Page 134 of Malcroix Bones Academy

Scar was still drinking off his flask, and smoking, ignoring the disapproving look he got from an older couple sitting behind them, waving the smoke out of their faces.

I decided it would be deeply impolitic to look back at Caelum’s parents.

I heard someone in that group say something jokingly, likely to diffuse the tension. I only caught part of it: “spirited,” “decent right hook,” “just like his old man.”

No one laughed apart from whoever’d said it.

My eyes refocused on the screen.

Caelum was as red-faced as Strangemore.

They still appeared to be yelling at one another, throwing words back and forth as their teammates separated them. Caelum’s eyes flashed with a strange light as I watched, a black, silvery, rippling glow that reminded me of something.

Had anyone else noticed that? Was that normal?

I didn’t remember seeing other Magical eyes doing that, not even in the midst of conducting spells.

It’s his primal,my mind whispered.

Gods, that’s exactly what it was. It looked just like the flashes of lightning his black crystal and flame primal gave off over his head. Was he overloading? Was this what it looked like, when he lost control over his magic?

Bones was leaving the area of play entirely now. He disappeared off the screen, and my last glimpse of him showed him walking away, baring his bloody teeth as he stared over his shoulder and wings at Graham. Once he disappeared into a tented, gold, violet, and green structure on the ground, the referee blew the whistle a second time.

Within seconds, arrows and wings once more filled the air.

30

Poetry

“Who would do this?” Jolie sounded upset, on the verge of tears. “Did they really come in here during the match, just to destroy our room?” Her bird of paradise was flying around the walls, agitated. Jolie’s light-brown eyes brightened and her jaw clenched as she stared around at the torn papers and ripped clothing covering our floor.

“Is this supposed to be a prank? Because it doesn’t strike me as particularly funny.”

“I don’t think it was a prank,” I said numbly.

I wished there was something I could say to Jolie.

I also wished I didn’t know Jolie wouldn’t have had to deal with this at all, if she’d had literally anyone else as a roommate.

We’d found the room that way when we got back from the Skyhunt match.

Our clothes had been cut with scissors and strewn all over the floor. Both of our mattresses had been flipped and cut, our night tables and desks roughly emptied, broken glass covering part ofthe rug. Most of the damage was on my side of our shared room, but whoever did it also ripped the medical posters off Jolie’s wall, and ran a knife through her bird of paradise painting. They also destroyed some of her clothes, including a pale blue dress I happened to know she loved.

“Absolute fuckers,” Jolie muttered, hands on her hips.

She didn’t swear all that often, and it landed harder when she did now.

“I’m so sorry, Jolie,” I said.

She looked at me, startled. “This isn’tyourfault, Leda.”

I didn’t answer. My eyes returned to my side of the room, and landed on the carved, wooden box with iron and glass inlays I’d found in an antique store in Magical London.

I’d been using it as a jewelry box. I’d really liked the unusual design, which made it look like a gothic church window. Now it lay facedown on the carpet, its contents spread all over the floor by my nightstand and closet door. A pair of glass earrings I’d just bought had been crushed to powder under someone’s shoe.

Staring at the wooden box, something else occurred to me.

I felt over my chest, then my pockets, but I already knew it wasn’t there.