Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
It’s the first time I’ve eaten here and the first time I’ve seen the hall in action at dinner. Usually, I’m riding home by now. In fact, Snowdrop is probably getting restless in the stables, and I make a note of visiting her after this. Until then, I just eat the food—it’s not as good as Famke’s, but it’s pretty close—and by the time the dessert of broiled honeyed apricots and ricotta comes out, I feel strangely at home.
This is what I’ve been missing, I think, feeling a pang in my chest, an ache for belonging. It’s foreign and familiar at the same time.
It’s too bad my mother would never let me live on campus. She was so obstinate about her sisters not taking me, even though I would have nothing to do with them. In fact, since I’ve been going to school, I haven’t even seen my aunts. Neither Leona nor Ana have ever come to my classes to check on me. Instead, I’ve only seen Sister Sophie and Sister Margaret, both of whom treat me with a sort of quiet contempt. For how often they seem to deride my mother, it baffles me that my mother comes to visit with them once a month. They might not be related to us by blood, but they are still part of the same coven.
I guess she needs them a lot more than they need her.
I just wish I knew what she really needed them for.
Chapter 13
Kat
When dinner is over, my stomach full and my heart happy from the company and conversation, Crane goes over to the faculty dorms to get supplies while I go check on Snowdrop.
“Hello, darling,” I say to my mare, but she seems especially anxious tonight.
“I know, I’m sorry. We will go soon,” I tell her, scratching my fingers along her neck.
“You’re still here.”
I jump in fright and whirl around to see the stableboy holding a lantern and staring at me.
“I am,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “I have to stay later tonight. Don’t worry about tacking her up for me. I can do that later.”
“You shouldn’t be here after dark,” the boy says flatly. He’s not blinking at me, and his eyes seem especially black.
I swallow uneasily. “It’s alright. I won’t be alone.”
“You’re never alone. Not when you’re here. They’ll never let you be alone again.”
Then he turns and walks away, disappearing into the night.
I glance at Snowdrop, my heart racing. “Gosh. He must have had a rough day.”
I have to wonder if that boy sleeps here. He must. But then, who is his mother if no families are supposed to be on campus? Who takes care of him? The coven?
“Kat?” I hear Crane’s voice come from the darkness.
I kiss my horse’s nose and then walk toward the lantern that’s coming closer to me.
“Did you see a little boy walk past you?” I ask him.
“No,” he says, looking around. I’ve never seen Professor Crane in the dark before. In the lamplight, the shadows under his cheekbones and brows are pronounced, making him look chiseled from marble. Or like a skull. It gives him this otherworldliness that I don’t think I’ve really grasped before.
This man is a witch.
This man is magic.
And he wants me to create magic with him.
“Who was it?” he asks, and I realize I’ve been staring at him, at the way his hair seems to blend in with the shadows, how dark his eyes look, how they draw me in.
“The stableboy,” I say. In the distance, most of the buildings are dark, with the only lights coming from the dorms and the dining hall, where I’m sure a few people are still lingering over meals. There is no sign of another lantern, like the boy vanished into thin air.
Perhaps he knows shadow magic too, I wonder.
“Stableboy,” Crane muses. “Can’t say I’ve ever noticed him.”
“He’s not staying in the men’s wing of the faculty dorms?”
He shakes his head. “No. Perhaps he goes into town like you do. Or maybe he lives in the cathedral with your aunts.”
It’s only now that I notice that in one of his hands, he’s holding what looks to be a black tie. “What’s that?”
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “You’ll see.” He holds out his arm for me. “Come on, let me walk you to the lake.”
My stomach flips. From nervousness or something else, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s everything. Two witches walking into the dark together.
I put my arm into his, and we walk down the path until we reach the main one that takes us close to the lakeshore. The air has a bite to it, and I’m grateful for my warm dress and gloves. But it’s also peaceful, the sound of our footsteps punctuated only by the occasional hoot of an owl, so soft that it sounds like a dream.