"Funny coming from a human," a guy grumbled.
I tried to follow his voice, but I could only get the general area of the room. "No!" I snapped in that direction. "There isn't a single pure fae in here, so whoever had the balls to say that?" I stepped forward, putting myself in front of Tag. "Let's talk about whose world we're in." And I pointed back at Tag. "Hers!"
"This is a school for the fae!" a girl said, shoving to her feet.
"You're not fae," I told her.
She jerked her hand like she wanted to call magic into it, but nothing happened. Not surrounded by so much metal. In desperation, the girl tried again.
I thrust my hand out at her. "And there is example number one," I told the class. "This? The amount of iron, steel, and other ferrous metals in here that screw up your magic?" Lifting my hand, I snapped, creating a puff of shadows. "It doesn't affect me at all."
"But Silver Oak's is a school for the fae!" the girl insisted.
"It is," Tag agreed, clasping my shoulder. "It's a school to teach fae and fae-descended students how to survive in my world. How to adapt to the metals we haveeverywherehere. How to be safe with your own magic, and around the magic of others. How to blend in, how to make money, and how to do all of that without the Hunt coming to scoop you up. Now, in all the time I've taught here, I've given plenty of lectures about protecting yourself, but we didn't have a Morrigan then."
"And she fights for us," called the girl who usually sat beside me.
Yeah, that felt weird, but also kinda nice. Unfortunately, I didn't know what to do about it. I wanted to smile, but the others made that feel out of place. Never mind how Tag had me standing before all of them!
"My point," Tag said, "is that this girl is doing more to help all of you than we're doing to help her. So, for our final exam, you will all make some item that will help her help the fae. Rain will decide how it would best be used with what she does."
"And the other wildling?" someone asked. "Are we going to be dressing him next year?"
"Hawke is too fae for this place," I grumbled.
"Say it louder," Tag told me.
So I pulled in a breath. "Hawke can come close to the Forge, but not into it. He's too fae for that."
"Fae," Tag said again. "Because while all of you may roam the halls, calling yourself fae and faelings, learning about Faerie or your parent's language of Faeril, you always forget one thing. Every sentient creature on that world, ugly or beautiful, is fae. Wildling or sidhe, it doesn't matter - and those from the other side of the gates? They can't do what all of you already are."
That made some murmur under their breath, but it also quelled the discontent. After a few more words, Tag finally let me return to my seat, but she brought over a book not long after. It had lists of equipment and their uses. Still, the way she was testing us this time, I was pretty sure I couldn't fail, so that was one class I didn't need to stress about.
Needless to say, everyone at Silver Oaks hit the books that weekend. What surprised me were the teachers. Everywhere I turned, instructors, administrators, and even the staff were hovering. The rumors said they were ready for another attack. I had a feeling there was truth to that, but it was more a case of being safe rather than sorry.
But before I knew it, Monday morning rolled around. It was officially finals week, but I only had two exams that day. First, it was my tutoring class with Ms. Rhodes. She made me demonstrate moving magic both into and out of my crow-stone bracelet. When I showed I was getting pretty good at that, she told me I'd passed "Literature" - since that was what this would look like on my transcripts - then showed me how to bind that stored magic to a pen.
Yes, I sucked at it, but Ms. Rhodes explained that the pen didn't matter. If I lost it, broke it, or anything else, there would be no loss. But once I could store it with magic and recall it consistently, we could move on to something much, much harder: my steel sword.
My next test didn't come until fourth period. There, I had to take a written exam, but biology was easy. Considering this biology was all about how it affected magic? I'd been learning this stuff ever since I got here. Putting it on paper was just proving it.
The problem came on Tuesday. For as long as I could remember, math had been my worst subject. Aspen and I had stayed up all night studying, so the coffee Ms. Rhodes gave me helped, but when she offered to give me a review instead of a magic lesson, I gladly took her up on it.
When I made it into my second period class, Aspen was in her chair and almost vibrating. "Sugar?" she asked, thrusting a Pixy Stix at me nervously.
"We've got this," I assured her.
"Queen..." Jack said, waiting until she looked over to nod encouragingly.
"See!" I said, mimicking last semester. "Jack has a good feeling about this!"
Surprisingly, he bobbed his head enthusiastically.
The smallest little smile took over Aspen's lips. "Yeah?" she asked. "I mean, I did study my ass off."
"And the guys helped us," I reminded her. "Asp, we've got this. And I'll even make you a deal. If you make a B on this test, we'll do something special to celebrate."
She tensed when I said "deal," but relaxed when I got the rest out. "Ok," she agreed. "That is something I feel safe binding you to. It is a deal, Rain le Fae."
