Student Council

  “Tired?” inquired Ty with a chuckle as she made her way out of the Headmistress’s office to the student council office on the other end of the hallway, amusedly watching her physician hang his head and let out a long sigh.

  “Was tense in there,” he replied, walking in step with her.

  “Heh. Maybe it’s not time to loosen up, then.”

  It wasn’t often that she walked down this section of the floor. In place of typically unlocked classrooms were sealed administrative workrooms, leaving the only open door the student council room at the very end. Opposite that was a bright hallway overlooking the Tactician’s Courtyard that led to a sturdy door with a threatening and complicated-looking contraption at its center. Though unmarked, she knew it led to the special staff accommodations.

  “Who did you want to talk to?” Theo was the one to ask this time, craning his neck and walking on his toes to try to peek through the small windows on the impassable doors.

  Ty watched him curiously, feeling the weight in her chest lift ever so slightly at his lighthearted mischievousness. “Halle, but anyone will do.”

  “You wanted to apologize, right?” Turning back to Ty, he lowered himself and crossed his arms with a critical look on his face. “For something you can’t control.”

  Her neutral smile did not waver. “It’s better than nothing.”

  For the umpteenth time that day, Theo sighed. “You drive me crazy,” he muttered under his breath as Ty peeked into the sunny student council room.

  “Oh, hey,” announced a voice within.

  The only other person in the room, leaning back in a regular wooden chair with their feet propped up on the back windows, turned their head as well. “Oh, hey.”

  Ty blinked. “Hey,” she echoed, staring at the twins staring back at her. “Is it only you two today?”

  “Did we have a mission today?” whispered Seth loudly to Pia, completely breezing past Ty’s question.

  Pia turned back to Seth, her voice calm and without judgment. “No. There’s class tomorrow.”

  Seth turned back to watching the sky outside. “Well, sometimes there are emergency ones.”

  “If I knew we had a mission, why would I be sitting here with you in the first place?”

  “True, you enjoy going on missions.”

  The sister turned back to the two at the door. “So, what do you want?”

  “Hey, hey, you can be nicer than that.”

  “What can we do for you?” revised Pia without a second’s pause.

  “Come in,” added Seth with a sloppy wave.

  With slight hesitation, Ty walked inside just enough so that she and Theo weren’t blocking the door. Small study desks, chairs like the one Seth was on, plush sofas, and Pia’s large office desk covered the expanse between them. “I’m not staying long. I spoke with Nate the other day. I wanted to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” the twins spoke in unison, incredulously.

  Their shock was not lost on her. “I don’t…completely understand everything, and I know it’s probably not enough to apologize, but I know that everyone from the student council has been put through—”

  “I’m going to have to cut you off,” the older twin interjected, raising her hand so that her palm was facing the tactician’s direction. “You don’t need to apologize to us.”

  At a loss, Ty slowly turned to the thin-lipped, wide-eyed, ‘I told you so’-faced Theo.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said earlier?” chided Seth, rocking back and forth on the back legs of his chair. “Pia enjoys missions. The only thing you and the Headmistress have given her is time to hone her blade.”

  “You enjoy it just as much as I do,” snapped his sister.

  Seth conceded easily. “For different reasons.”

  “If you want to say it, just say it.”

  “What, did you think your dear little brother was going to call you bloodthirsty?”

  “Like you weren’t.”

  “Okay, maybe there’s a sliver of you that isn’t a monster…”

  “And there’s the second one.”

  “Monster?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You know, I wonder if calling you one would make me one too.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re the same, through and through.”

  “Wuh…hey, no we’re not!”

  “Right.”

  Awkwardly spectating the twins’ tête-à-tête, Ty stood silently with her partner as if they weren’t there at all.

  It seems like you won’t get what you want.

  Monsters are still monsters even if they have a reason.

  Saying something doesn’t make it so.

  “Hey,” she blurted to silence the voices. “Do you know where Halle is?”

  Having forgotten they had company, both seniors jumped—Seth, losing his balance, crashed to the floor with a loud clang and thud, followed by an agonizing groan that pierced the silence.

  “We’ll get her,” Pia said with finality in her voice as she reached for her bag and got up.

  “Damn that hurt,” Seth continued to moan as he slowly got up from the floor, a hand on his back as he stared daggers at the chair that had betrayed his balance.

  “Give it a good kick, maybe it’ll make you feel better,” chimed Pia emotionlessly as she stood at the end of the desk, waiting for him to get out of her way.

  To everyone’s utter surprise, Seth stepped back a step or two before winding up his right leg. Pia openly mumbled to herself as her obstinate brother unleashed his kick.

  A horrible wail escaped Seth as he doubled over in even more pain, collapsing onto the ground as everyone turned to look at the chair.

  It hadn’t moved.

  “See? We’re both monsters. Let’s go.”

  Seth, letting out another defeated groan, got up at a snail’s pace, shuffling lamely and supporting himself with the surrounding desks while Pia made her way over to the entrance swiftly.

  Searching for a reason for her actions—any at all—Ty locked eyes with Pia’s stony, gray ones before she left, but found herself unable to pierce through them.

  “Scary,” whispered Theo, watching them leave.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Ty looked down the hallway with him. “Do you think I’m in way over my head with all this?”

  “Definitely.”

  “But I don’t want to leave things like this. Especially if this is the last time.”

  “How many ‘last time’s do you think they’ve had?”

  Fifteen times, Ty. We should have just given up from the start; it would have saved us decades of pain and suffering.

  And, as if the memory had conjured her, Halle began making her way down the hall. She had on a combat dress—a long-sleeved, deep red dress that hugged her chest and arms and was barely long enough to cover her knees—brown gloves, black tights, and combat boots. The only thing missing was the cape.

  “I heard you were looking for me,” she called from the end of the hall as she approached, taking off her gloves one by one. “Sorry for not being here earlier; you’re straying from the path, so time here is currently uncharted territory. Try not to create any trouble if you can resist it.” Then, shoving her gloves into a pocket, she flashed Theo a tepid smile, the first student council member that day to acknowledge his presence. “That applies to you too, Theo.”

  “Y-yes,” replied Theo a bit shakily, the surprise clear in his eyes.

  “Well, come in. I’ve just got to wash up a bit, but I’m all ears,” the fifth-year healer prodded as she walked past the two straight to the back of the student council room, where there was a counter and sink.

  Hesitantly, they walked over to a couch and sat down while Halle tied her hair up with a thick elastic from her wrist and turned on the water from the reservoir above the sink. “Go ahead,” she insisted, taking a small translucent film from her pack to run under the water with her hands.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” whispered Ty from the couch, uncharacteristically unsettled by the fact that Halle, who already disliked her in the first place, was presently equipped with her combat gear and what looked like two stacked tomes on her left book holster and another on her right. If she had to guess, it would be a pocket tome and secondary tome on her left, and her main one on the right. She must have just come from a training exercise or an actual mission.

  “Come on,” Theo mumbled dryly, “you’re changing your mind now?”

  Fighting the fear, Ty eyed the healer, who worked up a lather in her hands before bringing it up to wash her face. “I…spoke to Nate the other day.”

  If Halle heard it, she did not show it, so she forged on. “I wanted to apologize. I know it fixes nothing, and I can’t right the past, but I can see now how unfair it is, the position you and the rest of the student council have been put in because of me.”

  The water stopped, and Halle pulled a cloth out of her dress pocket. She wiped her face and hands and then turned around. “Anything else?”

  Had Ty not already been sweating bullets, she would have said something, but her nerves were properly rattled at her senior’s lackadaisical response. Even the Headmistress didn’t scare her as much as Halle did.

  Observing the fidgety Ty intently, Halle tucked the cloth back into her pocket and untied the elastic from her hair. As she slipped it onto her wrist, she asked again, this time with the severity that Ty was accustomed to. “Anything else?”

  “He…he told me about his tactician.”

  Halle was practically beaming as she took a seat on a desk and crossed her legs, something dangerous and malicious plain to see in her eyes. “Oh yeah? Tell me about her.”

  Treading on dangerous ground, the tactician did the only thing she could think of that wouldn’t trigger an outburst.

  “No,” she dared to utter.

  “No?” The question was a challenge, and some of the maliciousness seemed to fade.

  “I’m here to apologize. I won’t talk about something I don’t fully understand.”

  With a slightly impressed look on her face, Halle relaxed and started to undo her harness. “I’m sure the twins must have said it already, but apologizing changes nothing. All we need is for you to do your job.”

  Ty nodded.

  Her harness fell onto the desk with a clatter, and Halle leaned back, her long hair practically spilling off the desk as she eyed the two students coolly. “It happened once—before he broke himself for the Headmistress—Nate telling you about her. Only once. But it was in the library, and you asked me about it later like we were friends. You spoke to me as if you understood her.”

  Halle turned her head to the windows to the Tactician’s Courtyard. “Nathaniel idealizes her. He idealizes her because she died for him during their final exam when she should have lived, and he should have died. None of this would have happened if she had lived. None of us would be here.”

  The confusion on Ty’s face must have been palpable, because after a quick glance in her direction, Halle sighed with a dreamy smile on her face, her voice angelic as always. “I don’t just dislike you. I dislike everyone here. Everything about MATS, everything the Academy stands for, every professor, every class. Do you know the main purpose of this school? It breeds killers. It perpetuates the violence it claims to oppose, fight to end the fighting as if it’s not one of the instigators. Give the students a goal, call it ‘noble’ and ‘a just cause,’ give them an enemy to collectively despise. Then throw them into the organization, give them a specialized job that only people of their training can do, and watch them protect it until the day they die because that’s all they’ve ever known. That’s all they think they’re good for.” She kicked her feet. “She and I were going to burn this place down after she graduated. That’s why I’m still here, why I’m still playing the Headmistress’s game. I’m going to fulfill her wish for her. I’m not afraid of dying anymore. I’m not afraid of killing anymore. I’ve died in more than half the Circles, and I’ve sent off more dead bodies than I can count. What I’m afraid of is leaving a ruined world for her to come back to. A loveless, selfish world.”

  She fell silent, perfectly motionless.

  “So what was it that Nate saw?” Ty asked, looking out into the same sky, remembering the purple flowers in the Tactician’s Courtyard. His soft words.

  Halle uncrossed her legs and sat up, buckling back up her harness. “He was right about some things. She was always smiling. Eager to please. She saw the good in everyone, loved the world. And then she went on assignment. She saw how innocent lives were exchanged for mere numbers on a piece of paper. She saw how terrible the world was and lost all faith. She saw this place not as the haven for education and magic preservation it touted itself as, but as the cesspool of pestilence it truly was. I stood by her side, I loved her as I always did, and I watched her change into a completely different person until I, too, became just as bitter and resentful.

  “Nate—it’s funny. He always thinks that she saw only the good in him, but he can’t stop holding onto the shadow of herself that she tried so desperately to cling onto when all she could do was struggle to remain the shining beacon of light that her class expected her to be, the shining beacon of light that everyone saw in her that she could no longer see in herself. When all she could think about was not protecting the world she once believed was full of love but protecting the people wherein she found a spark of love remaining: her class, her class, her class. It was always her class. Until she was presented with a choice: to save herself, one who had committed grave, unforgivable sins and was bereft of love, or to save a boy who hated the world with all his heart, but who she believed contained a fountain of that which she could no longer find in the world.”

  Silence.

  “It was fate that we found each other, and it was fate that tore us apart. How ironic it is that fate made the reset point of all Circles your first year of school, four months after her death.”

  “…I’m sorry.”

  Halle’s reprimand this time was soft as she hopped off her seat, landing on the floor without a sound. “You’ve got to stop apologizing so much. If she were here, she’d have scolded you.” And then she gave Ty a tired look. Not of malice, not of sadness, but a heavy burden only she could carry. “Now go off and do something worthwhile with your time instead of playing the ‘sorry’ game.”

  Ty stood up and faced Halle. Her stoicism, her strength, and her resilience. There were no words she could think of that were worthy.

  Without wavering in the slightest, Halle chided warmly, “It’s alright. Off you go now, both of you. I’ve got practice to return to.”

  * * *

  “Last one,” whispered Theo softly, squeezing Ty’s hand.

  The infirmary had changed a lot.

  As their steps announced their presence in the large hall, they could see a few physicians tending to students in bed and a few walking around. Mumbles and whispers were mixed in with the sound of their steps and the sound of tools clattering onto metal trays. Spell candles adorned a corner of the infirmary, where the mosaics of the Graces were covered.

  “Hythe, Grace of the Wind. Severed,” began Theo.

  “Caspos, Grace of the Water; Lycea, Grace of the Land; Sephec, Grace of the Fire. Severed.”

  “That’s going to be a mouthful when you’re done.”

  She started grinning until she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “Two supplements every four hours, and a combination of Re-strata and Revit before bed. Keep it up for three days, and if it doesn’t get better, come back. Got it?”

  “Got it, Miss Chel.”

  Just as the novice student rushed away, and the senior physician was about to check up on another patient, she locked eyes with the two who had been waiting for her.

  “Oh?” she blinked, her expression softening before examining physician Theo from head to toe. “You’re not—”

  “No,” immediately protested Theo with a hurtful look on his face. “No.”

  Chel pushed up her glasses, and her expression turned serious. “Did you two hear about the book?”

  Ty’s eyes widened. “What?”

  The physician’s eyes turned to the tactician, as if she was supposed to know. “The book I let you read. The one in the study room. It’s gone.”

  “Someone took it?” The moment the words left her mouth, she knew it was no mere coincidence that she was going to show it to Theo later that same day to confirm that the writing was Em’s. “How…how did that happen?”

  Chel gave Theo a sidelong glance. “Does Theo know anything about it? It belonged to him, after all. Maybe he let something slip to his teacher?”

  Ty shook her head. “He’s been with me the entire time, and he has no reason to take the book,” she maintained with absolute certainty.

  Her turn came to be examined by the attending physician. “Well then, tactician, how about you?”

  Oh dear.

  Oh dear. Oh dear.

  Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.

  “Oh, Graces,” groaned Ty as she winced, briefly clutching her head with her free hand while the cacophonous echo of ‘Oh dears’ bounced around in her head. “I think—I think I know.”

  Much to her surprise, however, Chel merely shrugged. “Whatever. I’m peeved that I lost it, but I’ve copied its entire contents down already. That’s all that I really care about. Anyway, if you two see it, please return it to me.”

  Concluding the conversation without a farewell, she rushed to check up on another patient, leaving the two stranded in the middle of the infirmary floor.

  “Guess that’s one thing we won’t have to do.”

  “…Theo, you still hear those voices, right?”

  “Oh. Yes, I do.”

  Silence.

  “…Ty?”

  “I-I have to do a Spell Cleanse on you,” Ty sputtered, dragging the bewildered—but compliant—Theo out of the infirmary.