control my eyes, I still managed to control my feet. I followed quite a few other drama-hungry students toward the commotion near the Divination Hall.
I didn’t even have to get that close to the action to see what was happening, because Cly was dangling ten feet above the heads of the crowd, getting jerked up and down like a puppet. By her skirt. Flashing her red, lacy underwear.
“You! Do! Not! Cross! Me!” I heard Acubens's mocking voice, timed to each jerking motion, imitating Cly from yesterday. “Ooh, everyone look at me, I’m a big bad Redbriar!”
Mom would’ve wanted me to empathize with Cly. Cly had developed deep insecurities growing up with such weak magic in a family that prided itself on power, and expressed it by lashing out at those even weaker than her. She’d behaved badly, but two wrongs didn’t make a right.
My mother was always like that, generous to a fault, even to those who’d wronged her. Leda had been deeply hurt by Priam’s cheating and callousness, and took it out on us because she couldn’t take it out on her terrifying husband, Mom had tried to explain to me. Aegis was so blindly devoted because the Redbriars had spared no effort in manipulating him, ever since he was a child, to turn him into the perfect bodyguard for their use. I should try to understand them, she always told me, and then I wouldn’t be so angry at them.
But Mom wasn’t here, because while Mom extended her generosity, the Redbriars never, ever returned the favor. For all she insisted on humanizing Leda and Cly, they’d only seen her first as the filthier of two filthy lesser beings intruding in their lives, then as a tool, a lever to use on me so I’d be their good little wall charger. For that matter, they’d sneer at the word humanize—in their mind, there were humans, and then there were mages, as if they were two completely separate species. Theirs was superior, of course.
So I looked at Cly, screaming and flailing up there at Acubens's mercy, and felt mostly concerned about Acubens. This was admittedly satisfying, in a way, but you’d have to be an immature asshole to stand up there and do something like that at the age of eighteen, and immature assholes weren’t good teammate material. But where else was I going to find someone powerful and Redbriar-hating?
“Things will be interesting this year,” said a voice like smoke and silk.
I tensed and turned. Beside me stood the strange, beautiful boy from yesterday. I hadn’t even heard him walk up.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “And who are you?”
“Who are you?” He smiled at me, and I had a sinking suspicion that he recognized me through my illusions. “You may call me Wraith.”
“That totally doesn’t sound like a point-at-nearest-object fake name,” I said, eyes narrowed. At least no one else seemed to be looking at us. Everyone else was either crowded around the commotion or trudging back to the dorms.
Wraith shrugged, his long hair rippling with shadowy colors at the motion. He drew closer, taking my arm in his own. The guy clearly had no concept of personal space.
I would’ve pushed him away, but I had to know more. This was the first student I’d spoken to here, and I wanted to know what his deal was. Whether he was an enemy or a friend.
“You are a girl with many secrets,” Wraith murmured into my ear. Up close, he smelled like ozone and old stone. “In all my time here, I’ve only ever met one other with more, and he will leave me in a year. Perhaps you can fill my hunger in his place.”
“What are you talking about?” I narrowed my eyes. Was he high or drunk?
“Tell me a secret. I cannot tell it to anyone else without your say-so, or else it would not be a secret. Let me hold it inside me, and I will be ever grateful to you.”
“You tell me a secret,” I snapped.
It was the wrong thing to say, I realized. A slow smile spread across Wraith’s perfectly-formed lips. “Thank you for your permission. Here’s one for you, then, one that I find quite compelling within your collection. You sometimes wish you’d never been born. At least then your mother would have then had the life she wanted, instead of the life she was forced into.”
I rounded on him. “What the hell—”
But he was no longer there. He was already gone, nowhere to