Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(71)

It sank its teeth into Deborah’s delicate shoulder, and she squeaked in pain.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Malcolm said, his voice rolling over me as an echo of pain did bite into my muscles. “Through the familiar connection. Everything it feels, you feel too.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Stop it!”

“On. Your. Knees. And let’s hear that groveling loud and clear.”

Victory and her friends snickered. “Watch the mighty fall,” she said.

Deborah squealed again. My legs wobbled, my knees starting to give. My gaze darted across the room in one last-ditch to find something, anything, that could fix this. It settled on Imogen’s face.

Her lips were still pressed tight, but her eyes were wild. The weird thing, though, was that I didn’t see the same hopelessness I felt reflected there. Her expression was more frustrated, as if she already knew the answer and it was killing her not to be able to say it.

My lips moved instinctively, forming a word under my breath as I focused on her forehead. “Inside.”

If I’d tried an insight spell on anyone else in the room with my mind in its current turmoil, I’d probably have smacked into a shield I had no hope of breaking. But Imogen wasn’t guarded against me. I tumbled right into the whirl of her memories and emotions, flashes of hand gestures and laughter, and one thought so clear I heard it like her voice ringing in my ears.

…all a fucking trick.

I jerked my awareness out of her mind and caught my balance before I reeled backward. A trick. A trick?

“You feel how much Jude’s familiar is hurting that little thing,” Malcolm went on, and this time I recognized the faint casting lilt beneath the words. “Are you going to just stand there and ride out its last breaths?”

A fresh knife of pain ran through my chest, but it wasn’t coming from the mouse on the floor, was it? He was persuading me to feel the pain I’d have expected to.

He’d only need to do that if… if the mouse on the floor wasn’t really my familiar.

It might not even be a mouse at all. Jude specialized in illusion.

Something Professor Banefield had told me during our preliminary lessons came back to me. The four magical foci exist on a sort of axis of opposing pairs: the inward Insight against the outward Persuasion, the concrete Physicality against the ephemeral Illusion.

I’d seen through Malcolm’s persuasion by leaning on insight. Now I needed something concrete to challenge Jude’s illusion.

I should have a connection to Deborah, wherever she was. We were tied together with a magical bond. That was why she could talk to me inside my head. If I just reached out to her the way I’d drawn ice from the air and metal from the ground…

My hand came up in front of me. “Where,” I murmured, and closed my fingers to my palm.

A tremor of sensation tingled over my skin from somewhere beyond the walls. She was down here. Down here, but not in this room.

I dropped my hand back to my side and aimed a glare at Jude. “That’s not my familiar. You can stop now.”

Malcolm muttered a curse. Victory let out a disgruntled sigh.

Jude gave me a sickly smile and flicked his fingers. The mouse his familiar had been toying with blinked out of existence, leaving the ferret jerking its head back and forth trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

“It doesn’t really matter whether we feed it to the ferret or not,” Malcolm said. “You’re not getting it back until you get your act together.”

“Then I’ll just find her myself,” I said. I shifted my attention to the floor, wondering if I could apply the same principles to freeing myself—how could insight unlock my legs? To my surprise, Malcolm released the spell with a wave.

I didn’t get a chance to feel relieved. “You won’t be finding anything right now,” he said, his smile returning harder than before. “If you don’t hurry, you’re going to be late for your assessment, and that definitely won’t be good for your chances of sticking around here, now will it?”

Fuck. I wavered on my feet. For whatever reason, Malcolm had decided he couldn’t get away with actually hurting Deborah. That meant he wasn’t going to feed her to the ferret now, right?

But who knew what else he might do with her once I was gone?

What would happen to both of us if I got myself kicked out of the university?

Malcolm glanced at the time on his phone. “Tick tick tick.”

With a wrench of my heart, I made my decision. I spun and dashed for the stairs. Guilt squeezed around my chest as I bolted up them and ran for the main doors.

I needed to stay if I was going to get justice for Mom and Dad. I needed to stay if I was going to end all the horrors that happened here. Deborah would understand the risk I’d taken with her safety.

I had to believe that.

Passing students stared as I sprinted across the green. I slowed to a jog as I crossed the field and came up on the Stormhurst Building, my breath raw in my throat. Showing up hyperventilating wasn’t going to be a mark in my favor either.

I strode into the gym just as the clock mounted on the wall clicked over to nine o’clock. Ms. Grimsworth looked up from where she’d been talking with Professor Banefield near the door. The four professors from before were already standing in their positions around the central circle.