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I couldn’t think about him right now. I had more important things to think of. My sister, my place in the coven, getting everything I’d worked for over the years… I placed my hand over my stomach, where nausea still lingered from being hit by the seven sins. “Give me the cane.”
He handed it to me. I closed my eyes, wondering what curse lurked inside. It was a grade ten object, strong enough to hold in a vault.
Maddox cleared his throat, stepping into the circle. “Touch me.” He extended his hand.
With the cane in one hand, I touched Maddox and he aged thirty years. The skin around his eyes sagged into wrinkles, his laugh lines deepened, and his dark hair grayed.
“Oh, gods no.” I let him go, and his youthfulness returned. No matter how much I tried to contain the curse before it left my fingertips, the stronger it grew.
Minutes fell into hours, and I was exhausted when I finally found the strength to touch Edmund without him aging twenty years. I gasped when the curse neared my wrist but didn’t reach my hand. The blocks I’d formed in my mind, the resilience of my own magic syncing with my body, and pure will stopped the aging curse before it could leave me.
I touched Maddox’s, then Dora’s hands in turn. They both, gratefully, looked exactly the same. “I did it.” Tears seeped from the corners of my eyes. I held the cane longer, delighting in the power beating through my veins as the curse tried but failed to move through me. I’d beaten it.
With my peripheral vision, I noticed the headstone carved in Lor on the desk. Newfound confidence pushed me forward.
“Let’s get this over with.” My voice charged with hope as I approached the text.
Could I really be a keeper by the end of the day? Could I beat an actual god?
I paced my room. I couldn’t stay still as we waited. He hadn’t told me if I’d passed the Lor translations, but apart from two words I’d stumbled on, I thought I got it all correct.
Tingling pulled my gaze down to my hand. A magic quill appeared. Come to the garden. A decision has been made.
My heart skipped a beat. The moment of truth. Goose bumps ran along my skin as I walked downstairs. I stopped halfway, placing a hand against my stomach. Bile climbed my throat. Scrunching my nose, I willed it away, closing my eyes and finding peace in the temporary darkness.
“Elle.” Raiden’s silky voice found me. “You dismissed me so suddenly yesterday. I’ve been waiting for a moment alone with you.”
I spun around, peeling my eyelids back to take him in. Pine with spicy undertones wafted into my nose as he closed the distance between us. Aching rose between my thighs, and I clamped them together, shaking my head.
“That was a mistake,” I said, and he ran a finger down my collarbone, lacing his touch over my cleavage. “Stop,” I command. “I won’t have you distract me anymore.”
He smirked. “So I’m a distraction?”
I stepped back, although everything inside of me wanted to lean forward and touch him. “Yes now leave me alone.”
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he declares and my heart skips a beat.
“Then refrain from doing so. You are an asshole and I should never have given into my…desires.”
“Nothing I did was personal. I hope you know that. Well, except for yesterday. That was very personal.”
“You could have just asked one of us for the keys, you know,” I said, having realized the thought had probably never even entered his mind. “We’re not without compassion.”
His eyebrows knitted together, creasing above the bridge of his nose. “I’m not going to trust your people with something so important. Also, Edmund, Dora, nor Maddox would have just handed over such heavily guarded objects without permission from the elders.”
I clicked my tongue. “I get it. You don’t trust people, right? Freya betrayed you and killed your sister.”
“It was more than that.” His expression darkened. “Her death was my fault. I won’t place my trust in the wrong people again. I can’t.”
“How was it your fault?”
He hesitated. “As I said, I was too trusting.”
“Not everyone is bad, you know.”
“I don’t have time for this.” He stepped in front of me and walked the rest of the way to the garden in silence.
Stepping out into the brisk air, feeling the satisfying crunch of red and golden leaves beneath my boots, I hurried to where Edmund, Dora, Alma, and Maddox stood. Edmund held a parchment rolled up in one hand. Why was Alma there? My stomach dipped as I walked over cracked mud and the occasional white baby’s breath flower. Raiden must have won. Why else would she be here? A student going to apprentice, then keeper so fast was unheard of. She would be here to witness the greatness of Raiden.
