matter how oblivious I was. I hadn’t fully realized what a big deal that was, however.

When we arrived at the stadium on the south side of the river, I discovered Strangemore arranged in advance for me and my friends to sit in a booth at a higher elevation, which meant we’d have better seats than the vast majority of students and family who’d come to watch.

We also each got gifted a “peering glass” as part of the box seating.

All I had to do is hold the peering glass up, and I had a clear, highly-magnified view of any part of the grounds.

We also had a private screen floating over us, which showed off the field where the most action seemed to be occurring, and our own food vendors.

Silk banners whipped in the breeze overhead.

We had our own box speakers, rather than the echoing acoustics on poles that happened over the crowded stands below.

Honestly, I would’ve rather been down with everyone else.

“There’s a rain and weather shield, too,” Draken told us, speaking loudly over the announcer, who was currently listing off names for the Bavarian team. “We’re lucky. Weather’s absolutely perfect. It often rains for the second tournament.”

“This is the second tournament this year?” I said wonderingly. “When was the first?”

Draken and Miranda exchanged looks, and laughed.

“Don’t you remember me asking you? It was weeks ago now,” Draken teased, resting his arms on his thighs. “We played against Russia in October. Mir and I begged and begged you to go, but you were wandering around with that leather book you carry with you everywhere, muttering to yourself.”

I remembered vaguely, now that they mentioned it.

I’d just gotten my mother’s diary and spent the next two weekends reading it.

When I held up the peering glass, I saw mages and witches in the stands below waving banners with the Malcroix Cross and Strangemore’s name.

A fair few adults, likely parents and alumni, also sat in the stands, sipping hot drinks, holding up peering glasses with gold and silver frames, and waving flags decorated with the Malcroix cross.

The visiting team mostly sat in bleachers on the other side of the river.

Even though my friends and I took up nearly a row of seats, I felt conspicuous being up in the posh box.

Draken sat on my right, and Draken’s roommate, Gunther, sat on the other side of him.

Miranda sat on my left, with Luc next to her, and Jolie next to Luc.

Nyx, Miranda’s new friend from class, sat next to Gunther, with Luc’s roommate, Darragh, or “Dag,” at the end.

Being surrounded by friendly faces didn’t entirely fix it, though, in terms of my feeling out of place, particularly given who else shared the high-elevation box with us.

I’d finally learned which name went with which of the three “trolls” who followed Caelum everywhere he went.

That’s how I knew Norrick Voltaire noticed my presence in the box first. He was the only one of the three who seemed to have much of a brain, and the one Alaric called their leader.

He also scared me more than the other two.

Norrick Voltaire was a hulking beast of a mage, a few inches taller than Caelum, with giant hands and a bony face. His dirty-blond, curly hair did nothing to distract from the meanness of his eyes, or the constant sneer on his too-large lips.

He got a perverse delight in cornering me: in the dining room, in common rooms, in the library, by the coffee cart in Malcroix Mansion, and once outside a lecture hall, after which he’d suggestively invited me to accompany him to Bonescastle for dinner.

He’d asked me the same question roughly every week since then, usually in the crudest way possible, and often by getting unnervingly into my space.

I’d been tempted to knee him in the crotch as my answer, more than once, but I’d concentrated on keeping him out of my magic, instead. The last thing I needed was to give Norrick Voltaire a reason to physically attack me.

Alaric warned me to steer clear of Voltaire, and not to underestimate his magical ability. Just because his face “looks like a skull that got squashed on railroad tracks,” didn’t mean he didn’t know some dark, nasty spells.

Sitting on Voltaire’s right, Nicolai “Pants” Panzen gaped at me soon after Norrick noticed our arrival. Pants was another giant mage, but more wide than tall, with wispy, already-balding brown hair and a perpetually confused look on his face.

Pants looking over caused the troll on Voltaire’s left, the lanky, greasy-haired, Scarpen “Scar” Maskey, to glance over his shoulder, too, a silver flask gripped in one hand, a hand-rolled cigarette between two fingers of the other.

Caelum wasn’t there. While I was relieved he wasn’t, even though he’d clearly left his three trolls behind to be a pain in my arse, I wondered why.

Did he actually blow off the match?

Ugh, and why was I wondering where he was?

Realizing I was doing it again, thinking about him for no bloody reason, I focused on the adults who’d just joined us in the box, as well.

A tall, startlingly handsome mage with long black hair and disturbingly familiar features sat to my right and a few rows back, a witch at his side with golden hair, grey eyes, and an aristocratically beautiful face.

My lips pursed even before I saw the dragon made of bones perched on the man’s thigh where he leaned back elegantly in his seat. The dragon looked identical to Caelum’s in everything but the eyes, which were silver instead of black.

Gods. That had to be Caelum’s parents.

Where the hell was he, if his parents were here?

Other adults sat around them, and I saw the mage with the long black hair angle his head back to listen to something one of them said.

Just then, those silver eyes shifted to mine.

I didn’t hold his gaze, but looked away, thankfully distracted when a long horn blew from the center of the field. I faced forward, my neck and ears burning.

“And they’re off…” a voice echoed over the grounds.

I glanced to my left, at Mir, Luc, and Jolie.

“You guys are going to explain this to me, right?” I joked quietly.

Mir nodded, her eyes staring through her peering glass as winged players darted like shadows over the river. She glanced briefly at me.

“This should be a great match,” she gushed.

“Russia’s team was a bit sad this year, but Bavaria is always good.

They aren’t the best we’ll go up against this season…

that would be either the Magical University of California, or Tokyo Academy of Magical Arts.

But Bavarian Magical Defense Academy’s a solid contender.

Hopefully we’ll see some real battles before they get to The Eyrie. ”

I blinked. “Wait. California? Tokyo? We play against the entire world? Not just Europe and the U.K.?”

“It’s not about geography, Leda.” Draken’s voice was distracted, his eyes on his own peering glass.

“They arrange schools by tier. The top tier schools play one another, partly because we’re better funded and can attract better players, like Strangemore.

We’ve got eight teams total in ours. Occasionally the composition of the top eight changes, but not often.

I think the last time was when the Magical Institute of Sorbonne got beat out by the Brazilian International Obeah Academy, in 1965… ”

I looked out onto the field, distracted when another whoosh of wings indicated the players were coming closer.

I saw arrows fly, their tips glowing bright with iridescent colors.

Most flew past their targets without connecting.

The players on both sides wore masks; etched gold on the Malcroix side, bronze on the Bavarian side.

A muscular player in black, violet, and gold leathers and wearing a gold mask, dropped in a sudden, hard dive. He gripped his bow in his left hand, and yanked back the string, shooting at a player wearing a forest green uniform as he plummeted past.

He managed to get the other player, a witch, square in the back, and I saw the hit player curse as her uniform lit up in pink, red, and orange sparks.

“Oh-ho!” Draken crowed. “That’s two!”

“See that?” Miranda pointed at the witch who got hit. “She’s technically ‘dead’ now, and has to leave the field. They’re already two down. That’s ten points for our side. Five each death. Two for every wounding that doesn’t pull them out of the game.”

“Is that the goal?” I asked. “To knock everyone out on the other team?”