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BELLA
“Bella, if this is about the mate bond,” Eve said as soon as all of the other students were out of earshot. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“It’s not,” I told her. “I understand that it’s important for me to fulfill the school’s obligation. I’ve come to terms with it.”
“You have, eh?” she asked me, arching a brow. “That guardian must have been very… convincing.”
I felt my whole face turn red.
“Anyway,” I said, “I understand that I can’t keep attending school. But I came here for a reason. I need to help my brother.”
“What kind of trouble is he in?” Eve asked, sitting on a stone bench near the broken statue, placing the book down carefully beside her.
“My brother was in a bad car accident,” I said carefully. “He can’t walk now. I want to heal him.”
“And you’re hoping I can do a healing spell on him,” Eve guessed.
“Or that you can teach me to do it so I can help him myself,” I said quickly. “I’m sure Luke would let me go home for a day—”
“—I’m going to stop you right there,” Eve said. “I don’t know a spell that could fix someone in that condition.”
“Is there someone else at the school maybe?” I began.
“Combat and healing are two sides of the same coin,” she said gently. “There is no better healer at the school than I am.”
“But this is the only reason I came here,” I moaned. “When we met, you said the best witches could hold back death.”
“Oh dear,” Eve said, running a hand through her dark hair. “Let me explain some things to you.”
“I’m listening.”
But my head was already buzzing. If I couldn’t help Jon, then what the hell was I even doing?
“Our magic comes at a price, Bella, did you know that?” she asked.
“Professor Sora talked about it on my first day,” I said, nodding.
“Then you can see that while it is theoretically possible for a witch to hold back death,” she went on, “or even do the extremely complicated sort of magic it would take to bring movement back to your brother’s limbs, the practical cost of it would be too great. Magic like that hasn’t been used in the world in hundreds of years.”
“You mean the Raven King?” I asked. “The other side of the veil and all that?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The graffiti on the fountain says he’s coming back,” I pointed out.
“Bella, I don’t want to disappoint you, but there have been rumors that the Raven King was coming back ever since he disappeared,” Eve said. “The truth is that if you studied for your whole life, building up dedicated, disciplined magic without ever using it, youmightbe able to help your brother. But even then, it wouldn’t be a sure thing.”
I didn’t have a lifetime. I had a day. I felt my chest tighten.
“And even if you did have the power to do it, Bella, it would be extremely dangerous,” she said. “Fiddling about with someone’s spine isn’t like closing a fresh cut on an otherwise healthy young woman’s arm. The tiniest miscalculation could kill him. It could even kill you.”
I looked down at my hands. They went blurry from my unshed tears. It was over. I had ruined my brother’s life and I officially couldn’t help him.
Unless…
“Are there things I could do to make him more comfortable?” I asked her. “WhatcanI do for my brother?”
“That’s a fantastic question, Bella,” Eve said, hopping up and pacing around the garden to think.
While she mused, listing out different charms that could possibly ease pain and suffering, I went into action.
I locked my fingers around one of the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons on my school gown and tugged hard, coughing to cover the sound of it popping off the fabric.
It was tiny, but it was all I had. Hopefully, she wouldn’t notice. And hopefully it would stay in place.
The next time she turned her back to me, I slipped the button into the binding of the book and brought my hands back to my lap as swiftly as I could.
