Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2), Lan Chan [readict TXT] 📗

When I opened my eyes, my body keeled over. The world turned upside down. I gasped, my hands thrown out in front of me so that I wouldn’t pass out.

“What’s happening?” I whispered. My head throbbed.

“You’re overexerted,” Basil said. He tried to brush the hair from my face.

The well of energy inside me flickered. I was alarmed to find the pool of blue magic was less than a sliver over the surface of the darkness. The black beneath it churned. It swelled as though it might break the surface to stop me from passing out. Before that happened, the purple nymph shoved a sweet-smelling Arcana fruit in front of my face. I didn’t even wait to bite down. In two seconds flat I’d eaten half the fruit.

My head cleared almost immediately. This stuff was potent. My stomach growled but the sick feeling like I was going to hurl and collapse slowly ebbed away.

“This doesn’t count as the Arcana fruit that I’m taking,” I said.

I could tell the nymphs wanted to argue the point. Instead of waiting, I marched over to the tree and grabbed the fruit closest to me. I’d played the game of looking for the best fruit while I was watering it, but each and every single one of them was uniform.

“Pleasure doing business with you!”

I stowed it away under my shirt. Basil and I got out of there before they decided the deal wasn’t a fair trade. Sophie’s boss Bruno let me have some wax paper from the kitchens. I used that to wrap the fruit into a little ball.

Ha! Take that. No money but the perfect gift. Say what you will but I felt very proud of my resourcefulness at the moment. My stomach grumbled and I returned to the hall to find Sophie and the others.

19

Sophie glanced at my outfit up and down. I could tell by the way her eyes darted that she didn’t think it was up to scratch. She wore a textured black skater dress with a crimson belt and matching ballet flats.

“What?” I said.

“It’s a party. You can’t just show up in your ratty gardening jeans and a T-shirt.”

“But I thought we were going to play Shadow Ball.” I had no idea what that was except it was some kind of supernatural version of paintball or something equally violent.

“You do not want to get caught in a Shadow Ball tournament with shifters. They’re brutal. Don’t even think about it.”

I groaned. “Then what are we going to do then? And don’t say stand around talking and dancing.”

I couldn’t think of anything more painful. Also, it seemed kind of sad to be doing that with thirteen-year-olds.

“What’s wrong with just hanging out? If Max is coming, then you’d bet your ass there are going to be as many kids our age there as there will be Charles’s friends.”

That had been the reason why I’d invited Diana too. I was not going to walk in on some party where Sophie and I were outnumbered by obnoxious upperclassmen.

“This is getting worse and worse.”

She grinned. “Wait until you get invited to your first overage party.”

“Fat chance of that happening.” She hadn’t even been invited to one of those yet.

“You don’t know! We got invited to this party. Who says we can’t be invited to others?”

“I’ll believe it when it happens.”

Diana arrived shortly after. I smiled at Sophie smugly when I saw Diana’s outfit of tight-fitting cargo pants and a singlet that showed off her buff arms. “Not you too,” Sophie said.

“You better believe if there’s a Shadow Ball tournament that I’m going to be playing.” She looked me up and down. “You probably shouldn’t go near it, Blue.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re really rough and your aim is not that great. You’ll probably die.” I was going to protest but she raised a brow at me. “Remember last week in class when we were working on crossbows and you almost shot Trey?”

“That was a one-off.”

It wasn’t actually. My aim had improved since the beginning, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. The problem was that there was always so much going on with the checking of the notch and then making sure of the direction of the wind. I got all confused and it resulted in arrows going all over the place.

I scowled. “Alright, fine. But if it looks like fun I’m going to play anyway.”

While I changed into a pair of black jeans and an eggshell-blue blouse with little tulips on the cuffs, Diana cleared her throat. “So, I bumped into Brigid on the way here. She was her usual charming self. So I let it slip that we were on our way to Charles’s birthday. You should have seen the look on her face!”

She slapped her knee and laughed. “Oh brother,” I said. “Why does she even care? It’s not like she’d want to go.”

“She wants be anywhere Kai is at,” Sophie said. “Since Astrid started guarding the Academy, she doesn’t know which of the two of you she hates more.” I kind of loved Astrid these days. Picking on me was fair game, but Astrid did not take shit from Brigid. She just looked her up and down and shook her head like she was disappointed. If looks could kill, Astrid would be a corpse. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Let’s get out of here before she tries something,” I said.

Max and Charles’s dad had arranged for special portals to be opened on the portal field. I was still a little bit in love with him based purely on the fact that he looked like he could bench press a semi-trailer. Diana nudged me when we got to the field and Mr. Thompson was there ushering all the kids through. She was wide-eyed.

“I know,” I hissed at her. We burst into a fit of giggles.

“What’s so funny?” Max said from behind us. Sophie stiffened beside me. But Diana and I couldn’t stop giggling.

“Nothing,” I said. I wiped a tear from my eye. Diana