Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(39)

That low measured voice warbled across the space between us. “What the fuck were you thinking, Malcolm? How do you think you’ll ever stand up among the—”

I wasn’t sure if anyone could hear it other than him and me, but for an instant Malcolm’s face stiffened in a mask of horror. A tremor ran through him before he could catch his composure. He snapped his stance into place again and spat out a syllable with a swipe of his hand. The voice fell away.

He jerked his hand again with another brief mutter, and a wallop of air shoved me backward. I fell on my ass on the pavement.

“I think I’ve made my point,” the Nightwood scion said, all cool disdain again, but I didn’t think I was the only one who’d have noticed his momentary lapse. He must have realized that too. His eyes blazed for the second they met mine, promising there’d be hell to pay. Then he stalked off across the green with a wave of his arm. “The show’s over, folks! I hope you enjoyed it.”

The show was over, but he hadn’t totally won.

“Credit to Persuasion,” Ms. Grimsworth said in a voice that carried. She sounded weary.

I eased myself back onto my feet as the crowd dispersed. The glinting shards of my charms scattered the pavement in front of me. Even the chain had snapped apart under my stomping foot.

A fresh wave of heat burned behind my eyes. I swallowed hard, fighting back the tears. As the last figures slipped away at the corners of my vision, I stayed crouched, staring.

Most of the charms were nothing but little shards. There was no fixing them by regular means. Maybe magic could have done it, but I had none left. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I’d want to wear whatever my wavering talent could produce even if I summoned some more power. It’d remind me too much of this moment now.

But one shape wasn’t quite as mangled as the others. I’d interrupted Malcolm soon enough to mostly save one. The little dragon bead I’d asked for on my fifteenth birthday lay amid the broken chunks, the coil of its tail snapped off but its head and body still intact.

My lips twisted as I looked at it. That was the only one Mom had balked over.

A dragon? she’d said. That doesn’t seem to fit you.

It’s courage, I’d said. And strength. I want… I want to feel strong.

She’d grasped my arms and squeezed them gently. Of course you’re strong, honey.

Then I should have a dragon.

How could she have argued with that?

I fished it out of the broken bits. Had she been thinking that a dragon was too close to the predatory mage I’d been born to become? Was it a good sign or a bad one that this was my only surviving memento of their love?

I hadn’t exactly fought fair just now. I’d threatened people who hadn’t really been hurting me to scare them, and I’d hit Malcolm with the lowest blow I could. That wasn’t who I wanted to be.

It was who I’d had to be to survive. To get the justice Mom and Dad needed, to make my way back home, the ends justified the means.

I stood up, and a movement caught the corner of my eye. My head jerked around. One member of our audience hadn’t left after all.

Connar had lingered outside Ashgrave Hall, his hard face set in its usual impenetrable expression. My fingers tightened around the dragon charm. I didn’t have any magic left, but I’d fight him with everything else in me if he tried to take this one last token from me.

For a moment, neither of us moved. Then his lips curled just slightly upward in a hint of a smile, as if we were up on the cliff again in that secret spot away from the rest of the world. My heart skipped a beat.

Without a word, he headed into the hall.

I turned back to Nightwood Tower. I still had a class to get to. Clutching the dragon charm, I set off.

To get through the rest of my time here, I couldn’t think of anything I was going to need more than a whole lot of strength and courage.





Chapter Sixteen





Malcolm





The first thing I heard when I answered my mother’s call was my little sister crying in the background.

That sound was nothing new. Agnes was coming up on thirteen, and she still broke down way too easily. You’d have thought across all the years of our parents testing our limits and throwing our fears in our faces, she’d have developed more armor, like I had. That was why they did it in the first place: to harden us up before anyone else had a chance to take a jab at us.

Taking on the Nightwood name didn’t come easy. She needed to toughen up, or someone outside the family might destroy her. If I’d been able to think of a way to prepare her that would have been more effective than my parents’ tactics, I would have. Even at a distance, those sobs made my throat tighten.

She was old enough to be better at this, but she was also only thirteen.

“Hello, Malcolm,” my mother said in her tersely blasé voice, without any hint that she was aware of and most likely responsible for the muffled weeping.

I leaned against the hard mahogany back of my desk chair, my legs stretched out in front of me, one of my dormmates’ thrash metal songs filtering through our shared wall. He’d have turned it down the second I thumped on the wall, but I hadn’t bothered because it fit my current mood.

“Hello, Mother.”

I had the urge to ask her what had gotten to Agnes now, but showing concern wouldn’t help me or my sister. It would simply be an opening for some new attack. My mother knew I could hear Agnes; she’d called me in the right proximity as a reminder that no matter what Agnes had been through in the last half hour, I could find myself in even deeper shit twice as fast.