AllFreeNovel
Share Us
8
MIA
If Vanessa won’t help me, then I’ll just have to work harder. After classes, I take my sandwich with me to the hillocks to practice my magic. As it turns out, a few couples have chosen the spot to make out and I have to walk quite the distance to find a more secluded place. The grounds of the Academy seem to stretch into infinity.
The idea is to try a different element today, see if it’s only water I can sense and call. If it is my element, as I suspect.
But when I close my eyes and open my senses, I pick up a dance of air, breaths and sounds, like Sindri’s magic. I prod at it, try to make sense of it, and it wraps around me, a shivery embrace. It rustles through faraway trees and makes the water of the lake ripple. It speaks my name, speaks my face, speaks my essence. It knows me. It’s in me and around me.
Come, I think. Come find me. Work with me.
The sound of footsteps doesn’t quite surprise me this time, even as I have to struggle to get out of my head, out of the slight trance I’ve fallen into.
It’s a fae girl, her hair a lighter shade of blue than Sindri’s, the black in it barely visible. Her eyes are dark and huge, and instead of stars, they have lightning in them. “You called for me,” she says in a breathy voice.
Right.
The experiment results are in: I can connect to other elements—which means that maybe water isn’t necessarily my element after all?—and to magical creatures, too.
How does that help me? Does it help me at all? No idea. But I sort of understand now why this Queen Witch would need conduits. Looks like all witches do.
“Was it you who called me?” the fae girl says. She glances around with a frown, flicks a long strand of light blue hair over one shoulder. She’s dressed in a dress that seems to be made of cobwebs. Guess fae fashion is kind of different from that of the other magical races? “Or was I mistaken? What do you want?”
“I, uh.” I hadn’t thought that far, to be honest. But since she’s here… “Have you seen Sindri? Is he all right?”
Something in the set of her thin shoulders relaxes, even as her brows draw together again. “He hasn’t spoken a word to us since the day the elder took him away for a visit. Some of my brethren believe he’s… broken. Is that the right word?”
“He’s not broken,” I whisper, sadness welling inside me. “He can’t be. Sindri is strong.”
“Yes,” she acknowledges. “That is true. And we are drawn to power, which is how he became our leader at the Academy. Someone who has gone through hell because of an accident of birth and still rose to lead us is someone we follow. But sooner or later, pain breaks even the strongest.”
“Accident of birth? You mean the fact that his mother was from a different court than his father?”
Her gaze moves over me, calculating. “You don’t know,” she whispers. “He never told you.”
“Told me what?”
She sniffs, a disdainful sound, and turns to go. “Don’t call on me again unless you have any information that can help him.”
A valid point. Yet… “Wait. You’re Anala, right? Sindri’s friend?”
She stops. Cocks her head to the side. “I don’t know if he considers me a friend. Sindri doesn’t let people close.”
“I wanted to ask…” I swallow hard. “Do you know who put this tattoo on my back? Zoey asked one of you to put it on me.”
She turns back around, eyes flashing. “You could use magic to take the information from me.”
“That’s not my style.” My heart starts to pound because I didn’t even think of using magic that way and it doesn’t matter whether I could do it or not. “It would be wrong.”
She’s still watching me as if waiting for the punch line. “You’re a witch,” she says. “Witches can make you do things. You called me here.”
“I’m still learning, okay? I was trying to see if I sense the elements, if I could influence them.”
“You need a witch to teach you.”
“Don’t I know it…” I mutter.
Her mouth twitches. “Are you trying to help Sindri?”
