She turned her nose up at me, returning to the pedestal she always put herself on. “You need to end whatever it is you two are doing. Now.” She brushed her ponytail over her shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. “Or what? You’re going to tattle on me?”
“Not to sound childish, but yeah! I’m going to tell Dagmar.”
I’d since resigned myself to the fact that another summer at Lake Nevermore was a high probability. Gwen and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and after what had happened earlier, there was no way I was walking away over a small threat.
I flashed Astrid a smile, and her eyes bulged. She thought she had something over me. She thought she could control me, blackmail me, but she clearly wasn’t prepared for my answer as I shrugged and said, “What’s one more summer?”
I turned on my heel and headed toward the lake, needing to jump into the cold water just as much as I needed to leave Astrid dumbfounded.
24
Gwen
When I’d first arrived at SCUW, I’d thought the summer would last forever. Now, we were already doing the final trials before the end-of-summer games. These would determine which activity we participated in, and unfortunately for me, every witch had to compete in something.
So far, I hadn’t been selected for anything, which didn’t surprise me. There were witches who’d been training like it was their very own Hunger Games. I hadn’t even known Ihadmagic until a few weeks ago, so I would have been content to just watch from the sidelines and cheer on my cabin, but Dagmar had insisted I’d have to pick something.
The last activity to test our skills was archery. I’d managed to shoot decently in the first round—a total fluke, but somehow it had landed me in the finals against the rest of the first- and second-year witches at SCUW.
We gathered at the archery range in the late evening. The sky was clear, the stars twinkled overhead, and the moon shone brightly enough that we could all see each other in its silvery light. Fireflies danced through the field, reminding me of the night in the canoe with Sabine. I cleared my throat, trying to keep my focus on the task at hand, but I kept wondering if she was somewhere in the crowd, watching me.
Why did a crowd need to gather? It was only a trial run. Still, spectating was the only thing anyone was allowed to do past curfew, so here they all were.
There were fifteen of us in the lineup. The odds definitely weren’t in my favor, especiallynow, since we were all blindfolded.
“Can I just opt out?” I whispered to Faith as she tied the blindfold behind my head. “I’m probably going to hit someone.”
“You’re better at this than you realize,” Faith encouraged. “Trust your magic.”
“I’d trust my magic more if I wasn’t afraid I’d impale a fellow camper,” I muttered, passing the bow between my sweaty hands.
“Dagmar will have protection shields up around all of you, so don’t stress,” Faith said, squeezing my shoulder. “We’ll be laughing about this one day when we’re old witches gathered around the fire at the Halloween Festival.”
That made a lump of emotion lodge in my throat. She thought about us still being friends years from now, not just for a single summer. And for once in my life, I could see it too. Making friends wasn’t the hard part,keepingthem was, and I was starting to believe that I’d be keeping Faith—and that she’d be keeping me too.
“Okay, I got this,” I murmured, not sounding as confident as I was hoping I would.
“Yeah, you do!” Faith cheered.
“Ready!” Dagmar called.
I nocked my arrow and waited, my heart pounding in my ears as I imagined the target in my mind.
“Aim!”
I pulled back the bowstring, anchoring the fletching to the corner of my mouth as I held the image of the target tightly in my mind.
Target, target, bull’s-eye.
“Fire!”
An air horn screeched, and I jumped just as I released the arrow. My only hope of hitting the target was the thread of magic I was trying to hold onto in my mind.
“What was that?” the witch next to me cried.
I yanked down my blindfold and looked at the row of frazzled witches to my left. Half the arrows hadn’t even made it to their targets. Mine had thankfully landed, but nowhere near the bull’s-eye.
