Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(73)

I brought the word to my tongue, and everything in me hummed with the rightness of it.

“I’m going with Insight,” I said.

Several voices in the crowd whooped in approval. “I’ll have a new schedule for you tomorrow,” Ms. Grimsworth said. “I think you’ve earned a day off.”

I stepped forward, still a little uncertain that this could all be real, and the other students moved to meet me. At first they all just peered at me as if trying to glean how I’d done it. Then one girl said, “That’s amazing!” and the floodgates burst. I was passed from one person congratulating me to another in a dizzying whirl of grins and awed voices.

Some of these people had probably helped trip me up over the last few weeks. I couldn’t assume they were my friends now. I’d just been named the most powerful mage to attend the school in decades, and they were seeing how much that shine might rub off on them.

I’d be damned if the approval didn’t feel good after all the tripping, though.

Somewhere in the middle of the impromptu celebration, a soft warmth pressed into my hand from behind. My fingers closed instinctively around a small furry body that sent a pang of recognition straight to my heart. Deborah.

I tucked her close to my chest and spun around, but whoever had passed her to me had vanished amid the other students. Had one of the scions decided they’d tortured me enough using her? Or had it been—well, I couldn’t imagine it’d been Victory, but one of her minions?

I couldn’t tell. Maybe it didn’t matter. I held onto my familiar tightly with a sob of relief, and her tiny nose nuzzled my thumb as if to say what she didn’t dare speak into my head with so many mages around us. She was back. She was home.

In that moment, I could almost believe that I was too.





Chapter Twenty-Nine





Rory





My new cachet stuck with me throughout the day. Everywhere I went on campus, even in my dorm’s common room, people watched me as if fascinated to see what I might do next.

It was a little exhausting. I holed up in my room for a while, and when I got bored with that, I looked out the window and saw that the field to the east of the main triangle was vacant. Next to a low, broad wooden building that I assumed was some kind of maintenance shed, I thought I saw the beginning of a path I’d never tried before at the edge of the woods.

I slipped out of Ashgrave Hall as surreptitiously as I could and hurried across the field. I’d just passed the maintenance building when its door clicked open and a voice I recognized reached my ears.

“Here you go,” Malcolm was saying, his tone unusually warm. “About time for a run, don’t you think?”

I eased back a step to peer around the side of the building. The Nightwood scion stood with his back to me, giving his wolf familiar a pat on the side as he motioned it off toward the forest. As the dark creature loped off, Malcolm reached to scratch the side of his neck.

The sun shone off his golden-brown hair. The collar of his shirt shifted to the side, revealing an angry mottled pink line across his shoulder that looked like a recent burn mark, large enough that I could see it even from several feet away. His fingernail brushed the edge, and he winced.

I never did have the best control over my tongue. “Are you all right?” I blurted out.

Malcolm snapped around to face me, his hand jerking to his side. “Why wouldn’t I be, Glinda?” he asked with a haughty lift of his chin.

“You just looked like you had a burn or something on your shoulder.” I sighed. “Never mind. I was about to leave anyway.” I wasn’t risking a walk in the forest with his wolf on the prowl.

Malcolm chuckled, but it was a dark sound. “So you’re picking up the fearmancer mindset after all. Discover every weakness you can possibly exploit. Sorry, but you’re never going to find me an easy target.”

I stopped in the middle of turning away and met his eyes again. Anger flickered in my chest, but it was restrained by a quaver of a totally different emotion.

It was awfully sad that he couldn’t even accept an honest question of concern without searching for an ulterior motive, wasn’t it? How did anyone live their whole life like that?

For a second, I thought I saw something vulnerable behind the divine devil demeanor.

“I’m not planning to make you a target,” I said quietly. “You know, even though I didn’t want to be your friend and I’d rather you stayed as far away from me as possible, I’d care if I saw you get hurt. I’d try to help. Because that’s what people with properly functioning hearts do for other people. That’s who my parents—my real parents—raised me to be. And no matter how much of an asshole you are to me, you’re never going to break that part of me.”

We stared each other down for the space of several heartbeats. Malcolm folded his arms over his chest. His dark brown eyes bored into mine. “You should remember that no matter how many strengths you have, the guys and I have a much better idea how to use ours. We were holding back before because you couldn’t do much to defend yourself. But believe me, we’re just getting started.”

That might be true. And I still might not know exactly how I was going to make it through the days ahead, but I had a much better idea than I’d had before. I was a fearmancer raised among joymancers, and I was going to hold onto all the joy I could gather until I was ready to burn all the fear away and make things right.