Page 31

T he thing with going to school six days a week, is it doesn’t leave a lot of time to beg forgiveness from anyone.

Not that Opie was giving me a chance to beg for anything.

It had been nearly two weeks, and every time I so much as caught a glimpse of her in the halls of Neverthorn, she hurried away.

“What do you think, Harlow?”

I rolled onto my side to look at Fable. Other than Phyllis, who had her own quarters as an elder who had never left the school for reasons I still hadn’t yet sussed out, we were still all in one big, stupid dorm room until further notice.

So, we all got to listen to Zeed muttering in his sleep, Marina snoring, and Gary down at the far end constantly letting out noxious emissions in the middle of the night.

“What do I think about what exactly?” I yawned. “And why are you asking me questions so early on a morning we don’t have to be up yet?”

“One, I want to know how you really think we all are doing. And two, no point in getting used to sleeping in once a week, is there? Don’t forget, we have remedial runes with Doyen Morenotomorrow.

Just you and me, remember? He told us yesterday he wanted to see us in pairs for extra help whether we want it or not. Marina and Gary have to go today.”

I groaned and stuffed my head under the pillow as if that would be enough to block Typhon from my mind.

I could still feel his fingers on my face when we were in the well.

Could still feel the brush of his skin on mine when he’d wiped the blood from my face so gently after Nocta’s creatures had attacked.

Could still see the way his eyes had looked so sad.

Did I know that he had zero interest in me?

More now than ever after hearing what he thought of me and my runaways and my ulterior motives.

Did that stop my heart from beating a little faster every time he was near? Of course not. Because I was, if nothing else, consistent in my attraction to sheet men.

Why couldn’t I be thinking about Liam instead?

Although, that happened sometimes too. At least that made some sense. He was kind, and sexy, and, you know, nice to me, despite no longer teaching us for the time being. I still saw him around the school, but he seemed to have a constant shadow now.

Doyenne Parunah was always with him, as if she were his companion now.

“She’s apparently trying to get her Quirk to be ... better.” Liam had managed to speak to me for all of thirty seconds, just outside the dining hall while I waited for Nikita. “And she’s not taking no for an answer. Not that I wouldn’t help her, but I don’t think it can be done.”

I couldn’t help it, it was a little funny watching him try to dodge the old doyenne. And I couldn’t really blame her, I would be trying to improve my Quirk too, if all I could manage was condensation on windows.

Nikita was the one who’d informed us of the current situation in our Monday History of Magic session.

“Tarquinius feels that, until House Phoenix can get a real handle on rune casting, it’s a waste of precious time to search for latent Quirks which none of you would even have the skills to use effectively. Obviously.”

According to my whispered talks with Liam, though, the Senate, on the other hand, wanted us firing on all cylinders to prepare for whatever battles were to come. In the end, they’d agreed to have him stay and assist with various classes, on call and at the ready until our rune-making improved.

If our rune-making improved.

I still got to see him in the dining hall on occasion, though, and whenever I did, I always wound up smiling.

For a little while, at least.

Then, that hint of pity would appear in his eyes, and I knew that he’d seen it too. Not just the lever or whatever was meant to trigger the Quirk, if I had one. But the whole scene that he’d been privy to. My mother. The doctor.

Me . . .

The creak of beds and a shuffle of bodies curbed my wayward thoughts.

House Phoenix was waking up and it seemed everyone wanted to hear my answer.

I’d survived in ways that most of them hadn’t ever had to – none of them had been on the streets.

I sat up and rubbed a hand over my right arm, feeling the textures of the cuff .

.. tracing the phoenix. Underneath it was the faintest of lines that had been the start of my House Felinita mark.

What I wouldn’t give to have been in that house right now, without the weight of the world on my chest.

I wondered if the others felt the same.

“I want to know what you think, too.” Zeed shuffled over and sat next to Fable.

“At first, it seemed like people looked up to us,” his cheeks flushed.

“And I thought that they would be happy we were here, you know? Here to stop Nocta, especially after Tarquinius read the prophecy at the assembly. But it was like, once they realized that none of us were Quirks and word got around that we weren’t exactly killing it on the whole rune-casting front, everything just went downhill. ”

“Yeah, seems like even the few kids who didn’t doubt us before won’t make eye contact unless they’re looking down their noses at me.” Marina sat down with a heavy sigh. She’d added a streak of jade green to the lock of springy curls bobbing over one eye, and it made her look like a bad asterisk.

“Same,” Ross groaned. He was in his early twenties, like most of us he’d been out of school for at least a couple years. “I don’t remember it being this hard last time.”

Each one of my fellow House of Phoenix peers had something to say about their re-induction to Neverthorn. None of it good.

“How in the sheet-balls are we supposed to fight Nocta when we all suck so badly?” Caterina braided her long red hair off to one side as she spoke.

“I mean, in all seriousness, I’m beginning to think this is someone’s sick idea of a joke.

I can’t cast a simple blocking rune – I could manage it before though! How can I fight an army?”

A chorus of agreement rumbled through the room.

But still, all eyes were on me. I wished Phyllis were here.

As the eldest, everyone looked to her, but in her absence .

.. yours truly was it. The questions they were asking were valid.

What changed between the first time they were here, and now?

If anything, we all should have gotten better at rune casting.

Not worse.

I stared at the floor between my feet. “They’d have gotten rid of us by now if it was a joke,” I replied.

The others laughed at that, and I lifted my head, grinning. “Look, I don’t think any of you suck. We just ... we just don’t learn the way that they want us to.” Even as I said the words, I felt them in my bones as truth.

“It’s like the propelling rune. The powers that be say it’s only correct their way,” I flashed my fingers around me, using the rune that I’d developed and shoved the entire lot of them back a solid three feet. “Other ways work too.”

“But Tarquinius won’t let us use the ... wrong runes,” Marina said, holding up her hand to stop the murmurs. “I’m not saying he’s right, but how do we work around that?”

I grimaced, remembering the headache I’d woken up with the day after he’d sent me flying when I showed it to them the first time. He’d kept a tight rein on our ‘special classes’ since, and it had been nothing short of demoralizing.

What would it take to get him to loosen the training? Another attack on Heathermoor? Another attack on Neverthorn? Two more full moons?

“I don’t know,” I admitted with a helpless shrug.

Fable twisted to face me, jaw set, eyes gleaming. “We have to keep trying, practicing what we are told to practice. My brother was killed by Nocta’s men last year. I won’t stop trying.”

I stared at her, horror and grief flooding me. She’d not mentioned anything about her brother, but it made sense now that she said it. Her drive to succeed, to be good enough to take on Nocta and his army ... it was about vengeance.

How would she feel if she found out that Nocta was my father?

I put a hand on hers. “I am so, so sorry, Fable. More than I can say.”

She squeezed my fingers. “I know.”

“Nocta’s men killed my dad,” Zeed said quietly. Horror flashed through me, his desire to be better than his father made sense. He wanted to survive when his father hadn’t.

“He killed my cousin, she was at Heathermoor two years ago when the tower was blown up,” Caterina chimed in.

Gary leaned against his headboard. “He killed my great uncle, in one of his attacks on the Senate.”

Each of the others in the room added to the casualty list, one by one.

The soft-spoken, near-reverent words of my classmates rolled through me, tightening my chest until I couldn’t breathe.

Every single person in the room had reason to want Nocta’s death.

Because he’d killed someone close to them.

Here they were, sharing in one another’s losses and I felt like a damn traitor.

A spy in the midst of those who had no idea who I really was.

Because even though I had nothing to do with Nocta, it wouldn’t matter. Blood was blood.

None of my friends ... none of them could ever know.

Which is why I kept to myself more than ever after their confessions. Struggled with every class, even with Doyen Bob, because I could not unsee the grief on my friends’ faces. I could not unhear the pain in their voices as they spoke of those they loved and lost to Nocta.

People who’d been killed by my father.

Later that night, unable to sleep, in the wee hours, I got out of bed and slipped out of the dorm. Maybe there was one thing I could fix, maybe one thing I could make right.

The usual noises fluttered through, but even with everyone in the same room, it wasn’t hard to go unnoticed.

Except for Bandit who joined me in the hall. “What we doing now? Tell me there is food involved.”