Page 66 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

His brow furrowed over lowered eyebrows, his star-filled eyes stormy.

“We’re done deliberating,” Forsooth said, once Ankha met his gaze.

He tugged at his goatee, fingers rough, and cleared his throat. He looked displeased, even frustrated, as if the deliberations had not gone at all the way he wanted. He appeared almost to be stalling, as if still trying to find a way out of the final decision.

“You are granted full custodial responsibility for your niece and nephew, as requested,” he said, not disguising his reluctance.

“You are officially named legal guardian of Leda Rose La Fey Shadow, and Arcturus Robert La Fey Shadow, with the condition of full supervision by the Praecuri and G.O.R.E. until they are both of age and have succumbed to magical testing.”

Forsooth wasn’t the only one unhappy with this, as it turned out.

“Supervision?” Ankha stared up at him, aghast. “Why would supervision be necessary? As you said yourself, they’re my sister’s only children?”

“And yet, you’ve made no secret of your disapproval of your sister’s choices.” Forsooth’s eyes hardened. “You are getting what you want, Ankha. Don’t push it.”

“So I’m just expected to tolerate this invasion of my privacy? Of my niece and nephew’s privacy?” She barely got out those last words without spitting, or curling her lip. “You think that’s what I wanted?”

“I think I’ve made it abundantly clear throughout this hearing, I don’t believe you’re the best choice to raise half-human children, Ms. La Fey, regardless of the blood relationship you share with them.

” Forsooth voice grew frosty. “Not when you’ve spent most of your life lobbying for aggressive measures against Overworlders, and against your own sister. ”

I felt my heart jerk sideways in my chest.

Feeling rose in me, something like validation, even triumph.

So, not everyone thought Arcturus and I should be forced to live with our horrible aunt.

Looking at the old mage, I felt an irrational wave of gratitude and affection for the theurgy professor.

Someone had actually cared. Someone had seen Ankha for what she was, and cared enough about two half-blood kids to try and stand in her way.

Ankha also stared at Forsooth, but all I felt from her was blind rage.

She despised Forsooth, loathed his very existence. She despised everything he stood for, everything he cared about, his fame, his reputation, everything he’d accomplished. The intensity of feeling there made me feel a new, much rawer emotion.

Hatred.

Maybe for the first time in my life, I admitted to myself that I hated my aunt as intensely as she hated me.

“My sister’s choices, as you put it, Professor Forsooth, were highly illegal,” Ankha spat. “If you expected me to approve of what she did?”

“Are you a member of the organization known as Dark Cathedral?” Forsooth cut in.

The distrust and revulsion in his voice were as obvious as hers.

“And before you answer that question Ms. La Fey, a reminder. You are currently under oath by the Council of Ancients of the United Kingdom. The punishment for presenting false witness while under a magical oath issued by the Council of Britain remains a lifetime sentence in the Pyramid.”

“No,” she said coldly.

Forsooth didn’t blink.

“You deny the testimony of Fitzsimmons that you have long been a member of good standing? That you swore loyalty to them years ago, and answer only to their leader?”

“I deny it.”

“You deny your hostility towards the ideology of peaceful coexistence?”

“I deny it.”

Forsooth stared at Ankha, his eyes unmoving.

I could see plainly that he didn’t believe her.

The image in front of me was breaking up, just like all the others, when…

…something touched me that sent a violent shiver down my spine.

The presence made me sick, even as it infuriated me.

No.

I shoved back, hard. The gold-white sun flared brighter than it had since I’d fallen out of the back of that taxi cab.

Fueled by my fury, my disgust of my aunt and everything she’d done, the hatred I’d always suppressed, those flames smashed outward, forming a ring of white-gold light that violently shoved the presence away from any part of me.

The courtroom vanished entirely.

My eyes snapped open.

I was lying onto the wooden floor of the Victorian house, panting, only a few inches from the fireplace hearth.

My head hurt, badly enough that I suspected I’d hit my head on the stone.

I fought to breathe, to suck air into my lungs, shocked by my sudden return to the smoke and sulfur-smelling room.

After being in my aunt’s mind, or maybe after that flash of light and fire from my primal, my own mind cleared entirely. That clarity allowed me to think logically for the first time since I’d gone out on that balcony at Malcroix Mansion.

I could feel my aunt’s magic had left mine.

I could also feel something else, something a lot more important.

I was still me.

Whatever happened with my aunt’s spell, Morticia La Fey wasn’t inside my body, at least not yet. I felt no trace of that dark, sickening presence in me anywhere.

I was still a few feet from the mirror. I stared at it as I turned over and started to drag myself to my feet. I felt eyes on me then, and my gaze flickered to the other side of the hearth.

I jumped when gold eyes stared back at me.

I blinked, and they disappeared. I was still staring at the faded, flowered wallpaper, heart hammering in my chest, when a claw-like hand grabbed my arm, wrenching me around.

Ankha stood there, rage and hatred in her eyes.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded, shaking me viciously. “What did your foul, disgusting magic do to me, girl?”

I gasped, shocked at the face suddenly in mine, and everything that was wrong with it.

Two faces seemed to stare back, morphing one into the other then back again, without losing the cold fury that shone from either set of eyes.

My aunt’s blue irises danced with dark red fire, then shifted back to blue, then to a lighter blue, then back to those disturbing red flames.

Horror fell over me when it really sank in what I was seeing.

My alarm worsened as her irises continued to ripple and flash, from blue to red, then back to blue, growing more erratic as her bone structure seemed to change with the colors.

That apparition hadn’t gone away.

Instead of me, it had taken Ankha.

I grasped upward, reaching the gold-white sun over my head, and was shocked when I immediately accessed it. Magic flowed down to me like a spigot turned on full blast.

“What did you do to me?” my aunt screeched, shaking me. “What did you do?”

I slammed outward with my magic a second time.

I did it harder than I’d done to Caelum in the woods.

I did it harder than maybe I’d ever done it, even when Ankha had taken over my mind.

Sheer survival instinct mixed with revulsion and a deeper rage; the combination exploded a hard bolt of magical fire out of my chest and hands, straight into her.

Ankha slammed into the back of the nearest armchair. She spun off to one side and past it, and got flung jarringly into the wall. She screamed at the booming impact, a sound filled with hatred, pain, and furious disbelief.

She sounded like an animal trying to attack while being lit on fire.

Her eyes, wild now, stared at mine like I was some kind of demon. Without waiting, she aimed a hand at the gold mirror, and shattered the glass inside the heavy frame with a single spell, before I managed to take a step in that direction.

As soon as that bolt of magic left me, and despite my precious clarity of mind, I instantly felt drained. I’d needed that fucking mirror. I needed it. I needed to get out of there.

When it exploded into a billion shards, something in me snapped.

“Gods-damn it!” I snarled, clenching my fists.

“I should have drowned you!” my aunt screamed. “I should have throttled you both, the instant you were in my care! I would have happily gone to prison for it! Gladly!”

“Clearly not, you pathetic, groveling, lickspittle of a coward,” I snarled back. “No wonder they granted you custody. They knew you’d never risk yourself. They knew what a ridiculous little nothing of a toady you truly were… just a sad hanger-on of the real dark Magicals.”

Ankha stared at me.

That flickering, morphing presence still flashed behind her eyes, changing their colors as her jaw slowly hardened. The disbelief never left her expression.

“I still have the Stone,” she said coldly. “Do you really think you can take me on, even if Malcroix and that Bones pup managed to teach you a few tricks?” Her lip curled. “She won’t be in me permanently until I finish the blood-locking spell. I’ll have her back in you long before that happens.”

A flare of green-blue light rose from the Asian carpet.

I looked down to the rapidly brightening pentagram on the threadbare rug, and the skull in its center. The smoky, black, wraithlike shape began to shimmer around Ankha’s form.

A harsh, buzzing sound filled my ears.

I stumbled backwards, even though I knew it was the wrong direction, that there was nowhere left to run, not that way. Now that I couldn’t go for help, I’d need to get to my brother, but my aunt stood directly in my path.

In the center of the pentagram, the bloody skull began to vibrate, and that sick feeling roiled my stomach.

A corresponding smile grew on my aunt’s face.

“You should be happy, girl,” Ankha spat. “It’s a great honor. Far more than you deserve. It was only sheer, animal luck you survived this long. With our ancestor’s magic and greatness in you, you will ascend?”

“Funny how you don’t seem too keen on that honor, yourself!” I snapped back.

The silver-black light and that sickening buzzing began to reach a crescendo.

I had to run, screw my chances. I pushed off the fireplace stones, ready to sprint for the stairs, for my brother who might still be alive on the second floor?

When a muscular arm wrapped tightly around my waist.