Priscilla was back in class on Friday with more determination than ever. Professor Sahni announced a sudden quiz for Monday after she caught two students sleeping in her class. A storm cloud had settled over a fourth of the student body who had Sahni classes. I invited Priscilla and Lucius over on Sunday for a study night, figuring that their company would help me focus.
“Are you eating dinner with us tonight?” Theo asked after our training session on Sunday. I shook my head as I wiped the sweat from my face. We decided to throw in an extra training session this week to work on stretching and flexibility.
“Nope. Lucius and Priscilla are coming over to study for Sahni’s thing on Monday. If you want to join, you can.” He wasn’t well-known for his high grades in that class.
He yanked off his sweaty jacket. The gym was always an ice box for some reason. His muscles had definitely got bigger. I stared down at my own arms. They were like toothpicks compared to Theo.
“Who is Lucius?” he asked with a scrunched-up face. “Is that a girl’s name?”
“No. He’s a dragon-shifter. He’s friends with Priscilla. I met him at Enrique’s party.”
“You went to Enrique’s party?” He gave me a skeptical look. I ignored him and rolled a crick out of my neck. It popped with a satisfying sound. He grimaced with disgust. Ha! Serves him right for being unfriendly already.
“Yes. Look. Don’t be mean to Lucius,” I pleaded as we went up the elevator to the ground floor. “He’s a nice guy.”
“What does he want, though?” he asked gruffly. I glared at him. A shade of it was true anger. Heat climbed up my face and none of it was bashful.
“He wants to be my friend, obviously,” I insisted. “He’s got a girlfriend. Don’t worry.” He snapped his mouth shut. I wondered if it wasn’t romantic pursuits that Theo was worried about. Something else? I frowned on the way to our rooms.
Nobody in the academy knew that I wasn’t a late-shifter. Currently, the Core Council claimed that I didn’t have an exact title. They were still investigating. Tell me, what does a strange human girl with occasional visions of a shifter family that she doesn’t remember count as? I couldn’t tell you.
Theo left me in the hall on the way to his room.
“See ya,” he said. His voice was friendly enough. I hoped he got over his suspicion of Lucius, who was hardly intimidating. If anything, the poor dragon-shifter was scared of the Council boys. Maybe they were worried something like the Angela or Sam incident was going to occur again. I better not get stuck with a bodyguard detail.
“Is it odd to have multiple people attack you in your first month of school?” I speculated aloud. As I turned the corner on my hall, I decided that I would pretend it was completely natural and take a calming agent that Nurse Greta had given me.
In my room, everything was as I left it. Although today I had specifically planned an outfit since Lucius and Priscilla were coming over. It was a yellow sundress that hit my knees, printed with cute white flowers. It had been Enrique (and his harem, I understood) that had stocked my bathroom and closet to fit the needs of a young woman. I was grateful they had good taste.
I showered quickly and scrubbed my skin of the sweat and grime leftover from training. After my shower, I made a half-hearted attempt at drying my hair. Lately, my hair was taking a funny wave to it. Before, my hair had been stubbornly straight like it was during middle school and high school. Priscilla said it might be hormones. Maybe late-shifter hormones…I hadn’t told her that I had learned I wasn’t a late-shifter yet.
I hoped I could catch a moment with her alone soon. I did a quick minimal makeup look and went about my business, organizing my notes for our study session. I had asked Moony to make a tray of sandwiches and snacks for us. He agreed with gusto, trying to suggest sushi rolls or desserts to add on to make the study snacks more exotic. Brownies, candies, bonbons?
“It’s just studying,” I had told him. He put his hands on his hips with an exasperated look.
“Nonsense! You’re growing your brain.”
Around six o’clock, the door rang. I flew down the stairs in a pair of sandals. Dracus strolled across the gleaming wood floors, headed towards the door at the same time.
“I’ve got it!” I cried, pushing past him. An offended scoff left his mouth. Served the prince right, trying to catch my friends before I could!
“I told you that I was having friends over for a quiz review.”
“Right,” he mumbled behind me as I opened the door with a grin. Priscilla, freshly recovered and in her signature, twin braids, beamed at me. Lucius stood next to her. He looked as if he had just swallowed a frog. His skin was a bit paler. It somehow drained of even more color when he spotted who was behind my shoulder.
“Hi, guys!” I said. “Welcome to the Council manor. Well, Priscilla, you’ve been here before.”
Dracus cleared his throat beside me. Lucius’ eyes seemed frozen on the other dragon-shifter’s powerful frame. Dracus had a knack for taking up the most amount of room with his presence alone.
“Welcome to the manor,” he said. His voice was cold, but not uninviting. “My sole rules are that you keep a low volume of discussion, and you leave by midnight.”
“Of course,” Priscilla said quickly. After a moment, Lucius nodded
“I’ve got this,” I told Dracus from the side of my mouth. To my pleasure, he left…although his pace was slow for my liking. The typical father figure of the Core Council. He’d been reluctant to allow visits from my friends, but I reminded him that Enrique brought his girlfriends over all the time. I told him that it was sexist. He had balked at the accusation, like a proper prince.
I threw open my arms and gestured around at the magnificent entryway. “Welcome, Lucius!”
Priscilla trotted in with a bright smile, Lucius following reluctantly behind her.
“Where are we studying today?” she asked.
“One of the studies! It’s farthest from the boys, so I figured that was the safest option.” I had my backpack slung over one shoulder. They followed me down the Creepy Hallway, which looked much brighter after I had flung each door open to let the sunlight spill in. I’d chosen the last room on the left, the one opposite of my last adventure with Mr. X.
“There are so many rooms,” Lucius breathed behind us. Priscilla had already seen the tour. “Do you guys use all these?” Not many of the students at Beast Academy ever got to see inside the Manor, unless they were visiting a Council boy. I doubted Enrique’s girlfriends cared much for the abandoned sitting rooms and studies that lined this corridor.
“We don’t use any of them,” I told him with a frown. “It’s sad. We have amazing spaces here.”
Priscilla nodded. Her hands tightened around her school binder, which was pressed tightly to her chest. She inhaled the scent of the stuffy hallway.
“I love the way old buildings smell.”
“It’s probably not older than the castle,” I told her as I gestured inside to the study that we would be using. They filed in before I followed.
“Yes, but the castle has a certain air to it. There are plenty of open windows and doors. The manor…” she trailed off as if unsure of how to say it.
“It’s very closed off,” Lucius said suddenly. “It’s like it’s a special bunker or something.”
“That’s it,” she said with a grin and shake of her finger. “I think it feels almost like the secret military base of the Academy. Ironic considering Lucius and I live in the actual castle, which should be the fortress if the Academy had ever needed to defend itself.”
“Defend itself?” I echoed. She shrugged with an especially exaggerated lift of her shoulders.
“Who knows? The world is crazy.”
We settled at a magnificent oak table that was pushed against the windows for the best light. I had taken half an hour earlier to clean the entire place. Although magic left most rooms in the manor spotless, it smelled…stale. I had rubbed lemonwood cleaner into almost every surface to give it a pleasant air.
“It smells nice,” Lucius muttered. I inwardly cheered. Good. I succeeded.
“Lucius, can you help me grab the snacks from the kitchen?” I asked with a smile. “Priscilla is still recovering.”
The young woman in question rolled her eyes from her position at the table. “If I didn’t need to start studying immediately, I would yell at you.” She flipped her binder open and descended upon her notes. Lucius gave an awkward laugh and scratched the back of his head.
“Okay, okay, you convinced me.”
“Are you scared of this place?” I asked him as we headed down the hall. He cleared his throat.
“Not of the location…Of the people inside.”
“The Council boys?”
“They are intimidating,” he confessed with a nervous laugh. From the side, I could admire his strong nose, almost hawk-like with a certain handsomeness. “Nobody wants to mess with them at school.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s because they think they are the top dogs of the Academy.”
He snorted. “They are!”
“Maybe for some people, they are the top dogs,” I muttered. “Do you mind cutting through the dining room? I can introduce you if you like.” His eyes widened by an inch. I laughed and said, “Okay. Fine. We’ll take the entrance from the hallway.”
It was the door that I usually passed through for school. Sometimes, Enrique was waiting for me there. When I led Lucius into the immaculate shining kitchen, he gave a low whistle.
“This place is nice,” he said. His eyes wandered to a stack of three plastic trays and a carafe on the counter. “Is that all for us?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Moony must’ve gone overboard for our study session. He gets really excited when I ask for specific things. I told him not to do too much.”
He whistled as he grabbed the trays. “Tell him a big thank you from me.”
“You’re the first person at the Academy that I’ve heard of wanting to thank the staff.”
“I don’t believe in being rude to people who prepare food,” he said with a wiggle of his eyebrows. We laughed and I helped him with the carafe. From the dining room, I could hear muffled talking and sudden silence. He pulled a grimace as we shuffled out of the kitchen.
“Man, your five boyfriends are terrifying. As soon as they heard me in the other room, I could feel them stiffen. Their scents got shadowy! I thought they might bust into the kitchen and hold me down to interrogate me,” he said as we headed back to join Priscilla.
I rolled my eyes. “They don’t care. They’re just bizarrely paranoid. It doesn’t have much to do with me. More like their Council business.”
He scrunched his face up. “What exactly do they do?”
“Something for the school,” I answered vaguely. Although Lucius seemed like he was someone I could trust, I didn’t want to test my luck…Priscilla was the person I decided to confide in. Eventually. I needed to get her alone.
The girl in question lifted her head from her books when we walked back into the room. She blinked three times in the direction of the three trays, stacked on top of one another, that Lucius carried in his steady arms.
“The chef went overboard,” I informed her.
“Perfect. I’m tired of soup after four days.”
We ate first and then dove into our review session. He was as quick as her in terms of thinking. After two hours, my mind reeled as I tried to review what we had gone over. My head pulsed painfully. I rubbed my temples with a gentle but firm movement. Too much content.
“I’m never feeding you guys again,” I lamented. “Dragon-shifters are even smarter after they’ve eaten!” They chuckled.
After another half hour, Priscilla checked her watch and then glanced outside at the setting sun.
“We should probably get out of here,” she explained with a small smile. “I’m actually still tired from my recovery…”
“Of course.”
“Lucius, didn’t you say that you needed to use the restroom before we came here?” Priscilla asked, leaning onto the table. She tilted her voice and rose her voice a pitch too high as she asked it. I eyed her from the side. What was she doing?
“Oh, yeah,” he muttered. “I do need to pee.”
“Last door going towards the entryway on the left side,” I told him. He nodded and jogged out of the room with sudden speed. We had nearly drained the carafe of tea that Moony prepared us. Priscilla’s hand immediately found my arm on the table. It struck me so quickly that I leaped out of my skin.
“I saw something,” she whispered darkly. “About The Officials.”