Cave of Nightmares (22 page)

His heart leapt as he did the mental math. Seven wasn’t a bad number at all, especially out of their first challenge. They wouldn’t be at the bottom of the ranking
at least.

Master Sark started to argue
but Asher pretended to have lost the ability to speak Junirian, and eventually Master Willow snapped at them both to shut up and said that the points would stand as assigned.

Th
ey were finally permitted to go, and Hayden nearly sprinted from the room before the Masters could change their minds, meeting up with the others out in the hallway as they walked towards the main staircase.

“Does it always go like that?”
Zane asked Tucker, clearly not relishing another meeting like that in the future.

“It’s usually not that heated, but otherwise yes.” He shrugged. “Sark and Asher have always hated each other, and it looks like you’ve b
een dragged into it now as well,” he said to Hayden.

“Because I’m my father’s son or because I’m terrible at Powders?”

“Both, I imagine.”

Tess changed the subject. “But seven is a pretty good score right?
Especially for the first time.”

Tucker brightened. “Yeah, it’s not bad at all. I expect we’ll be near the top of the rankings for now. They almost never award perfect tens, and you’ve got to be really outstanding even to get a nine.” He stopped at the third-year landing. “Well, good job everyone
; I’ll see you all at practice on Lenthin.”

The rest of them continued up the stairs to the second-year floor, saying goodnight to Tess as she turned in at one of the first doors and they continued on to their own room.

“Well, I know Sark wants to see you kicked out and all, but awesome prism-work back there,” Zane grinned at him. “I’m sure it’ll be all over school by tomorrow.”

Hayden raised an eyebrow.

“How? No one was there but us and the Masters.”

“Oh, things like this always have a way of getting around, just you wait. Oliver’s going to explode whe
n he finds out you can already compound prisms.” He laughed at the thought, and Hayden couldn’t help but smile as he followed him into the dormitory, where he found Bonk chewing on his bed sheets.

He pulle
d off his circlet and his Focus-correctors and set them on his desk, climbing into bed fully-clothed and scooting Bonk over. He didn’t remember anything after lying down and closing his eyes.

10

Family Day

Zane’s prediction turned out to be accurate. By lunchtime on Gerin the entire school seemed to know about his sojourn in the lake, though Hayden still had no idea how word got out.

He had been hugely relieved to see their team’s position on the ranking board when it was updated that night. They were currently tied for fifth place
for their age group, along with three other teams of third-years. Tucker assured them that the scores would spread out as they completed more challenges, but for now Hayden was just happy to wipe the smug look off of Lorn Trout’s face for a few weeks.

He still felt a bit a
wkward around the Masters after his emotional outburst during scoring, especially Sark, who seemed determined to hate him no matter what he did. True, Hayden had made absolutely no improvement in Powders class at all, much to the delight of the classmates who thought he was a power-hungry maniac like his father, but it wasn’t from lack of effort. He just seemed destined to fail at the subject, no matter how hard he tried.

Over the next
several weeks he continued to make steady progress in his other subjects, despite his shortcomings in Powders. He even enjoyed some of them, Wands especially, and had learned how to cast both Repair and Break. He also finally managed to summon a paperclip successfully in Conjury without it turning to mush or rusting, and passed an exam in Elixirs where he had to match a list of twenty different plants to their primary function in mixtures.

Of course
he was still most comfortable in Prisms, and Master Asher continued to push them heavily on theory, making them draw intricate diagrams of major and minor alignments that made his classmates grumble about spending hours on homework every night. Hayden didn’t tell them that it never took him more than forty-five minutes.

He ha
d to replenish his spent prisms, as their next team challenge was in a few days and his first two had been entirely consumed in the lake. He had been saving the unpleasant visit to Pounds of Prisms until the last minute since he dreaded facing the owner of the shop. As expected, the man was as cold and unpleasant as he’d been the first time, perhaps even more so, now that he’d heard of what Hayden could do with level-one prisms.

All in all
though he was enjoying school and was eager to learn all that he could, if only to spite the people who wanted to see him fail. He was sitting up in bed on the morning of Serin, reading his Prisms textbook, when Zane came in and shut the door behind him.

“Where ha
ve you been?” Hayden greeted his friend, glancing around at all the empty beds. “I haven’t seen you or the others since I woke up.”

Zane
gave him a strange look.

“It’s the first of the month.”

“So?” Hayden raised an eyebrow. “Are we supposed to be doing something on the first that no one told me about?”

Zane
looked slightly uncomfortable when he answered.

“No, it’s just…the first is always family day. We’re gone for so much of the year that we’re allowed
visitors at the beginning of each month. I saw Kayce’s mother eating breakfast with him earlier, and Conner’s parents probably came to see him too.”

“Oh,” Hayden said softly, his
stomach fluttering unpleasantly. He now knew why his friend looked so uncomfortable.

I have no family. No one
came to see me.

“I just came up to get Felix
because my sister wants to play with him,” Zane continued awkwardly, leaning over his bed and jostling the fox until it woke up.

“You have a sister?” He had known
Zane for over a month now and the subject of his family had somehow never come up before.

“Five of them, unfortunately.”
He made a face. “I’m the baby of the family, and only my oldest sister has any magical abilities like me. She and the next youngest, Maybelle, came to see me. They take it in turns, you see, because there’s no sense in all five of them coming at once, and my parents have jobs that don’t often let them away…” he seemed to realize he was rambling and cut himself off abruptly.

“Oh, well have fun with your sisters then.” Hayden hitched a smile on his face that he didn’t feel, trying to look unaffected. “
I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Yeah, sure thing.”
Zane looked relieved to be let off the hook. “Don’t get me wrong, I want you to meet them and everything…I just think I’d better give them some time to get used to the idea of you and ask questions first, you know…to avoid any awkwardness later.”

Hayden nodded, wishing (for the millionth time) that he was the son of anyone in the
Nine Lands other than Aleric Frost.

“Sure, I get it,” h
e tried to sound nonchalant. “I’d better get back to my reading. Have fun.” He held up the textbook and focused his eyes on the page, though he didn’t take in a word of the paragraph in front of him.

Zane
collected Felix and left the dormitory, shutting the door gently behind him. Hayden sighed and set the book down in his lap, losing his enthusiasm for reading about prisms quite abruptly.

He had been an orphan for two years now, and a pariah, but sometimes the overwhelming sense of loneliness hit him like a ton of bricks when he wasn’t expecting it
no matter how much time passed. The knowledge that everyone else in Mizzenwald was enjoying the day with their families—who had traveled who-knows-how-far just to see them for one day—was heartbreaking, because there was no one who would ever come for him.

Anna might have, if the orphanage gave her any time off.

No, he remembered that the nice young caretaker was hoping to be married soon and had been funneling all of her free time into organizing her wedding. She would be too busy for him even if she wasn’t working.

She’s probably already forgotten all about me.

He tried to read for a while longer but eventually gave up on the wasted effort and climbed out of bed, changing into a long-sleeved shirt that would cover his Focus-correctors, which he was supposed to wear at all times when he wasn’t sleeping. He left his belt in the dormitory, not wanting to draw attention to himself by carrying prisms around.

He examined
his reflection in the mirror. The person staring back at him looked unremarkable: the same brown hair as anyone else, with light green eyes. He’d always received mixed reviews on whether or not he resembled his father in appearance, but never having seen the man, there was little he could do to gauge the accuracy of the claims or do anything to lessen the effect.

His stomach grumbled loudly, stirring Bonk from his slumber.

“Do you want to go outside? I’m going to get something to eat and then walk around the grounds for a bit,” Hayden informed him, and the dragon beat his wings and flew over to him, occupying his preferred perch on Hayden’s shoulder.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He
entered the hallway and tread the familiar path back to the main stairwell that led downstairs, avoiding the common area because it was full of his classmates and their visitors.

He could hear the increased
level of noise on the ground floor while he descended the stairs, passing by clusters of families who seemed to be touring the school with their children. They ignored Hayden as he went by, which he preferred to the alternative, though a girl no older than five pointed at his retreating figure and said, “Look Mama, that boy has a dragon on his shoulder!”

Hayden smiled at her excited tone, noting that Bonk was being unusually still and poised right now, as though aware of the attention and determined to impress.

The dining hall was unusually full this morning, with classmates and their families packed around the tables of food. Hayden saw Tamon trying to persuade his boa constrictor to release his little brother, who was punching the snake’s coiled body where it wrapped around his middle.

Since there was no room to sit by
himself and he didn’t want to impose his presence on other people’s families, Hayden grabbed a couple pieces of buttered toast and turned back around to go outside.

He had hoped
that the grounds would be mostly empty, thinking it would be a nice day to play ‘fetch’ with Bonk (though he still had to throw the red rubber mouse by hand), but that was a serious miscalculation on his part. Hundreds of people were outside, picnicking on the lawns with their visiting loved ones or simply enjoying the fresh air. A group of first-years were trying to get their familiars to go through the obstacle courses to show off for their families. One girl’s cat refused to come down from the top of the climbing wall.

For a minute Hayden stood in the courtyard like an idiot, looking around at them all, searching for anyone he knew while he t
ried to think of where to go next.

He didn’t see
Zane or Conner, but Oliver and Lorn Trout were showing off their magical abilities to a woman that he vaguely recognized. It took him a moment to realize that it was their mother, and that he had met her before, during his trial. She was dressed casually right now instead of wearing her golden robes, and looked much less imposing than usual.

Not
keen on being seen by anyone in the Trout family right now, Hayden turned his gaze away and continued looking around, becoming aware of the nearby groups pointing and whispering about him.

I should start charging
money to let people gawk at me; I’d be rich.

Frowning, he turned to the right and began walking with
out a clear destination in mind, just to get away from the prying eyes of others. He wasn’t paying attention to where he was going and nearly collided with a stout man with shoulder-length blond hair who looked instantly familiar, though he was sure he’d never met the man before.

“Oh, sorry,
wasn’t watching where I was—” the man took a more careful look at his features, and all the kindness vanished from his face. “Are you
his
boy?”

No need to ask who “he” was. There was only one person
that people talked about with that kind of loathing.

“I’m Hayden Frost,” he admitted, wondering what kind of trou
ble he was about to get into with someone he had never met before. It didn’t help that the man was built like a blacksmith and could probably crush his skull with one hand.

The man’s face colored angrily, splotches of red appearing o
n his cheeks and making him appear feverish.

“You stay away from my daughter or I’ll hunt yo
u down like a dog in the street,” he snapped unpleasantly, and Hayden took a step backwards, confused and alarmed.

“I don’t even know who your daughter is,” he insisted, wondering
if anyone would come to his aid if this man decided to attack him on the front lawns of Mizzenwald.

“I don’t know what you meant by picking her for your challenge group, but if you
dare
give her so much as an unkind look, I’ll—”

“Dad, stop it!” Tess came hurrying up to
them, her face blanched with horror.

This is
Tess’s father?
Hayden could suddenly see the resemblance, which explained why her father looked vaguely familiar at first sight.

“He hasn’t done anything wrong…
.I told you how he wouldn’t leave me behind during our first challenge,” she pleaded with him, tugging at her father’s sleeve in an effort to pull him away, but for all the good it did she might as well have been trying to pull the castle itself.

“I know wha
t blood runs in your veins,
boy;
don’t you ever forget that.” He clenched his fists, looking very close to attacking Hayden.

“I’m not my father,” Hayden insisted.

“I see him in your eyes, that same stubbornness and arrogance.” The man spat at the ground near his feet. “If you think I’m going to let my daughter go the same way as her poor mother…like father like son, eh, Frost?”

Hayden felt sick to his stomach. He had no idea that
Tess’s mother had a bad encounter with his father, and wondered if Tess secretly hated him for it and had simply been afraid of telling him all this time.

“I don’t know anything about that…” Hayden said truthfully, taking another
measured step backwards. Bonk shifted slightly on his shoulder, narrowing his eyes at the older man and flattening his ears as though preparing for a fight.

“
Dad,
please
, can we just go inside?” Tess was begging now, tears running down her cheeks. Other families were watching the display with unpleasant interest, probably eager for fresh gossip to spread about the horrible son of Aleric Frost.

Fortunately
Tess’s tears seemed to draw her father’s attention, or else Bonk had managed to look sufficiently frightening, because he gave Hayden another distrustful glare and then stalked past him with Tess on his heels.