Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3) by Lan Chan (best short novels .txt) 📕

I tried to sit up, but my head was pounding. He touched his finger to my temple and my vision filled with green light. “No,” I said, trying to brace my shoulder against his chest. “The dingo…”

“Not until you’re okay.”

I thumped him in his stomach. Pain radiated up my wrist. Damn him and his stupid physicality. “I’m fine. Please?”

He blinked slowly. I tried to remember the last time I’d used that word with him. He was as shocked as I was. “Kai?”

“Give me a second to bask in it.”

“That’s not funny.”

The glimmer in his eye said it was. He reluctantly let me go to place his hands over the wounded torso of the dingo. I tried to get to my feet but couldn’t move my head around without a throb of pain.

I heard clicking on the metal platform. A shadow draped over me as the scent of sweet pea and cucumbers filled my nose. “Hi, Jacqueline.” I didn’t open my eyes. “Do I get hazard pay for this?”

A palm touched my temple. I would have opened my eyes, but the flare of Kai’s magic was too bright. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t take you off the guard roster,” Jacqueline said. “Do you think you can move?”

“Not really.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She must have made a gesture, because I heard boots thumping on the platform. “Leave her!” Kai barked. “I’ll take her.” His voice strained. If it took more of his celestial energy to heal a human, was it just as hard or harder to heal an animal? I swallowed, wondering if I was asking too much.

“She needs medical attention now,” Marshall’s voice said. My head lolled when he picked me up. He tsked when Kai made a disgruntled sound. I didn’t hear any more of his protests because Marshall must have teleported. The next thing I knew, the scent of freshly washed sheets and the sound of claws on linoleum filled my senses.

“Not again,” Doctor Thorne said.

“Don’t blame me! It was an ambush.”

“It’s always something, isn’t it?”

Marshall lay me down on the bed. I tried to open my eyes, but Doctor Thorne was already waving something in front of my nose. It smelled sweet, but it must have been a supernatural drug because a second later, I was out cold.

3

In the midst of all the problems with the Soul Sisterhood, Doctor Thorne had taken it upon himself to brush up on human medical theory. “How’s it working out for you?” I asked as he held two thick, scaly fingers in front of my face to test my vision.

“Tedious,” he said. “You’re all so soft and...killable.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Everything I’m learning suggests you should all be dead already. To think you get sick from a cold. It’s ridiculous.”

I couldn’t help laughing. The movement hurt my side, but I dared not complain in case it proved his point. In between his ministrations, I was watching the senior campus entrance trials for the first-year students. There were no low-magic students in this batch. After last year’s debacle, Professor Eldridge had taken over the obstacles. They were much tamer than Kai’s idea of initiation.

“How’s your head?” Doctor Thorne asked. I paused the replay and set the mirror aside. “Getting there. I wasn’t out that long this time, was I?”

“Only twelve or so hours.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “How’s Astrid?”

He sighed. When he picked up the putrid mixture in the glass beside my bed and tried to make me grip it, I sat on my hands. “I can do this all day long,” he said. As a basilisk, he could go for days without sleep. I kicked out at the chair beside my bed.

“It’s disgusting!”

“We all have to do things we don’t enjoy.”

I took the glass. “That’s some bedside manner you have there.”

“That’s another thing. You humans expect to be coddled every time you hurt yourselves. Even when it’s your own fault.”

I pinched my nostrils closed and took a couple of slow, preparatory breaths. It didn’t make swallowing the concoction any more pleasant. The bitterness went halfway down my throat before it tried to come back up again. I sputtered. Doctor Thorne switched out the glass in my hand for water. I gulped it down like I was dying of thirst. That helped to push the substance down, but it did nothing to take away the taste of river sludge.

“As a hedge witch, I would think you’d be more accepting of these organic brews.”

“I might be a witch, but that doesn’t mean I want to drink sewage.”

“Now that’s not very nice. Peter made that concoction especially for you.”

I sniffed. “Remind me to send him a lump of coal as a thank-you present.”

He shot a puff of smoke from his nostrils and made a dry sound. I interpreted it as basilisk laughter. Then he turned around and fiddled with something on the side table. I let a couple of seconds tick by.

“So I’m guessing by the avoidance tactic that Astrid isn’t doing so well?”

His tail curled into a spiral. “I should wait for Jacqueline to tell you.”

Alarm spiked in my chest. “Why?”

“It strikes me as unfair that I am always the bearer of bad news.”

I tried to get off the bed. “Now hold on a second,” he said.

“Is she in Seraphina?”

“Yes.”

“So she’s alive?” I could feel my throat closing. He saw it too. Poor beside manner notwithstanding, he placed his hand on top of my head.

“There now. Don’t cry. Astrid is alive.”

I wasn’t sure when he’d managed to press the duress alarm because Jacqueline and Kai marched in a moment later. Sophie and Wanda trailed after. Sophie saw the look on my face and raced up to throw her arms around me. Doctor Thorne moved away to give us space.

I glanced up at the headmistress. “Astrid?”

The vein in Kai’s jaw jumped. “She’s stable but unconscious,” Jacqueline said. “Those humans dumped some kind of magic-infused toxic chemical substance on her. It burned her quite badly.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

Kai glanced at Sophie.