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

She placed her hands on her hips but emitted no sound. Normally, she would be chattering away. The nymph was being decidedly quiet. Like she was hiding. And that’s exactly what I realised it was. She was trying to hide. They all were.

“What are you hiding from?” I asked her. She glanced back at me. Her focus didn’t waver. “Me?” The notion was incredulous. “Why would you be hiding from me?”

I was pretty sure that two of them combined could kick my butt. Heck, one of them was sometimes too much for me. For the first time since I’d met her, there was reticence in her eyes.

“Will you just tell me what’s going on?”

I stamped my foot. The Arcana tree shivered. It wasn’t just the nymphs. The whole Grove seemed to be on edge. “I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s changed?”

I tried to sift through all of the things that could have brought about this sudden turn of events. The only thing I could think of was my encounter with the Soul Sisterhood. But how did that have anything to do with the Grove. Unless….

“Do you think I’m one of them?”

Her face turned a greenish shade. I didn’t know how I knew but right then, I sensed she was afraid. The whole Grove was afraid of me. When I’d first stumbled upon this place, I’d broken through their barrier easily enough that they must have believed me to be an especially powerful hedge witch. They could live with a mortal who could be used to help them maintain the Grove. But a mortal who might be associated with the assassins born to destroy their race? That might be asking a bit much.

And in the back of my mind, I was still trying to deny it. “All low-magic users can sense the Sisterhood,” I told her. “You knew about that well before what happened on the weekend.”

She shook her head, hovering in the air but too still for my liking. She curled her hand into a fist and tapped it against her chest first and then her forehead. She made a gesture that looked like she was tearing something apart with her hands. And then she placed an image of Kai into my head.

It was the soul thing that had them running scared. Because that was the unique power of the Sisterhood. That was what gave them their name. And I had been able to counter their attempts with my blood magic. Which either made me one of them, or something else equally frightening.

I exhaled slowly. I thought I had gotten over the worst of this ambiguity about where my power originated. It had been all right knowing that my darker magic was a gift from Azrael. Evidently, there were still things I could do that were completely outside the realm of normal magic. If this was the reaction I was getting from the nymphs, who weren’t afraid of anything, I could only imagine the reaction I would get from the other students.

“Would it make you feel better if I didn’t come anymore?” I asked. The notion had a stabbing pain erupting in my chest. As much as I complained about it, the Grove offered me the opportunity to be with nature outside of my Herbology classes. It was the one place where I felt closest to my nanna.

I could always go to the Fae forest, but that place had always felt otherworldly to me. Like the plants and trees there weren’t entirely natural. At least not natural in the sense of the Earth dimension. They had plants in there that we definitely didn’t have in this realm before they arrived. Plus, everything was always so clean and lush. It just wasn’t right.

Purple didn’t respond. She hung her head and turned as though she was going to just slip away. I blinked and she was gone.

It was like a light had extinguished from the Grove. I stood there alone feeling like somebody had kicked me in the chest. With heavy feet, I put away the watering can and left. That was the start of what would be a day that I would sooner forget. Cassie, Luther, and Charles were still speaking to me, but many of the other students glanced sidelong at me like I was going to pounce on them when they weren’t alert.

At lunchtime, I ate with Sophie and Diana. Everybody else acted as though I didn’t exist. For two days it was like I was a ghost drifting through the halls. The hazing stopped at least, and the petition not to allow low-magic users to be part of the Council disappeared. As I walked down the halls, what I saw in the eyes of those around me as they darted furtively around was fear. They were as terrified as the nymphs were that I was part of the Sisterhood.

My mood hit rock bottom when I was summoned to Jacqueline’s office during lunchtime on the third day.

Neither of us smiled as I entered her office and closed the door behind me. “Take a seat, Lex,” she said. She wore her navy-blue pin-striped pants suit today. Her heels were strappy golden ones to match the gold bracelets on her wrist. Her hair was growing out and she had it in loose waves.

“I can imagine you’ve been having a grim time these past few days,” she said. She sat back in her armchair as I sat down.

“You mean the rumours and the side eyes I’ve been getting about possibly being part of the Soul Sisterhood?”

This time, she did smile a little. “At least I can always count on you to be frank.”

“Let me guess, the board are worried that I pose a threat to the school and they want me out.”

It would have sounded pretty tough if my voice hadn’t caught at the end. Jacqueline folded her hands in front of her.

“On the contrary,” she said. “I don’t know how I feel about it as