Page 15 of Faerie Gift

The rest of them introduced themselves shortly after. Shy, I noted. They all seemed terribly shy, but kindness went a long way in my book. We had no reason to be suspicious of each other. Except part of me felt…we did.

And Zinnia was clearly half elf.

“We’re fourth-years,” Zinnia’s friend Saffron stated with a small smile, peering down at me from a staggering height. Taller than almost any boy I’d seen in the school. Dark-skinned, his hair cut short, Saffron radiated a sort of patient gentleness. When you looked at him, you were suddenly reassured that everything would be all right. “Our citizenship to Faerie has been granted, though our arrival is delayed.”

“Amazing,” I answered. “I’m sure it’s a great feeling to know you are on your way to Faerie. You’ve already passed your final exams?” I knew they had; I was only making polite small talk.

The four of them nodded in unison. I wondered if their lotteries in Canada were as cutthroat as ours or if their academy had a completely different set of tests and procedures in place.

Lotteries, yeah—the term was a joke. It’s what Leaves and the rest of the professors decided to call the culling process which drastically reduced our numbers systematically. They must think the wordlotterywould somehow make us feel luckier for passing through to the next level.

“The exams were difficult, but in the end, we were the triumphant ones. Only thirty from our entire starting class,” Zinnia told me. “Down from nearly two hundred of those of us with Fae blood.” She grinned. “Most of us nearly lost our minds during the last round of testing.”

Were there thirty exchange students here? I hadn’t counted.

Saffron let out a low laugh. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’rehere.”

“I am, but I thought it was rude to ask,” I said with a wry smile. “I didn’t realize I was so transparent.” The weight of my bag pressed into my shoulder and I shifted it to the other side.

“Not rude at all. The portal for our school was destroyed a few weeks ago. No one knows what happened,” Zinnia said. She caught Saffron’s gaze and the two shared a long look.

“Wait a minute. Destroyed?” I asked.

“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Our only option was to come here and wait for the next ceremony. You are the closest institution with access.”

It seemed convenient to me.Tooconvenient. Why would their portal be mysteriously wrecked?

“What happened to your portal? Was there an accident?”

One of the other girls answered quickly for the rest of them. “It’s a mystery,” she supplied. “The elders have no answers for us. The only course of action was to send us to this academy.”

“I gotcha.”

I totally didn’t.

The five of us spoke for another few moments before I felt a tug on my sleeve from Mike telling me it was time to move on to our next class. I hadn’t even realized he stood there waiting for me. I said goodbye to Zinnia and the rest and turned down the hallway with Mike at my side.

His groupies were nowhere near us but I could feel their eyes on our backs. They’d better keep their distance. My inner wolf may not be fully in control, thanks to my potion, but I still felt her beneath the surface, lurking. Watching. Marking them as competition and wanting to bare her teeth in retaliation.

You will not take what is mine.

Except, I tried to remind her, Mike didn’t belong to me.

“You make some new friends?” Mike asked.

I nodded and shuffled closer to him when the hallway became too packed with bodies. “I did,” I told him, wondering if he’d heard the conversation about the portal. He’d been close enough to eavesdrop.

He said nothing else about it and I let it drop, knowing we both had a full schedule ahead of us.

A ruined portal…

My stomach twisted, brain working a mile a minute. In my time at the academy, I’d learned to trust my intuition more and more; it had kept me alive in more than a few situations.

Things weren’t adding up to me. I knew it was only the first day, but I was determined to figure out what was really going on.

Before it took me by surprise.

6

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