We pull into the parking lot of a rge college campus. Huge stone buildings are everywhere and from where we’re parked, I can see a sushi restaurant, a café, with a bookstore right beside it. People are walking to css, hundreds of mages and gifted people. I haven’t been around this many people in years. I’ve never been around this many gifted people.

  I can feel my general sense of panic welling in my belly; it feels like bad indigestion when this happens. I’ll have to do something about it soon. I don’t know what will happen being around this many gifts. I don’t know what the limits of my abilities are, that conversation always led to more panic until I would shut down.

  The Uprising had been hellbent to find my limits, and after that happened there, I didn’t even want to discuss the limits of my gift. Or anything at all about it. I was willing to physically train, and train the gifts I had taken, but training my actual gift was something I just ignored.

  Amon didn’t realize it wasn’t my goal because he had his own thoughts on how I was to complete the prophecy. He never realized I had almost no intention of completing the prophecy if I can avoid it. It’s not even my prophecy to complete.

  I just need to do some training until I can figure out a way to escape without hurting Trevor and Selda. Then I can find Kara.

  Trevor and Selly were my older brothers’ essentials before he was killed. They were fully ptonically bonded before the attack; they would have eventually been completely bonded but Trevor and Selly were under eighteen and it’s looked down on to fully bond before everyone in the grouping is an adult.

  Bonding allows your gifts to fully manifest and for groupings to share gifts and energy. It sounds great, until you find out that if an essentials’ primary dies and they can’t find a primary surrogate, they will slowly go insane. Not to mention the danger of not finding your essentials as a primary. I’m Selly and Trevor’s surrogate. Part of this farce will include finding them another suitable surrogate. It’s not that I don’t love them, I just don’t want so many people to have to rely on me, I want them to be free.

  People usually post on the Gifted network to find their essential or primary. It’s a government-backed website that gives resources for jobs, assistance, and finding your grouping. You post a photo of your symbol and connect with those that have the same one. I’ve never been on the Gifted network.

  I don’t get to ‘know’ my essentials one day. I’ll never get to have them, ever. I have two options in this world, fight and most likely be killed in a prophecy I’m a repcement for… or run for now and probably fight and be killed ter. My best option is going insane after I turn twenty-five. My mother only told us that the prophecy was unclear, and she would tell us the whole thing when we were older. She never had the chance to say anything more than that. I don’t even know what I would be fighting.

  I really only have the hope of saving as many people I care about as I can, and that includes the ones I’ll never get to meet.

  The goal of a grouping is power and protection. The more essentials a primary has, the more powerful they are and therefore the more protection they all need according to the gods. When I was first born my mating symbol in the primary location had three tendrils to show that I had three essentials. Grace had four. It’s not uncommon in our community for gifted kids to die, either from loss of control from their own power or someone else’s. If that happens before you turn thirteen, the oldest anyone’s symbol has ever been known to change, and the oldest a manifested power was ever reported, your symbol changes to reflect the number of essentials you still have alive. But usually, the oldest people are when the symbol changes is five, I’ve only heard of someone being thirteen once.

  When I was thirteen, the birthday after my family was killed, my power finally manifested and my symbol changed. No one has ever heard of a symbol gaining essentials, it was always a loss. I went from three to six. I can only assume I took on some of Grace’s fated essentials and someone from one of our groupings died.

  A guard pulls me out of my thoughts by literally pulling me out of the van, he sets me down so hard I bite my tongue. I taste blood. I spit it at his face guard to remind him to be more gentle. The blood starts to burn through the plexi of his face guard. Oh yeah. I forgot about that one.

  The guard starts to freak out, grabbing his helmet off and throwing it as far away as he can and while he scrambles away from me. Another guard steps up and grabs me while another one shoves a spit guard down over my face. A brief look around shows me we’re at what looks like a typical college campus. They pull me towards the double gss doors, and I see my reflection. I look like Jason from Friday the Thirteenth.

  We paused for a moment at the administration building before they can take me inside I can see that the campus is actually very nice. There are tall, big brick and stone buildings everywhere, a few of the buildings are built with more ornate stones and huge windows. There are a few buildings that aren’t as fancy, they look like they have businesses on the ground floor, I see a café, a sub shop, and a sushi pce. I don’t get to explore much as this brute tugs me around, but I do catch sight of what looks like a gym.

  People of the gifted community usually all had a few mage powers, small amounts of magic that didn’t make a rge difference in most of our everyday lives. Things like being able to shut doors without crossing a room or tying your shoes without touching them. Nowhere near what a proper mage could do. If history is correct mages and the gifted used to be mated to each other, our small amount of magic is the leftover of that time.

  Our gifts are what we really have going for us, but they can be deadly even to ourselves. Especially as kids when the gifts can be much harder to control. The Academy has branches of grade school up to the senior year of high school, but that’s usually only an option for parents of kids with more dangerous gifts that are at a higher level and harder to control. They also accept the orphans of the gifted and mages, something that can unfortunately be a common occurrence as well. The final academy is more like a master’s program to help us learn to integrate with humans, control and grow our gifts, explore the community history, and be safe for others to be around.

  I was pushed and pulled down a hall and unceremoniously shoved into the small office, my hands still cuffed behind my back. A disheveled, kind looking woman sat behind a desk and looked at me, taking me in slowly. I could swear her eyes were actually twinkling, a smile hidden behind her pressed lips. I sat back in my chair, deciding how to py this.

  She also sat back in her chair, gray eyes wrinkling in the corners as she lost control of the smile she had been suppressing, loose white curls framed her face from the hair that had fallen out of the bun twisted on the top of her head with a pen stuck right in the middle. She had a dab of pink lipstick on her teeth; her many yers of clothes did nothing to hide her tiny frame that made her look extremely breakable. Her wrinkled skin was light brown, as though she spent most of her time outside, from the state of her hands I would guess gardening. She wiped the tooth clean of lipstick without looking at a mirror, as though my noticing it made her aware it was there.

  She waved away the guard, ignoring his immediate protest. This tiny woman tilted her head at him and then looked at me with her eyebrows raised. In a deep Irish accent she said, “She’s not going to give me a bit of trouble. Are ye…Marie?” I didn’t like how she paused before she said the name I had given them.

  On the desk in front of her she id out a bck velvet cover and a crystal ball that she set on a stand, so it didn’t roll away. When she was done setting up, she looked back up and was apparently startled to still see the guard still standing behind me. Now she stood up and led him to the door, “Out with ye, I’m busy and I can’t have ye in here messing up me readings.” She huffed after she kicked him out and sat back down at her desk with a grunt.

  She looked into the crystal ball, and then back at me. She did this three more times before a huge smile spread across her face. She leaned forward as though she was going to tell me a secret, and in a gravelly voice whispered, “Hello Aida.” I jumped slightly and narrowed my eyes at her. How did she know my name? I hadn’t told anyone my first name.

  She lifted her eyebrows at me like she was shocked I would be upset by her having this information. “Aida, I already know exactly who and what ye are. Leave the goggles on, I have no desire to have my head rifled through today, ye can call me Professor Stephens by the way.” I snorted at her and looked to her right side, I didn’t want it to show, but I was now extremely uncomfortable. She already knew too much, and I hadn’t even said a word. This was not according to Uncle Amon’s pn, at least I don’t think. How was I supposed to deflect as taught, if she already knew all the answers? He had always told me divination wasn’t real; he had never prepared me for this.

  Her face looked kind as she said to me, “I’ve been dreaming about ye for a long time, Miss Bennett. Ye’ve been host to both my prophecy dreams…and quite a few nightmares.” She stared at me with dark eyes, but then she chuckled, “The fates certainly did a number on ye, dear, hmm?” Standing up, Professor Stephens stood up and walked towards me, “A bit of an overreaction, probably. But who am I to say that?” She clicked her tongue and canted her head, “I guess it wasn’t all the fault of the fates’, was it, Aida?” I squeezed my eyes shut, and she patted my head, she whispered, “Very noble of ye, dear. Although I’m sure ye couldn’t have known what it would cost.” I wasn’t usually embarrassed by who I was, but the way she was smirking at me while looking at me with what I can only describe as pyful pity and saying things that she shouldn’t know was unsettling.

  She walked over to me, closer than most people would be willing to get if I was able to tell them about my gift. She tapped my real mate bond symbol on the nape of my neck that I usually cover with my hair. She was not fooled by the tattoos on my neck I have that represent my parents and siblings’ symbols as distracters for even a moment.

  “Good cover.” She winked at me, and I swallowed hard. “So, I suppose yer thinking I’m going to tell everyone all yer secrets and get ye locked up for yer own safety and the safety of others.” I hadn’t been thinking about being locked up, that wasn’t going to happen, never ever again. I’d rather die, and if history does repeat itself, I would be taking a lot of people with me.

  “Well, I’m not. In fact, I have a feeling ye’d rather die. No….I think the way the future looks now is the best we can hope for and that means….I need to py it as close to the vest as ye do.” She gave me a mischievous grin and sat back down at her desk. “That isn’t going to keep the mate mage away, though.” Fuck. The goddamn mate mage. I’d heard about her from Selly and Trevor. She left them alone, since their primary, my brother, was dead. Me? I would be a whole new mystery to cast a spell on.

  “Don’t worry, I can keep her busy for a little while, make ye less interesting. I don’t know how much yer…artwork will help yer cause in the end me dear. It may make ye an anomaly, or it may irritate her to distraction.” I had mate symbols everywhere on my body. They all meant something to me, they were the symbols of the people from my time in The Uprising camps. The people I needed to remember to dedicate my life to when my life, or my family’s lives, may not seem like enough, if I ever felt the need to give up. For a regur person it would be very difficult to figure out if I was a primary or a non-primary, which had been a plus from the beginning.

  “I know your weaknesses and how they could be your strengths, if you let them.” Professor Stephens pulled me from my thoughts again and I looked behind me, pulling on the cuffs and preparing to snap my left thumb again. “I’ve seen so many futures for you, dear. Which one will be the one?” I’m now desperately trying to figure out how to get out of here and away from this insane woman.

  Observing my discomfort she said, “I wasn’t threatening ye, just letting ye know. More for yer safety than anything else. Ye will tell them I said that the tattoos interfere with the mate bond symbol and it’s impossible to tell which one is real, from my perspective. You’re going to tell them you have the regur small amount of magical ability.” She paused for a moment and ran her hand over my shoulder, “And of course, Strength and Suggestion, since we can’t do anything about those two, can we?”

  She was giving me an out, yes, I could use those things, but they weren’t my true gifts. In fact, they were essentially my nothing abilities, except for Suggestion. As far as my mate symbol, I had tried to cover my true symbol with tattoos many times, it never stayed covered longer than twenty-four hours. Finally, I had just covered my neck in vine tattoos and my family’s symbols. This was considered an abomination in our community, people rarely studied the designs for too long, assuming I was too insane to not be a non-primary with a dead primary. Making it harder to find your bonds was basically unheard of.

  There was no way my essentials would be able to help me the way I needed to be helped, and there was no way they could ever know me. Not the way that fated mates were meant to know each other. I didn’t exist for that reason anymore. If I ultimately decide to nut up and take my sister’s pce I will probably die, and if I decide to run I can only rescue Kara. Eight powerful people, seven gifted and one mage, on the run is too damn many. We would be found and hauled back here pretty fast.

  This prophecy…it was never supposed to be me. I can only protect them the way I pn to protect Selly and Trevor, by either running or offering myself up. All I can do for them is have someone ready to take my pce. If I run and go insane without them, someone will have to put me down. A powerful primary with a broken mind is always dangerous, I’ve heard awful things.

  I can never even meet them. Essentials without their primary were usually fine as long as the primary remained alive, they had a soul grounder even if you never found each other. That’s why they were there for protection. If the primary died, without a strong retionship with another primary, they would slowly go insane. The retionship didn’t have to be sexual or romantic in nature, it just had to be present to help ground the Coils to a primary presence. That’s my retionship with Selly and Trevor. After my brother was gone, they needed me, and I needed them even more.

  Selly and Trevor would find them for me, after I’m gone. They’ll find them and help them find a new primary, and they’ll all be fine. They’re better off without me.

  “The goddess of the gifted isn’t exactly pleased you have gone to such lengths to hide your future and yer bonds. It radiates from ye. Perhaps that’s why ye have so many….overcorrections.” She winked at me again.

  “I guess we’re done here. I really only had to see ye to get the rest of the picture, I only needed to see if it could be true. I had most of it already. Ye can come back when ye’re ready to talk to me girl. I’ll be here.” I hadn’t said a word to her, and she was done with me. She eyed me up and down before giving me a tight smile, “It’s already started and soon, ye’ll be ready to talk, and I’ll be waiting.” She walked over to her door and opened it, looking down the hall, “She’s all done boys.” Professor Stephens called my guards, I stood up and walked out of Professor Stephens’ office.

  Standing outside her door was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Dirty blonde hair, shaved on the sides with a longer cut on the top but slicked back. Deep green eyes. He looked like a football pyer with his build, but his dark blue suit and tie was nothing but business. He had a five o’clock shadow like he’d forgotten to shave the st few days. His jaw clenched and then ticked as I approached, and he held out his hand to shake mine.

  “Hello Marie, I’m dean Ethan Summers. I’m here to give you a tour of the school and then we can discuss…our expectations here at The Academy.”