Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Contest of Claim

Elowen challenges Leofric for Kerensa's contract in front of the whole hall, with Morvran's life as the stake, and learns why her serpent's wings never set.

"He can't do that," I said.

"He can," Kerensa said. "Whoever pays my tuition picks me. That's the deal."

"You were on the roll for the old griffin in the fourth tower."

"The griffin's Warden sold my contract this morning. Leofric bought it before breakfast." She shrugged, but her hands were shaking. "A cup a week. I've done it for two years. It's fine."

It wasn't fine.

Last time, she'd been on his roll too.

By Rift Night, he'd taken so much from her that she fainted on the cliff stairs and broke her wrist.

He'd done it because he couldn't take it from me fast enough.

Now he was doing it because I'd said no.

I stood up.

"Where are you going?" Kerensa said.

"Supper."

Morvran sat up on the cot. "I'm coming."

"You can barely stand."

"Then I'll lean on things. Menacingly."

The Great Hall was full.

Long tables, candles, two hundred students all talking about the Waking at once.

When I walked in with a seven-foot man in a borrowed infirmary shirt leaning on my shoulder, the whole room went quiet.

Leofric sat at the high table beside Aveline, where the bonded third-years ate.

He had a gold cup in his hand.

I walked straight down the middle of the hall and stopped in front of him.

"I'm calling a Contest of Claim," I said.

Somebody dropped a spoon.

The Contest was an old rule. Nobody had used it in thirty years.

A Warden could challenge another Warden in the ring for a feeder's contract.

The winner took the contract.

"For whom?" Leofric asked, though he knew.

"Kerensa Polglase."

Aveline laughed. "You've been a Warden for six hours."

"It says Warden. It doesn't say how long."

Leofric set down his cup. "The rule says the challenged party names the stakes."

"Then name them."

He looked at Morvran over my shoulder.

"If you lose," Leofric said, "you go on my roll. And that goes to the pits, where it should have gone this morning."

The hall murmured.

I felt Morvran's hand tighten on my shoulder.

"If I win," I said, "Kerensa's contract is mine, and I tear it up."

"Done." Leofric smiled. "Three days. The ring. Bring your snake if it can still crawl."

The Headmistress had come in behind me. She sighed.

"Three days," she said. "Witnessed."

We walked back out through two hundred silent people.

At the door, Morvran leaned down to my ear.

"For the record," he said, "I would have liked to be asked."

"Would you have said no?"

"No. But I would have liked to be asked."

That stopped me.

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. Will you fight him?"

"Yes." His mouth twitched. "Thank you for asking."

That night I took him down to the old training ring behind the menagerie, where nobody went after dark.

The sand was cold and gray under the moon.

"Can you shift?" I asked.

"I've never tried."

"Never?"

"I've been in a stone. Do you want me to try or not?"

"Try."

He walked to the middle of the ring and stood there a moment with his eyes shut.

Then he wasn't standing.

He was pouring.

The man folded down into something long and black that kept coming and coming, coil after coil, until a serpent as long as a fishing boat lay across the sand.

His scales caught the moonlight like wet slate.

His head was the size of a carriage wheel. His eyes were still that same sea-green.

On his back, behind his head, two huge black wings lay folded.

Folded wrong.

The left one was bent back at a sharp angle near the shoulder. The right one hung low, the long bones twisted.

I walked up to him slowly and put my hand on the left wing joint.

He flinched.

"Can you open them?" I asked.

The wings shuddered. They lifted a hand's width off his back and dropped again.

He made a sound low in his chest that I felt through my feet.

Then he poured back up into a man, kneeling on the sand, breathing hard.

"So," he said. "Flying is out."

"What happened to them?"

He didn't answer for a while.

He looked up at the gold roof of Leofric's tower, shining over the dark academy.

"Your sister dropped my stone down the stairs when she was twelve," he said. "She was angry she didn't get the dragon. The stone cracked. I was still soft inside it." He flexed his left shoulder and winced. "My wings never set."

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