of the crowd dimmed to a low murmur. I found the water fountain and bent down for a drink.
“Hello, Cassandra.”
I sputtered. “Oh god damn it, it’s you again, isn’t it,” I muttered, wiping water from my face. I turned to face Wraith, he of the obviously fake name.
He looked about the same as I remembered, an eerily handsome student with flowing dark hair, this time tied back neatly in a ponytail. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” I said.
“You wouldn’t have wanted to see me,” he replied.
“True,” I said. “For obvious reasons. How the hell do you know my name, anyway?”
He smiled. “I promise not to use it elsewhere. I’m too fond of my secrets to give one up easily.”
I rolled my eyes. “So why are you here now, or is that another one of your secrets—” I broke off as I put two and two together. The impending duel. Seeing him with Arcturus that first time. His vaguely practical hairstyle. “Oh. You’re the third person on the Nightfelds’ team.”
Wraith nodded approvingly at my guess. “Not bad. Yes, I am. There aren’t many others whom Arcturus would trust to fight alongside him.”
“I bet,” I said, even as I sized him up warily. What were his capabilities? I’d never seen him do obvious magic, unless you counted being creepy and knowing too much. Could he upend our careful plans?
Wraith only smiled. “Don’t worry, I consider myself merely a spectator to the main attraction of this duel. Redbriar versus Nightfeld. Cunning versus might. I’m terribly curious how it’ll turn out. I would never spoil things by interfering in any unfair way.”
“How reassuring,” I growled. My mind simmered with dark fears. Too much depended on this duel, and too much about this duel depended on a cryptic weirdo who wouldn’t even give me his real name. I hated this. I hated everything about this.
Pull yourself together, Cass, I told myself.
I took a deep breath. “Last time you asked for a secret,” I said. “Well, here’s one for you.”
I drew strength from the words as they left my lips, truths I’d never dared to say aloud. “I… adored Priam Redbriar as a kid, before I grew old enough to understand all the terrible things he’d done. It was like something from a storybook, an ordinary girl spirited into a world of magic by her mysterious guardian. I devoured it all. I mastered everything he tried to teach me and begged for more. I wanted to be him when I grew up.”
I looked at my hands. “I hate him for what he did to my mother, but I owe him my magic, which is to say, my life. Without my magic, I wouldn’t be me. Maybe it would’ve been better for everyone involved, but someone else would be living that better life in my place.”
“So this is what I’m going to do,” I said, finally. “This is going to be my attempt at justice. I’m going to take Priam Redbriar’s magic and defend my mom with it.”
The fear had left me, replaced by iron-hard determination. I looked at Wraith, and saw that the smile had left his face.
“I will witness you,” he said, his strange eyes bright.
The clock was ticking toward noon. “Then let’s go,” I said.
Chapter 18
By the time Wraith and I got back, the bleachers were packed. I even thought I saw eyes peering out from behind the pairs of seated legs, from additional spectators clinging to the underside of the bleacher rows themselves. I was pretty sure that was a fire code violation.
“I never thought I could get claustrophobia in a gym this big,” Darshan muttered to me under his breath, looking ill.
I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “The sooner we kick Nightfeld ass, the sooner we can get out.”
Darshan gave me a weak grin. “At least you’re feeling good about this.”
“Hey, shouldn’t I?” I scanned my gaze across the dueling ground. Arcturus, Acubens, and Wraith were moving into place in their half of the field. Professor Sarva and a few other mages I didn’t recognize walked among them, inspecting them for contraband artifacts or weapons. They would be overseeing the duel.
Soon, the judges came over to our side. Aegis hadn’t worn his knife to the duel, but the longest of Darshan’s pencils got confiscated as a weapon, and he was warned to only use the others for their intended purpose. Professor Sarva looked me over, frowning at the stickers pinned to the insides of our jackets.
“Is there a problem?”