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The stirring inside of me when I looked at the wolf made me feel so much worse. Timothy was my boyfriend, here or not. We were a thing, a couple. I could look, but feeling and touching were off-limits. Those were the unspoken rules in a relationship, weren’t they?
Hell, if I knew for sure. I’d had a boyfriend before Timothy, but that didn’t last long enough to learn anything. Timothy was the real deal. He wasn’t my first kiss but my first everything else.
Frustration boiled inside me, and I shook my head to clear it, pulling myself back into the throng of things at the moment. The attention was off Mallory as those pooled in the mess hall were mostly pressed against the walls, watching the vampire soldiers move about. The vehicles rolled up, one by one, lining the area between trees and the mess hall. There was no clear path without having to maneuver around them now.
Side-eyeing the wolf, I slipped into the crowd and slithered through them. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught his eyes watching me. Turning sharply on my heel to peek out an empty space of window, I pretended to be interested in what was happening in the outside world. When I no longer felt his eyes on the back of my head, I turned to make sure. He was also watching what was going on, no doubt alert to make sure I wasn’t about to slip out without his knowledge.
But he forgot a vital piece of information; I was a damn witch.
Reaching up, I brushed my fingers along my forehead and drew them down, flicking my wrist. My body rippled like a bucket of water had been dumped on me. I always hated this feeling, so I rarely used this spell. Shivering as I felt drenched but knew I wasn’t, I turned and slipped through an opening in the ground. I wasn’t exactly invisible. That was a higher spell I had yet to completely master. No, I was simply camouflaged, but it would do. It’d get me out of this place without prying eyes taking in every move.
As the door opened to let in another batch, Olga in the midst of them, I slipped through and left the mess hall. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end, warning me of the eyes watching me. But that was impossible. As long as I kept close to the building, there was no way to detect my spell. But cold slithered down my spine anyway and pulled me to turn around.
The vampire from earlier was staring directly at me. As a shot of fear pinged through me, I glanced down. I was still camouflaged. I was a good witch; I could do spells well enough. The ones I was good at anyway. But I was good at this one. How the hell was he seeing me? My breath caught in my throat, my heart hammering. Realization dawned on me, and my throat seized up.
Vampires could smell blood. They could hear heartbeats. Of course, I was such an idiot for not remembering that right away. As the thoughts processed, the vampire staring at me curled his lips back, giving a view to the fangs that dropped. He sneered at me, but Valencia appeared at his side before he could move forward or do anything.
She spoke in a low voice to him, her back turned to me. As his eyes flitted away from the spot where I stood, I took the moment of distraction to flee straight to my bunk. Pushing open the door, I skidded to a stop, blinking furiously to take in the mess splayed out in front of me. The entire place had been ransacked. The beds were slashed open, foam from the mattress floating all around. The pillows had feathers piled up in every place. And the trunks that belonged to all the witches were overturned, contents dumped out. My heart skipped a beat as I stepped over various broken items, glass pieces dotting the ground.
As I stopped in front of my bed, my eyes fell on what was left of my items. My eyes scoured the pile, then I dropped to my knees, digging through the pieces of fabric, feathers, foam, and everything else. But I couldn’t find it – it wasn’t there.
Panic flared through me. This wasn’t possible; this wasn’t right. I shook my head as I began to fling items away, desperate to find that one thing. It was nowhere.
I felt the trickle of my spell fade away, but I didn’t care at the moment. Anger seared through, burning. That was all I’d had left of her. It was the last thing I had of her.
My nostrils flared and my fingers tingled. Squeezing my eyes shut, I curled my fingers into my palms, willing myself to stay calm. The last time I had gotten this angry and my powers went out of control had been disastrous. I’d nearly burned down our home. I couldn’t let that happen, not again. I couldn’t dare let myself get out of control. Not this time.
But my mother’s belongings were gone. What was I supposed to do with that? Was I just supposed to be okay with that? Absolutely not. I didn’t have to let anyone take my things, especially the last I had of my mother.
As I opened my eyes, they fell on a book, the corner peeking out from beneath a torn pair of pants. Staring at it for a long moment, I took in the swirls that warped the front. I didn’t recognize it and couldn’t remember ever packing a book that looked like that. I would’ve remembered that, right?
Still, I reached forward and tugged it out, my fingers tingling with my powers. As I made contact with the book, bolts of electricity shot out, curling around the book. The air sizzled, setting my hair upright from the friction. It was just a corner of the book with swirled designs; the rest was nothing more than a children’s fairytale book, which I remember packing. It was a book Dad had always read to me growing up, one I always picked for bedtime. I vaguely recalled Mom reading it before him, before – well, before she was taken.
Burning leather stung my nostrils, but I couldn’t move as I watched the top layer of the book melt away. Beneath it was a black cover with gold swirls and red letters scrawled across the top in a language I couldn’t quite understand. The book thickened, the pages yellowing, and the grimoire sat right in front of me. Disguised this entire damn time as a child’s fairytale book.
My heart skipped a beat and dropped in the pit of my stomach, churning the contents within. What contents? I suddenly couldn’t remember the last time I’d even eaten anything. Great, I was going to end up dry heaving, if anything.
Fear and panic flared through me, smashing out any remnants of angered magic that had built up. Because this wasn’t good. This was bad. This was so bad. Grimoires, spell books, were against the rules. Having your own was asking to be burned at the stake. Well, not quite literally, but that was the joke about the trouble you’d get into. I could have my magic stripped from me in the blink of an eye. I could never be a healer, never get to be part of the war. I would be cast out of our village, forced to live among the humans. I wouldn’t be able to survive without my magic.
All because my mom had left this in my possession.
ChapterThirty-Two
The door to the bunk hall squeaked as it was pushed open, and I snatched up the grimoire, my fingers tingling once again. Upon contact, the melted default cover reversed and wrapped itself around the book once more, deflating it into a much smaller one. I gripped what now looked like a child’s fairytale book, and my stomach curled. Before the arrival could fully enter, I grabbed hold of a bag I wasn’t even sure was mine and shoved it in, grabbing a few more items of mine to accompany it.
“What are you doing?” Olga’s condescending tone clipped at me, her shadow falling over me. “Did you make this mess?”
I snorted and drew up to my feet, slinging my now-mine bag over my shoulder. “Do I look like I could’ve done it?”
She shrugged and stepped over something broken, pressing her face close to me within inches. “I’ve seen you lose control, Azula. I wouldn’t exactly be surprised.”
Narrowing my eyes at her, I pursed my lips as I held up my chin, refusing to let her see if she could even make a dig at me. “That was once, Olga.”
She shrugged. “It was enough, don’t you think?”
My jaw ticked, and my fingers curled around the strap of my bag. “Why’re you even here? Shouldn’t you be ogling those vampires or something?”
Olga sneered, placing her hands on her hips. “I came to get a couple of my things. Apparently, you and I had the same idea.”
