“I should ask you the same. What is this?” Her cheeks are pink with anger. “Are you cheating on me?”
“Seriously?” He stands up, stretching to his full height. There’s something dangerous about the look in his eyes as he towers over her.
“You’re going to go there?”
“Well, what do you expect?” Celeste is fuming, apparently oblivious to the murderous look in his eyes, and I push myself up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. A few others are gathered in the hall, peering into the room.
Great first impression, Addy.
I reach up, feeling the rat’s nest of hair on my head.
“Hi,” I say, holding my hand up in a little wave. “I’m Addy, and this is not what you—”
“She’s wearing your cloak?” Celeste pushes past Maxon, her eyes full of fire as she stalks toward me. “You little cheating whore!”
“Celeste!” Maxon yells as she raises a perfectly manicured hand, summoning a white ball of energy. He moves to stop her, but it’s too late, and she whips the energy ball at me. Reacting on instinct, I bring my hands up, shielding my face as I turn away.
The painful shock never comes, but I can feel the prickle of electricity just inches from my face. It reminds me of when I was a kid and used to think it was funny to rub a balloon on my hair and hold it up, using the static electricity to make my hair stand on end.
Leaning back, I slowly open my eyes to see the ball of energy hovering in the air. My mouth falls open as I watch tendrils of raw energy crackle and pop, fizzling into the air.
“How did you do that?” Celeste demands, and brings her hand up, probably to summon another energy ball that I won’t be able to stop this time. “No one deflects my energy balls. No one!”
“Well, it looks like someone did.” Maxon dodges in front of her and holds out his hand, muttering an incantation that causes the ball to dissipate into the room. He whirls around, putting himself between Celeste and myself.
“You are way out of line,” he sneers. “What the fuck were you thinking, attacking a student like that? I should report you to Professor Dal.”
“You wouldn’t do that, now would you?” Celeste snaps her attention away from me and puts one hand on Maxon’s chest, splaying her fingers. “You wouldn’t want me to get in trouble now. Unless you want to punish me.”
“Excuse us,” Maxon says, and takes Celeste by the hand, pulling her out of the room, closing the door behind him. I stare at the spot where they just stood, blinking. I have no idea what time it is, but if others were up and dressed, I should probably get up too.
I take off Maxon’s cloak and carefully fold it, laying it on the foot of his bed. Then I grab my uniform and quickly change.
“I see you met Celeste.” I whip around just in time to see Cass materialize through the door. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
“She seems psychotic.”
Cass laughs and glides to the dresser, perching on the top.
“I didn’t know he had a girlfriend,” I whisper. “Not that it matters. Nothing happened and I’ll be moving into the girls’ dorm today.”
“She’s his fiancée,” Cass whispers.
“Really? Wow. No wonder she was mad. It’ll be fun rooming with her.” I sit on my bed and start brushing out my tangled hair.
“You won’t. She’s a magus and isn’t supposed to be up here, but she sneaks up to see Maxon anyway. Her skirt is yellow, did you notice? Proeliators wear red, Magi yellow, and Arbiters blue. That hottie with a body you should have been shacking up with last night had on a red tie.”
“How do you know all this?”
She shrugs. “I’ve been bored without you. I lurk.”
I laugh. “You lurk anyway.” I try to sound reproachful, but I can’t help thinking that having Cass lurk about the academy could very much come in handy, especially since this place is still a mystery to me.
“I have to say, Addy, death becomes you.”
“You think?”
“Have you seen yourself?”
