Princess of Ruin

Chapter 8 - Strange Happenings

Aria

Why didn't I ask Emery to explain this to me? I wondered to myself as I stared at the test in front of me, tapping my pencil aimlessly against the desk. I really did hate math. The girl sitting in front of me turned around and glared daggers, clearly asking me to be quiet. I mouthed a quick apology and turned my gaze out the window next to me, gazing at the snow-covered campus instead of at my test. We'd had yet another snowstorm last night, and the frozen white powder came up to my hips now.

"You have thirty more minutes," the teacher, Mr. Anderson, called from the front of the classroom, where he was grading tests from another class. I glanced back down at my paper, feeling as though I were looking at a foreign language. I'd been feeling a bit out of it all morning, and if I combined that with my already-terrible math skills, I found myself royally screwed.

Sighing, I picked up my pencil again and began scribbling numbers on the page. This class counted towards my scholarship as well, and I couldn't afford to fail it. Apparently, Ekta's soldiers needed basic math to supplement their other skills. Fortunately for me, though, I was a third year, which meant that this was my last required math class. I honestly couldn't have been happier.

"Fifteen minutes," the teacher said again. As he spoke, I circled my answer to one of the problems, and a terribly loud bang resounded throughout the entire room. Everyone's heads snapped up in alarm. The sound was followed a moment later by another bang, then another, and then yet another.

"What's going on?" one student, Isabelle, said, all sense of the honor code forgotten.

"Were those gunshots?" another student who'd been in my class all year but whose name I could never remember asked. I was sitting up straight now, fully at attention, the test forgotten.

"Are we going to die?"

"Everyone, just stay calm," poor Mr. Anderson said, making motions with his hands in an attempt to quiet the students. "Just be quiet, and everything will be fine." The sounds from outside had stopped by now, and the only noise left was the sound of quickened breathing, light rustling, and the sounds of murmuring coming from neighboring classrooms. A few students were on their phones, either texting their families or friends in other classes to see if they knew what was going on.

"Is it the rebels?" Lucette whispered in a hushed tone. Mr. Anderson ignored her and turned his attention to me.

"Aria, dear, see if you can see anything out the window, will you?" I nodded and turned to the frosted glass as the teacher clicked the lock shut with his mind. Peering through, I at first saw nothing more than glistening snow, the surface occasionally broken with footsteps and dips where maintenance made a futile effort to clear off the paths. And then I saw it.

It was barely anything, and I probably wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't for the fact that I was looking for something out of place.

But there in the snow was undeniably a small splotch of blood. From up where I was sitting, in the top of the raked desk rows, it looked just like a dot. But it was most certainly there, and when I squinted just a bit, I caught sight of the footsteps leading away from that spot, off into the distance until I couldn't track them anymore.

"There's nothing," I said, pulling away. "I can't see anyone." Mr. Anderson visibly relaxed and then immediately looked rather confused, as though unsure of how to proceed with the class. My throat suddenly felt scratchy, and I coughed into the sleeve of my old knitted grey sweater that Mom had made for me five years ago.

My phone dinged from my backpack, the screen lighting up with an email from the headmaster. Campus secured. Classes have been cancelled, it read. Based on the joyous expressions of other students also looking at their phones, I guessed they'd received the message as well.

"So...does this mean we don't have to finish the test?" a girl asked hopefully, gesturing at the paper in front of her.

*

Ten minutes later, I was trudging through the snow towards the dining hall contentedly, scrolling through a text conversation between myself, Mikela, and Flynn. We'd just made plans to grab food and then hang out in our dorm for the rest of the day, seeing as we no longer had classes. I was especially delighted by the prospect, considering that I'd just gotten out of one of the worst math tests of my life.

I was also overjoyed that I didn't have to go to Ability Training that afternoon. Ms. Aiko had been planning on conducting our class that afternoon outdoors, her justification being that soldiers needed to be adept at resisting the elements. We all knew, though, that she was just practically impervious to cold and wanted everyone to know that.

I passed a small throng of students standing under a bare-branched tree as they discussed the gunshots that had given us the rest of the day off. I didn't know them and was too focused on the prospect of lunch and lounging to join in the conversation, but I did briefly wonder what those had been and why the headmaster had cleared the campus for travel so quickly. The last time something like this happened, back when I was a first year, we were all stuck in our classrooms for hours before they finally let us out, and there were still soldiers swarming the campus on high alert. Now, I only saw the usual security guards mulling around the campus.

Mood dampened slightly, I made my way into the dining hall and very nearly ran right into Mikela, who halted my feet before we could collide. "You ready to do this?" she asked with a grin, holding up a bag of chips in one hand and a bottle of chocolate milk in the other. I snatched an apple from the tray behind her before nodding.

"I'm trying to be healthy," I said in response to her odd look.

"Gods, you sound terrible. Are you feeling ok?" Mikela asked as we left and stepped back out into the snow. She levitated the snow, clearing us a nice, dry path back to the dorm, which I very much appreciated. My boots were getting holes, and I hadn't had the chance to tape them up recently.

"Fine, I think," I rasped, realizing all of a sudden just how scratchy my throat was. "Is Flynn upstairs already?"

"They texted me a few minutes ago and said they'd be there in a few minutes. Have you heard from Emery? I don't want to bother her too much if she's going to be home."

"Who cares what she thinks," I grumbled as we stepped into the nice warm lobby of our dorm, still annoyed about the whole incident in town yesterday. I had to raise my voice in order to be heard, as the room was filled with students watching television and chatting, clearly enjoying the free time and the respite from the freezing outdoors.

"You're upset about that incident still, huh?" Mikela asked me as we climbed the stairs. I found myself more winded than usual as I gasped for breath through my mouth, my nose clogged all of a sudden.

"She just left me, Mikela. She left me with her credit card, which I've yet to return because I haven't really seen her since then. She just had a freakout and then left, and she hasn't said a single thing about it since." I was very distressed about this.

"That was yesterday, Aria," Mikela said steadily. "You've got to give her time. She'll explain herself eventually."

"But still."

"We have a very mysterious roommate. You should have figured this out by now," Mikela chided as she swept a few stray braids over her shoulder and unlocked the door to our suite. "And stop being grumpy. You're starting to sound like Emery." I broke into a coughing fit all of a sudden, pitching forward. "You're coughing like her, too. I swear, that girl seems like she could be blown over by a stiff-"

"Mikela," I interrupted, gaze catching on something behind her. My friend whirled around to find Emery standing in the doorway to her bedroom, almost hunched over.

"Look who's here! How's it going, Em? You excited about our day off?" Mikela babbled, clearly trying to recover some of her dignity. The white-haired girl only stared back at her tiredly, and it was then that I noticed the massive bags under her eyes. She looked absolutely exhausted.

"Are you okay?" I asked, all irritation momentarily forgotten.

"Fine," she said, though she really didn't sound it. "I have an appointment to make with the headmaster, if you will excuse me." Without another word, she strode past us and out the door, limp more pronounced than usual.

"Like I said," Mikela commented. "She's a weirdo. Now go get some water for yourself while we wait for your twin. Don't want you to be hacking up a lung."

It wasn't until the middle of that night, when I was rummaging through the medicine cabinet in the dark in search of cough syrup to soothe my throat, that I noticed our first aid kit was missing.