We woke up the next morning and found Becky combing out her hair. Sparks flew into her brush as she tried to get her hair to lie flat. She didn’t really succeed.
I laughed into my pillow as strands of her hair kept jumping straight. Frustrated, Becky threw her brush at me but missed. At least she was a good sport.
When we entered the cafeteria, everyone stopped eating, turned, and stared at Becky.
“News travels fast,” Sammy said as loud as she could, and some faces ducked behind their friends and others quickly turned away.
Lucian and Blake sat around a table. Lu bent slightly over the table to get closer to Blake and their lips moved fast. I couldn’t hear a thing, and I had a funny feeling that one of their shields caused that.
When Blake saw Becky, he tried to suppress his smile, but Lu just burst out laughing. It was silent for a few seconds before his laughter seeped through. It was a shield, all right.
“Ha-ha,” Becky said.
Sammy plopped down next to Lu. “I wouldn’t mess with her. Electricity is like pouring through her veins. She can seriously cause you guys a lot of pain.”
Many of the Moon-Bolts glared at Becky.
What was up with that?
“Don’t even think about it, Johnson.” A girl with blue streaks in her hair walked past her and out of the cafeteria.
Becky’s shoulders expelled as laughter pushed through her lips. “Thank heavens for other Moon-Bolts.”
Blake stared at her with a raised eyebrow and that smug smile on his lips. I knew she didn’t have a choice. George was her Dent.
I remembered then what she’d told me. How she had dreamt of being part of a Dent. I doubted she really thought it through. What was it with this world giving you your heart’s desire in the most messed up way?
“Becky.” A third-year boy had just walked up to our table sounding serious. He saw her hair and his lips drew in a thin line.
“It’s fine, you can laugh,” she said.
“Master Longwei wants to see you in his office, pronto.”
“Why?”
My gaze found Blake’s, but he was looking down at his plate of food, chewing what was in his mouth as if there was no tomorrow.
“I don’t know. He just asked me to fetch you,” he said and walked away.
“You want us to come with you?” Sammy asked.
“No, you guys already took a beating last night. I guess it’s my turn,” she said and got up.
“I hope that it’s nothing bad,” I said.
“We just have to wait and see.” Blake stroked my back softly. When the bell rang, we left the cafeteria hand in hand and walked into Professor Pheizers’ class for Bonds and Dents.
I struggled to shake off the events of last night.
My muscles still felt like knots as we sat down for lunch. Today was hard again. My spells worked now, but they have a different effect if you don’t stress out certain words. Things I still had to learn as I clearly didn’t have a vast grip on it yet.
Lucian and Sammy spoke to Becky at one of the outside tables.
“Oh, crap.”
“I’ll grab you something to eat. Go find out if she is okay,” Blake said.
“Thanks.” Our paths split, and I rushed toward the table.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Lu’s voice reached my ears as I neared.
“What happened? What did he say?” I plunged down next to Sammy. Becky tried to tell me, but she stuttered too much and then began bawling again, as if somebody had died.
“The viden told Master Longwei about a foretelling. It’s about George. She told him that lightning would strike his Dragonian,” Lucian said as he looked at me the way Blake looked at me whenever there was a secret involved.
It was because I had told them last night about that foretelling.
“She thinks it’s you?” I asked, not to give it away that the two of us already knew. It wasn’t like we’d left her in the dark. I told her what Blake had said, why George treated her this way.
She nodded while blowing her nose into a hanky.
“They’re going to force me to claim George.” The tears streamed down her face again.
“You are part of a foretelling. It’s supposed to be a good thing here.”
“One that means absolutely nothing. I don’t know why I can’t refuse,” she yelled.
“Because of what it is,” Lucian replied.
“George is your Dent, Becky. It was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” I said.
“Three Dents?” Sammy asked.
“Me and George?” Becky yelped and fell into her arms. A short buzzing sound emanating from her made us all stare.
“Welcome to the clan,” Lucian tried, but Becky only cried harder.
“Calm down, girl,” Sammy said, almost stroking her arm, but yanking her hand away just in time. “You should embrace this. Besides, he isn’t that bad looking.”
“That’s the absolute worst thing you’ve ever said to me. I’m not shallow!”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Sammy said. “Maybe George will change.”
“He’s a freaking Moon-Bolt. They don’t change.” She looked at the sky. “Kill me now, please.”
“Calm down. I know it’s hard to see the silver lining on this one, but maybe Sammy’s right. He could change,” Lucian said.
“Oh, like you and Tabitha. How long has it been, Lu? You are still nowhere.”
“What are you so worried about, anyway? That it’s George, or that he is a Moon-Bolt?” he asked.
“That he’s a dickhead.”
“My brother was a huge dickhead and look at him now.”
“Oh, thank you so much for that.” Blake appeared with two trays, and Lu laughed at Sammy.
“I didn’t mean it like that. No, I do. You were a huge dickhead.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “It’s not the end of the world, and you rock. That dragon can count his lucky stars to have you as his Dragonian.”
“Aw. I wish I could hug you. You are the best BFs a girl could ask for.” Becky snorted, then wiped her eyes.
Blake sat down next to me. “George?”
“The worst ever.”
“Easy, he has been one of my friends for the past four years. He’s not that bad.”
“Maybe not to you, but you didn’t see how he treats me.”
“Because of what you are to him.”
She grunted. “He knows.”
“Yeah, I’ve told him so many times that he’s an idiot. Still, you are part of us. Welcome to—”
I covered his lips and elicited a few laughs as Blake stopped and looked at me.
“Do you really electrify people if they come close?” Lucian asked, pretending to poke her.
Becky giggled.
“That’s so wicked,” he said and launched into how she could easily claim George with her lightning. With some extra training, she could seriously claim him on the first try.
She looked at Blake.
“Don’t look at me. I am a dragon and his friend. Hee would see it as a monumental betrayal.”
The bell rang again, ending all our fun. I couldn’t stop thinking about why we would need three Dents.
“Stop sulking.” Blake bumped me softly. “It will make sense in no time.”
How the heck did he know I was thinking about that?
By the end of the day, George had finally received the bad news. The rumors that hung around the hallways were that he was highly pissed.
One even mentioned how he’d ended up zapping the piece of paper to ash that Master Longwei had given him with some formalities that he must fill in.
Another said that one statue was missing an ear.
Poor statues. I hoped it wasn’t one of the dragon statues.
I wanted to run away when he stormed at Becky, but Blake was right behind me and I sort of smashed into him. At least he was in tune with me and pushed me behind him.
“Crap,” Blake said.
George stopped inches from Becky’s face. “You just stay away from me.”
Blake took a step toward Becky. She pushed George away, hard. Electricity passed between them. Not one of them flinched.
Blake retreated and pushed me tighter to his back.
“You think I wanted this?” Becky yelled. “I would rather spend my life with a colony of wyverns before claiming you.”
He huffed with a sideways smile, accepting her challenge. “At least you know where you stand.”
“As if. Let me rephrase. I would rather die than have you around me!” she yelled, standing inches away from his face.
My eyebrows raised. You go, girl.
George grunted, bared his teeth, and raced off, cussing.
Becky turned around and growled furiously. “He’s such an asshole. Why did I have to be struck by lightning? I would even claim a Night Villain over George Mills!”
“It’s going to be okay. In a couple of days, he won’t be such an arrogant bastard,” Sammy said, but it didn’t seem right without the hug.
“High five.” Blake held up his hand, and she smiled. “Are you going to leave me hanging?”
“Electricity hasn’t disappeared unless you want to sit on your ass.”
He took his hand down fast, making us laugh.
We split paths with Blake as we rushed up to our room.
“Lu is right. I need to train.”
“I can give you a few pointers.”
She gave me a skeptical look.
“Hey, I was actually ready to claim Blake. He just submitted.”
“Is it true that Micha Le Clerk trained you?”
I nodded.
“Then yes. I really need to claim that ass the first try. I don’t want to see his smugness if I fail.”
“That is the spirit. I really need to train too. Apart from Art of War, I don’t train as much as I want to anymore.”
“Cool, so when do we start?”
“Did Master Longwei give you a date when you are going to have to claim him?”
“Next week Thursday.”
“Wow, you only have a week.”
“I have an advantage, lightning.”
“Still, you just started learning how to fight.”
“Yeah, that is not the way things work here.”
“You know what? You’ll be ready. Even if we have to train three times a day. It’s just a week, so the way Micha has told me, give it your all and you’ll walk away with your dragon. I’ll ask Lu if we can use his simulator on the weekend so that you can get more or less a feel for what is waiting for you on Thursday.”
“His simulator?”
I told Becky about Lucian’s simulator. I’d used it many times facing Blake’s dragon form, and it felt so real. I could actually see some excitement on Becky’s face.
“You mean we would go to the palace?”
“Oh, stop, it’s not like you were never at the palace before,” Sammy scolded Becky.
“Only with formal functions that my mom got invited to, not visiting the prince of Tith, Sam.”
“Your mom gets invited to these formal functions?”
“Yes, my dad had a very important part in your father’s fleet that always required them at functions. He even had his own little trading card.”
“Trading cards?” Why was this the first time I’d heard about trading cards?
“Oh, I’m sure you will get one too,” Sammy said.
“What?”
“My brother has one.”
“A trading card?”
“Yes,” both of them said in unison.
Laughter pushed through my lips just thinking about it.
“To get back to your question, the tradition never stopped. They kept inviting my mom to functions, and she is quite a pillar in the community. She donates a lot of money to the queen’s charities.”
“What does your mom do?”
“She is a sculptor, way ahead of her time, and I don’t always understand what her sculptures are saying as we have a fish with legs doing the can-can as a water feature in our yard.”
We barked out our laughter. I could only imagine what that must look like.
A fish doing the can-can with human legs.
