Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(34)

“A little friendly competition,” Connar said. “And even though we’re strong in other areas, you usually end up strongest in whatever type of magic you give the most focus. It seemed like a good idea to spread the talent around for when we’re the ones in charge.”

In charge. My skin prickled again with a different kind of nerves. I was heir to one of the five ruling families. What that fact meant for life beyond this school hadn’t really sunk in until just now.

Someday the four guys and I were supposed to reign over all fearmancer society.

I definitely didn’t want to stick around for that. I wet my lips, wavering between finding some new line of conversation or calling it a night, and Connar shifted forward.

“What would you be doing if you weren’t here?”

“I— You mean, like, here on this hill?”

“Like Blood U. If the blacksuits hadn’t found you. What would you have been doing?”

He sounded as if he was genuinely interested in knowing. I hesitated, but I couldn’t see any trap in answering. It was a straight-forward what-if.

“Working on assignments for the college classes I had back home,” I said slowly. “I was studying design. Or making—I did these little sculptures of different fantasy creatures—people on the internet would buy them.” My hands moved as if to form the shape of the half-started phoenix I’d left on my table, and nausea pooled in my stomach.

“Kind of like conjuring,” Connar said. “Maybe you’ll end up on the Physicality side too.”

“Maybe.” I hadn’t thought about it that way. Physicality wasn’t just about what you could do with your own body but creating solid things too. What kind of figurines could I create with magic as my clay? “I guess it must be easier to decide quickly if you’ve grown up knowing that you’ll need to. And having an assessment that’s not a flop probably helps too.”

I shut my mouth before I babbled on any more, but Connar just kept watching me in that mildly curious way.

“It’s hard for you, isn’t it?” he said. “Dealing with everything here.”

Possibly I shouldn’t have been honest, but no one else had acknowledged that quite so frankly, and the words spilled out with a surge of relief. “Of course it’s hard. I wasn’t ready for any of this.”

I looked away from him toward the lake, swiping my hand over my mouth. Connar leaned against his tree again.

“While you’re here, you can leave all that behind too,” he said after a moment.

We sat in silence for a few minutes after that, but it had a weirdly companionable quality to it, as if we were leaving each other to our own thoughts rather than simply unsure of what to say. Connar closed his eyes, his posture relaxing even more. I didn’t know who he was down there with the other scions, but up here, away from everything, he didn’t seem like a bad guy.

He was the only one of the four of them who’d acted as if my life before I’d gotten here might have been of the slightest bit of importance, for starters.

Imogen would probably be worried if I didn’t turn up soon, though, and I did have a session with Banefield tomorrow morning. With unexpected reluctance, I stood up.

“I’d better get going. But—thank you for sharing this spot with me.”

Connar blinked at me in apparent surprise. “Thank you for trusting me not to toss you off a cliff,” he said after a couple beats.

It sounded like a joke, but as I headed back through the forest, I couldn’t help thinking that his expression had been awfully solemn in that moment.





Chapter Fourteen





Rory





Professor Banefield answered his office door beaming with excitement.

“I think I’ve found just the thing for you,” he said, ushering me into the book-lined space with its cluster of four armchairs at one end and desk at the other. He’d pushed the chairs and the coffee table that usually stood between them off to the walls. The click of clawed feet from the other side of the desk told me we were back to playing with animals.

My heart sank. “I don’t know… I’m not sure terrifying furry creatures is ever going to be my forte.” It was one thing to give them the unavoidable anxiety that came with any human presence in their natural habitat and another to purposefully scare an innocent being right in front of me.

Banefield didn’t sound fazed. “But that’s the trick of it.” He ran his hand over his uneven orange hair. “You don’t want to hurt them—you don’t want them to be hurt. What if you were scaring one animal to protect another?”

He ducked behind his desk and dragged a large cage into view. This one held a plump house cat that was pacing restlessly behind the bars. Then he pulled out another cage from the other side of his desk: quite possibly the same adorable bunny I’d been unable to torment much before.

His meaning clicked in my head, and a smile crept across my face. “The cat tries to eat the rabbit, and I scare it away. Okay.” I paused with a fresh twinge of guilt. “But it still doesn’t seem fair to the bunny to put it in that position in the—”

“Which is why we’re just going to dive right in,” Banefield said, and snapped the cages open.