The Black Witch by Laurie Forest

Author:Laurie Forest
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Stick Magic

“There’s something strange about you and wood.”

I pause, my hands coated with esmin bark powder.

Only the drip, drip, drip of condensation from a distillation tube breaks the silence of the deserted lab. Tierney and I are the last scholars here at this late hour, finishing up work that takes twice as long without wand magic.

I’ve known for some time that Tierney’s noticed. It’s like something in me is waking up, and it’s more than just the echo of my grandmother’s power in my blood. I’ve always had fanciful imaginings about source trees, but the more time I spend in the apothecary laboratory, and especially in the attached greenhouse, the stronger my strange leanings have become.

And Tierney’s noticed.

She noticed when the small, potted Gorthan trees from the inaccessible northwestern forests opened their flowers at the brush of my hand. How a fiddlehead fern once reached up to curl lovingly around my finger, the small plant’s waves of adoration washing over me. She knows that I don’t have to label any ingredients that come from trees now. That I’ve learned to read mixtures intuitively, and can easily and effectively stray from the stated formulas more and more.

I level my gaze at Tierney. “Yes, well, there’s something strange about you and water.”

A flash of fear crosses Tierney’s face.

Whereas I know Tierney has been surreptitiously watching me, I also know she hasn’t realized that I’ve been doing the same. On several occasions, I’ve peered into the lab, late at night, and have caught sight of odd things. Things that left me blinking and wondering if my ongoing sleep deprivation is playing tricks on my mind. Tierney absentmindedly playing with water rivulets, the streams and balls of water following her swirling finger like playful kittens. Tierney directing steam with her fingers. Tierney holding a ball of water in her hand.

I’ve been forced to come face-to-face with the truth of it—like Gareth, there’s no doubt that Tierney and I have mixed blood.

Fae blood.

For a long moment Tierney and I stare at each other in edgy silence.

“Have you noticed,” Tierney ventures, “that we’re the only two people in class without white armbands?”

More and more Gardnerian scholars have begun wearing these armbands, showing their support for Marcus Vogel’s rise to High Mage in the spring referendum, Fallon Bane being one of the first. I can’t bring myself to wear one, no matter how important it is to fit in. The thought of Vogel as our next High Mage fills me with a powerful dread I can’t explain.

“Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,” I tell her with forced lightness. “That’s my aunt’s domain.”

Tierney shoots me a look of hard appraisal, her mouth inching up in a coldly sardonic smile.

It makes me uncomfortable, her look. Like I’m being harshly judged and found lacking.

“I’ll need your help with the vials,” Tierney uneasily blurts out. “Carrying them, I mean. With this crook in my back—I can only carry a little.”

I nod, eager to let all these threads of conversation drop into oblivion.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.