Page 6 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Lighter

We were almost all the way across that enormous, stone room, when a shock of white hair, and riveting metallic irises caught a corner of my eye.

I turned my head swiftly, as if pulled by a magnetic force.

I tried to find that glimpse again, stopping on every blond head and light-colored set of eyes, but whatever I’d seen, it had winked out of view.

Even just that brief, likely-imagined glimpse was enough to to send my heart racing in my chest, my thoughts spiraling.

The boy.

Very few things stood out about my parents’ deaths as much as the boy I’d seen at the Underground station that day.

That platinum-haired, metallic-eyed boy showed up in my dreams every other night since, still dressed like a fae princeling, his bow-shaped mouth agape as he stared at me, too.

Everything about him, how he looked, his facial expressions, had been burned into me somehow, more than any other detail of that day.

I remembered him so clearly.

He’d stood there, by the Underground station’s wall, maybe a few years older than me.

I’d been looking at him before my mother’s scream, fascinated by his white-blond hair, his gold eyes, his strange clothes, the green, velvet-looking pants, soft-skin boots, dark cape, a diamond and gold pin at his throat.

His eyes had shone from the alcove by the wall, a fierce, metallic gold.

They’d glinted even through the dust and green smoke swirling through the air, blocking the sunlight in the mouth of the London Underground station.

His face had contorted in what looked like pain as he’d stared from me to my parents, to the robed figures scattered throughout the crowd. He’d looked shocked, confused, terrified?

I jerked my mind back to the present.

I looked around as I sped my steps after my aunt.

That boy made sense here. His clothing hadn’t been so dissimilar to what I saw around me now. His gold eyes?they almost made sense, too, as I looked around at the faces and eyes staring back at me here.

I scanned obsessively through them, looking for something that told me it was him, that I’d glimpsed someone who looked like him, at least. Of course, he wouldn’t be a boy now.

He’d be an adult, maybe a little older than me.

But that was crazy, wasn’t it? Assuming he’d ever been real, what were the odds he’d be in this same building?

No, that was definitely crazy.

I kept my mouth firmly shut as I paced my aunt’s steps.

I didn’t stop looking at every glimpse of blond hair until we turned down a new, smaller corridor, this one lit with round, glowing, ceiling orbs and teeming with people.

We passed wooden doors on either side with round handles in the center.

Those fist-sized, fiery creatures zipped past us going both directions, darting like birds on leathery wings.

Most of the regular-sized people clutched briefcases or bags, armfuls of books and parchments, cups of coffee and backpack-like satchels.

All appeared to be in a great hurry, just like they had in the cavernous, atrium-style space we’d just left.

Our group finally stopped in front of one of the painted doors. An aid trailing the two leaders stepped forward and swiftly opened it.

Horace, with the mutton-chop sideburns, turned to Ankha.

“You’re aware, surely, that you cannot go inside.”

I glanced at my aunt, whose expression showed she very much hadn’t known that.

“She’s had no preparation,” Ankha clipped, a sour look on her face. “None. She has absolutely no idea what she is, what her mother was, what she’s doing here?”

The man’s sideburns didn’t disguise his satisfied smirk.

“Of course,” he said smugly. “Anything less would mean you’d broken the law, which I never, for one instant, thought you’d do, Ankha.”

“She won’t know what is expected of her,” my aunt snapped. “She’ll have no idea how?”

“She’ll figure it out.” Horace gave me a wink, and about the least sincere smile I’d ever gotten from an older man, and that was saying something. “She looks like a bright, attentive lass. I’m sure she can follow direction.”

“That is absolutely ridiculous, and you know it!” Ankha retorted angrily. “You’re deliberately sabotaging this, Horace. You want her to fail?”

“Pish-posh.” The red-nosed man waved a dismissive hand. “I merely want an objective, unbiased assessment, Magus Ankha.”

I heard nothing but satisfaction in his words.

That, and the word “Magus,” which again made me blink.

Horace gave Ankha a deeply unconvincing look of sympathy.

“Would you really have her thrust into a world where she doesn’t belong, solely because she is family?” His smile reflected that false concern. “How would that not be ‘sabotaging’ her? And in a much more damaging and permanent way?”

Ankha’s face turned bright red as a vein throbbed on her temple.

I didn’t know my aunt well, but I knew her a little.

Ankha hadn’t even looked that angry the time Archie burnt one of her antique rugs so badly, imagining he was a wilderness explorer in the deep arctic, I’d disposed of it in the weekly rubbish collection.

During her next “inspection,” Ankha noticed the missing rug immediately, claimed it had been “rare and valuable,” and formed an equally fast (and, unfortunately, accurate) opinion about who was responsible.

She fumed and muttered coldly about her “mind-addled nephew” for the rest of her blessedly short visit.

Now, she looked even more murderous.

“She’s already showing,” Ankha returned coldly.

“If you push her out and she’s one of us, the consequences will be far worse.

You can’t possibly be this determined to keep me confined in your petty little prison forever.

” She warned, louder, “Suppression won’t work on a fully matured Magical. Eventually, she’ll do more than show?”

“No one is pushing her out,” he cut in, his face reddening. “You are paranoid.”

“Am I?” she sneered. “Are you forgetting the outcry around my precious sister? The scandal that got us here in the first place? Do you really want to be in the same position as your predecessor, only due to her offspring?”

“No one has forgotten anything, Ankha. Least of all me.” He gave her a harder, more warning look, his voice openly annoyed. “Now will you instruct her to come forward, or not?”

“Can I accompany her inside?” Ankha demanded.

“No,” he said, all trace of faux sympathy gone.

“That much is out of my hands. If she can’t pass even the basic skills test qualifying her to live in our world, I doubt anything you could tell her in a handful of minutes would help her, Magus La Fey.

Now step forward, candidate. You are already late. ”

I realized with a start he meant me.

He’d transitioned so smoothly from talking to Ankha to talking to me, I’d missed the change. Now I jerked forward a step, my heart thrumming in my chest. He motioned to me again with a thick hand, clearly wishing me to go through the open door ahead of him.

“Come, miss,” the man said, a little more kindly. “Do not be afraid. If you are meant to be here, that will certainly out itself. In one form or another.”

I took a breath, resolved myself, and walked towards the door.

“She won’t be able to do this,” Ankha muttered angrily as I passed.

“Which is why we are testing her,” the man warned, making it clear the subject was closed.

He waved at me again. “Please,” he said politely.

“I am sure you’ll do just fine.” He aimed his next words at my aunt.

“There’s no need to be so dramatic, Ankha, not until we’ve seen what she is capable of.

We won’t unfairly mark her. There will be witnesses?”

“But not me,” Ankha said.

“No family or sponsors are allowed,” the man said with exaggerated patience. “They aren’t ever allowed. Only objective observers. You aren’t being singled out.”

“Yet you allow the press.” Ankha glared at the woman with the orange quill.

The man dropped the hand he’d been using to gesture me forward, and stared openly at my aunt.

“Are you refusing to test your ward? Because she is a legal adult in our world, even with her blood. We have the right to ask her what she wants, and transfer her guardianship to the Council of Ancients, or even to me, if your answers differ.”

Ankha’s lip curled.

She looked at me, eyes blazing.

“Go on, girl. Do as he says. Once you’re inside, follow every instruction. No matter how it sounds to your stupid, Overworld ears.”

I bit my lip. I wanted badly to hiss something back, but another part of me told me she wasn’t worth it. Whatever this was, Ankha was the least interesting part of it, and I wasn’t particularly enjoying being spoken to and about like I wasn’t there.

I made up my mind to just do this, whatever it meant.

I passed through the doorway, walking fast now…

…and staggered.

My knees buckled. The floor tiles swam upwards as I struggled to focus my eyes.

I managed to stop myself before I would’ve hit the floor.

Barely.

My hand caught hold of the nearest wall.

I tensed my legs, forced my knees and muscles to clench, then to straighten and lock.

My free hand stretched out, looking for balance, for something more to hold onto.

There was nothing, as I was already inside the door, so I stood as still as I could, swaying, breathing hard, and fighting to stay conscious, because suddenly that was an issue, too.

Meanwhile, my vision had blanked out.

Something swirled around me, tangible as water, or a hot wind.

It grew stronger, more physical.

Soon it felt more like fingers and hammers, claws and pliers.

It grabbed me invisibly by the head, and seemed to be tugging and breaking something that weighed down my entire neck and spine.

A helmet? Some kind of cage? Whatever it was, I’d had no idea it existed until I watched it being dismantled.

The structure cracked under the strain, bending and breaking from the onslaught from above.