The portal William refers to is the one in the basement and inside a closet. Talk about Narnia. Jake put the keycard in the slot to open the door and inside it is just a mirror with glowing edges that seems to bend anything around it. It's kind of similar to what Alexander does when opening a portal.
I look at Jake and we have a silent agreement to think about home and step into the mirror. There's a blinding light that crossed my eyes before I suddenly stepped onto the carpeted floor and suddenly the familiar air freshener in Jake's house surrounded me. That's when I knew I'm home.
"Ethan!" Jake immediately called. He kissed the top of my head before running upstairs. While I quickly sunk into the sofa and sighed. I never would've thought I'd be glad to be back in this house so soon, but here we are.
I heard two footsteps coming down the stairs and I'm so glad to see Ethan's face. Everything is suddenly as it should be. He sat beside me and hugged me tightly and I didn't mind it.
"We need to leave," Ethan said after releasing the hug and turned to look at Jake who sat next to him. "We can either leave the city, the country, the continent, let's just go somewhere they couldn't find you."
Jake faintly shook his head. "We can't."
"There must be something that we can do,"
"They kinda know how to portal anywhere, so there's no point in hiding." I said.
"I'll find a way to go home, so in the meantime, try not to get in trouble ok?" Jake said. "I think I can get a deal with Alexander, so I'll make sure we don't have to go back to that place."
I quietly sighed. The rest of the night passes too quickly. Ethan orders takeout from that Thai place we love. We eat on the living room floor while watching a Jackie Chan movie.
"I missed this," I say, picking at my pad thai. "I missed... being normal."
Ethan reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. "You are normal."
"I'm literally radioactive on a good day," I counter, but I lean into his touch. Jake watches us from across the table, his expression soft in a way that makes my chest tight. He's thinking about Ethan. About home. About the promise he made.
"I'll talk to Alexander," Jake says again, quieter this time. "There has to be a way to do the training without the...Academy stuff."
"And if there isn't?" I ask.
"Then I'll make one."
He says it with such certainty that I almost believe him. Almost. But I see the way his hand finds Ethan's under the table, the way their fingers thread together like they're building a rope bridge back to each other. I see the cost.
We don't sleep. Ethan puts on another movie I've seen a hundred times, something loud and stupid with explosions that require zero brainpower. Jake dozes off with his head on Ethan's shoulder, and I watch them, these two men who have built a fortress of normalcy around me, wondering how long before the walls crumble.
At four in the morning, Jake's phone buzzes. A text from William, simple and cold: I'll open the portal from where you walked out in 45. Don't be late.
Jake hugs Ethan first, long and hard, the kind of embrace that looks like it's trying to store up enough contact to last through whatever comes next. Then Ethan turns to me, and I let him wrap his arms around my shoulders because I'm tired of being brave.
"Come back to me," he whispers into my hair. "Both of you."
"We will," I say, even though I'm not sure I believe it.
Jake steps through the portal first. I follow, and the familiar scent of bergamot and salt air hits me like a slap. The Academy. Always the Academy.
The next three weeks are a special kind of hell.
My regular classes were bad enough with Morcant's lectures on Ælytheran history, the endless theory of magical channeling, the lists of things I have to memorize for finals, the humiliation of basic magic practice in a room full of people who've been levitating objects since they could walk. But now there's the additional coursework.
The Affinity training.
The class literally made for high council members and year 4 students only. I shouldn;t be in this class, but as Sara just said, I'm among a special case since I awakened my Afiinity early. The extra sessions are held in a sub-basement beneath the Atrium, a space that looks less like a classroom and more like a bunker designed by someone who really enjoyed medieval torture devices.
"Again," William says, for what feels like the thousandth time. The only good thing in here is there's only one teacher whose job is just to supervise. So the students literally can do anything they want, including one who is peacefully sleeping on the corner. I wish I could join him.
I'm standing in the center of a containment circle, my hands shaking, my clothes soaked through with sweat. Around me, the other initiates watch with varying degrees of interest and pity. There's Kael, the guy I fought a month ago before I accidentally portaled away during our first assessment. There's the girl with the mismatched eyes, Seraphine, I learned, who seems to find my suffering genuinely entertaining. Then, there's Albert, Dion, and Cyril having a heated discussion about who should cook dinner tonight. And there's William, standing in front of me and being a source of my sorrow.
Since my first time entering this class, he was the one that helped me explain what my powers are and how my family uses it. Apparently the Kane family is one of the founding fathers of the Order where their powers were feared because they owned something called Void Magic. It is also the reason why other founders started to collect knowledge about the root of their power and now it's known as Affinity. The history goes that the Kanes can take any form of energy to enhance their ability and powers. They also have been closely affiliated with the angel of death, and based on what I went through so far I think that part was also true.
"You're overthinking it," William says, circling me like a shark. "Your Affinity is absorption and dispersion. Don't do anything else."
"I don't know what that means," I grit out.
"It means you're not listening to me." He stops directly in front of me, close enough that I can see the Tremaine family pin on his lapel, the empty scale, balanced on a knife's edge. "There's no point if you can do basic magic but can't control your Affinity. That's what makes you one of us."
I want to tell him to go to hell. I want to walk out of the circle and back through William's precious portal and never look back. But I think of Ethan's face in the early morning. I think of Jake's promise. I need to make an effort too to return to our normal life.
"Let's do it again," He walked back to a table and reached for another glowing glass ball. "This has an energy that can light up an entire city for a decade. You need to know how much you absorb, and leave enough to preserve the ball."
He put his hand into it and a stream of energy shot out of it and hit me square in my chest and for a second, I felt incredible. I feel like all my pain disappeared and I could lift the building. Like I could tear open the sky and step through it. Like I could drain every drop of power from every person in this room and still want more.
"Cut it!" William's voice cuts through the high. "Now!"
I lifted my hand and waved it in front of me like trying to cut an invisible rope but all I did was make another explosion that knocked me out of my feet. I hit the ground, gasping, and looked up to see William standing where I was, his own hands smoking faintly. "We'll do this again tomorrow."
He helped me up and walked me to the nearest bench where another pair went inside the circle. It's Seraphine and another guy with a Russian name but I forgot what.
"Here, take this." William gave me a small water bottle and I gladly finished the whole thing in several gulps.
"Be ready to lose today," Seraphine pointed at the guy who is probably the same build as Jake with a sleeve tattoo on his left hand. His brown hair is long and braided away from his face.
"What are their powers anyway?" I find myself asking.
"Didn't you get the lesson about the high councils in the first week?" William said, sitting beside me.
"I forgot about it."
He chuckles and throws me another bottle of water. "Seraphine is a Veyra, and Ilya is a Korvin. You can figure out the rest later."
"Better take her down Ilya, remember our bet!" William holler just before the two people in the circle start to spar. Their power is explosive and I can't tell what power they are using. They moved fast and I could feel every hit vibrate through the floor and some even rattled the ceiling. But the fight ended quickly when Ilya managed to grab Seraphine by the collar and threw her outside the circle, sending her flying to a wall with a loud thud.
I was prepared to call 911 or yelled at the teacher to do something when she lay on the floor unmoving, but then she yelled so loud before standing on her two feet with a frustrated look on her face. "Why can't I predict that! This is so unfair." She yelled at Ilya then at William.
"You can't beat me." Ilya said, grinning at her. "I'm the strongest, you have to train more to get on my level."
"Alright, enough." William stepped in between them when Seraphine looked like she wanted to fight him again. "Class is adjourned. You can do this again tomorrow. And for the rest of you, I'll expect the money later tonight at the house."
I can hear some of them groaning while cleaning up their stuff and one by one walking out of the room. Good thing I'm not joining their bet. I still can't remember what family they're from, but I know some of them just because we've met before this class. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it one day but now I just want to sleep my way through Sunday now.
The hallway outside the training chamber was almost painfully quiet after the chaos inside. I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I walked, every muscle in my body aching. It wasn't even from fighting. It was from failing. Again.
The water bottles William had given me had barely taken the edge off whatever the hell absorbing that energy core had done to me. I hated this.
"Emily."
I looked up.
Alexander stood at the end of the corridor, hands tucked behind his back as though he'd been waiting for me.
Of course he had.
"How long have you been standing there?" I asked.
"Long enough."
Great.
I started walking past him.
"You've improved."
I snorted. "If this is your version of encouragement, I think I'd rather take another explosion to the face."
"It wasn't encouragement." That made me stop. "It was an observation."
I sighed before continuing down the corridor. To my surprise, Alexander fell into step beside me. But neither of us spoke for a while. The silence wasn't uncomfortable anymore. It was just... complicated. Eventually he said, "Jake is training."
I frowned. "So?"
"You should watch."
"Did you really send your people to spy on us?" I asked when I think the others are out of our earshot.
"I did." Alexander stopped in front of me. "When I first felt your brother's power awakened I knew I had to do something. But you seems happy where you are so I did what I can from the background."
I sighed. It's my fault we're here. If only I never awakened my power. We will never stepped foot in this place. "Thanks for that. For helping Jake too."
Alexander shook his head. "Sorry I couldn't do the same to you."
"It's not your fault," I said.
"Come, you should see Jake train." He said then lead me outside in silence.
The outdoor combat grounds were nothing like the underground chamber. There were no walls. Only green grass, a few trees, and now there are enormous stones floating. The entire training field looked like something from Harry Potter.
A thunderclap split the sky. I instinctively looked up. Jake stood on one of the floating stones nearly two hundred meters away. But when I turned beside me, Alexander wasn't beside me anymore. He was already standing across from Jake.
Wait.
How?
Portal.
Right.
I still wasn't used to that.
Alexander stood in front of Jake with his hands clasped behind his back, looking almost bored.
Jake rolled his shoulders before throwing his punch that Alexander can counter with another punch to his stomach and sending him crashing to the ground. Before the dust settled, the air exploded, launching Jake forward faster than I could follow.
His fist met Alexander's in a shower of sparks as flames erupted along Jake's arms. But Alexander blocked without flinching. The fire disappeared instantly when he twisted Jake's wrist and punched him again in the same spot, sending him back to the ground. But when I expected another loud crash, the ground beneath Jake liquefied. Solid earth became quicksand trying to swallow him whole.
But Jake waved his hand and the molten ground surged upward into jagged pillars that launched him into the air before the trap could swallow him.
I blinked. The pillars shattered into dozens of floating boulders. With another sweep of his hand, each rock ignited with fire and he aimed all of them at Alexander who's still in the same spot.
Alexander moved and raised one palm. A translucent barrier appeared where the burning stones slammed into it one after another. Alexander walked out untouched. But Jake was already behind him. Water erupted from the lake surrounding the floating platform. Hundreds of razor-thin streams spiraled around from every direction. The next thing I know lightning exploded from the sky. I instinctively stepped backward. Their fight is even more explosive than what I see in the class. Their power is terrifying and can't even begin to phantom how someone can have this much power.
Jake throws a wall of ice towards Alexander but it's no use when he easily breaks them and grabs him by the collar and pushes him up higher towards the sky. I can't see them anymore and I stood there, frozen.
Three weeks ago Jake had barely understood what an Affinity was. Now he wasn't simply using magic. He was weaving his Affinity into a single fighting style.
I slowly looked down at my own hands. Mine still shook whenever I absorbed too much energy. Jake was learning to command nature. I couldn't even control a single stream of power. For the first time since coming to the Academy, I didn't feel jealous. I felt ashamed. Not because Jake had surpassed me. Because somewhere along the way, he'd decided to become stronger. While I'd been waiting for someone to tell me how.