might wish to hide,” Professor Gale adds in.
“My name is Healer Julie, and as you can guess, I am here to fix anything. Even though you will be alone in the forest, help is never far away.” The woman looks each and every one of us dead in the eye. “You just have to look in the right places for it.”
“Isn’t that jolly?” Sage grumbles in my ear, and I just manage to suppress a laugh.
“Now, in the forest there are clues,” the headmaster states. “These clues will lead you to the prize you will spend the entire year looking for. The forest will not give its prize up easily, so you must be prepared to fight for it and your lives.”
“Now that’s even jollier,” I mumble back to Sage.
My best friend doesn’t manage to restrain her laugh, and we both receive a sharp glare from Greyhorn.
“There are only ten prizes,” he resumes calmly, his cold eyes flicking away from us, “and the first one to find them will win something very special. The prizes give you a passing grade in this class and guarantees a good job when you leave Shadowborn Academy. So do pay attention and try to win.”
I can’t help but snort at that. Basically what he means is that instead of cleaning the toilets of the train station, we might be lucky enough to clean the toilets of rich assholes instead. Gee, aren’t we the lucky ones? Shadowborns rarely get any of the good jobs; if we don’t manage to become a warden, we get basic, poorly paid jobs in the community. A keeper told me that once. He was one of the rare keepers that were actually honest with me about the world I would soon be getting thrown into whether I wanted to be or not.
He also said the only reason shadowborns are tolerated at all is that our children are usually born as light magic users, or because in a war, we are easy cannon fodder. Shadowborns are disposable in the eyes of the High Wardens. It makes me sick.
“You will be divided into teams of four, chosen by us. Please come up and find your team from my list and group up,” Professor Gale announces, waving his hand to produce a scroll of parchment from thin air.
We all get into a line and I silently pray that I’m in Sage’s team. Or at least in Izora’s. Do not put me in Willow’s. Do not put me in Willow’s. As people rush off to group up, the area becomes chaos as we move through the line and finally reach the professor. He looks right at Sage, who avoids eye contact until it becomes awkward.
“I did this for you,” he tells Sage, holding out a rolled-up parchment, but she doesn’t respond to him. I clear my throat and he roughly hands me two pieces of parchment. Sage is already walking away as I jog to her side, out of earshot from the queue.
“You okay?” I ask her, grabbing her arm to stop her from walking away from me. Dark magic itches my hand as I hold her and she turns to me, smiling softly as the magic fades.
“It’s just him. I’ll eventually get used to it,” she assures me.
“Or we could kill him,” I suggest with a completely innocent smile.
Sage snorts. “Don’t tempt me, girl.”
“Just putting it out there,” I say, handing her the parchment with her name on it. I unroll my own, seeing four names written in blue ink.“Let’s see who we’ve got in our team.”
“It better not be anyone shit. We’ve gotta spend a whole year with them,” she grumbles, and I grunt in agreement, reading the names listed on my parchment.
Corvina Charles.
Sage Millhouse.
Ronan Fairweather.
And what do you know? Last but not wanted, Jonah Fucking Vincent.
Underneath him, there’s a single clue meant to help us complete the task: all year round it grows but never dies.
“I like the first three names,” Sage mutters, peering over my shoulder to confirm our parchments are the same. She sighs. “Professor Gale must have made it so we are together. At least he did something right. I’m still not thanking him for it.”
“I think that’s all he wanted,” I gently reply, though she’s too angry to look past it. I can’t really blame her.
I turn around and find Ronan with Jonah already, both of them arguing.
Sage follows my gaze. “Teamwork, huh?” Jonah shoves a hand into Ronan’s chest. Ronan raises a fist covered in icy