by Sarina Dorie
Thatch ended my lesson early. He sat on the edge of his desk in front of me, his brows furrowed. “Your affinity is reacting . . . oddly. Go back to your room and see if you are ready now. If not, that’s fine. But if you are, I’ll be here in an hour.”
It didn’t take an hour. It took me fifteen minutes. The follow-up meditation to control my affinity and channel my energy was banal in comparison.
Considering pain magic didn’t turn me on, it must have been thoughts of him that had aroused me. As if this couldn’t have gotten any more awkward, I had a boyfriend. I didn’t want to fantasize about the emotionally unavailable dungeon master.
But apparently my subconscious liked forbidden fruits.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Suspicion and Spies
In my teacher mailbox I found a letter. From the fancy calligraphy, I knew it was from Elric. The wax seal was broken on the outside of the envelope, signaling that someone at the school had read my letter. Mrs. Keahi could have been the culprit, but she was vacationing this week. That meant it was either Thatch or Jeb.
My Dearest Clarissa,
I cannot put into words the suffering in my soul caused by our parting. My heart lies at my feet, shattered into a million pieces, all because of your last letter. Please, won’t you leave that despicable school and run away with me? I shall continue to attempt to bribe the principal into letting us see each other again, but if he says no, you must see our relationship is more important. Our agreement is more important.
Yours truly,
Elric
I tried not to laugh.
I wrote back, professing my own sorrow and heartbreak at being so long apart. If he wanted to say goodbye in person, he needed to make an appointment with one of my chaperones and speak to me with someone else present. I wrote the day and time for meeting him secretly in code. If Jeb was reading our letters, he would witness our cover story and see I was acting within the bounds he had set for me. If he did catch us together out in the forest, I would say Elric arrived without warning. Elric would say he used magic on me in an attempt to seduce me.
It was actually kind of fun having a clandestine romance.
Two days after my magic lesson with Thatch, I told Imani I was taking a walk in the woods and would be back in a few hours.
“Can I come with you?” Her dark brown eyes filled with hope.
I felt bad saying no to her. She didn’t have anyone else to spend time with besides Thatch and me. He was away recruiting half the time.
“How about we go on a walk together tomorrow? We can bring our sketchpads and make some nature drawings. Today I need some alone time.”
Her shoulders sagged. “You mean you need time away from me.”
I nudged her with my elbow, smiling playfully. “We study together eight hours a day. If I don’t give you a break from me, you’re going to go crazy. This is for your own good too.”
She crossed her arms, looking downtrodden. I tried to stomp down my guilt for lying to her, but it kept surfacing as I changed into hiking clothes in my room and packed a small bag with a snack and a water bottle.
As I stepped into the path in the forest, the silhouette of a black bird flitted through the trees. It wasn’t near enough to tell what kind of bird it was. Since it was alone, I suspected it wasn’t the Raven Court. More likely it was Thatch’s pet bird. If it was Priscilla, surely he had sent her to spy on me.
I strode along the path, warily watching the sky and the boughs for signs of ravens. Behind me twigs popped. My heart lurched. I turned but saw no one.
A moment later, I felt a tickle on my neck. When I turned, no one was there. The tickle came again. It could have been an insect or a stray hair that had escaped my ponytail, but I was certain it wasn’t. The hairs on my arm prickled in warning. Someone was there.
When the tickle came again, I whirled, hand raised and connecting with solid flesh. I smacked a trillium flower from Elric’s hand. As always, he was radiant and angelic, looking comfortable in flowy robes. I might have found his impish smile and devilishly good looks drool-worthy if I hadn’t been irritated by his prank.
He laughed and pulled me in for a hug.
“Don’t do that! You scared me half to death.” I tried to wiggle back from him, too annoyed to greet him with a hug.
He kissed my nose and released me. “I can’t help myself. I’m a trickster. It’s my nature.”
“I thought someone was following me,” I said.
“Someone was.”
“You?”
“No. It was your student.”
I lowered my voice. “Imani?” I looked around, not wanting her to spot me with Elric.
“Don’t worry. She can’t hear us or see us. My guards have used magic to camouflage us and have diverted her from our path by now.”
“I didn’t see her follow me.” My earlier pity for her deflated under the prickle of irritation. I had told her I would take a walk with her tomorrow. She hadn’t listened when I told her I wanted privacy.
We would be having words later.
“She’s clever. She was using an invisibility . . . what do you call those baggy, long-sleeve shirts with the hoods?”
“A hoodie?”
Elric nodded. “That’s right. So many modern clothes to learn. So little time.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. “Do you mind if we venture a little deeper into the forest today? I want to ensure we put some space between you and your student.”
“Imani can’t wander around the forest alone. She might stray off school grounds, and the Raven Queen will snatch her. I need to find her.”
“I’ve already thought of that. My guards are herding her back to the school. There’s nothing to fret about.” He stroked my back, the comfort of his touch melting away my worries. “How are your magic lessons?”
“Fine,” I said quickly, trying not to act guilty. I had no reason to act guilty. Thatch and I weren’t doing anything risqué together. My affinity happened to be pleasurable touch. I needed someone to teach me how to regain it. It wasn’t like Thatch had actually touched me or we’d done anything illicit together.
Even so, I couldn’t help feeling wrong about the fantasy my subconscious had thought up with Thatch. The meditation chair was supposed to put my concentration to the test because it made me face fears. Kissing Thatch wasn’t a fear. Was it?
Elric gazed at the trees. A butterfly flitted in front of him and landed on his outstretched hand. He presented it to me. The moment I tried to touch it, the butterfly glided off.
He guided me deeper into the forest. The last time I’d gone this deep into the forest, Julian had taken me off school grounds and had “accidentally” magicked away my clothes. I wanted to believe Elric wouldn’t do the same.
Elric nudged me. “A penny for your thoughts?”
“Huh?”
“You’re awfully silent today.”
“Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”
“During your holiday you are overwhelmed by worries?” he sounded rightfully doubtful. “Is this about your magic lessons?”
I hesitated. Elric was my boyfriend. I should have felt like I could share anything with him, but I also knew he and Thatch weren’t exactly on the best of terms with each other.
“It puts me in an awkward position, you being someone I love and Thatch being someone you hate.”
He stopped and turned to me. His eyes shifted from green to brown and back to green. A little smile laced his lips. “Do you love me?”
“Well, um, yes.” The admission made me nervous. I’d told him I loved him once before, but the words had slipped out so casually this time. I hadn’t even thought about it. But it was true. I did care about him. I enjoyed our friendship.
More firmly I said, “Yes. I’m in love with you.”
He brushed a stray strand of hair from my face. “Good. Because I’m in love with you.”
His touch against my
skin made molten desire rise up inside me. He leaned closer and kissed me. His lips tasted like honey and summer.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him more tightly to me. The air was already warm, but where his hands rested on my shoulder and the small of my back burned. My affinity momentarily flared. I pulled away.
Elric tucked my hand back into the crook of his arm. “What were you saying about your lessons? You’re afraid to tell me how they’re going because you think I’m going to give you a hard time about it? Because you’re studying with Mr. Thatch?”
“That’s not what I said.” Though it was what I’d meant. “I just don’t want to cause more problems by talking about him.”
“Why would it cause problems? It isn’t like I’m going to be jealous of all the time he gets to openly spend with you while I’m forced to see you in secret and only in fleeting moments while we hide from teenagers attempting to follow you.”
I sighed in annoyance.
He squeezed my arm. “I’m teasing.” He stepped over a fallen log in the path and took my hand to help me over. “True. I am jealous, but I know it’s illogical. The circumstances aren’t your choosing. If you had the power to make it so, you would spend more time with me.”
I stared at the flowers and ferns growing along the path. I wished I could have told him why I had to study with Thatch, why only he could teach me. If I did, that would reveal what I was and what Thatch was. I wanted to tell Elric my secrets, but I couldn’t.
“If something is on your mind and you want to talk, I’m here to listen,” Elric said. “I won’t judge you or tell you how much I hate your teacher. I will keep my opinions to myself.”
Sunlight glittered across Elric’s skin, resembling diamonds for the briefest moment before he passed under shadowy boughs.
I didn’t want there to be secrets between us. Perhaps some were necessary, but not all of them. I wanted to show him I trusted him.
I wanted to trust him.
“Do you promise not to get mad or indignant or tell me what I have to do? I hate it when he bosses me around. It’s the most annoying thing ever, and I can’t deal with one more person in my life getting in my face about something.”
“I will be the most not-in-your-face-person ever. I will only listen.” The genuine affection in his smile told me he meant it.
“I have to do these meditations and visualizations. Mr. Thatch has this special chair that is supposed to draw out my fears. But it hasn’t been working lately.” I left out the pain magic and what he had suggested I do to spark my affinity so it wouldn’t raise questions. “The chair used to show me all sorts of scary things. Snakes or my ex-boyfriends—Julian who tried to . . . well, you know about him already.” I couldn’t say the words out loud. They were still too painful. “And Derrick. I used to see him too after he killed me—tried to kill me.” Resurrection magic was a Red affinity trait. Elric didn’t need to know about that either. “Sometimes I saw a strange combination of Derrick and Julian mashed up together. They would try to hurt me while I was in the fear chair. I was supposed to remember it wasn’t real and any pain I felt was imaginary. But lately I haven’t seen either of them. I’ve seen Thatch while I’m in the chair.”
His head tilted to the side. “What do you think that means?”
“I guess it means I’m afraid of him, but he isn’t doing anything scary. He’s usually being nice. More than nice.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Sometimes he kisses me in these meditations.”
Elric’s voice was slow and measured, nonjudgmental. “How does that make you feel?”
Guilt percolated inside me, so close to exploding. “Horrible. Weird. Sometimes I like it, and then I wake up and feel ashamed of myself. He says everything in the chair is created by my subconscious. I have no control over what is manifested, only control over my reactions—but even that doesn’t always go as planned.”
“That sounds . . . confusing.” He unhooked my hand from his elbow and hugged me around the shoulder.
“I don’t want you to think I like him that way. I don’t. I’m in love with you. But I hate the idea of being aroused by these ‘dreams’ of him when all I want is to be with you.”
“I can see this deeply bothers you. I feel privileged you’re willing to share this with me.”
That only made me feel worse because there was so much I didn’t share with him.
“I don’t feel jealous, if that’s what you fear,” he said. “If your subconscious manifests him instead of me, it means you don’t fear me. You don’t think I’m going to be like Derrick or Julian. I find solace in the idea that you trust me—even on a subconscious level.”
That was one interpretation of why my subconscious experienced Thatch kissing me.
He led me down the bank toward a murky green pond. “May I ask, is he in the room while you meditate?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I have promised not to ‘get in your face,’ and I don’t want you to see me like him. Nor do I wish to tell you what to do. But I do want you to consider something, if you don’t think it’s impertinent of me to ask you to do so.” He frowned. “I hate to make the insinuation, but . . . how much weight do you hold in his professionalism? Is it possible that what is happening during this visualization isn’t all your subconscious? Could it be that he is actually kissing you?”
I stared at him, aghast. “No. He wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t even touch people—especially not me. Any time I’ve ever touched him, he’s the one who pushed me away.” Literally and figuratively.
“Then it must be your subconscious. The fear of feeling pleasure with a man who you don’t want.”
“He wouldn’t kiss me.” I teetered precariously on a rock, trying to regain my balance. “I would know if he did. I’ve been doing my lucid-dreaming exercises. I can tell the difference between what happens in the fear chair in my mind and what happens in reality.”
Elric took my hand and grounded me. “I believe you. You needn’t justify yourself to me. I’m certain you can tell the difference.”
I could tell the difference . . . except when I couldn’t. What if Thatch had actually kissed me? There had been that one time recently I’d seen him sitting close and touching me in the meditative dream, and when I’d opened my eyes, he had been caressing my arm. He said he’d been healing my bruises, but what if he had been doing more than that?
Elric pushed aside a curtain of moss hanging from a low branch of a tree, clearing the way for me to walk underneath. “Do you feel better now that you’ve unburdened some of the weight from your shoulders?”
“Yeah, loads better,” I lied.
On the other side of the moss was the canopy bed, hung with the same mixture of fabric and moss as the tree. As I stepped onto the ground next to the bed, wood creaked. The surface under my feet sank and bobbed. Elric navigated around a few rocks and stepped a few feet away, near the foot of the bed. The ground rocked ever so slightly.
Elric grinned, pleased about something. That’s when I realized the bed was on an island of its own, detached from the bank.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s a boat. We’re about to be kidnapped by feral mermaids. I hope you don’t mind.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Swimming with the Fishes
With Elric, I could never tell if he was joking or not. His pranks, although he meant them as harmless, had gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion.
“What do you mean by kidnapped? You’re joking, right?”
He kneeled on the raft next to the water and splashed around with his hand. Webbed fingers gripped the edge of the boat. I held on to the post of the bed for balance while I peered closer to view the flicker of orange through the murky green water.
“Have no fear. They aren’t going to hurt us. Well, they aren’t going to hurt me, anyway. I wouldn’t advise that you swim with them. They’re feral. And don’t venture too close
to the edge without me.” He tugged me closer to the bed and lifted me onto the springy mattress.
A scaly orange tail that reminded me of a koi fish, only larger, swished back and forth under the water, momentarily cresting before diving back down.
I stared, transfixed. “Will they try to call me into the water with their music, only to lure me in and drown me?”
“Not on purpose. Freshwater mermaids aren’t mean, but they aren’t too bright either.”
“They aren’t really kidnapping us and taking us into the Faerie Realm?”
“No. They’re simply going to push us down to the other end of the pond so we have more privacy.”
Yellow, orange, and white tails flickered and flashed through the haze of green water. A head bobbed up above the surface momentarily. Stringy green plants interwoven with black hair hung in the eyes of the woman. I only caught a flash of her aqua eyes for a moment before her head dipped back under.
Elric pushed aside more of the curtain and sat on the bed. “Did you bring your picnic? I brought my own food this time—but I didn’t bring Fae food. I don’t want my food to get mixed up with yours and for you to bite into the wrong apple and to end up trapped in the Faerie Realm.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the mermaid tails swishing under the water. Maddy was a siren, and I had seen sirens in the wild before, but they didn’t have tails or look like this. This was almost as magical as riding a unicorn!
“Are mermaids considered Fae or beasts or what? How do you control them?” I asked.
“They’re Fae, but the Fae courts consider them lesser Fae, like they do with pixies, brownies, and sasquatches. Water creatures belong to a different kingdom with their own system of courts. And I can’t control them. I bribed them.” He winked at me.
Once the gondola was out in the middle of the pond, he reached into a pouch at his belt and crouched down at the edge. A head popped above the water. She was beautiful, with blue-green eyes and a scale-covered face. Her hair might have been made from some kind of weed or maybe it was a mixture of weeds and hair.
