Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 853: Bridget Bloom [Bonus Chapter]

[Valoria Academy, Shortly Before 4pm]

The late afternoon light slanted through the tall arched windows of Junior Cohort Class Three and painted the rows of wooden desks in warm stripes of amber and gold.

It was the last period of the day, a general class that pulled several study tracks together, so the room was packed.

It hummed with the restless energy that always took over right before dismissal as binders snapped shut, bags were stuffed full of textbooks, and conversations bounced off the high stone ceiling.

Near the middle of the third row, Lia Graves sat with her feet swinging gently under her chair, carefully packing her rune brushes and ink into a felt-lined wooden case.

Beside her, Kaede was balancing a stylus upright on the tip of one finger, watching it wobble with wide-eyed concentration.

Penelope was leaning back in her chair with her hands laced behind her head and her long legs stretched out into the aisle.

”Do you think Big Bro will come back soon?” Lia asked hopefully, snapping the lid of her brush case shut. ”He said he had a lot of business in the city this week...”

Penelope’s fierce dark eyes softened immediately at the mention of him. She sat up straight with an enthusiastic grin.

”He’d better!” She declared before blushing. ”Well I want to see him is all...”

Penelope wasn’t sure that she had thanked him enough for everything he did in Khemet, she needed to do so much more.

”He’s really nice,” Lia agreed with a fond smile, resting her chin on her hands. ”Even if he always pinches my cheeks in front of everybody... even in public, That part’s embarrassing. I’d love it if he picked us up from school though.”

”That’s just what big brothers do,” Kaede said cheerfully as her stylus finally toppled off her finger and clattered across her desk.

She didn’t bother picking it up, the girl just retied one of the bright red ribbons in her dark side-ponytails. ”My brother does it too... except he does it to my whole face, It’s so annoying.”

Penelope rolled her eyes fondly and leaned her elbow on Kaede’s desk.

”Speaking of people,” she said, lowering her voice. ”Did you guys hear what the prefects were saying at lunch? There’s a new transfer student coming today. In the middle of the semester but nobody knows which class she’s in.”

”A transfer student?” Lia blinked her big, gentle eyes. ”This late in the term? I thought they didn’t let people in...”

”I heard she’s from some fancy private academy down south,” Penelope whispered, leaning in. ”Somebody with a really powerful family... I really hope she’s a princess! Wouldn’t that be so cool? An actual foreign princess with a tiara and royal guards and everything.”

Kaede gasped as her eyes flew wide with deep personal offense.

She shot up out of her chair so fast her knees bumped the underside of her desk and rattled her ink pots.

She flung her right arm out in a sweeping regal arc, planted her left hand on her hip and lifted her chin toward the ceiling in full grand princess-declaration mode.

”How dare you wish for another princess in my presence, Penelope!” she proclaimed, her voice ringing out across the entire room with operatic formality. ”You stand before a true royal! I am Kaede, Princess of the Shogunate Isles, walking in disguise among the common folk to learn the ways of this foreign land... You have no need of another princess when one already sits at your very desk!”

Nobody gasped, and nobody bowed.

In fact, across the entire classroom, not a single student so much as turned their head.

Two girls in the front row kept arguing about water glyphs, and a boy by the window kept practicing coin tricks, even Penelope just rested her chin in her hand and watched Kaede’s dramatic pose with a deeply unimpressed deadpan stare.

”Right, right,” Penelope drawled, reaching over to tug one of Kaede’s ribbons until she sat back down. ”And I’m the Grand Marshal of the Sky Legions... Sit down, Kaede. Your ribbon’s in your ink.”

”I’m serious!” Kaede whined, pouting furiously as she fixed her ribbons. ”I really am a princess! My royal guards are just disguised as vegetable sellers at the market...”

Lia giggled behind her hand.

How could anyone take Kaede’s royal claims seriously? She was sweet and fiercely loyal and would share her last candied plum with a stray dog, but she was way too much of an airhead to be some scheming princess from a foreign court... plus the Princess of Shogunate Isles or rather Shogya in general was too pretty to be her.

’Even if they have the same name...’

Before Kaede could launch into a second proclamation, the big oak doors at the front of the room swung open.

CREEEAK!

The classroom went quiet.

Professor Dunmore, the Runes instructor, walked in... He was a tall, stern man in dark scholar’s robes with an attendance ledger tucked under his arm and half a step behind him walked a girl.

The entire class froze.

The whispers died in everyone’s throats, and dozens of eyes widened in instant recognition.

The girl was tiny, noticeably shorter than Lia, dressed in the dark charcoal blazer and pleated skirt of the Academy uniform but it was her hair that grabbed the whole room like an open flame.

It was a brilliant shocking crimson, the color of fresh blood and roaring wildfire as it fell in thick straight sheets, tumbling forward over her forehead and cheeks in a deliberate curtain that covered her eyes and the whole top half of her face.

All anyone could see beneath it was a pale sharp little jaw, a small straight nose and a pair of pursed haughty lips.

Pinned to the lapel of her blazer was a round brooch of solid gold engraved with a blossom of flame.

...The Bloom crest.

A silent shiver rippled through the rows of desks.

Everyone at Valoria Academy, from the youngest junior to the oldest senior, knew exactly what a Bloom was... House Bloom was one of the most powerful noble families in the world, famous for producing terrifying fire prodigies.

They were proud, ruthless and completely untouchable.

”A Bloom,” someone whispered two rows back, leaning over toward their deskmate. ”A real one, standing right here in our class...”

”Do you think she’s related to Seraphina Bloom, the fire genius?” someone else hissed, before a third student elbowed them sharply and whispered for them to shut up before the new girl heard.

Penelope leaned sideways toward Lia without taking her eyes off the newcomer.

”Okay,” she breathed. ”Okay, that’s not a princess but that’s close... That’s like a princess with a flamethrower.”

”I’m the princess,” Kaede muttered darkly, crossing her arms and sinking lower in her seat. ”She’s just some girl with way too much hair who’s never heard of a hairpin.”

”She’s a Bloom, Kaede,” Penelope whispered back, rolling her eyes without looking away from the front, while Kaede sniffed that she was still a princess and princesses outranked hairpins anyway.

Lia shushed them both, but she couldn’t stop staring either.

There was something strangely familiar about the shape of that small proud jaw, though she couldn’t for the life of her think what.

Professor Dunmore cleared his throat with his knuckles tightening slightly around his ledger.

”Settle down, class,” he said, his tone stiff and very polite. ”We have a late enrollment joining us... This is Bridget Bloom and she has transferred to us from another academy.”

Bridget didn’t bow.

She stood with her feet planted firmly apart and both small hands clutching the strap of a sleek black satchel, radiating a prickly standoffish aura that warned everyone within ten paces to keep their distance.

”Because of a delay with her transfer paperwork,” Professor Dunmore went on, ”Miss Bloom arrived later than expected... She’ll simply be sitting in on the rest of today’s class, and her enrollment will become official tomorrow morning. Miss Bloom, you may take the empty seat at the back by the window.”

Bridget gave one tiny curt nod.

She turned on her heel and marched down the center aisle with her shoes clicking sharply against the floor.

Students shrank back in their seats as she passed, pulling their elbows in however Bridget ignored every one of them.

She walked straight to the empty desk in the back corner, sat down with perfectly rigid posture, and set her satchel neatly against the leg of the desk.

”Now then,” Professor Dunmore said, clapping his hands to break the heavy silence. ”Before dismissal, please bring your rune-drawing assignments to the front and leave them on my desk. Neatly, please...”

The room broke into motion as students got up and lined up along the front with their drawing sheets.

Lia stood up, carefully holding her assignment in both hands, and joined the line behind Penelope and Kaede.

As she stepped into the aisle, a strange prickling feeling started at the back of her neck.

She glanced over her shoulder.

In the back row by the window, Bridget Bloom was sitting ramrod straight... Even though her thick curtain of crimson hair completely hid her eyes, Lia could feel the weight of a stare boring directly into her face.

It was an intense unblinking examination that tracked every single thing Lia did, her hands, her posture, the ribbon in her hair, the way she held her drawing.

Lia’s cheeks went warm with self-conscious confusion.

She quickly turned back around and clutched her sheet against her chest with her heart thumping awkwardly... Why was the new girl staring at her like that? Did she have ink on her nose? Was her skirt crooked?

She handed her assignment in.

Professor Dunmore checked off her name with a polite nod, but the phantom weight of that crimson stare followed her all the way back to her desk, and it stayed on her for the rest of class.

Ten minutes later, the bell rang out from the central clock tower.

DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG!

It was four o’clock, and for once, nobody had any homework due tomorrow.

”Class dismissed,” Professor Dunmore announced, gathering his papers. ”Enjoy your early evening and don’t forget your protective gloves for tomorrow morning’s rune lab...”

The classroom erupted as everyone surged toward the doors, eager to take advantage of the dismissal.

Lia slung her school bag over her shoulder and stepped out into the wide stone corridor with Penelope and Kaede.

”That was so weird,” Lia whispered, leaning close to her friends as they walked through the busy hallway. ”The new girl... Bridget... Did you see how she was looking at me when we handed in our assignments? She didn’t look away once and then she kept doing it for the rest of class. It made me feel so strange...”

Kaede nodded hard, her ribbons bouncing.

”I saw it! It was super creepy! Like she was trying to read your mind or something...”

”You’re probably just imagining things, Lia,” Penelope said, adjusting the strap of her big training bag, though her dark eyes flicked warily back over the crowd behind them. ”She’s a Bloom... All those rich southern families walk around like they’ve got sticks up their backs, She was probably just annoyed she had to sit by the drafty window.”

They turned the corner toward the tall glass doors of the main entrance...

A small dark-uniformed figure stepped smoothly out from behind a marble pillar and planted herself directly in their path and the three girls stopped short.

Standing right in front of them, blocking the hallway with authority, was Bridget Bloom.

Up close, the height differences between the four of them were almost funny.

Penelope was by far the tallest, nearly a head above the others while Kaede was second, lean and quick with her ribbons... Lia was just a little shorter than Kaede looking small and slender while Bridget was... even shorter than Lia.

She looked tiny, like a small angry doll in a charcoal blazer, with the top of her head barely reaching Lia’s collarbone but she held her satchel strap in both hands with her chin tilted up, and her hidden gaze swept over the three of them with the cold scrutiny of a general inspecting new recruits.

Penelope bristled immediately and stepped half a pace forward with her height casting a long shadow over the crimson-haired girl.

”Can we help you with something?” she grunted. ”We’ve got places to be.”

Bridget ignored her completely. She didn’t even shift her weight, as if Penelope were a piece of furniture someone had left in the hall.

Her hidden eyes stayed locked on Lia’s face.

”Are you Lia Graves?” she asked.

Her voice was surprisingly sharp and clear, blunt as a fresh-forged blade, with the clipped accent of someone who’d had elocution tutors since she could walk.

Behind her, the stream of students heading for the doors had slowed to a trickle.

A few of them were openly staring now, and one boy stopped altogether and pretended to tie his shoe so he could listen.

Penelope turned and glared at him until he untied it again, retied it badly and fled.

Lia blinked, caught completely off guard.

”U-um... yes,” she said softly, clutching her bag against her hip. ”I’m Lia Graves... Is there something—”

”Good,” Bridget cut in. ”Starting today, I am joining your friend group.”