Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(20)

I managed to get a little reaction by stomping my foot or giving a shout, but the jab of guilt that shot through me afterward made it hard to concentrate on doing any casting or conjuring. After a while, Banefield had put a pause on applied magic and switched to theory and history to give me a break.

“You’ll adjust to the process,” he’d said with the confidence of a man who’d been taught his whole life that freaking out every conscious being around him was a totally admirable goal. “Another option would be to take on a familiar. Most of us end up taking one. The magical bond allows any fear your animal provokes to fuel your magic as well.”

“Oh,” I’d said. “Maybe later, if I can’t get the hang of this on my own.” I couldn’t admit I already had a familiar who wasn’t likely to terrify anyone. I got the impression the girls in my dorm weren’t the type to scream at the sight of a mouse. They were the type to skewer it. I’d rather not risk her life to test that theory.

By the time I reached the seventh floor for the second time, my breath was coming short. I leaned against the cool plaster wall beside the classroom door to recover, and who should come strolling up the stairs but Malcolm Nightwood, looking as devilishly hot as ever and not the least bit winded. How was that fair?

He grinned when he saw me, but the curl of his lips had a hard edge. “If it isn’t Glinda the good witch,” he said wryly. “Finally came out of hiding?”

“I wasn’t hiding,” I said. “Strangely enough, I do have a little catching up to do.”

“Hmm.” He set his hand against the wall about a foot from my shoulder and looked me up and down. That close, I could practically feel his gaze traveling over my body with a flicker of heat I couldn’t say I enjoyed. He might be the most gorgeous man I’d ever set eyes on, but he was also clearly dangerous.

“You cleaned up well,” he said. I was wearing another of my birth mother’s outfits: tapered pants and a V-neck blouse. It’d looked professional enough to me when I’d put it on this morning, but under Malcolm’s gaze my chest felt abruptly exposed. He trailed a finger down my forearm to my charm bracelet, drawing a sharper line of heat to the surface. “Everything except for this. Did you buy it in some feeb dollar store?”

I jerked my arm away from him. “Just because something didn’t cost thousands of dollars doesn’t make it cheap. It was a gift from my parents.”

He guffawed. “From your parents? As if the Bloodstones would ever—” His voice cut off, and his grin turned into a grimace. “You mean the joymancers. The ones that incarcerated you. Why the hell would you want to hold on to a memory of that? They weren’t your parents; they were your jailors.”

“You’ve got no idea what it was like,” I retorted, and changed the subject before he could insult my parents any more than he already had. “Why did you lie to Ms. Grimsworth at my assessment? You know I conjured that ice.”

Malcolm shrugged, his mouth shifting back into his previous cocky grin. There was more of an edge in his voice now. “Just living up to your expectations, Glinda, since you’ve already decided I’m an asshole. We play by our own rules at Villain Academy.”

My body went rigid. How did he know—had he heard me talking with Deborah, or had someone else heard and told him?

Malcolm chuckled at my reaction. “Did you think we don’t know what those sanctimonious pricks call us while they’re looking down from their high horses? Let them think that.”

Oh, okay, so the nickname was just common knowledge. “It doesn’t bother you?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Why should it?” He shrugged. “You know, if we were being really accurate, it wouldn’t be about fear and joy. It’d be truthmancers and liemancers. We lean into what the world really is, how it really works. At least we’re not pretending it’s something it’s not. If that makes us villains to them, who cares?”

“Says the guy who just lied about me in front of the headmistress.”

Malcolm leaned a little closer with a glint in his dark brown eyes. He’d left the top two buttons on his perfectly fitted dress shirt undone, and the fabric gaped to reveal a triangle of toned chest. His voice came out smooth and silky.

“I was speaking a higher truth: thanks to the jailers you’re still honoring, you don’t have enough magic for us to bother acknowledging. If you want to change that, the other scions and I are ready to accept your pleas whenever you’re ready to get down on your knees.”

“I’d rather jump out that window,” I said, jabbing my thumb toward the opening behind him.

“We’ll see.”

He pushed away from me and sauntered into the classroom with a completely carefree air. Fuck, he had the Persuasion seminar now too? I’d been hoping he’d just been passing by on his way to a different class.

The room I stepped into after him held three rows of three desks each—individual-sized, but the same posh mahogany as most of the furniture around Villain Academy. Three of them were already taken, the one in the middle by Victory’s friend with the purple-and-pink-streaked french braid. Cressida, Jude had called her.

Malcolm dropped into the seat at the far back corner, so I took the one at the front closest to the door. Maximum distance seemed like a wise idea.