Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“Something tells you right.” This is the first thing I’ve been successful at here, and I need to know if there is anything more to it.
I need to know if Creed was right.
Professor Astra nods lightly, holding my gaze, and my spine prickles in alert.
I cock my head. “Now that you got that out, what is it that you truly wanted to say?”
“Be careful when calling on fire,” she says without pause.
“Why?”
“Because you are no Fae, which means you do not possess elemental magic, and yet the element was eager to answer your demand. Dare I say, it was compelled to.”
Her words loop in my mind, and even by the third pass, still make little sense. “You know, for being a school, all you people in charge could really benefit from a speaking class or something.”
Professor Astra’s brows raise in surprise, but I just pop a shoulder and head out. For the first time, I’m not rushing to avoid the failure, a feeling I didn’t even know before this fucking place, but the opposite.
Today, I did something a real gifted can do.
Legend is going to—
My feet freeze mid-step.
No. We don’t run to royals to…ew. Share accomplishments?
“I swear to the gods, Haide,” I murmur to myself. “Keep your head fucking straight. You don’t want to impress him. The opposite, in fact.” He would smirk and say he couldn’t wait to see more, and he’d mean it.
More of that warmth stretches across my chest and I scrape my nails across it, annoyed.
Ugh! Stop.
Pushing through the sea of gifted, I can’t help but stiffen. My mind might be high on magical fumes, if that’s a thing, but my body feels wound tight, just waiting for one or more to prove themselves a threat. Or attempt to come off as one, anyway.
A few hundred steps later I’m crossing paths with others.
I mean, damn, how many fucking students does this place have?
The good thing, if there is one, is I don’t have to shove people out of the way, since every whisper on my trek is pointed directly at me. Did you hear about what happened in Professor Astra’s class? She almost burned it down. Bet she did kill Elena…
Bunch of softies is what they are. Their whispers are irrelevant to me.
I’m not here to make friends or be their entertainment. Hell, I never asked to be here in the first place, but after today’s class, I don’t know. There’s this nasty little nagging of optimism building in the back of my skull. A slow-burning fire created by the flame of my own making, telling me to dig deeper.
If speaking specific words that were scripted by some ancient witch or what the fuck ever can give me fire…then what, if anything, can I do my damn self? With my own words, actions, or whatever else it is that the gifted draw from?
I have no idea, but I’m going to find out. And when the time comes, Creed will help me get away. I’ll leave with whatever it is I’ve learned.
Hopefully the island, greedy bitch that she is, doesn’t take it right back when I return home for good.
Can you really go home and leave him here?
I shake the thought away.
I wander the campus, letting my feet take me deeper into the campus grounds. The paths twist and branch, leading through courtyards and gardens, past training yards where students clash with staffs and swords, their movements sharp and controlled. I watch for a while, leaning against a stone pillar, and feel a pang of something I don’t want to name.
Zev would love this place.
He’d take one look at these pristine little warriors and their perfect forms and laugh himself sick. Then he’d probably challenge the biggest one to a fight and win through sheer audacity and a willingness to fight dirty.
Gods, I miss him, and I hate missing things.
Miss the way he’d sprawl across my bed whenever I’d want him to, all long limbs and easy grins, bitching about the heat. Or the shit we had for food. Or whatever else. Miss the way we’d spar until we were both bruised and breathless, then collapse in a heap and let the adrenaline bleed into something else entirely.
No strings. No expectations. Just…easy.
Nothing about this place is easy.
I push off the pillar and keep walking, following a path that winds upward, climbing toward a section of campus I haven’t seen yet, my codex held tight in my hands. The air changes as I go, growing cooler, sharper, like the magic here is older somehow.
The path ends at a small hut.
Thatched roof sagging, walls patched with moss and crumbling stone, and beyond its crooked doorframe, vines choke what might’ve once been a garden, now swallowed by shadow. The door hangs ajar, no lock, nothing keeping me out—but my pulse kicks up anyway, some animal instinct whispering back away.