I’d just gotten my mother’s diary and spent the next two weekends reading it.
When I held up the peering glass, I saw mages and witches in the stands below waving banners with the Malcroix Cross and Strangemore’s name. A fair few adults, likely parents and alumni, also sat in the stands, sipping hot drinks, holding up peering glasses with gold and silver frames, and waving flags decorated with the Malcroix cross.
The visiting team mostly sat in bleachers on the other side of the river.
Even though my friends and I took up nearly a row of seats, I felt conspicuous being up in the posh box. Draken sat on my right, and Draken’s roommate, Gunther, sat on the other side of him. Miranda sat on my left, with Luc next to her, and Jolie next to Luc. Nyx, Miranda’s new friend from class, sat next to Gunther, with Luc’s roommate, Darragh, or “Dag,” at the end.
Being surrounded by friendly faces didn’t entirely fix it, though, in terms of my feeling out of place, particularly given who else shared the high-elevation box with us.
I’d finally learned which name went with which of the three “trolls” who followed Caelum everywhere he went. That’s how I knew Norrick Voltaire noticed my presence in the box first. He was the only one of the three who seemed to have much of abrain, and the one Alaric called their leader. He also scared me more than the other two.
Norrick Voltaire was a hulking beast of a mage, a few inches taller than Caelum, with giant hands and a bony face. His dirty-blond, curly hair did nothing to distract from the meanness of his eyes, or the constant sneer on his too-large lips.
He got a perverse delight in cornering me: in the dining room, in common rooms, in the library, by the coffee cart in Malcroix Mansion, and once outside a lecture hall, after which he’d suggestively invited me to accompany him to Bonescastle for dinner. He’d asked me the same question roughly every week since then, usually in the crudest way possible, and often by getting unnervingly into my space.
I’d been tempted to knee him in the crotch as my answer, more than once, but I’d concentrated on keeping him out of my magic, instead. The last thing I needed was to give Norrick Voltaire a reason to physically attack me.
Alaric warned me to steer clear of Voltaire, and not to underestimate his magical ability. Just because his face “looks like a skull that got squashed on railroad tracks,” didn’t mean he didn’t know some dark, nasty spells.
Sitting on Voltaire’s right, Nicolai “Pants” Panzen gaped at me soon after Norrick noticed our arrival. Pants was another giant mage, but more wide than tall, with wispy, already-balding brown hair and a perpetually confused look on his face.
Pants looking over caused the troll on Voltaire’s left, the lanky, greasy-haired, Scarpen “Scar” Maskey, to glance over his shoulder, too, a silver flask gripped in one hand, a hand-rolled cigarette between two fingers of the other.
Caelum wasn’t there. While I was relieved he wasn’t, even though he’d clearly left his three trolls behind to be a pain in my arse, I wondered why.
Did he actually blow off the match?
Ugh, andwhywas I wondering where he was?
Realizing I was doing it again, thinking about him for no bloody reason, I focused on the adults who’d just joined us in the box, as well. A tall, startlingly handsome mage with long black hair and disturbingly familiar features sat to my right and a few rows back, a witch at his side with golden hair, grey eyes, and an aristocratically beautiful face.
My lips pursed even before I saw the dragon made of bones perched on the man’s thigh where he leaned back elegantly in his seat. The dragon looked identical to Caelum’s in everything but the eyes, which were silver instead of black.
Gods. That had to be Caelum’s parents.
Where the hell was he, if his parents were here?
Other adults sat around them, and I saw the mage with the long black hair angle his head back to listen to something one of them said.
Just then, those silver eyes shifted to mine.
I didn’t hold his gaze, but looked away, thankfully distracted when a long horn blew from the center of the field. I faced forward, my neck and ears burning.
“And they’re off…” a voice echoed over the grounds.
I glanced to my left, at Mir, Luc, and Jolie.
“You guys are going to explain this to me, right?” I joked quietly.
Mir nodded, her eyes staring through her peering glass as winged players darted like shadows over the river. She glanced briefly at me.
“This should be a great match,” she gushed. “Russia’s team was a bit sad this year, but Bavaria is always good. They aren’t thebestwe’ll go up against this season… that would be either the Magical University of California, or Tokyo Academy of Magical Arts. But Bavarian Magical Defense Academy’s a solidcontender. Hopefully we’ll see some real battles before they get to The Eyrie.”
I blinked. “Wait. California? Tokyo? We play against the entire world? Not just Europe and the U.K.?”
“It’s not about geography, Leda.” Draken’s voice was distracted, his eyes on his own peering glass. “They arrange schools by tier. The top tier schools play one another, partly because we’re better funded and can attract better players, like Strangemore. We’ve got eight teams total in ours. Occasionally the composition of the top eight changes, but not often. I think the last time was when the Magical Institute of Sorbonne got beat out by the Brazilian International Obeah Academy, in 1965…”
I looked out onto the field, distracted when another whoosh of wings indicated the players were coming closer. I saw arrows fly, their tips glowing bright with iridescent colors. Most flew past their targets without connecting. The players on both sides wore masks; etched gold on the Malcroix side, bronze on the Bavarian side.
