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The broken girl beside me raised her hand. The teacher pointed to her. “Their wings are black or bronze. The edges of them are torn.”
The teacher nodded and began to pace. “Good. What else? What is their objective?”
No one answered. “I’ll fill in here. They want to be on this side of the veil. They don’t belong here and when they cross, it’s for only one reason and one reason alone. They want your…” She drawled out her question.
It was Nissa who answered the call. “They want to steal our powers. Also, they want to mate with us.”
The class broke out in laughter.
“Excellent, Nissa.”
Maeve let the knowledge sit there for a moment.
“Now that we know who we are fighting, how do we fight?”
The room went silent.
She shook her head. “Good. That’s a good point. Not knowing is always the best way to begin. Next class, we fight. I want to see what everyone can do.”
Shit. I couldn’t even get my wings out.
And I was starting to think that might be a real thing.
Chapter Fourteen
We had a day off between classroom fighting and real fighting, and I woke up after dreams of blood and gore and torn wings slashed off to find a beam of sunlight cascading around Alara’s head as she bent over me. “Are you going to sleep until dinner?”
I perked up. “Is dinner going to be like last night?”
“No. It’s our day off so most everyone will be eating in town somewhere. They just have sandwiches at the cart for those who stay behind, maybe a little soup or something. If you want to catch the shuttle to the village, you’d better get up now.”
I paused mid-yawn. “Wait, there’s a village?”
“Yes, there is a village, but can you get dressed while I tell you about it? We only have about ten minutes to get aboard, or we’ll miss the whole day and have to linger around here waiting for someone to give us a job to do.”
I scrambled to my feet and ran for the bathroom, pausing at the door to ask, “Is that what would happen?”
Alara was slipping a wild-colored poncho over her head, so her response was muffled. “Rumor has it.” Her face emerged. “But other than those few advanced classes, I’m new here, too. This is my first village day, and I’m not missing it. Get dressed!”
Ten minutes later, we boarded just as the driver was ready to pull out, and as a result, we had to make our way to a seat all the way in the back row, and we settled in and stretched out. As the vehicle pulled out of the gates, I turned to my friend. “Okay, so there’s a village…”
“Well, yeah. There is, of course. Everyone who works at the academy doesn’t live on the grounds, and there are all the usual services like a plumber, a market, findings store…”
“Oh, like…a hardware store?” I’d never heard the term findings store, so I was guessing.
She cocked her head. “Not exactly. I’ll take you there, and you’ll see.” I teased information out of her along the way to town, and I was not super amazed I’d missed it. The village was not on the main road, but a little bit off it down a side street, and lay on the opposite side of the road from where I’d been sitting in the limo.
By the time the van stopped and everyone was filing out, I was super excited to get a look at town. We moved up the aisle with the crowd, passing empty seats, except for one row where a brooding type with dark hair sat alone, either waiting for everyone to move out of the way or planning to spend the day on the van. Either way, his black-from-head-to-foot clad body was trim but muscular, and he gave off a bad-boy vibe even before he turned his head to fix green eyes with gold flecks on me. I stopped, but Alara gave me a little push and growled, “Keep moving!”
When we emerged into the misty sunlight, I’d already put Mr. Tall, Dark, and Grouchy out of my mind, mostly.
“I see you got a look at Zephyr,” said Alara, leading me toward the main street of a fairy-tale village.
“Is that his name?” I mouthed the word for a moment. “Zephyr, like the wind?”
“I guess so. Anyway, he’s always glaring at everyone, so don’t take it personally.”
He hadn’t been glaring, but I didn’t need to mention that. Somehow. “So where to first?”
