Defensive Magic
Chapter 37: The Beast that Love Ignored

WINTER TERM - January 29th

I was trying with the shape-changer’s grimoire. Or at least after weeks of just bearing out the pain from the mark of Orendell, I decided it was time at least to actually try to get the dark grimoire back.

The short of it? Shape-changing blows.

It’s Orendell’s magic and it shows. For one thing, every spell hurts. Marblebrook asked that I learn five of them. I’m pretty sure she did that without thinking she was signing me up for several weeks of self-inflicted physical torture, but she was nonetheless.

Orendell liked pain, remember? It was a nice thought that it might help satiate the burning mark on my arm, but no. Orendell apparently didn’t give a shit if I wanted to learn to change the color of my eyes. (Which, if you wanted to know– it hurt like hell, made it impossible to see anything for a few hours, and was functionally just a useless aesthetic change.)

And I still had to learn four more.

Aisling’s already asked me for the instructions on the familiar summoning ritual— Ripley wants to use it next. She’s still insisting they’re not even really friends. Though Whim likes him.

I had to be the one to break the news that I hadn't written it down, and the book was in a locked drawer in Marblebrook’s office for the time being. Aisling offered to help read through the shape-changer’s grimoire to help find one that didn’t cause temporary blindness.

We were in the greenhouses today. Aisling and Noodle were taking a class on Botany, which meant for “research purposes” Noodle was digging through one of the vacant plots, still undecided on what he’d plant and Aisling was back to her poison-testing habit, holding an aconite clipping under her tongue to see if it had any effect. I gave Aries a patchwork potion and instructions to watch her in case it did. The too-warm air was making me sleepy. We’d found a collection of patio furniture that had been brought in for the winter. There was a wicker loveseat, inviting enough I could settle in for a nap.

I slept better now— than I had, that is. A few months ago even without the dreamwalking, I didn’t really sleep. I woke too early, chest tight, breathing heavy. Like I’d been running from something I no longer even remembered. And those were the better nights.

Now, I was drifting off to the sound of Aries panicking in short little bursts— Aisling could fake poisoning symptoms twice before he caught on that she was still just kidding. I knew she was fine. My confirmation came in the feeling of a strange weight settling on my chest, invisible little claws first. It was unsettling. I froze until I felt a sweep of something soft swipe across the bridge of my nose. Whim.

Aisling was fine.

I didn’t actually sleep. I heard Aries, groaning as he dropped down onto the stone floor, leaning his back against the arm of the wicker loveseat. He was close enough I could feel the air shift around him.

“It’s really not fair that she can turn her lips blue like that. Especially since you’d hate me forever if she died on my watch.” He set his head back until his hair brushed against my horns.

“You take the job seriously enough that she had to mess with you a little.”

Whim jumped up from my chest. I felt a quick flutter of air across my face and got up just in time to see Aisling’s familiar grab for a fistful of Aries’s hair.

He yelped. Though that wasn’t enough to keep Whim off his shoulders.

“Is there really no animal transformation in this book?” Aisling said. She’d finally spit out the aconite. “Just seems like kind of a missed opportunity, isn’t it?”

“I’m already more of an animal than I want to be,” I said. “I’ll pass.”

“You say that like it's not hot,” Aries muttered.

I quickly grabbed a little tuft of his hair next to Whim and yanked.

“Hey!”

“Easy there, Whim,” I said. I hadn’t pulled that hard.

“What about something to change the color of his fur?” Noodle asked, still digging. There was a splotch of dirt on his nose. He’d definitely dug much deeper than any plant that could be grown over the course of a single term would need.

“You mean hair?” Aisling asked.

“Zeph’s got fur too,” Aries said.

“Not where we can see. I don’t want to hear about it.” Aisling didn’t look up from the grimoire.

“He means as a werewolf,” I said.

Aisling’s eyes shot up. “What if we spelled your fur pink?”

Imagining the pain of the spell on top of shifting. “Hard pass.”

“You’re no fun,” she groaned. But Whim had already moved on from playing with Aries, back to scrambling up the back of my neck. So, clearly Whim, at least, disagreed.

“Are there pages missing?” Aisling asked. “Did it come this way?”

“Probably did,” I said. It’s not like I’d opened it much.

We agreed I’d try one called tailspin next - a conjured tail. Functionally useless, but Aries had suggested it, and Noodle latched on. Given that all of these physically sucked, it was Aries’s thought that a few hours of mild ass pain was probably more tolerable than some of the bigger full-bodied spells.

I earmarked the pages and told everyone I most definitely would not be attempting this in front of them. I’ve ruined enough pairs of pants shifting to begin with.

“I can still come though, right?” Aries climbed up on the loveseat next to me. “You’re so grumpy. I want to see what makes your tail wag,” he teased.

I rolled my eyes.

“Sensitive ears, guys,” Noodle shouted, head down still in the dirt. Aisling only laughed.

I stopped to grab some wolfsbane clippings on the way out. I didn’t take wolfsbane solution often since the last full moon but it still felt strange to leave empty handed.

“I thought you were done with that stuff,” Aries said. I’d told him enough about how the last full moon had gone for him to wonder.

I didn’t like it. But that didn’t matter. It’d never mattered.

“I don’t get to be done.”

WINTER TERM - January 31st

We were a month into term and Marblebrook was still pretending I was decent at Divination. There was still all of Spring Term for her to catch on. She’d brought up the idea of me being her research assistant another time since the start of term. It was only a passing mention, but the tone had made it clear– she was serious about this.

Don’t think I’m not appreciative. I am. But it’s not as though I could pretend to be more than passably useful. Last term had a particularly strong astrological focus, and for this one, we were meant to be more ‘self-guided’. Which in my case, meant using tarot like flash cards, committing their meaning to memory and still somehow botching every reading. More than once Marblebrook had hovered over my shoulder and said, “you’re not wrong exactly, but…”

So, I was wrong. I was always wrong. And worse, I felt myself falling behind. Noodle somehow was able to move on from candle scrying to osteomancy, and Aisling had managed to figure out how to use a pendulum. Aries was about as slow moving as I was with Divination, not that it said much. Since arriving here, he's gotten to be a better student. Or at least, if he failed at something, there was never a thought that he hadn’t tried— except maybe with Divination.

I’ve already tried to tell him, just because I suck at this doesn’t mean you have to join me.

But he just said, “doesn’t it, though?” He was only kidding, I think.

In class today, we were tasked with attempting to read a partner. Marblebrook gave me a particularly pointed look and added, “Sometimes we hold our fates too preciously. It can be easier to see the fortunes of others.”

I don’t think there’s anything in my future I might consider precious. Sounds like wishful thinking on her part. It didn’t mean I was above trying. Might even be able to make Aries try as well.

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More generally, it meant that today’s lesson would be more practical application focused, less lecture. I didn’t mind Marblebrook’s lectures generally. They were directly, overly informative, and sometimes a little likely to run into arcane tangents. Often, I came away with the feeling that this is a field of magical study that she took very seriously even as most other mages did not. Given that, it didn’t change the fact that I was bad at it. Just gave me reason to try not to be.

So, I didn’t have to ask. Aries was already shuffling a deck of tarot cards like he was about to deal a hand in poker. I nearly missed it when Aisling a few chairs away shot me a scowl. We almost never had classes together. I hadn’t even really thought about it. I mouthed sorry. Made a mental note to pick her next time.

“So, tarot cards?” I asked.

“Yeah. Something with pictures and interpretation manuals. I know Noodle can stare at a candle and come out with a short essay on what he saw there, but me? Hell no.”

I nodded. Exactly. It was why I’d been trying my luck with tarot too. I like the idea of something a little more tangible. But it’s not like it’s helped.

“Can I go first?” I asked.

Aries passed me the deck of tarot cards. “Just so long as you tell me something good. And if not, tell me something good anyway.”

Heh. “I’ll be lucky if I can tell you anything at all,” I said. I shuffled the cards. Marblebrook was watching Noodle throw bones for Aisling. If I happened to see him slip one of them into his mouth, well, that was just none of my business.

She’d given Aries and I a tentative glance as though to say she’d be checking in on our reading next so I did what I could to rush us along. I spread the cards into a fan across the table beside us.

“How many do I pick?” he asked.

I didn’t even have a spread in mind. “Five.”

Aries picked out his cards. Set them face down on the table between us. “Moment of truth…”

Marblebrook paused just over his shoulder. Her stern gaze sharpened.

I flipped the cards. “The Moon, the Tower, the Lovers- no, Lovers reversed. The Devil, the Hermit- and there’s one stuck to this… Death.”

“You said only five, it doesn’t count,” Aries said.

“It counts, Mr. de la Fel,” Marblebrook said. “Sometimes the cards have more to say. Better to listen than pretend not to hear the part you didn’t like.”

I stared down at the cards, tried to think of what I actually knew. Obviously, Death didn’t sound good. The Tower didn’t look great either. And on the Moon, there was a howling wolf. A lot of tarot art skewed more morbid though. Death didn’t always mean death. It just meant an ending, or maybe a change. “They’re all major arcana,” I said. “Did you have minor arcana in your deck?”

Aries flipped over a few more cards where they lay fanned across the table. 8 of swords, knight of cups. Yes.

“It’s the right question, Zephyr,” Marblebrook said. “Major arcana can be a sign of big things to come.”

“Bad things to come.” Aries’s voice was suddenly soft.

“It can’t really mean that,” I said. It was the thing everyone feared when their cards were read. That Death meant their own was coming fast. That the Devil was looming near. It’s not how it really worked though. I wasn’t that bad of a card reader.

Marblebrook was still watching.

I picked up the Moon. Intuition, deception, confusion. Luna, framed by Selene and Little Pandia over a howling black wolf. I looked between the card and Aries.

I was nearly about to ask if there was a way to know that this was his future and not just my own reflected back at me when suddenly I heard a voice leak through my inner ear. A whisper, growing clearer.

Beneath black moons and starless skies,

The crown of Fel in shadow lies.

I dropped the card.

“You saw something,” Marblebrook said. “Chase it.”

“What’s you see?” Aries asked.

My breath caught. The wolf within stilled— it listened. This voice was in my head. Not invasive exactly. It sounded like Aries. Achingly familiar, close, mine.

I picked up the Tower next. Nothing. The Lovers, a man and woman naked and embracing, though it was upside down. They looked haunted instead. Relationship issues, hurt feelings, commitment issues. Shit.

I braced myself. The second I held it up, the voice returned again. This was about Aries. It wasn’t just his voice— it was his reading. His own. And it was speaking to me.

A son is felled, not by sword,

But by the beast that love ignored.

A cold stone rolled over in my chest. Oh. The world froze for a stuttering second. The wolf waited. The word in my head seemed to echo. The werewolf bite. The thing he’d been hinting at but avoided saying ever since he’d first mentioned it that day in the Statuary.

“… beast that love ignored,” I muttered. No one needed to say it was me. I knew what I was.

“Zeph? Tell me what you’re seeing.” Aries set a hand on my knee.

“I’m hearing it,” I said. “Hearing something.”

I grabbed the Devil, the Hermit. The Devil had horns like mine and the hermit looked haunted. The words kept coming.

Fire without flame will feed the fight,

And death walks twice in borrowed light.

Then, Death. I didn’t realize I’d picked it up until it was already in my hand and held up to where Aries and Marblebrook could see.

“It’s his prophecy, Zephyr,” Marblebrook said. “Blessings and curses both. You’re reading his.”

“We really don’t need to go into it,” Aries said.

I blinked. The whisper in my head was still repeating the words. I ran my hands along the cards to keep hearing it. The words coming closer and more into focus.

Beneath black moons and starless skies,

The crown of Fel in shadow lies.

A son is felled, not by sword,

But by the beast that love ignored.

Fire without flame will feed the fight,

And death walks twice in borrowed light.

I said it out loud. I hadn’t meant to, but did it anyway.

“With prophecies, the future is always harder to read. It’s less legible. And you’re reading it anyway,” Marblebrook said. There was a gentle note of pride in her tone that I nearly missed, because only then was it clicking.

Aries is killed by a werewolf. He’d said it before. He didn't say it like this, but now I was hearing it anew. I shivered. It was a prophecy, sure, but more than that, it was an accusation.

“It’s the same crap they all say, everyone who digs into my future gets that. It’s not special,” Aries muttered.

I’d written it down, unwilling to let the whispering voice leave my head until I could get it all on paper. Crown of Fel. Felled. Beast that loved ignored.

I rose quickly from my seat. I knew I was always meant to screw this up. It was practically preordained. “Fuck, Aries…”

I couldn’t breathe.

“It’s not that big a deal, Zeph,” he said.

Not that big a deal? I groaned. I grabbed onto my own horns to steady myself. The whole world had tilted on its axis.

“You knew this and what? You went all the way to Mesym and decided you needed to shack up with the one person in the school who just might be fated to kill you?!”

I hadn’t meant to shout it. It wasn’t a large class but everyone stared.

Aries stood up. “Zeph…” he sighed. He reached for me.

I flinched.

“Yeah. Fuck it. Maybe I did.” Aries’s hand dropped away. He stepped a little closer. “Maybe I want to actually have a life somewhere despite the fact that for years everyone has only looked at me like I’m about to be ground into puppychow.”

I sucked in a few quick, hard breaths. Aries wasn’t backing down.

“I wanted to be a werewolf and instead I got told I’m gonna get murdered by one. I hate it, Zeph. Can you drop it now? It’s just going to piss me off.”

We had been too loud. Marblebrook had made herself scarce, now half way across the room. It didn't matter though. We’d been loud enough there was no missing it.

Aries hadn’t backed down. He leaned nearer. “You’re gonna let it go and we’re not talking about it. Okay? Get it through your skull. It’s not you. I love you, alright? It can’t be.”

This whole tarot reading had spun into something it wasn’t meant to be. I muttered, “okay,” through clenched teeth.

That was enough for him to breathe a sigh of relief. He put a hand on my shoulder. And maybe he’d felt guilty for shouting. He shouldn’t have. I’d started it. But he hugged me anyway, rubbed his head into the underside of my neck. He patted my shoulder, let his hand slip, lower than it needed to be. No longer friendly. He was trying not to fight me and almost everything in me was ready to relent. Almost.

There were still the cards on the table. The Moon. The Tower. The Lovers reversed. The Devil. The Hermit. Death.

I couldn’t flip them over. Reshuffle them. Not yet. I was staring into his future and suddenly I could see it where I previously couldn’t. It wasn’t clear, no. I wasn’t good enough at this for that. But I saw what counts. Aries’s future: I was in it— and covered in blood.