Chương 47: Mel

POV: Melody Constant - 4 Years Ago I sat in the entryway, new socks laid out on my left, my bag on my right, and gave serious consideration to skipping class. Nobody would miss me. Half of them would probably be relieved. The only ones who'd be disappointed are Aurelie and those idiots who follow her around. But if I didn't go, wouldn't that be surrendering? Wouldn't that mean they'd won, that I had given up? Then I would be the new girl who got flattened, and that's who I would stay.

It would shame my family, and they'd only find more ways to look down on me for it. I won't give them the satisfaction. I picked up the socks and pulled them on, one and then the other, drawing the white cotton up over my ankles and smoothing them flat against my calves. Then I took the bag, the flat rectangular kind, strap over one shoulder, got to my feet, stepped into my shoes, and went out. The morning sky met me at the door. I stopped on the walkway outside my unit and looked up at it for a while.

A sky like that, over a world like this, and it still somehow ends up full of insufferable people. The thought of skipping surfaced again. I shoved it back down, sighed, took a breath, and headed for the stairs. From the steps I could already see students on the main road below, walking in twos and threes. A cluster of girls with their heads together, laughing at something I'd never be told. A couple drifting past, shoulders bumping, teasing each other about something. Not that I'm envious. Obviously.

I hooked my fingers around the bag strap and fixed my eyes on the road ahead; a habit I'd picked up without noticing I was doing it. It's easier that way. You don't have to watch everyone else enjoying each other's company.... Fine. I was envious. They have friends. Boyfriends. Parents who dote on them and write to them, and I have exactly no one; not that I blame Mom since she had had enough problems on her plate.

The closer I got to Verdantis Academy, the thicker the crowd became, and I found my pace quickening without meaning to. Just get inside. Just get through the gate before—"Well, if it isn't Miss Constant Zero." A voice, right behind me. That voice. Ugh. I tried to keep walking without looking back, but soon, I felt a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around, and sure enough, it was Aurelie with her two sidekicks.

"I'm talking to you." Aurelie tilted her head, that practiced little smile in place.

"It's rude to walk away. Then again, I suppose no one ever taught you manners where you're from." Where I'm from. She never let anyone forget it. Aurelie Vareux. Third daughter of a house with a lineage of court mages going back six generations, an aptitude score near the top of our year, and the kind of casual confidence that comes from never once wondering whether you belonged somewhere. Everything I wasn't.

I had scraped into Verdantis Academy by the very bottom of the entrance exam, one of a handful of students from a lower-tier family, families without a name worth invoking, without a mage of note in living memory. Most of the students here had never met someone like me before enrolling. Aurelie had made it her business to remind them, daily, what the difference was.

"Nothing to say?" One of the sidekicks smirked.

"She never does. Guess zeros don't talk."

"Be nice." Aurelie didn't mean it. She stepped in closer, and I caught the expensive floral something she always wore.

"I actually came to ask a favor." She swung the bag off her own shoulder and pushed it into my arms. Heavy. Weighted with books she'd never open, most likely.

"Take that to the classroom for me. My arm's tired, and you're going that way anyway." She patted my cheek, twice, light.

"Consider it your contribution. Everyone should be useful for something." Then she walked past me, her shadows trailing, and none of them looked back. I stood there in the middle of the road with two bags now, mine on my shoulder and hers in my arms, students flowing around me like I was a rock in a stream. For one bright, satisfying second, I pictured it: dropping her precious bag straight into the nearest gutter and walking off. Or into the pond by the east courtyard.

Or simply dropping it, right here, and stepping over it. I didn't. Because Aurelie would write home about it, a wounded little letter to her father about how the lower-tier girl had damaged her property, been hostile, been ungrateful, and her father would send one letter, and it wouldn't land on me. It would land on my family. On my mother, who'd already spent more than we had to get me here. People like the Vareux didn't ruin people like us directly. They didn't have to.

They just made a comment to the right person, and the walls quietly closed in. I had tried the teachers, once. Early on, when I still believed in that sort of thing. The professor had listened, nodded gravely, and issued Aurelie a warning, which she'd received with a straight face and forgotten before she left the room. Because everyone understood the arithmetic. Verdantis needed the Vareux name on its rolls far more than it needed mine. Names like hers brought patrons, prestige, the right kind of families.

A name like mine brought nothing but a filled quota. So a warning was all I'd ever get, and warnings were free, and worth exactly that. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. I shifted her bag against my hip, let out a long breath through my nose, and started walking toward the classroom. Just get through the day. That's all. Get through this one, and then the next. Verdantis was one of the most renowned academies on the continent.

It sat in Astrea and had produced a great many of the mages who had gone on to serve in the Hero's Party. Despite being quite close to the Church, it was a private institution; neither the Church nor the King had any hand in running it, though the two shared resources with it freely, for whatever mutual benefit. Or so I'd heard. I had never much cared about the politics of it.

I looked up at the building as I approached; grey stone gone pale gold in the morning light, four storeys of it, arched windows and climbing ivy and a great crest carved above the main doors that I still couldn't have named the meaning of. Two bags in my arms. Mine, and hers. I thought about my family, the way I did most mornings. A small town, days of travel from here, everything they had riding on me. I couldn't afford to fail. Not one part of it. And tomorrow was supposed to be special.

The word going around was that the top candidates for the next Hero would be visiting, some kind of session where they'd speak to the students, share how they'd gotten where they were, let us learn from them. I had always admired those people. Good at everything, composed, willing to lay their lives down for strangers. It's a tired thing to admire—every fairy tale has its heroes—but there's something different about knowing they're real.

That somewhere out there are people who would actually stand between you and the dark. Though I doubted they concerned themselves with small evils. People like Aurelie were beneath a Hero's notice. I carried her bag into the classroom and set it down in her favored seat, which was dead center of the front row, then went and sat several rows back. When she arrived, she didn't so much as glance at me, which suited me fine.

The only times Aurelie ever met my eyes were when she wanted another favor, or when she'd thought of some new thing to say. Class began. Partway through, I was called up to demonstrate a fire spell. I failed it. Then I failed it again. On the third attempt the flame guttered and died before it fully caught, and a low ripple went through the room. I got it on the fourth; a small, unimpressive flame, but a real one, and returned to my seat with my face burning hotter than the spell had.

A few others were called up after me, for the other elements. First try. Second, at worst. Each of them sat back down to nods, to that easy belonging that never once cost them a thought. Ugh. I already knew how this would go the moment class let out. When it did, I grabbed my bag and moved fast, hoping to be gone before anyone could— My foot caught. I'd cut through the front aisle, past Aurelie's desk, and something snagged my ankle, her outstretched foot, or a bag strap, I couldn't tell and it didn't matter.

I went down hard on my knees, my bag spilling open across the floor, spell notes and pens skittering out in every direction. Why did I walk down her aisle again? Idiot. Idiot.

"Oh, Constant." Aurelie's voice dripped mock-sympathy above me.

"Maybe try walking a little slower next time. Though I suppose that explains the fourth attempt, doesn't it? You've simply got to take everything slowly. Observe. Concentrate very, very hard." A pause, perfectly timed.

"It's all right. Not everyone can be gifted. Some people are just here to make up the numbers, to remind the rest of us how far we've come and that we should be grateful for what we have." A few of the students still packing up nearby lost the fight against it, a snort, a hand pressed over a mouth, a giggle bitten back not quite fast enough. None of them brave enough to laugh at me openly. Just enough to let me know they'd heard, and agreed.

I stayed on my knees, gathering my notes off the floor, one page at a time, and said nothing at all. Once I'd gathered most of it up, a pair of feet appeared in front of me. I looked up at her and glared.

"Can't you just leave me alone?"

"What? I'm befriending you." Aurelie said it like the word cost her nothing.

"If it weren't for me, no one in this whole academy would say a word to you. You think you're being bullied? You've got it backwards. I'm doing you a kindness." I got to my feet and turned to leave, and two of her goons slid into my path.

"You clearly don't understand how these places work." Aurelie circled a little, unhurried.

"A prestigious academy demands mental fortitude. Real strength. I'm making sure you build some, before the real world grinds you into nothing." She smiled.

"So. As part of today's lesson, why don't you fetch me a cup of spiced cider from the courtyard stall? I'll even pay you for the trouble." She held up a coin between two fingers, let it catch the light.

"One silver, for a job well done." I shoved between the two of them and walked, faster now. Behind me came the delicate, well-bred giggling of girls who'd never once wanted for anything. The silver was tempting, Lord Luminaryn help me. A whole silver coin for fetching a drink. But I wouldn't do it. Whatever else they took from me, I wasn't going to hand them that; the sight of me trotting off to buy her cider for a coin like a servant.

There were things worth more than money, and my last scrap of standing was one of them. It had been barely a month since I'd arrived. Three years left to graduate. If I graduated. I'd only just scraped through the first-year assessments, and everyone said it only got harder from here. I didn't know if I had it in me. I genuinely didn't know. But if I failed, then all of it was for nothing. Mom emptying what little we had. My whole family staking every hope they owned on me. All of it, in vain. Lord.

What am I supposed to do? I walked faster, eyes on the ground, that awful prickling climbing up through my chest, something hot and stinging gathering at the corners of my eyes— —and walked straight into someone. I bounced off and landed hard on my backside, my bag tumbling out of my arms again. Wonderful. The day had found a way to get worse.

"Oh, sorry, are you all right?" A hand appeared in front of me. Whoever she was, she'd kept her feet; she hadn't gone down at all. She was... rather beautiful, I thought, in a way I didn't have time to examine. About my age. Blue hair drawn up into a high ponytail. And she wasn't in an academy uniform; she wore a sleeveless set of light armor instead.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going." She took my hand and drew me up to my feet.

"It's all right. I was somewhere else in my head too." I couldn't remember the last time anyone had apologized to me. It landed strangely, like a word in a language I had half forgotten.

"Say," she went on, glancing around, "do you know the way to the faculty office? I came in with a small group and got turned around somewhere. That's where they were headed."

"It's—" I found my voice.

"Down that corridor, left at the end, then up the stairs. You'll see it."

"Thank you." She dipped into a small, slight bow. Do people even do that? No one here had ever bowed to me. Then she turned and walked off the way I had pointed, and was gone around the corner. I stood there a moment, my bag still half-open at my feet. For some reason I couldn't name, I had the distinct feeling I would be seeing her again.