Blood Pledged (Arcane Arts Academy #3) - Elena Lawson Page 0,66
whispered. What is he doing with her?
He was hurting his own reputability just being near me. No one else except Bianca deigned to speak to me anymore.
Marcus shook his head. “I know your familiars wouldn’t do what everyone thinks they did. Bianca told me about them. And if she trusts them, then so I do, which means I also trust you.” He dropped his hand and turned to go back into the hallway. “Come on, maybe Bianca’s already at the Magical Defense lesson.”
I looked into the hallway at all the students staring, and Marcus dragged me out from the alcove. “I don’t care what they think, and neither should you,” he said. “Now let’s go find her.”
25
Harper
Marcus was right. And I needed to stop being such a damn baby about everything. How the hell did I expect to absolve Cal and Adrian of the sins everyone believed they committed if I was sitting quietly in the corner, whining?
How would I help Bianca? Or anyone?
So, instead of walking into Magical Defense with a huge chip on my shoulder, I pulled my hair into a tightly coiled bun and tugged my headband into place as I walked into the completely new training room with my head held high.
They could whisper all they liked. I just hoped whoever the MD instructor was, he planned to allow sparring so I could knock a few of them on their asses.
I knew Granger was working on a temporary addition to the academy to host this class, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so large. The ceilings were fifty feet above us. And the floor was made up of a sort of springy black material. The rest of the room was plain off-white walls—windowless. The whole place buzzed with magic, and I wondered how many witches it’d taken to slap it together basically overnight.
Marcus and I found Bianca standing near the back of the room, near the other students but not with them. We shared a look before weaving our way through the bodies waiting for the instructor to arrive.
“Hey, B. Where were you?” Marcus asked lightly as we approached, with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes.
Bianca jumped a bit, only just noticing we were there. “What? Oh, I was…” She trailed off and looked like she was about to cry.
Oh, shit. What were you supposed to do when people cried, again? Hug them? That’s what Bianca did when I was upset. I wrapped her up in an awkward sideways embrace and lowered my voice. “You don’t remember, do you?”
She shook her head and peeked up at Marcus before her gaze rested back on me and she stepped out of my grasp. “He told you?”
I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could’ve helped.” I wasn’t sure what I’d have done, but I would have at least tried to do something.
“You had enough to worry about already, I didn’t want to give you another thing to stress about.”
She didn’t want to give me another thing to stress about? I wasn’t the one blacking out and losing time. “You’re an idiot,” I told her, and she gave me a sheepish smirk. “Let’s get out of here. We can skip this today and I’ll take you to the infirmary. Maybe the nurses will—”
“No,” she said with a harshness I didn’t know her to be capable of.
“Harper is right, and it’s what I’ve been saying all week,” Marcus agreed. “You have to get help. Whatever is happening to you, it isn’t normal. It’s actually kind of scary.”
Bianca narrowed her eyes at him, glaring like only she could. He shrank back from her stare. “You think I don’t know that?” she snapped in a rushed whisper, checking to make sure no one nearby was listening. “When I turned eighteen, I took legal guardianship of my brothers.” She sounded as if she were repeating herself, and I got the feeling they’d had this conversation already once—without me.
“I know—”
“No, you obviously don’t, Marcus. If something is wrong with me—with my… my head, then they’ll be taken away. The Council will take them from me!”
“I thought maybe if Harper—”
“What? You were trying to get her to help you convince me to see… what? Some sort of magical psychologist? No, thank you. I can deal with this on my own.”
She crossed her arms, not able to look at either of us as she shoved her blonde hair from her face and stared with her glittering brown eyes at anything else.