“Isn’t the trust the accumulation of wealth from our reincarnations? If Hemlock and Apep haven’t been able to reincarnate in this realm before because their bones weren’t here, wouldn’t they not have one??” Sage asked.
Yeah, that was the thing. I didn’t think they cared. I grew up with money. I never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from or if I could pay for anything. The same could be said for the social circle I was forced to surround myself with. Those people had more money than they’d ever be able to spendin their lifetime and they were constantly thinking up shitty ways to get more.
I’d dug into Lola’s background thanks to my hacking and the dossier the school had on her. She hadn’t grown up wealthy, but she hadn’t grown up poor, either. We didn’t know who Apep was at all. I didn’t know if his upbringing was more like Khalid or Mazen. My brothers had titles and money and if they could screw someone over for more, they would.
Suddenly, that ten thousand points didn’t feel all that great.
Professor Kane didn’t make a peep about the lottery and I didn’t really expect her to. She outright ignored anyone who asked questions about it. However, when she askedusquestions about the reading she assigned, she was giving out points to people who not only read, but understood what they were reading.
And not a lot of my classmates did that. Everyone I was friends with did the assignment and everyone else was whining about not getting points they didn’t earn. Lola was the loudest and egging them on.
There was one person who generally never participated who actually started when our trusts were on the line. Radamesfinally started talking in class. As far as I knew. He hadn’t figured out who he was yet, but he did appear to be taking his studies seriously. He hadn’t given me a damned thing to work with, but I at least respected him for distancing himself from Lola when her story started changing.
It was honestly the most I’d heard him speak all semester, and I’d been doing work study with him the whole time. Radames was pretty smart. I’d probably never be as good a friend with him as I was with my other friends here because he didn’t seem interested, but I could appreciate that he hadn’t been taken in by Lola.
It wasn’t until we got to Arcane Magic that anyone tried to explain the lottery. I was pretty sure Professor Gefn knew damned well Professor Kane was going to do her lesson and nothing else. Elliot and Petros had done a pretty amazing job explaining while Morgana was taking care of her witch with Mazen.
A bunch of hands shot up when she explained you had better odds working as a group. Liam’s new magic was coming in handy.
“Everyone’s bonds are barely there,” Liam whispered. “They are weaker than Mazen and his group and that bromance is off to a super shitty start.”
“Can we pick our team?” Lola asked.
“No,” Professor Gefn said cooly. “The fates pick your team. I’ve never seen anything like it. All of you have someone or multiple someones you are cosmically connected to. You would have been drawn to them when you initially picked your teams. Most of you have completely neglected to explore that and I know not all of you are asexual like some gods.”
“Well,Iwas only on my team because they were ashamed of being gay and then they beat me,” Lola said, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
Adrian just fell out laughing. Lola might be using some kind of magic to manipulate some of our classmates, but Adrian seemed to have some kind of magnetism with the rest of the school.
“Mate, Ivar openly flirts with more men at this school than I do, it’s just harder to get in his pants because of Ari. I watched him flirting with people during the trials. They aren’t gay, they’re bi, but they aren’t ashamed of that, either.”
“They really aren’t,” Mazen said. “I don’t know why you’re still lying about that.”
Ivar cocked an eyebrow at Mazen because he’d mostly been ignoring Lola. The first time he publicly called her out was to defend Ivar, Ari, and Alexios.
“Enough!” Professor Gefn said. “We need to move on to the next lesson and it’s going to take the rest of the semester to master and maybe even part of the next. This is one of the most important things you can learn and may save your life one day. You are very hard to maim right now, but it’s not impossible and you can be killed. You’ll be learning healing for the rest of the year.
“If you’re an original and not a reincarnation, you either won’t be able to do it, or it will be different for you. We have the original vampire in our class, so their blood heals. A lot of the original shifters don’t have healing magic, but Ari does as the original bear. You won’t get a failing grade if you can’t heal because you’re an original, but I will flunk you in a heartbeat if you aren’t taking the lessons seriously. At least consider your trust fund if you need financial motivation to not be completely mediocre.”
Liam got out of his seat, walked over to one of Lola’s friends who had kind of been a jerk to all of us, and punched him right in the face. I was pretty sure his name was Edwin. He howled and blood started pissing out his nose.
“Sage, I got you a patient to practice on.”
Professor Gefn just crossed her arms.
“None of you are actually going to be able to heal anyone today. I was just going to go through the practical side of healing for this lesson.”
“You broke my nose, you psychopath!”
“Relax, Edward, I had a plan.”
Was his name Edward? A lot of my classmates were more interested in crawling up Lola’s ass than anything else. I wouldn’t be shocked if he didn’t know my name, either.
“My name is Edmund!”
Oops.
“Don’t actually give a shit, mate. You should probably go to the healer and get that looked at.”
