by Elena Lawson
An older woman in an apron shoved a big oval-shaped plate into my hands, a scowl on her face, when a flash of blonde hair caught the light and I found Bianca off to the right of the windows at the other side of the room. The afternoon sunlight captured the gold tones in her hair, and made her creamy skin gleam like polished ivory.
I almost called out to her, hopeful for one second that I wouldn’t have to sit alone. But then I saw him. Headmaster Sterling stood next to her, partially concealed in the shadows next to the column of light entering through the windows.
He seemed to be watching me. His gaze flicked from his niece, back to me, and to her again.
Already reporting on all the things I’d screwed up that day I was sure. My stomach dropped, and I scooped a giant portion of mac and cheese onto my plate.
Oh well… there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. Maybe the more I screwed up the more he wouldn’t want me around. Maybe the headmaster was the perfect person to find a way to get me out of this prison sentence. From the looks he had given me the night before, and the one he’d just given me now, I didn’t think he wanted me here any more than I wanted to be here.
Though I had to admit, I’d already learned a good deal in the half a day of classes—even if I did have a bit of trouble concentrating on anything other than Elias in Arcane History, and had my brain turned inside out in Alchemical Sciences.
After filling my plate with more food than I could reasonably fit in my stomach on any given day, I scurried to an empty smaller table near the windows far away from Bianca and Sterling. At least I’d have something to look at that wasn’t all the eyes in the room staring at me.
I ate in silence, and just as I’d known would happen, no one dared approach my table. Not even Bianca. In fact, the seats from the neighboring tables closest to me also remained vacant. You’d think I had been infected with some sort of plague and they were afraid of catching it.
More’s the better. I didn’t want to be friends with any of these people, anyway.
I popped another handful of grapes in my mouth, near-moaning at the sweet, cool liquid as it slithered its way down my throat.
Elias entered the dining hall a moment later. I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help it.
He raised his hand slightly as if to wave but dropped it to his side a split second later. I blushed and looked away quickly, a sour taste making me lose what was left of my appetite.
When lessons for the day ended, I finally felt like I could breathe. Then I remembered I had to do it all over again tomorrow. And the day after that.
And the day after that.
But I had to thank whatever gods were out there that none of the teachers in the classes I’d had to endure that day forced me to introduce myself. I had no idea what I would’ve said. Uh, hi, I’m Harper. Nope—no last name. Let’s see… well, I’ve been living out of the back of a caravan selling illegal potions to mortals since I was a toddler. Oh! And I’ve never been to a real school, and I accidentally split open the French Quarter yesterday. Nice to meet you all…
Yeah, because that would go over so well.
But of course, that didn’t mean I managed to escape notice entirely.
In true Harper fashion, the potion I tried to brew in the second class of the morning exploded all over my sweater even though I would’ve sworn I had followed that recipe to a T.
And in incantations I smashed my head on the ceiling while trying to levitate—I still had the bump to prove it.
And then just when I thought the day was starting to turn around, I almost stepped on Professor Granger’s familiar, a ferret, in sigil’s 101. At least she hadn’t made a big deal about it. And even snapped at the other students to hush their snickering.
She’d seemed nice. Not like the other teachers—well save for Elias. But he didn’t count since I was still having trouble believing he was a history professor and not a student.
Not in the mood to run into him again, or Bianca, or Headmaster Sterling, I rushed to the dining hall at dinner hour and swiped a few rolls from the top of a bread basket before taking off back to my dorm room. But it was too sad and lonely in there, so I pulled on one of the navy blazers from the old steamer trunk, stuffed the rolls deep into its pockets, and went to find my way outside.
Where it was nearly impossible to find my way around inside of the academy, it seemed exceedingly simple to find my way out. As though I already knew the way.
Bottom of the stairs, down the hall—run past the history room, turn down the southern hallway, past a huge looking library that I would have to check out later, and there it was, the way out.
And with everyone still at dinner, I really didn’t think anybody had seen me. Double bonus. I crept down the thick stone staircase into the slight chill of the evening. There wasn’t another soul in sight, and for the first time in almost two days I took an unrestricted breath. No one to watch me trip over my own feet, or mess up a simple spell, or stare at me with judgy eyes. Just me, the sky, and the ground beneath my feet.
I pulled one of the bread rolls out of my pocket and tore off a chunk of it with my teeth, savoring the yeasty buttery flavor and set off down the narrow path away from the academy and into the woods.
It didn’t take long before my thoughts wandered back to the academy and consequently to Professor Fitzgerald.
Stop it, Harper. You can’t have him. He’s a teacher.
Get over it.
But there had been a connection, hadn’t there? And why didn’t he say he was a teacher from the start? He totally led me to believe that he was a student. How was I supposed to know?
The thin trail I was following wound away from the grounds and into the woods. Through small clearings and copses of trees. A canopy of newly budding leaves above and a damp carpet of earth below. The air had that musty scent of wet wood and young plants that signified the start of spring, but a chill still clung to the air.
Turning back, I could just make out the top spires of the academy through the trees.
As the sun fell lower, about ready to dip below the horizon, I thought I should probably turn back.
But… what if I didn’t? If I just kept walking…
There had to be a town somewhere around here. I didn’t think anyone had seen me leave. Maybe they wouldn’t find me. Maybe they wouldn’t even look.
So, I kept walking, telling myself I wouldn’t go too much further, when in fact I wasn’t even sure if I would stop at all. After what could’ve been a few minutes or maybe closer to twenty, the sky darkened, the temperature dropped, and a shiver ran up my spine. And was that mist rolling down from the north?
The forest had come alive with sounds. The rustle of twigs and leaves. The sound of bugs chirping and buzzing. Beautiful, I thought. But also eerie as hell…
And then a howl.
I stopped, my body going rigid at the ear-splitting cry. So close. Too close. Another howl rose to meet the first, and I took a step back, catching my tennis shoe on a tree root and falling backwards onto wet dirt. My gaze darted through the trees and the underbrush looking for the telltale glow of yellow eyes. But I saw nothing, and the howling stopped.
Shadows played with the remaining light in the forest, tricking my eyes. The mist made it impossible to see clearly. My heart beat erratically in a chest now coated in a fine layer of cold sweat and the hair on the back of my arms and neck prickled.
Idiot, I thought, trying to shake some of the muck and dead leaves off my palms. What was I thinking?
Just get back to the academy. Walk slow, I told myself, try not to make too much noise.
I pushed myself back to my feet and spun, freezing in place. My hands shot out in front of me—fingers splayed, stiff as a corpse.
The gigantic wolf snarled. Its hackles were raised, and its mouth was dripping with steaming saliva. It beared its teeth to me in a feral growl.
“Good dog,” I said, my voice hitched and broken. “That’s it… it’s all right. I won’t
hurt you if you don’t hurt me, okay.”
Think, Harper. Use your magic. Your brain. Anything.
Do something!
And then I did the thing they tell you not to do when faced with a wild animal instead—I looked it square in the face.
Our eyes locked together. And then I felt it.
My heart beat once, hard. Air slammed deep into my lungs and then a sensation like something clicking into place, settling in my bones and rippling through my body.
The wolf cried out, recoiling as though struck. Whimpering, it bowed its head to the ground. Making sounds so pitiful and so pained that I had to resist the urge to go to it. To console it.
Just as the wolf began to recover from whatever was happening to it, another wolf came soaring over a tall bush, landing forcefully in front of the other, sliding—its claws dragging in the dirt from the force of the impact. The second wolf growled, snapping at me before it lunged to attack. I screamed, raising my arms to shield my face.
But just before its hind legs left the earth to go straight for my jugular, our eyes met between my wrists and it happened again.
The beast let out a high-pitched yip before it barreled into me, tucking his head down and turning his body. The wolf’s torso knocked into my chest and I went soaring through the air before skidding to a stop in the dirt, my arms taking the brunt of the impact from wrist to elbow. Burning, stinging, and slick with more than mud.
Quick as I could I flipped over, finding the wolf whimpering not more than five feet away from where I laid against the ground. My heart did that strange beat thing again, except this time it was almost agony. I whimpered, crying out. Unlike the last time, this time there was a gut-wrenching tearing sensation, like my heart was being cleaved in two, before the pieces clicked in and I was left dazed and gasping for breath.
“It’s alright,” I whispered through shuddering breaths, reaching out to my familiars with hands covered in decaying foliage and blood.
I heard the thump thump, thump thump of feet pounding against earth and turned just in time to see him fly out of nowhere to land in a crouch right in front of me.
He threw up a ward around us, its rippling, shimmery surface created a strong barrier between Elias and I and my familiars. The wolves, startled by his entry and still reeling from the force of the bond, turned tail and sped off back into the mist.
They’d be back. Familiars couldn’t stay away from the witch they were bonded to for long. But still, he’d scared them, and I’d already done enough of that.
“What did you do that for?” I whined at Elias, wincing as I attempted to stand from the ground.
He knelt down in the mud before me, lifting my chin to the light of the dying sun to look into my eyes. I stiffened.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, lifting my hand from the earth to examine my scraped forearm. “You shouldn’t be out here all alone. The woods are no place for a young witch at night.”
“What? Is this the part where you give me detention?” I snapped, pulling my hand away.
Elias recoiled, his eyes darkening as he moved to stand, not responding.
“Where’d they go?” I asked, looking through the dense trees for any sign of them as I begrudgingly took Elias’ hand to help me get up. “My familiars… why did they run away?”
“Your what?”
“The wolves. I felt it. The witch familiar bond,” I paused before I told him the other part, unsure if I should omit it—not knowing how it was possible or what it meant. But then, like always, I blurted it out anyway. “With both of them.”
Elias shook his head, dropping my hand with an incredulous look in his eyes. There was tension in the set of his jaw and in the way his lips were pressed together in a thin line. “Those weren’t wolves, Harper. They were Endurans.”
The word hung in the air between us.
Impossible.
There weren’t any shifters in these woods, were there? They couldn’t have been. A witch couldn’t bond to a shifter. I’d never heard of such a thing.
My skin crawled at the idea. I really hoped he was wrong, but something deep down told me he wasn’t. Shifters and witches did not get along, but then again, none of the other species really got along with us. We had the mistakes of our ancestors to thank for that. They’d cut out the tongues of the Vocari people in Emeris, slain thousands of Fae in Meloran, and then to top it all off, they’d been the cause of the curse on the Enduran and Vocari people.
It didn’t matter that it had been nearly a thousand years since then; immortals tended to hold grudges.
“We’ll talk after. Let’s get you cleaned up and inside, it’s freezing out here.”
I hadn’t realized I was shivering until he laid his own suit jacket over top of my blazer, his hands rubbing warmth back into my arms as he guided me slowly down the thin trail back toward the academy.
6
I thought he was leading me back to the academy, but just as I started to be able to see bits and pieces of it through the trees and we were fully in its shadow, Elias veered off, leading us down another trail.
“Where—” I had been about to ask where he was taking me when I saw the darkened shape of what looked to be a tiny cabin nestled in a grove of bushy pine trees.
“These are my quarters. Do you mind? If you go back to the academy now, with mud in your hair and cuts and scrapes all down your arms…” he trailed off. He didn’t need to say anymore.
If anyone saw me, I’d surely be sent to Headmaster Sterling’s office. Made to answer for why I was alone in the woods and what happened. Would he even believe me? Would anyone when I told them I’d bonded to two Enduran shifters in the woods?
But the more important question at the forefront of my mind was… would Elias tell anyone if I asked him not to?
I was enough of a pariah as it was. Already an outcast among the outcasts. There had to be a way to undo it. To sever the bond. And if there was, I’d find it.
Swallowing past a lump in my throat and licking my dry lips I answered. “No, it’s fine. Thank you.” We climbed the three steps to the small front door, a faint orange glow coming from the window to the right.
The hinges let loose a stuttering groan when Elias pushed the door open, gently herding me inside, looking back over his shoulder as he did. My head just fit through the top of the doorframe, but Elias had to hunch over to keep from smashing his.
I got why he was so tense though… I supposed it wouldn’t look right for him to have a student in his quarters.
Inside the small cottage-like cabin a fire burned in the hearth. Mostly embers now. Elias rushed to grab a log from the basket beside it, tossing it in. It was dim aside from the glow of firelight and smelled like him. Like warm spice and cold mountain pine. With only a hint of the mothball scent that came inevitably with the age of the cabin.
It was sort of like a studio apartment, or a motel room. A small kitchenette occupied the space to the right of the hearth, along with a wrought-iron two-person bistro style table covered in tomes, notes, and other documents.
“Sit down,” Elias said, hanging an old-fashioned kettle over the fire, which had devoured the log and grown several inches in height. I could feel the light touch of its warmth on my shins and sighed.
Elias muttered to himself as he dug around in a dresser at the end of a double bed covered in rumpled blankets and lumpy pillows. I jumped when I noticed two yellow eyes staring at me from under the bed frame. And then the creature slinked out, its ears and tail erect as it sniffed the air.
It was a silver fox. Though it was more deep gray and black then it was truly silver. Only the very tips of its ears and tail bearing the trademark metallic color of its name.
It came to me slowly, creeping over with silent steps.
“Hello,” I whispered, and the fox’s hackles raised, and it made a strange strangled sound before it skittered back under the bed.
“Don’t take it personally,” Elias said, pulling what looked lik
e a small first-aid kit out of his bottom drawer. “He doesn’t like anyone.”
He came to kneel in front of me, holding a hand out for my injured arms. “I’m just going to clean out the dirt, and then we can use a healing sigil to do the rest, okay?” he asked in a voice like velvet that managed to be deep and gruff, while also being soft and seductively warm. I’d have let him do whatever the hell wanted to me right then.
I nodded numbly. The moment his steady hands took hold of my arm, grasping it gently in the place just above my elbow, I melted and froze all at once. The calm he radiated seemed to penetrate the aura of shock, fear, and worry that felt near closing in. Dismantling it from the inside out.
He made quick work of my forearms, his hands deftly working to clean the dirt and muck out of the many tiny lacerations. He didn’t speak while he did it, just worked quietly, his jaw tense and brows drawn.
When the shock had almost completely worn off, and the warmth of the fire reached bone depth, the tension left my body. I slumped into the unforgiving iron of the chair, suddenly lightheaded and exhausted.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Elias said, drawing the sigil over my forearms that would help speed the healing process. The simple glowing circle and cross symbol seeped into my skin, making it glow too, and tingle for a moment before the magic of the sigil faded and the lacerations began to close. The process was slow, but they’d be healed within the hour instead of within days.
Being a witch did have its perks.
“I hardly felt it,” I said, blowing out a breath.
A beat of uncomfortable silence lingered between us before I started to feel awkward and like I was imposing.
“I really should go,” I said, dropping his suit jacket on the back of the chair as I stood.
Elias’ large hand closed around my wrist. “Wait,” he implored me, swallowing before he added, “Are you certain you bonded with them?”
“I am.”
The connection I’d felt to the two wolves in the forest was undeniable. Leo and Lara had always told me I would know when I’d found my familiar, but I didn’t think it would feel quite like it did. They didn’t say anything about it being so painful.
