*
I turn to Aislinn at the end of class, dumbfounded. “I cannot believe you are passing notes with a Lupine male.” I stare at her, amazed. “I thought you were terrified of them.”
Aislinn turns to me, her silver Erthia sphere necklace catching the light, her expression riddled with conflict, as if faced with a world suddenly turned clear on its head. “There’s been a mistake. There has to be some mistake.” Her eyes flicker to where Jarod stands with his sister. She looks back to me and shakes her head, but her gaze is full of certainty. “Elloren, it’s impossible to be evil and uncivilized and love the poetry of Fleming. I’m sure of this.”
I look toward Jarod just in time to see him briefly and discreetly meet Aislinn’s gaze and smile. Aislinn returns his smile shyly, colors then quickly turns away, hugging her poetry book close to her heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stick Magic
“There’s something strange about you and wood.”
I pause, my hands coated with esmin bark powder.
Only the drip, drip, drip of condensation from a distillation tube breaks the silence of the deserted lab. Tierney and I are the last scholars here at this late hour, finishing up work that takes twice as long without wand magic.
I’ve known for some time that Tierney’s noticed. It’s like something in me is waking up, and it’s more than just the echo of my grandmother’s power in my blood. I’ve always had fanciful imaginings about source trees, but the more time I spend in the apothecary laboratory, and especially in the attached greenhouse, the stronger my strange leanings have become.
And Tierney’s noticed.
She noticed when the small, potted Gorthan trees from the inaccessible northwestern forests opened their flowers at the brush of my hand. How a fiddlehead fern once reached up to curl lovingly around my finger, the small plant’s waves of adoration washing over me. She knows that I don’t have to label any ingredients that come from trees now. That I’ve learned to read mixtures intuitively, and can easily and effectively stray from the stated formulas more and more.
I level my gaze at Tierney. “Yes, well, there’s something strange about you and water.”
A flash of fear crosses Tierney’s face.
Whereas I know Tierney has been surreptitiously watching me, I also know she hasn’t realized that I’ve been doing the same. On several occasions, I’ve peered into the lab, late at night, and have caught sight of odd things. Things that left me blinking and wondering if my ongoing sleep deprivation is playing tricks on my mind. Tierney absentmindedly playing with water rivulets, the streams and balls of water following her swirling finger like playful kittens. Tierney directing steam with her fingers. Tierney holding a ball of water in her hand.
I’ve been forced to come face-to-face with the truth of it—like Gareth, there’s no doubt that Tierney and I have mixed blood.
Fae blood.
For a long moment Tierney and I stare at each other in edgy silence.
“Have you noticed,” Tierney ventures, “that we’re the only two people in class without white armbands?”
More and more Gardnerian scholars have begun wearing these armbands, showing their support for Marcus Vogel’s rise to High Mage in the spring referendum, Fallon Bane being one of the first. I can’t bring myself to wear one, no matter how important it is to fit in. The thought of Vogel as our next High Mage fills me with a powerful dread I can’t explain.
“Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,” I tell her with forced lightness. “That’s my aunt’s domain.”
Tierney shoots me a look of hard appraisal, her mouth inching up in a coldly sardonic smile.
It makes me uncomfortable, her look. Like I’m being harshly judged and found lacking.
“I’ll need your help with the vials,” Tierney uneasily blurts out. “Carrying them, I mean. With this crook in my back—I can only carry a little.”
I nod, eager to let all these threads of conversation drop into oblivion. I take my bowl of powder and shake it into the viscous syrup that’s simmering before us. The rich scent of cedar and cloves flavors the air.
“They’re in my room,” she adds.
I cough out a sound of disbelief as I wipe the bark powder from my hands. “I can’t go to your room. What if Fallon sees me there?”
“She won’t,” Tierney says with a shake of her head. “She has military drills most evenings.” She shoots me a significant look. “Weapons training.”
A dark laugh wells up. “Oh. Weapons. Is that all? So she’ll be well practiced when she walks in and slays me.”
Tierney cocks a shrewd eyebrow and regards me evenly. As if waiting for me to get this humor out of my system.
I let out a long sigh. “I cannot run into her, Tierney.”
“Fallon’s a fanatic about her schedule,” Tierney states evenly. “She won’t be there for a few more hours. I’m sure of it.”
*
I stare at Diana Ulrich, blinking.
She’s dozing on one of the four beds in Tierney’s crowded room, belly down, one arm dangling listlessly off the bed, snoring loudly.
Completely naked.
Tierney notices me gaping at Diana as she packs soft cloths around each vial in the first of two long, partitioned wooden boxes. She shrugs. “It’s shocking at first. But I’ve gotten used to it.”
Diana makes a snarfling sound and rolls over, her legs splayed apart. I blush and turn away.
Tierney sends me a thin smile. “I’m almost done.”
I glance around the room as Tierney works, curious. “So which bed is Fallon’s?”
Tierney snorts and gives me an incredulous look. “You think she’d sleep out here? With all of us?” Tierney jabs her thumb in the direction of a side room. “Her bed’s in there.”
I cautiously step into the adjacent room as Tierney begins loading the second tray of vials. It’s dramatic, as I expected it would be—done up in deep red and hard black, an expansive four-poster bed in its center, expensive sheets thrown about, a half-eaten plate of fruit spilling onto the white undersheet.
I note, with some petty satisfaction, that Fallon Bane is a slob.
I guiltily pad into the room, feeling like a thief in the night, curiosity getting the better of me. She has an impressive spellbook collection. Rows of brand-new grimoires, leather-bound with crisp gold-embossed titles, are housed in a locked bookshelf, its diamond-paned glass reinforced with iron latticework. Silver knives and swords with bejeweled handles and a cunning bow hang from the walls. An expansive fireplace with a grate of wrought iron worked into the shape of dragons’ claws cranks out a delicious warmth. And to top it all off, a real-life dragon skull hangs over the mantel.
I walk over to her bed and run my hand over the silky down comforter, feeling a stab of jealousy over the luxury she basks in every night. The jealousy digs its claws deeper when I spot a small ceramic portrait on her night table.
Lukas Grey.
It’s a good likeness—handsome as sin.
I hear a terrified squeak behind me and jump, the portrait falling from my hands, landing on the tile flooring with a sharp crack that sets me wincing.
It’s Olilly, one of the Urisk workers from the kitchens. Like green-skinned Bleddyn, her coloration stands out there, as she’s not the usual rose-white, but lavender. She’s framed by the doorway, hugging a pile of clean, folded sheets to her chest.
“Beg your pardon, Mage,” she forces out, ducking her head as if I might swipe it off.
“It’s all right,” I stammer, heart racing. “It’s fine.”
She’s a fragile slip of a girl with a sweet, easily frightened nature, barely a day over fourteen, if I had to guess. I notice her amethyst eyes are a sickly red around the edges.
My eyes flick to Lukas’s portrait, which is now split right down the middle.
Oh, Ancient One. Fallon cannot come back to find this broken.