Noble Fae Academy: Year One Read online

  That made Esmeralda speak at last. “The band is terrible. They sound terrible. Whenever they get called out for a bit, I go and get food. Don’t join them,” she said, looking at me.

  I smiled at both of them. “It’s not like I know anything about music anyway,” I said. “I never had the chance to learn.”

  There was a lot I hadn’t had the chance to learn, a fact that I hadn’t shared with the teachers here or the officials who had brought me.

  The main thing I was worried about not knowing how to do wasn’t something to do with magic or power. I felt entirely comfortable with those. This was a more fundamental issue, one that would make learning the lessons of philosophy very difficult.

  The subject matter of philosophy itself was of course the other thing that was going to make learning philosophy difficult, but I didn’t have time to worry about that right now.

  Suddenly my chest started to hurt and the air started to feel like acid rain, thick and painful. My eyes went wide as I glanced at the others at the table. They were all carrying on chatting as if nothing odd was going on.

  I glanced up and saw a darkness covering the sky, as if black blood was being dripped over the ceiling of the atrium, veiling the glass in darkness.

  Finally some other students started to notice and cry out, and soon everyone in the room was looking around in panic. Students jumped to their feet and tried to make a break for it, to get out of danger.

  Unlike the others, I stayed rooted to the spot, even though the air was becoming so painful that I felt like I was soon going to stop breathing altogether.

  A couple of teachers rushed into the room from wherever they’d been, or maybe they had been there all along and were just now standing up.

  In the next instant, a black covering melted over the entire glass enclosure.

  We were in darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  Terror built and swelled, and now I did stand up. Screams sounded from different pockets of the big room like tiny explosions. Several fae slammed into me as they rushed past, panicking. If I had feared school would be dull, those fears had already proved groundless.

  I reached out into the darkness, intending to grope my way out of the place, but a small hand grabbed my elbow before I could move, and Esmeralda said in my ear, “Follow me. Be careful.”

  Then I heard another series of screams, even while the space remained swirling with black.

  At last a small light appeared across from me. Vayvin was holding it, her face illuminated and spooky.

  “Let’s blow this joint,” she said.

  But when we looked around there was nowhere to go. Students were pressing against the doors, and up ahead I could see that the main entrance, the one I had come through, was open again. Some students were trying to get to it, while others seemed to be specifically avoiding it as if they feared that leaving the room would be deadly, as if there would be even worse magical attacks outside the atrium.

  Since we seemed to be going nowhere fast, I turned my attention to the black covering that had spread itself over the glass enclosure. But I had no idea what it was.

  “We have to move,” said Esmeralda urgently. “Let’s make for the side door.”

  The glass of the side door was just as black as the rest of the room, but who was I to contradict fae who had been here longer than I had?

  Vayvin led the way. Once we reached the general vicinity of the side exit, she glanced back at Esmeralda. “You’re going to have to take it from here,” she said. “I have no idea where that stupid door is.”

  “It’s right here,” Esmeralda coughed. She put her hands on the glass, but immediately cried out and pulled her hands away. Instant blood blisters covered them.

  “That didn’t go so well,” said Vayvin. Her eyes were steady but her voice was shaking.

  Several more students slammed into her and then kept moving. We were still surrounded by fear.

  “Let me try,” I said.

  “The same thing is going to happen to you,” Vayvin pointed out.

  “No, it isn’t,” I told her. “Because I’m wearing cuffs that dampen magic.”

  Vayvin’s mouth opened in surprise.

  Carefully, I touched my hands to the glass. For a moment it didn’t appear to know what to do with me. Then the darkness covering the door slowly melted away, and the door pushed open as if there had never been any problem at all. At no point did I feel the slightest twinge of pain.

  Clean sunshine hit my face, as did a beautiful breath of fresh, untainted air. We tumbled out the door in a confused pile, and I landed hard on my knees. A hand grabbed my shoulder to help me to my feet.

  “We can’t stop here. We’ll be overrun by everybody else trying to get out,” said Vayvin.

  Esmeralda was following us, moving slowly as she stared down at her hands, which had started to bleed.

  My stomach rolled. For once, having the cuffs on had been a good thing.

  In fact, it had been a good thing a couple of times before, too. I smiled at the memories.

  Bright sunshine blazed down on us, in stark contrast to the dread I still felt from the panicking students in the atrium. There was confusion everywhere. The light from the door we had opened paradoxically increased faes’ fear of being trapped inside. I watched as students poured through the side entrance, but not for long.

  Vayvin was dragging me away from it, trying to clear some space so that other fae could get out, while at the same time making sure that none of us got trampled.

  Her strength surprised me. I told myself wryly that it must have been all the muscle she had built up during band practice.

  When I checked for Esmeralda again I found her nearby, her tight face almost more terrifying than the attack itself. Because what that expression meant was that none of this had surprised her. She was used to it. I hated to think what that said about the time I was going to spend in this place.

  Just then a group of young men bumped into my shoulder. They had been among the first students to follow us out the side entrance. In fact, I had felt some of them pressing against my back as we had escaped. It was as if Esmeralda wasn’t the only one who knew how to get out of the atrium.

  When I focused on them more closely, I found it difficult not to stare. Two impossibly good-looking guys flanked, what else, a third impossibly good-looking guy. The dark-haired one in the middle was tall and thin. One of the ones next to him, who seemed to be protecting him, had nearly white hair. The third was the biggest and had the broadest shoulders. He had dark, wavy hair and a surly expression.

  The one in the middle was dressed splendidly. His clothes alone would have told me he was nobility, but a gold brooch with royal insignia on his shoulder told me he wasn’t just nobility, but royalty.

  The two guys flanking him were dressed more plainly and more practically. They wore thick tunics with studs over the chest and torso. They looked like defenders. I found myself wondering if they were indeed bodyguards for the prince.

  It was my first time seeing a prince, and I was too busy trying not to get killed to gawk.

  Surprise spiked down my body as the three men started to move away from us. The prince was between his men and the glass wall of the atrium, and the guards were standing between him and the mountains, creating a physical shield between him and the unknown.

  Were they afraid of an attack from the mountains? Based on their placement and their posture, I thought they must be.

  I checked on my tablemates, who seemed okay, then glanced back at the glass enclosure. It was still entirely black except for the section I had managed to clear.

  I was starting to feel smug. Between Esmeralda and me, we had found a way to escape from the midnight terror that had visited students in broad daylight inside the atrium.

  But just as I was congratulating myself, a subtle change wafted through the air, nearly brushing my cheek. My senses came alert again, my eyes sharpening on a glint in the distance. My heart squeezed as I
saw something new pelting through the air, coming straight toward us.

  I reached out and yanked Vayvin down, and we both fell heavily to the ground.

  From at least twenty feet away, one of the prince’s guards happened to glance back at us. But there was enough space between us so that whatever had been aimed at us couldn’t possibly have been intended for them as well. All he did was frown slightly and return his attention to the prince he guarded. For a confused moment, my eyes locked on him. Then he moved away.

  There had been something odd about that look, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Anyhow, I had more urgent things to worry about at the moment.

  I glanced over at Esmeralda, who had clearly seen the same thing I had. An arrow the length of my torso was quivering in the ground.

  My eyes shot back to the mountains, where I caught just a glint of I knew not what.

  The arrow, in any case, had come within inches of hitting one of us.

  “Get cover!” I yelled.

  Vayvin nodded sharply, terror in her dark eyes.

  A glance at Esmeralda told me she felt the same.

  Teachers were now coming out of the building carrying large shields and bellowing orders. They kept the shields next to their bodies, facing the mountains.

  Paying them and their orders no attention whatsoever, I took off without a word and went pelting straight for the spot in the mountains where I had seen the glint. It was a long way away, but I ran as fast as I could.

  Strength had returned to my legs, and the wind suddenly started to blow at my back. I felt as though my hands were sparking, and when I glanced down at them I saw that I was right.

  My heart pounded as the smell of a battle hung in the air. The cuffs around my wrists flared and twisted as if they were on fire. I had never seen such a thing before.

  Anger was coiling inside me. It wouldn’t burst out, but it was connected somehow to the fact that the cuffs had never been able to contain my raw physical abilities. I was faster than everyone else, I was stronger than everyone else, and when I decided to catch you I did.

  Looking ahead, I saw the glint shift slightly. It was all the warning I needed to know that another arrow was being fired.

  This time directly at my chest.

  Chapter Nine

  There was no cover between me and the mountains, so I watched the arrow come whizzing through the air as if in slow motion.

  As my eyes sharpened on it and took it in, I ducked and rolled at the last second. I felt the air shift around my head as the arrow went zinging past, missing killing me by inches. I landed on my feet and kept running.

  This was the easy part. I had had years of practice outrunning the authorities. I had told McGryth when he came after me that nobody else stood a chance, but he had caught me.

  For now I headed straight toward the mountains until I reached the base of one of the cliffs. Strange rock formations met my eyes, striped with different hues of grey and silver. I hit them at full stride and started to climb, my hands spreading out as if they were made for the task.

  The problem I now faced was that in order to climb, I had to let myself lose track of the glint.

  My legs pushed upward. I grabbed onto rocks and roots as I climbed, feeling soil that was quite different from what I had known in the mountains back home.

  Of necessity I had let myself lose sight of the glint, but I remembered perfectly where it was. All of my senses were attuned to the quest.

  My shoulders started to scream as I continued to pull myself up, but just as I wondered whether I could keep it up, I reached a ledge that I thought was about even with where the Shadow had been.

  I shot to my feet and started to run again, turning right toward the Shadow’s vantage point. It had been a clever move on the part of the shooter, I thought. Drive everyone out of the atrium and turn them into sitting ducks.

  I skirted a boulder to give it one last try.

  The Shadow would have seen me coming, of course, and he would have run, but I hoped to be able to use my senses to track him.

  Suddenly a smell hit my nostrils. I knew what it was instantly, gasping as smoke filled my lungs. I rounded one last corner and hit a wall of fire, skidding to a stop just in time to avoid getting burned.

  So, he had covered his tracks with fire. Disappointment at having missed him tasted like bile, but I forced myself to be practical. I had to do the best I could to discover what he might have left behind.

  I started examining the ledge where he had hidden, but there wasn’t much to go on given that the fire was keeping me at a distance.

  I bent down as close as I could get to the spot and saw that the rock was clean, with no marks to indicate footprints or anything else. I glanced to my left and looked in the bushes. There was nothing there, either.

  Then I turned to my right and frowned at the sight of a small piece of paper wedged between a couple of stones. I doubted that it had been there for long; this wasn’t a gentle climate, after all. The seasons came and went with a whipping fury that left no part of the terrain unscathed. Anything that had been left there longer than a few minutes ago would have been rained on or snowed on or blown away by now.

  I picked up the piece of paper. All it said was 101.

  Was that one of our classes? Had it even been left by the Shadow? I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but it was the only clue I was going to get, so I stuck it in my pocket and stood up to look around.

  Glancing back toward the academy, I saw the glass walls starting to clear, revealing that the inside of the atrium was a trampled mess, with tables overturned and food everywhere.

  Outside I saw several fae running across the open field to where I had started my climb. I raised my hand and waved.

  Two men were far ahead of several others, but they slowed momentarily when they saw me.

  I knew they’d want to see the ledge for themselves, but I didn’t need to be here for that, so I decided to head back down. I reached the bottom of the mountain just as they were reaching the foot of the cliffs.

  “What do you think you’re doing, and who the hell are you, anyway?” one of the men demanded.

  I didn’t reply.

  The man by his side said, “She’s new. Arrived today. I’ve never seen anybody run that fast. Let’s get up there before everything gets destroyed by that fire. I take it the fire was set by the Shadow?” he asked, looking at me.

  I nodded my head.

  “At this rate the girl is going to get herself killed,” said one of the guards to the other, anger in his voice. “So far the academy hasn’t had any murders this year, and I was looking to keep it that way. Last year there were five.”

  He paused, then continued to rage. “So what does she do? Runs at an archer who has near perfect aim, no help, no armor. No wonder security here is an impossible job and you can’t keep anyone in the position of head of security.”

  Without a backward glance, the two men made for the mountain, leaving me standing awkwardly by myself at the bottom of the cliff as other guards approached from the direction of the castle.

  One of them turned out to be Wayllin. When she reached me, she grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me away from the mountain, as if it had finally occurred to her that she should be protecting me from danger.

  I let her pull me away and decided it was best not to say any of the sarcastic things bubbling up in my mind. I was pretty sure sarcasm would only get me into even more trouble.

  Wayllin led me away from the mountain and toward the castle, while the others kept going. One of them was dressed all in white. I figured she must be a healer, coming outside to help.

  “What were you doing? What could you possibly have been thinking? How could you?” Wayllin was sputtering. “You could have died! And you just put on clean clothes!”

  I glanced down at myself and almost grinned. My knees were scraped and there were holes in the pants she had given me. The white linen covering my arms was a muddy brown from my
scramble up the cliff.

  “I did my best,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t have done anything at all,” she said through gritted teeth.

  The students had dispersed by the time we got back to the castle, so there was no one around to listen to her yelling at me. In fact, there was no one in sight at all.

  Seeing me looking around, Wayllin explained that everyone had been sent away. “Classes will start an hour later than usual. But they will start,” she said.

  She led me back to the dorm, walking in cold silence all the way.

  The dorm was filled with my bunkmates, every one of whom stared at me as I walked to my bed.

  Vayvin gave me a nod, as if to say thanks, and Esmeralda watched me in a thoughtful way. Unfortunately, our bunks weren’t close to each other, so I couldn’t talk to them without getting out of line and drawing even more attention to myself.

  After a quick wash, I sat on my bunk and waited, trying hard not to get any dirt on it lest I get into even more trouble.

  After what felt like forever, Wayllin returned. She took a single step into the dorm room and beckoned to me. As I stood up again, I noticed that some of the mud had dried and caked onto my arms. Wayllin noticed the same thing and closed her eyes in consternation.

  I followed her silently as she led me out the door and back down a familiar route. Even though I had only taken that way once, I recognized the hallways that led back to the principal’s office. He was obviously waiting for us, because when we arrived the door was already open.

  There were several fae in the room, including the two men I had run into at the bottom of the mountain.

  I sighed inwardly. Why I had to explain myself I didn’t know.

  “She’s causing more problems than she’s worth already,” said someone who was introduced as the head of security.

  “Paddy, please,” said the principal. “What do you think?” he asked, turning to the man who’d been angry about my climb up the mountain.