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He clears his throat then looks at her. “Did Camille fill you in on what happened?”
“No,” the man replies, adjusting the collar of his cloak. “We’ve been busy with—”
Sage reaches over and squeezes his hand, her gaze remaining on Jude. “I’ve been made aware that an accidental arrival occurred and that the creature isn’t certain why she’s here.”
"Creature?" I don't mean to say the word aloud, and the noise draws all of their attention.
"Yes, creature," Sage says to me with either annoyance or curiosity in her tone—she's difficult to read in a very creepy way. "Or were you not aware of that either?"
“She wasn’t,” Jude answers for me. “She’s not aware of a lot of things.”
Sage glances at him with her brow raised. “Then why is she here?”
“That’s what I wanted to find out.” Jude faces her with his hands behind his back. “It’s why I asked for you to meet me here—so I could get your help trying to figure out why she’s here and what she is. However, after talking to her for the last couple of minutes, I may have arrived a
t a conclusion.” He grows stiff then, the flames in his body flickering.
His reaction causes tension to pour through me. I'm not sure what he's about to say if I even believe any of this or not, but I have a feeling something terrible is about to occur.
Now might be a good time to run.
I sneak a glance around, searching for an escape, but the room doesn’t even have a door.
“I think… Well, considering some of the stuff she said…” Jude opens and flexes his hands. “I think she might be a maddening.”
I don’t know what I expected him to say, but that wasn’t it, that he’d say some word I don’t know the meaning of. But Sage and the man seem to understand, both of them stiffening, their gazes sliding to me.
“You think she’s a maddening?” the man questions in a low, tremulous tone, his grey eyes shadowing over.
Sage clutches onto his hand. “Mor, please calm down.”
His gaze snaps to her, and black-feathered wings suddenly snap out from his back, causing feathers to scatter through the air.
I gape at him.
Wings?
This dude has wings?
Then he seems to grow twice his size, his body stretching taller the more his anger builds. "Calm down!" he shouts, and I stumble back, tripping over my feet and landing on my ass. "A maddening has been brought into the academy, and all you can say to me is calm down!"
I have to give Sage some credit as she stands there looking completely calm and maybe even a little bored.
“Oh, quit throwing a tizzy fit,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “She clearly doesn’t know what she is, which probably means her powers are mostly dormant.”
Mor’s nostrils flare as he gets in her face. “Mostly dormant or not, we don’t allow her kind in this academy.”
Sage crosses her arms. “That might be true, but the fact is she’s already here, which means she’s not going anywhere for the next year.”
“Wait, what?” I ask, getting to my feet and looking at Jude.
He offers me an apologetic look. “It’s the rules of the academy. Once you start the school year here, you’re stuck with us for the next year, whether you want to or not. It helps keep the attendance rate up, which keeps the funding amount up.”
“I…” I don’t know what to say.
I try to latch onto to the hope that this really is a dream and that I’ll wake up soon.
And that hope only grows when Mor fastens his gaze on me and says, “Take her to the dungeons. She can spend the next year there.”
