by Tasha Black
Every time I screwed up a practical, I had to make it up with an essay or book assignment. The professors all said it wasn’t my fault, that magic like mine was hard to wield.
But it never seemed to stop them from loading me up with a punishing amount of make-up work.
As the practicals got harder, it seemed like I had more and more writing and reading to do in addition to my regular classwork.
With the Choosing Ceremony, and everything that happened afterward, I hadn’t had time to do any of it last night.
I thought my teachers would understand that I would have some late assignments. But clearly they didn’t, if I was being rushed off to see the headmistress about it.
Miss Twillbottom threw open the door to reveal Headmistress Hart’s office. It was a spacious, yet warm room with a view over the woods.
The headmistress had decorated it with magical items from all the places she had visited when she was a young ambassador of magic. An African world globe, carved of priceless wood, spun on its own in a stand by the window. The bookshelves were covered in ancient editions, magnetic spheres from Finland, a Grecian copper maze, and rows of things I didn’t even recognize.
Headmistress Hart herself sat behind an enormous mahogany desk. The desk was like the headmistress, beautiful and inscrutable. You could lose yourself in the depths of the dark polished wood, which offered nothing on its surface to tell you what to expect - just like the headmistress’s beautiful dark eyes, which were fixed on me now.
“Hello, Cori, please sit,” she said, indicating the chair opposite the desk.
That was the chair where visiting parents sat. Students stood politely, awaiting instruction.
“Go on,” she said impatiently.
I pulled the chair out and sat.
“This came for you, Headmistress,” Miss Twillbottom quavered, handing the envelope to her, then scurrying out, closing the door behind her.
“Thank you, Regina,” the headmistress said, pulling an engraved silver letter opener from the top drawer of her desk.
I waited while she opened the envelope and looked at the letter. I couldn’t help but feel it was a bit of a power move - asking me to come here and then making me wait while she opened her mail.
At last, she slipped the letter and opener into her drawer, and finally looked up at me.
“So, Cori, how’s it going?” she asked, leaning back as if prepared to wait all afternoon for me to respond.
Great. How was I supposed to answer that open ended question?
“I’m, uh, okay,” I mumbled. “Last night was a little intense, so I didn’t get to all of my make up work…”
She let me trail off as she observed me shrewdly.
“I’ll try to get it all done before the weekend,” I added.
“Cori, you have been chosen by a guardian to be his mate,” she said, ignoring my bumbling statements. “There have been changes to our agreement with the guardians, as you know. Your friend, Bella is still with us at the school.”
I nodded as earnestly as I knew how.
“I wanted to speak with you, Cori, so that you would know, that the changes to the rules do not in any way impede you from making up your own mind,” she said.
I blinked at her, not getting it.
“Just because Bella chose to return to school after her mating, doesn’t mean you have to,” she said plainly. “If that’s what you choose.”
Ouch.
I nodded as tears prickled the back of my eyes.
She didn’t want me here anymore. It didn’t matter that I worked harder than anyone else. All my potential they always talked about, all work I’d put into trying to control my magic, none of it mattered.
I was a nuisance, a clumsy embarrassment. Maybe even a fatal accident waiting to happen.
Being chosen as Reed’s mate might have been lucky. Because it would have stung to be kicked out of school without a reason. If I left with Reed, we all saved face.
“You’ll let me know when you decide?” Her voice was light, like she didn’t even care what my answer was.
I nodded, unable to speak without crying.
“Good girl,” she said, standing. “Don’t worry about the make-up work for now. I’ll explain everything to your professors.”
I scrambled out of the chair and managed to open the door and get out the hallway before the tears started leaking from my eyes.
I was furious with myself for crying. If I’d been able to hold back the tears maybe I could have told her how much I loved being a witch, and how hard I was working to stay.
But I doubted it would matter. Hart seemed like the kind of witch whose powers had always come effortlessly. She wouldn’t value a student like me, who tried too hard and wore her heart on her sleeve.
The halls blurred past, and I burst out the door into the courtyard.
Wind whipped at my dress and hair. The sky was gray overhead. Rain wasn’t expected, but it looked like it was coming anyway, and right before I was about to go for a hike on the cliffside. I couldn’t catch a break today.
I heard the door to the castle slam again and turned back to see Kendall darting off. She must have been looking for a clue too. She didn’t even wave to me.
It was like I was already gone.
I kept walking, punishing the cobblestones with my strides in an angry rhythm.
At last I reached the maze. The boxwoods were particularly verdant in the hazy air. That wild green seemed almost unnatural against the contrast of the gray sky. But they didn’t catch my attention for long.
Because Reed was there already, waiting for me.
My breath caught in my throat and all my pain and anger fell away. There was only Reed, his golden eyes fixed on mine.
16
Reed
There was something wrong.
Cori didn’t exactly beam at me most times, but her demeanor was usually so pleasant, so calm. This was something else.
I could feel the anger bristling from her, and the pain in her chest, as if the emotions were my own.
She stopped and looked up at me, and I felt a little of her unhappiness melting away.
I was a grown man, and a half-ton bear most of the time. But I had never felt stronger.
Knowing that she trusted me with her burdens, as a mate should do, even if she hadn’t recognized it yet, made me feel like I could move mountains.
“Cori,” I growled, unable to think of one other word in the entire language.
She swallowed audibly, another encouraging sign.
Though I wanted to pull her into my arms, I offered her my hand instead. “Are you ready to see the caves?”
She nodded and took my hand. A slight smile curved up the corners of her lovely mouth.
I squeezed her hand as gently as I knew how, nearly shivering at the pleasure of her touch.
“Is it a long walk?” she asked.
“For me? No,” I told her, wondering what would be considered normal for most people. I’d been a guardian so long I had no clue.
“More than a mile?” she asked.
“Yes, more than I mile,” I told her. “But less than five.”
Her eyes widened, but she nodded gamely.
“If it sounds like too much, I can carry you,” I offered.
“No,” she said quickly. “But thank you anyway. I like going for walks.”
“Do you do it often?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I spend most of my time studying.”
“Shouldn’t you be spending more time in nature?” I asked. “To encourage your gift?”
“The last thing they want is to encourage my gift,” she said, with a bitter smile.
My Cori wasn’t a bitter person. I knew this about her already.
“Why not?” I asked, deciding to take her statement at face value. “I would think the school would be proud to have a student with such an illustrious future.”
“A future lying around a cave with a bunch of bear
cubs?” she asked. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I lied. Relaxing and playing with our cubs together sounded great to me. I could picture the children already. They would all have my eyes and their mother’s incredible hair.
But I could see how she wouldn’t want to walk away from her education.
“You do know our whole organization went to bat so that you could have choices after we mate, right?” I added.
“That was really awesome,” she said, finally looking up at me with her usual earnest expression. “It meant the world to Bella.”
“But not to you?” I asked.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said, looking down at the ground.
I suppressed the growl that was trying to escape my chest. If she wanted a little space, she should have it. Just because I wanted to bare my soul to her, didn’t mean she had to feel the same way. That would happen over time, I hoped.
“So why are we looking for beetles?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s one of the ingredients on the page the Order stole,” she told me, brightening at the change of subject. “I think we figured out how to stop them.”
“We can’t be everywhere at once,” I warned her.
“We don’t have to be,” she said, eyes twinkling. “We can do a counter spell.”
I stopped in my tracks. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that we can replicate the spell ourselves, but change one key element,” she said. “If we do it properly, it will stop the original spell instantly.”
“That’s genius,” I told her honestly. “That changes everything.”
“I hope so,” she said with a shrug and a half smile.
I could feel the pleasure bubbling in her.
“That was your idea, wasn’t it?” I realized out loud.
“We learned about it in a lecture class,” she said. “It just hit me that it might work in this situation, and the others agreed.”
“You’re amazing,” I told her honestly.
This time she let herself really smile and I swore I could feel my heart leaving my body to rest in the palm of her little hand.
17
Cori
We walked until the sun began to sink. It was cold out, but the fresh air smelled clean and pure. It was actually more invigorating than tiring, at least at first.
By the time we got close, I was beginning to feel better, more like myself. A long walk in the woods at twilight with the man who had proclaimed himself my mate was actually doing me good.
I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but it was hard with my whole body laser focused on the feel of his hand around mine.
We approached a section of the cliff face where there was a break in the foliage just as the setting sun turned into a fireball on the horizon.
“Here,” Reed said, indicating something.
I stepped closer to the rocky ledge. An odd little path led down into darkness. I could hear the sound of running water somewhere ahead.
“What’s down there?” I asked, afraid of what he was going to say.
“Caves,” he said. “One of them has an underground lake, and that’s where we’re going to find your red beetle.”
“An underground lake?” I echoed.
I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t really expected an underground anything, to be honest. I was picturing a nice little indention in the side of the mountain, where we would take like two steps inside and then grab a beetle and leave.
“I’ll go first,” he offered, letting go of my hand to lower himself onto the path.
It was funny how quickly all my bad feelings threatened to return the moment I lost contact with his hand.
I found myself hurrying to join him, even though I wasn’t exactly a fan of underground lakes and whatever creepy crawly things might be waiting in that dark crevasse.
He took my hand again and we walked quietly down the little path until it leveled out in front of a small waterfall. We followed the path behind it, and into the rocky interior of a cave.
It was cold inside, and there was a strange scent. I would have expected a moldy smell, maybe even a coppery one. But this was sharp and bright.
Reed wrinkled his nose, which made his handsome face look momentarily adorable. Then he shook his head and we plunged forward into the darkness.
I couldn’t see a thing, and the ground was slippery with moisture. Out of nowhere, there was a high-pitched scream. The echo ricocheted around the walls of the cave.
No.
That wasn’t an echo. It was more screams.
Reed pulled me to his chest and I buried my face in his shirt as the air came alive around us.
At last, the cave went quiet again.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Just bats,” he said. “We scared them. You might have been able to sneak in here on your own, but I think they can sense the bear on me.”
“Can you see in the dark?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said. “Oh. You can’t, can you?”
“Nope,” I said, cursing the fact that I had left to explore a cave without thinking to bring a flashlight. “Give me a sec, and I’ll make myself some light.”
“By all means,” he said.
I closed my eyes and lifted my palms upward.
I was in utter darkness, in an unfamiliar place with Reed. I couldn’t risk paying much of a price for this.
I decided to meditate for a moment to earn a touch of magic. Then I would have to keep my light small and efficient.
Breathe in, breathe out, I told myself.
When my mind was a pure wash of comforting darkness, without the slightest pollution of light or color, I began to smooth out the wrinkles of my mood. I pushed away all my fears, hopes and frustrations until the fabric was smooth and light.
I could feel the headmistress’s words falling away into the abyss, along with the stack of make-up work on my desk back at the castle. I watched as Reed, waiting for me at the labyrinth, fell away too.
When there were no more distractions, I envisioned lifting the fabric of myself from both sides, sending my consciousness billowing like the parachute we used to play with in gym class back in my regular life.
A sense of peace rippled through me and I knew I had earned enough magic for a small, dim light to accompany me for a short time.
I opened my eyes again to see a walnut-sized golden ball of magic in my right palm.
It gave off enough light that I could see Reed’s expression of admiration.
“Beautiful,” he said in a hushed tone.
My eyes were caught on his lips. I suddenly wanted to touch them.
“We, uh, we should keep moving,” he said gruffly.
I wrenched my gaze from his, embarrassed.
“I want to keep moving so I can get you back to my bed,” he added.
I could feel the blood rushing to my face, and I tried to concentrate on the small circle of the cave in front of me that was illuminated by my magic.
The stone walls were sweating beads of moisture. All around us, stalactites and stalagmites gave the appearance of jagged teeth. There were sounds coming from outside my light, rustling and skittering. I was glad I couldn’t see what was making those noises.
I tried not to think about what would happen if I were here alone.
“Look, up ahead,” he whispered to me.
“I can’t see more than about two feet in front of me,” I reminded him.
“It’s the lake,” he told me. “The beetles will be among the rocks on the other side.”
“I have to swim across an underground lake?” I asked, horrified.
“No, love,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m going to swim across and you’re going to ride on my back.”
That sounded marginally better. But I was still going to have to get wet. And it was so cold down here.
We continued on for what felt like hours, but was possibly only minutes. It was so hard t
o judge anything when I felt so cut off from the outside world.
“Stop,” Reed growled suddenly.
I froze in place.
“It was nothing,” he said after a moment. “It smells so strange down here that it’s throwing me off.”
“What does it smell like?” I asked as we walked on.
“Hard to say,” he said thoughtfully. “These caves flood and dry out, and different animals live in them. The smells change constantly. But I can normally identify them. This is weird, almost like a smell that isn’t a smell. Here we are.”
My light reflected back at me on the dark water that was nearly at our feet.
“I have to let go for this part,” Reed told me.
I realized I was clinging way too hard to his hand and forced myself to release my grip.
The depth of the water was unfathomable. My light was weak, but the reflections helped me see a little better.
The air moved near me and I cowered instinctively, expecting more bats. But when I turned to Reed, I saw he was no longer there.
Or, he was there, but he was also a bear.
The creature gazed at me with his golden eyes, and I felt myself smile. I reached out my left hand to touch that thick, soft-looking pelt.
He bent down to butt the crown of his massive head gently into my palm. I giggled and the sound echoed off the walls of the cave.
It was easier between us this way, somehow. Without the hammering pulse of lust, I could appreciate his gentleness.
I hadn’t realized that gentle was how I thought of him until now. But it was true. For all his bluster and bossiness, and his excessive muscles, he had been nothing but gentle with me.
I also realized that I genuinely liked him.
And I was standing here with the beast that was always with him, even when I couldn’t see it. This side of him was a massive ball of protective instincts, and I could no more blame it for being protective than I could blame it for being a bear. This was its nature. It saw me as family.
Some of the fury I’d felt when he yelled at me began to dissipate. I might not like what he’d done, but his reasons were apparent to me now.
Maybe he could do better now that he knew it upset me.
