"You might be." He stepped closer, and despite myself, I stepped back. There was something about him that made my hindbrain scream danger—not the overt threat of violence, but something colder, more calculated. The sense that he was always three moves ahead and I didn't even know we were playing a game.
"The Bolingbroke family has studied magical anomalies for twelve generations," he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "What you just did—cycling through all four disciplines—that's not undifferentiated magic. That's something else entirely."
"Great. When you figure out what it is, let me know. I'd love to stop being everyone's favorite freak show."
"This isn't a joke." His eyes bore into mine, cold and sharp as winter. "Whatever you are, you need to get it under control. Before someone decides you're too dangerous to let roam free."
"Someone like you?"
He didn't answer, but he didn't need to. The threat was clear enough.
"Perhaps," he said finally, "you'd be better suited elsewhere."
I should have agreed. Should have nodded and walked away and started packing my bags. That would have been the smart thing to do—the safe thing.
But I've never been bullied before, and I wasn’t about to go down without fighting.
"Perhaps you'd be better suited minding your own business," I said. "I'm not going anywhere. And if you want me gone, you're going to have to do better than a vague warning in a hallway."
We stared at each other for a long moment. I could see him calculating, weighing options, deciding whether I was worth the effort of destroying.
Finally, something shifted in his expression—not warmth, exactly, but something that might have been respect. Or at least acknowledgment that I wasn't going to be easy to break.
"Be careful, Miss Grey." He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. "You have no idea what you're dealing with."
"Neither do you," I muttered at his retreating back.
If he heard me, he didn't respond.
I shoved the cracked sphere into my bag and walked outside, still fuming, still trying to process everything that had just happened. The sphere. The four disciplines. Callum's warning.
You have no idea what you're dealing with.
Neither did he. Neither did anyone. That was the whole problem.
The sky was clear when I stepped through the doors—a perfect September afternoon, blue and golden and warm. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, trying to think.
Then the clouds rolled in.
Fat and black as a bruise, boiling up from nothing, centered directly over my head.
And I knew—I knew before the first drop of rain hit my face—exactly who was responsible.
The rest you already know.
Brittany is waiting when I squelch into our room, leaving a trail of water across the floor. She takes one look at me—soaking wet, blazer ruined, bloody hands clutching a cracked sphere, murder in my eyes—and sits up slowly.
"What happened?"
"Atlas Knox happened." I peel off the blazer and throw it in the corner. It lands with a wet splat. "He sent a storm after me. Chased me all the way to the roof of Bellamy Hall. So I tackled him."
She chokes on nothing. "Youwhat?"
"He tried to fry me with lightning, so I ran straight at him and knocked him down before it could hit me. It was that or die, but…" I start wringing water out of my hair over the trash can. "He told me if he'd wanted me dead, I'd be dead, shoved me off him, and walked away. Oh, and before all that—"
I set the cracked sphere on my desk. Even now, hours later, faint traces of color still swirl inside the fractured glass—shadow and lightning and red and purple, refusing to fade.
"—I broke a testing sphere in class by channeling all four disciplines at once, and Callum Bolingbroke cornered me in a hallway to tell me I'm dangerous and should leave."
