Nightworld Academy: Winterfall Magic by LJ Swallow

Author:LJ Swallow [Swallow, LJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-11T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

MAEVE

I can’t sleep and wake before dawn, but too late to catch Andrei as he’s already retreated to his room. Passing the lounge room, I peek inside at the two witches sprawled across the sofas beneath their matching blue blankets. What will happen today? Where will they take me?

The same question repeated in my mind all night—the one I daren’t ask after Tomas’s response. Is one of them my father? Do they know?

I look exactly like a Winterfall. How could she or any of them know?

“Good morning, Maeve.”

I sense Tobias before he speaks, and I turn away from the lounge room to face him. He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and sends a shiver across my face as he brushes my cheek.

“You’re awake early,” he says.

“Can’t sleep.” I glance behind me at the sleeping pair. “I need to go with them, Tobias.”

The anxiety I expected clouds his aura, but I sense something more.

Defeat.

Tobias won’t try to come with me. “I know. These men won’t hurt you, and as long as one of us accompanies you, I’m happy.”

“Happy?”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. “No. I’m not. But I accept the situation.”

“I’m surprised, Tobias. I expected more resistance.”

For a moment, he’s silent as he pulls on his lip and looks at me in the way that flips my stomach. “Xavier and Nathaniel have answers and this other man—Alexei—does too. If I refuse to let you go, the three may refuse to help you.”

I half-smile. “You do know that I’d go whether you ‘allowed’ me or not?”

“Yes, Maeve,” he says with a hint of exasperation. “That’s another reason I’m not interfering.”

“You knew Tomas. Do you know Nate and Xav too?”

“No, but they certainly know about me.” He looks away as he says the next words. “Do you think you can convince these men to tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“How to break the curse.” He half-whispers the words and my heart speeds. Tobias’s refusal to accept it’s possible to breaking the curse drives a wedge between us, and now he asks this? “Maeve. This is fucking killing me. All curses can be broken, even if some are more complicated than others.”

“You never believed that,” I whisper.

“Because I didn’t hold hope anyone would want to, or if they did, that the solution is hidden or impossible.”

“But hope is what gets us all through, Tobias.”

His eyes soften and he traces a finger across my lips. “Yes. If I believed there’s a solution but knew nothing could ever happen, I’d struggle. I wanted to accept there’s no answer. I wanted to make you accept.”

“I would never,” I say firmly.

He smiles. “Which is obvious.”

“I love you, Tobias.”

The building energy grows, and I want to believe too—I want to believe that the craziness that comes from the physical bond that tortures us both isn’t only a curse.

“And I love you. Utterly and completely.” Tobias draws me to him and kisses my forehead. “And that love does not come from a curse.”

My face presses

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