Free Elemental Fire by Maddy Edwards

them.
Meanwhile, the paranormals in the cages were silent, their eyes fixed on us.
    Again and again the Fire Whip
cracked his weapon, first just near Trafton, then hitting him. The blows
started out as tiny licks of the fire, little scratches, enough to put Trafton
in pain but not enough to make him cry out. Trafton stood his ground stoically,
his hands pressed to his side where Zervos had wounded him. I spared a glance
at our professor, but his eyes were hooded. He must have perfected that
unreadable look years ago , I thought. The rest of us were not so impassive.
    “You do not like seeing your
friend suffer?” a woman’s voice asked me. I looked past the Fire Whip who was
tormenting Trafton to see that a middle-aged woman had appeared. She was short
and thin, with a round face and a coil of blond hair that wound around her
head.
    Ms. Vale looked nothing like her
children. Unlike Dobrov, she had no decency lighting her eyes and no humility
softening her features. She wore a red robe, but she carried no Fire Whip. Her
eyes were round and black, set wide apart in her pale face. Her nose was so
small it was more like a button. She had tiny ears. A very odd-looking woman,
all in all, but one who in her youth, I imagined, had been striking. Her voice
was rich and amused, as if we were having a normal conversation about the
weather or what we were going to do that weekend.
    “I don’t like seeing monsters,” I
said, clenching my fists. “Unchain me and I’ll show you just how much I don’t
like it.” The chains must have had spells in them that kept my magic from
working, because I had tried to call to my ring, to order my magic outward to
stop the attack on the Airlee in the pen and on Trafton, but nothing had
happened. I felt lost and naked without my power.
    “Ha, ha, big talk for a little
Astra,” said Ms. Vale, her laughter tinkling around us like the glass crystals
of a chandelier clinking together.
    “I’ve met my fair share of
bullies,” I said, trying to sound bored. “No offense, but you are not remotely
the worst.”
    “Evil, like love, is not a
competition. It’s not about just one winner. You either do it, can do it, or you cannot. I am not
evil. I am merely trying to help. I have children who attend this school, after
all, and I would hate to see their education neglected.”
    “Good thing you aren’t letting
that happen,” said Trafton. He was sweating and his eyes were feverish. His
shirt and arms were covered in blood.
    Ms. Vale turned her black eyes
toward Trafton, but they skated over him as if she thought him irrelevant.
Trafton’s shoulders relaxed a little when she stopped looking at him, as if he
was relieved that she was turning her attention elsewhere.
    “We are here to make a deal. I
would explain it to you, but I do not have to justify myself to children.
Suffice to say that the elemental’s presence here will make negotiating
considerably easier.”
    My stomach turned. We had walked
into a trap. The committee members had tried to keep us away as best they
could, but we hadn’t listened. We had merely believed what they said, that
Public was closed, even after the signs - above all the fact that we had seen
no students coming out - were obvious. Now they had me, Sip, and Lisabelle too
for whatever purpose this madwoman desired.
    “You remind me of Daisy,”
Lisabelle said casually. She stood with her shoulders thrown back and her head
held high. “The crazy side anyway.”
    Ms. Vale smirked. “You do not
scare me, Ms. Verlans. I am not impressed by your ego. What we are doing here
is for the greater good. For my children’s good. I do not care whether you
understand or not. It will all be clear soon enough.”
    “Oh, great,” Sip muttered. “I
just love clarity.”
    “Are you working for Malle?”
Lisabelle asked. “Is she the one pulling your strings and telling you what to
do? Your daughter is a puppet as well, led around by her massive nose.” Daisy
didn’t have a