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The rest of the school day passes in a blur of nervous chatter as everyone scrambles to learn what they can about the Spring Court gauntlets. Even the fourth years are worried.
What sort of contest will the trials be? How dangerous are they? How many students pass, on average?
No one seems to know anything, but I can’t help assuming the worst. All my plans, all my grand ambitions for my future, and this Spring Court pretty boy dickwad comes and ruins everything.
If the contest was fair, I would pull my crap together and do whatever it took to succeed. But after Inara’s threat, everyone has a vested interest in seeing me fail.
The only bright spot in my day is that Mack shares every class after lunch with me. Since the last four periods are when shadows attend school with the Evermore, I prepare myself for more hazing, but Inara and her homicidal gang don’t show up until the last class, Advanced Properties of Magic.
I can’t help but grin as I watch Inara, Kimber, and Lyra slip quietly into the auditorium right as Professor Lambert begins to talk. Rhaegar and Basil follow.
All of them file into the back row, subdued, missing their usual arrogant I-own-the-school grins.
No one even notices them. The entire classroom’s focus is riveted on Hellebore and the girl he sits next to. Like him, she’s dressed casually in black leggings and an oversized gray tee, artfully ripped at the shoulders and frayed in the hem. Her hair is a shade lighter than his, the uneven ends tinted pastel purple, making her gray eyes pop. Tapping her pencil on her desk, Mack leans over. “That’s his sister, Freesia Narcissus. She’s a first year.”
Mack tilts her MacBook Pro so I can see the screen. She’s pulled up the Whitehall Academy website dedicated to the most powerful Evermore students. The screen is split in half, Hellebore’s insanely photogenic face on one side and his sister’s on the other.
I enlarge Prince Hellebore’s bio and quickly run through his long-ass list of attributes. Top Whitehall student two years running. Champion sprite-ball player. Head of the Seelie Fae for Integration club. Rising star at Narcissus Asset Management, a real estate conglomerate run by his aunt, the Spring Court Queen.
The list of achievements goes on and on until I want to gag.
Geez. Did he write this himself?
“Who the frick is this guy trying to impress?” I whisper, sneaking a look at the teacher. The last thing I need is to be called out by Professor Lambert for talking on the first day.
Mack’s eyes sparkle as she looks over Hellebore’s bio. “He’s like a Fae male version of me. Overachieving bastard. I hate him.”
I peer at the photo, strangely intrigued. “What are his powers?”
“Beyond what we saw today? I don’t know. Whitehall students don’t have to declare their powers third year like Evermore, so we can only guess. But I heard a rumor.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Spill.”
Her eyes light up. She’s definitely going to make me work for it.
“Mack,” I whisper-growl.
Grinning, she jerks her chin toward Hellebore and his sister. “Don’t you wonder why their seats are set away from the others?”
I shrug. “Because they’re too good to sit with the rest of the peasants?”
“Well that. But also, the prince is rumored to have some sort of carnal powers of persuasion.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Wagging her chocolate eyebrows, she runs her tongue over her lips, looking more like she’s seizing than trying to be sexy. Lord help her if that’s how she flirts. “Supposedly, with a single touch, he can make you wild with desire. I heard that they only accepted him here after he agreed to wear some spelled jewelry that prevents him from touching a mortal without their permission.”
Only the Fae could turn desire into a weapon.
I peer at the prince’s photo again. If what Mack says is true, humans are even more screwed than I thought. As if the Fae don’t already have an advantage with their flawless looks and cunning nature, now they can use magic to seduce us at will?
In what world is that fair?
A sudden idea has me screenshotting the page. Enlarging the photo capture, I quickly edit it. When I’m done, I flip the masterpiece for Mack’s viewing pleasure.
She claps a hand over her mouth as she takes in the arrows pointing to his piercing blue eyes with the words, shoots laser beams of lust. For his mouth, I’ve written, weapons of mass destruction.
His ears are the best. Small ears=small you know what.
