Spellwood Academy by Kate Avery Ellison

Author:Kate Avery Ellison [Ellison, Kate Avery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

~

For the next few days, every time I crossed Lucien’s path, he seemed to be watching me. And I was watching him. Something had shifted between us, but I wasn’t sure what. Had it been the attack by the fragmyr, or his rare vulnerability afterward? Had I done something, said something that upset him?

I was flummoxed and annoyed about my emotions.

In the evenings, in the Cistern, we migrated closer together as we cleared the moss. The mushrooms sang their strange, hypnotic songs, and Lucien ignored me, but with a casual friendliness that bordered on comradery at times. The evenings were strangely soothing—I had something to focus on, no matter how much my stomach tied itself into knots beforehand—but the rest of the days were far less so.

Finally, one evening weeks after we’d been working in the Cistern together, Lucien struck up a conversation.

“Do you like books?” he asked.

I raised my head and stared at him. His face was half-turned toward me, as if he hardly cared about my answer, but I could see by the stillness of his shoulders that he was waiting for my reply.

“Yes,” I said. “I like books.”

Lucien smiled, a flick of his mouth and a twitch of his eyes, and then he resumed work on the moss.

“Do you know what I like to read best?” he said after another pause.

I was expecting him to say he liked horror, or perhaps political strategy. What did fae princes usually read? The idea of them reading anything seemed incomprehensible, like a sea monster enjoying mall walking.

“Romances,” he said, the confession accompanied by a flicker of vulnerable shyness that was almost instantly replaced with a kind of stubborn defiance bordering on boredom.

“Romances,” I repeated.

Not what I’d been expecting.

“Mortals are so honest in their love stories. So certain about their affections. Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby—”

“The Great Gatsby isn’t a romance,” I said.

“Isn’t it?” He stretched with the lazy grace of a panther. His wavy hair had grown longer and nearly hid his antlers, making him look completely human for a moment.

“They make children read it in schools.”

He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Fae children don’t read anything. They play in the forest and climb trees and make flowers grow.”

“So, I’ve been told,” I said.

We fell silent. I wondered if I dared ask what I wanted to.

“You read all the time. Where did you learn, if not in school as a child?”

I left the question unasked but hanging in the silence between us.

“My grandmother was mortal. She taught me. She gave me most of my books, helped me hide them so my father wouldn’t burn them. She’d bring me trunks full of them when she returned from visiting the mortal realm.”

“Mortals are proud when their children like to read,” I said. “It’s considered a sign of intelligence.”

He tipped his head back. “My father says it’s my mortal blood corrupting me.”

The sky grew indigo as we talked, and the stars appeared one by one. Our time was up.

Instead of heading back toward the school, Lucien drifted in the direction of the forest perimeter.

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