Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(18)
Finally, the divine devil and his cohorts swaggered into the gym. Even knowing what a callous, sadistic asshole Malcolm was, I couldn’t stop the flutter that passed through my chest at the sight of his shockingly gorgeous face. Overnight I must have downgraded his looks in my memory to match his personality. With two more epitomes of hotness on either side of him, it was hard to look away.
Malcolm gave the headmistress a cherubic smile. “What can I help you with, Ms. Grimsworth?”
The headmistress motioned for me to rejoin the group. I walked over, watching the three guys uneasily. Their gazes skimmed over me as if they’d never seen me before. Somehow that unnerved me more than if they’d been glaring at me.
“Miss Bloodstone has informed us that she conjured ice in your presence yesterday,” Ms. Grimsworth said. “I was hoping you could verify the incident.”
“Ice?” Malcolm said, knitting his brow.
I gritted my teeth. “On the floor. Under your feet.”
He shook his head. “I remember sending a little ice under you to interrupt your tirade, but I don’t recall you throwing any magic at me.”
“I think Miss Bloodstone must have gotten confused, Headmistress,” Jude said helpfully, flicking back his floppy copper hair. “Maybe she was trying to summon some ice at the same time Malcolm did. But I heard him cast the spell.”
“Mr. Stormhurst?” Ms. Grimsworth said.
The brawny guy’s chiseled face stayed blank. “As far as I saw, only Malcolm used any magic.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Malcolm shot me a triumphant flicker of a smile, and I forced myself to bite my tongue. What could I say? It was the three of their words against mine, and I was the newcomer here.
“All right, boys,” the headmistress said. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your day.”
“It was no trouble at all, Ms. Grimsworth,” Malcolm said sweetly.
The three of them sauntered out. I turned to the headmistress. “I swear to you, I used magic yesterday.”
She sighed. “Even if you did, if it isn’t enough to register on the assessment, it might as well be none. This test has never failed us before.”
“Could it be… My parents—the joymancers—were suppressing my magic before.”
“Your rescuers examined you for lingering spells on your journey here,” Ms. Grimsworth said. “By the time of your arrival, any magic used on you had already faded away. Spells of that sort are difficult to maintain without regular reinforcement.”
No wonder my parents had kept me so close. Had they been casting magic on me every single night—or even more often than that—without me knowing?
“Then what do we do?” I asked. Despite the tightening of my throat at the thought of all those secret spells, my hopes stirred. Maybe I could get out of this hell right now after all.
“Well…” The headmistress rubbed her chin. “It’s a highly unusual situation. In light of your heritage, I don’t believe we should make any decisions hastily. We’ll continue with a general spectrum of courses for the next month and see if we can’t wake up your talent from whatever depths it descended to thanks to your captors’ suppression.”
A month. Okay. “And if I still don’t show what you’re looking for in this assessment after that?”
“I suppose we’ll deal with that when we come to it. Most likely we’d have you take up residence in your family’s properties with some private instruction on our society, and when you’re ready to marry, we’ll hope that your children fare better.”
My children? Were they going to turn me into some kind of broodmare?
Ms. Grimsworth was studying me. “Were you hoping for something else?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, thinking over my answer. These people hated the joymancers. I couldn’t tell her I wanted to go back to my parents’ people.
“I spent my whole life that I remember in California,” I said. “If I’m not any use here, I’d kind of like to go back there.” The fearmancers couldn’t stop me from reaching out to the Conclave for help if I was in the same city.
The headmistress pursed her lips. “I don’t think that would be at all advisable, Miss Bloodstone. The southwest is the epicenter of joymancer activity in this country. They’ve already ripped you away from your community and kept you prisoner once.”
“But if I don’t have any magic—”
“Do you think they’d believe that? You had no magic when you were two years old, but they knew you were a bargaining chip all the same. They’re afraid of us, and people acting out of fear find it very easy to ignore rationality. You’ll be safe as long as you’re among your kind.”
You’re not my kind, I wanted to snap. But with her words, a sense of dread was sinking in. Not about Mom and Dad—I knew they’d cared about me. They might not have wanted me roaming too far out of their reach, but they hadn’t treated me like a prisoner the way she was saying.
The other joymancers, though… If I was so important, why hadn’t any of my parents’ mage colleagues ever come by to talk to me? It was almost as if the rest of the joymancers had avoided meeting me. So I couldn’t identify them if I defected back to my real “kind”? So they didn’t have to worry about revealing any secrets?