Fallen University: Year One

That did it. Everyone began to file out and section off to head to their next class. I stayed behind for a moment, studying Toland’s face. He looked worried. Very worried, and exhausted on top of it. If he thought all of this was coincidence, then I was the Queen of fucking England.

By the time I looked away, Kingston had disappeared again. Goddammit. I was getting real sick of that man dodging me.

Chapter Nineteen

The unrest continued for weeks. Third-years were still being pulled out of classes at random to help the Custodians with whatever they were trying to do outside the school, but I noticed Sonja was around FU more often than some of the others. There hadn’t been any more major disasters, but there had been plenty of minor ones.

One of the big bathrooms on the main floor had been closed down for five whole days. Apparently, the pipes had burst and created a huge sinkhole down into the basement, and even with magic on hand, the mess had taken forever to fix. A pillar had cracked in the basement, and the floor beneath it too. It could have easily become a disaster, but poor Beedle noticed the problem before it got that far. Things did always seem to happen in his class.

“Do you think it’s because he’s in the basement?” I asked Hannah over breakfast one morning. “Like, does magic just sort of sink to the bottom and stay there until it wreaks havoc in his classroom?”

“I don’t think so.” She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t think magic works that way. It doesn’t have a whole lot of actual weight, you know.”

“Neither does ash, but it always finds its way to the ground eventually,” I pointed out.

“Maybe the basement does have something to do with it though,” she said, completely ignoring my wholly valid point. I stuck my tongue out at her, but she ignored that too.

“I mean, what if somebody wants something that’s in the basement? Or what if somebody’s trying to break in from underneath? I read somewhere that these mountains are riddled with caverns and tunnels that nobody has ever managed to map, not even with sonar. Or radar, or whatever they use for earth. Do you think they’re trying an attack from below? Like, dig through the mountain or something?”

“They who?” I asked in frustration. “Whoever they are would have to at least have someone on the inside. You can’t release sprites if you aren’t in jar-opening range, right? Besides, an attack from below would be idiotic. This castle must weigh as much as all of Seattle. How would they keep from being crushed?”

“There are ways,” she said with a shrug. “But you’re probably right. They’d have to know where the school is for one, then they would have to know those tunnels well enough not to get lost, there would have to be a tunnel within digging range of the school—and if there is, that feels like an oversight—and they would have to be able to stop the tunnel from collapsing in on them once they got under the school.”

When she put it like that, it didn’t seem far-fetched at all. I frowned. “But you don’t think that’s what’s going on?”

“Not now that I’ve said it out loud. The attacks have been too clumsy for that. Amateur even.”

“And you know what professional magical sabotage looks like?” I nudged her with my elbow.

She grinned at me. “I actually pay attention in class, thank you very much.”

“Fair enough. Speaking of which, we better go.”

Apart from the tension in the hallways and classroom—which had become a constant—the day progressed as usual until lunch. Three times, I caught Sonja staring at my group, and all three times she looked away again as soon as she saw me looking. But it wasn’t me she was looking at. She’d been eyeballing Xero, which put my hackles all the way up. The man himself didn’t seem to notice, which was a blessing. He already felt like an outsider around here. I didn’t want him to know she was singling him out again.

After lunch, I broke off from the others to head to my next class. As I was walking alone down the hallway, I heard her voice around the corner. Her voice was low, almost secretive. She sounded like she was in mid-lecture, and I wanted to hear what she was saying. Knowing she’d stop talking as soon as she saw me, I shifted into a different face and sauntered around the corner like I wasn’t eavesdropping.

“He doesn’t even deserve to be here,” Sonja was saying. “How many people do you think he tortured when he was in the underworld? How much information do you think he’s slipping to Gavriel? He could’ve blown all of the school’s secrets already. I don’t know why they don’t just arrest him already. It’s obvious, right?”

“Yeah,” said one flunky.

“Totally.” Another nodded his head vigorously.

“I mean, if his past didn’t say it, his name sure does. He’s a big fat Xero,” a third student snickered.

I had to walk faster before I gave myself away. Fury rippled over me like red-hot electricity. I wiped my face and found it wet with tears. Xero had never been anything but kind to everyone in this fucking school. He was intelligent and sensitive and polite, and what were they even finding fault with, anyway? His trauma? Imagining his sweet soul locked into a rotten deal with Gavriel hurt my heart.

I did my best to focus for the rest of the day, but all I could think about was getting to Xero and proving to him that he wasn’t the monster everybody seemed to think he was. That he was loved, and lovable. I wanted him to know that he was seen for who he really was, at least by me.

The desire burned so hot in my chest I thought it would catch my tunic on fire. It was different from what I had felt for the others; sure, there was a sexual component to it, but that craving paled in comparison to the fierceness of my other emotions. I had never felt this strongly about anybody before in my life. It scared me.

It scared me so much that as soon as the last class of the day let out, I ran right toward the feeling at top speed, not stopping to think for even a second.

Chapter Twenty

I was vibrating with a kaleidoscope of emotions by the time I reached Xero’s door. Hannah and I were roommates, but not everyone here shared a room with someone else, and I knew the fire demon had a space of his own. At the moment, it seemed like just another the way the school had tried to isolate him from others.

He opened it before I could even knock, apparently feeling my presence. I wondered if they could all feel me that way—if they could feel one another. Then I stopped wondering anything, because I was in his arms and my mouth was on his, giving as much as I took, pouring myself out to try to heal his hurts the only way I knew how.