Chapter 16
My frantic footsteps echoed through the emptiness crowding each room as I searched the magical chamber for my apprentice, holding my guiding spell aloft like a lantern. The flame flickered as if about to go out, evidence of my strained powers’ loose hold that barely kept the spell together. My magic had been weakening ever since I’d exerted so much of it for my failed potions, and had only further drained with my portal spell, as if whatever ominous force siphoning my powers had followed me to prey on my magic even away from the competition.
I gritted my teeth and forced the dark memories away to better focus on the matter at hand: Maeve was missing after vanishing while under my charge. Her name echoed through each empty room as I searched, but no matter where I looked there was no sign of her.
I knew the effort was futile when her absence had prompted the letter that alerted me to her disappearance, yet desperation compelled me to do something, as if acting would ease some of my guilt for having left her in the first place.
Her room still contained her trunk and possessions, with no evidence she’d departed in a hurry. The only clues were the leftover potion ingredients still scattered on the counter in the prep room, the cauldron and tools also haphazardly left out despite my apprentice’s tidy nature, the recipe book open to the recipe for another healing tonic, all leading me to wonder if she’d left in haste to return to her ill brother after making a healing potion. Yet that didn’t explain why she’d left all her possessions, including her traveling cloak.
When the chamber bore no results, I next searched the surrounding forest, but that too yielded nothing. I cast the tracking spell cupped within my palm an almost accusatory glance before extinguishing it. Useless charm; it should have acted as a guiding light to wherever Maeve had gone. Had my weakening powers affected my spell, or was there another reason it hadn’t worked?
When I’d exhausted every possibility of where I’d last seen my apprentice, I deliberated on whether or not I should next go to her home and inform her family she’d gone missing. Surely that would only concern them…yet if I did nothing, wouldn’t Maeve’s lack of response to their letter only escalate their worry?
I mulled the matter over, and might have made the decision based on my own judgement if I hadn’t remembered my frog’s advice about seeking help from others. On such a delicate matter, I realized I would benefit from his insight.
I took a portal back to the clearing…only to find it abandoned. I looked frantically around, using my conjured light to better search the undergrowth, but there was no sign of the frog I’d left behind. My stomach lurched. “Mae?”
No answer, save for the symphony of crickets magnified in the darkness. I wandered the clearing again before stepping deeper into the forest, keeping my light aloft.
“Mae? Mae!”
Silence, not even a ribbit. My panic rose, far more acute than before. I was naturally worried about my apprentice, but she was a feisty, determined woman with magic…albeit untrained, but enough to defend herself. Mae was a helpless frog prone to predators.
This worry compelled me to draw from my draining reserves to summon another tracking spell, this one for my frog. Whereas my first one back at the magical chamber had been too dormant to prove useful, this one immediately emanated a twisting trail of golden light that led into the forest.
Halfway down the path, I encountered my spellbook, aflutter with panic. “Where’s Mae?” I demanded.
It gestured its pages all around before giving a helpless shrug. I sighed.
“He’s wandered into the forest? What could he be thinking?”
I wanted to scold my spellbook for allowing Mae to escape while under its charge, but that could come after I found my lost frog. I continued following the magical lure, which grew warmer as I drew closer to my target.
I heard Mae’s frantic ribbit and hops against the undergrowth long before I saw him, but eventually my frog came into view, illuminated by the spell now surrounding it in a hallow of light.
“Mae!” I hurried forward. Upon hearing my approach the frog turned to me, his dark brown eyes rounded in relief.
“Alden! I’m so happy to see you.” Emotion choked his voice, as if he was on the brink of tears.
“I’m so glad I found you.” I knelt on the ground so Mae could hop onto my palm. “Were you lost?”
The frog nodded. “But you found me. Thank you.” In his relief, he snuggled deeper against my hand. My fingers naturally cradled his body, hoping to provide security and solace within my hold.
“Thank goodness you’re safe.”
I stared at the frog resting on my palm, marveling that someone who had started off as a simple companion had now become one of my dearest friends…fitting for a wizard with my eccentrics who had become so withdrawn in my magic I could only forge friendships with enchanted objects. Yet that didn’t make our relationship any less precious, even as there was an added element that I didn’t experience with Kai nor anyone else—a sense of protectiveness and affection.
The worry that had accompanied my frantic search cumulated into fierce relief. Completely forgetting that Mae was a human man, I bent my head and kissed the top of my frog’s warty head, an affectionate gesture such as I might bestow on a pet. The moment my lips made contact with its skin, they grew warm and tingly, and the frog became enveloped in magical light.
“Mae? What—”
The frog’s dark brown eyes widened at the pulsating energy, making it difficult to maintain my grip. At the risk of dropping him, I set him gently on the ground and stepped back. The light expanded as the frog lifted into the air…and began to change.
First its legs lengthened, growing towards the ground, followed by human arms, and then a torso emerged, wearing a plum purple dress. The skin transformed from green and warty to smooth and brown, followed by fluffy black hair that formed a halo around her head. My breath caught the moment I recognized the woman.
It was my apprentice.
The light faded and she—not he as I had initially supposed—collapsed in a heap, as if she no longer had the strength to stand on her own after the transformative magic that had been sustaining her vanished…or perhaps she was no longer used to standing on human legs.
Shock rendered me temporarily still, but eventually I was able to stir enough to help her up. I gingerly hooked my fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face. She steadily avoided my gaze, so I moved into her line of sight. She hastily ducked her head, but not before I glimpsed the dark brown eyes I’d grown intimately familiar with during her time as a frog, finally realizing why I’d seemed to recognize them.
“Maeve?” I asked tentatively.
She finally peered up at me, her usual steady confidence strangely shy. “It appears I’m human again.” She lifted her hands to study them front to back before wriggling her fingers with an almost child-like fascination, as if experimenting to see whether this was really her body.
I continued to gape at her in disbelief. This entire time the frog had been my apprentice? That explained why my first tracking spell hadn’t worked—her cursed condition had blocked the magic.
“I’m amazed at how accustomed I became to being a frog,” she continued. “My real body almost feels unfamiliar.”
Her voice wavered, betraying the illusion of calm. Her shoulders stiffened, as if bracing herself for my reaction…but I was too stunned to do anything but continue to stare. The facts didn’t align in my head—how the apprentice I’d left behind had not only been transformed, but had somehow made her way to me, allowing us to spend days in one another’s company without my knowing her true identity.
How had this happened?
I’d never given much thought to who had cursed my companion—whether it’d been done in malice or in punishment it did little to affect the unconventional friendship we’d forged as we worked towards a common goal. Yet now the thought that someone had done such a thing to Maeve…protective anger swelled up in my chest at the thought, an intense feeling similar to when I was defending my sister, Dahlia, only much, much stronger.
My fists clenched. “Who cursed you?” I growled, my mind scrambling for a possibility before settling on the most likely candidate. “Was it Demetria?”
Her brows drew together in a way I found surprisingly alluring. “Didn’t we already visit this conversation?”
I forced myself to take a calming breath. Right, we had already discussed this…but the situation felt more personal since learning my frog was truly my apprentice, leaving me dissatisfied with her initial explanation.
Her blush deepened as she bit her lip. “Technically I cast the curse, but not on purpose. I was trying to brew a health potion and in my haste I accidentally mixed up the filipendula and the dryas, which is apparently the only difference between the brew I was trying to create and the frog transformation spell. I tried to let you know what had happened…but the curse prevented me from not only telling you but appealing for your aid.”
Hence the deal to acquire the human transformation spell should I win the competition…only for her to instead be transformed back without it. What magic had resulted in such an anomaly? As far as I could tell, I hadn’t performed any spells.
Midst my confusion I felt the urgency to fall back on magical basics that formed the foundation of our relationship and scold her for making such a basic mistake which I’d repeatedly warned her against, but shock smothered the words, leaving only disbelieving silence.
She tilted her head. “Alden?” Her voice was so different than her old frog timbre—so soft, so lovely…and distinctly feminine.
The reminder brought an onslaught of memories that tangled my mind, making them difficult to process—the confessions I’d made, the food we’d shared from one another’s plates, how closely we’d slept with her resting on my pillow directly beside my head…
I groaned. “I—you—”
Heat swallowed my cheeks and robbed me of my fumbling words. Her face also took on a lovely shade, the pink a perfect complement to her warm brown skin. The sight of her blush only reminded me of what had transpired between us moments before.
I’d kissed her.
Obviously it hadn’t been a real kiss, but in this moment it felt like outright scandalous, considering a mentor had no right to kiss his apprentice, frog or otherwise, even somewhere as innocent as the top of her head. “My apologies, I didn’t realize—”
Once again embarrassment seized my words, especially when my mind drifted to memories of all the embarrassing interactions where I hadn’t been behaving as a gentleman ought to in front of a lady, particularly the day we’d been caught in the rain and I’d rested my frog on my chest to keep it warm…my bare chest. My memory shifted, transforming the image to the reality…so that it wasn’t a frog I held, but Maeve tucked in my arms with her head resting against my heart.
Another memory assaulted me, worse than the last: the night I’d bathed in the pond while my frog gaped at me with bulging eyes from the bank. My arms instinctively covered my chest in a futile makeshift shield that couldn’t make up for all the times I’d bathed with her nearby.
With a groan I burrowed my fingers in my hair, the second best alternative to burying myself alive.
“Alden?”
I’d heard her speak my name many times in the weeks leading up to the competition when she served as my apprentice, but somehow it sounded different now. Gone was the perpetual annoyance that seemed to have frequently filled her tone before. Now it was softer, more gentle, and created the strangest sensation of reaching inside me to curl itself around my heart…a rather pleasant feeling, albeit an unsettling one.
I began to pace, as if I could outrun whatever strange emotion prodded my heart where it wasn’t welcome.
Other than her powers and common background, Maeve wasn’t a woman much different than the countless I’d met during my acquaintance…yet I couldn’t look away, my gaze taking in every detail with an interest even deeper than when I perused my favorite books on magical theory.
Her features were both familiar in my recognition yet entirely different, as if I were seeing her for the first time. Warm bronze skin, deep chocolate eyes, wild black hair, determination lining her jaw and amplifying the feistiness filling her expression, all softened by the friendship we’d built in our time together. The way she fidgeted beneath my attention and nervously smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirts only added to her charm.
She was…rather pretty.
With a rigid shake I forced my thoughts away from her darling dimple, expressive eyes, and quirky eyebrows to refocus on magic, clinging to it like a lifeline.
“I don’t understand how you transformed back into a human. I didn’t do anything.” The mystery gnawed at me, almost as persistent as this strange new feeling swelling my heart I had no explanation for. Desperate for answers, I spun on my spellbook, which had been closely following me in my frantic pace around the clearing. “Were you aware that my apprentice had become a frog?”
It gave an aggravated rustle and promptly opened itself to the frog transformation spell it’d tried to show me many times before now, a message that in my distraction with my own self interests, I hadn’t given the proper consideration.
With a frustrated sigh I plucked it from the air. It wriggled uncooperatively as I frantically searched through it for the frog transformation spell, where the spellbook felt obliged to illuminate a particular section so that it practically leapt off the page: Alternatively the curse can be broken through true love’s kiss.
My breath hooked. Impossible. Breathless with disbelief I stared, the only sound the frantic pounding of my heart beating erratically and almost painfully in my ears.
I slammed the book shut. “That is not the reason she turned back.”
“What did the spellbook suggest?”
I stiffened at her innocent tone, completely oblivious to the spellbook’s mischievous accusation. I tried not to look at her…but found myself drawn to her anyway. She truly was quite pretty, especially with the air of mischief about her that made her all the more interesting. Of all the woman to notice, it was my apprentice when up until this point only magic had been able to turn my head.
The spellbook inched closer, angling itself to better showcase its condemning suggestion concerning love and curse-breaking kisses. I shoved it away. “Kisses only break curses in fairytales,” I muttered beneath my breath so as not to risk Maeve overhearing.
The spellbook lifted its cover in a distinct shrug, but even without words I sensed its knowing stare, its smug challenge to deny the reality before me: despite how much I yearned to believe kisses didn’t break spells, I couldn’t deny mine had done exactly that. With a defeated sigh, I collapsed onto the bank and buried my forehead in my hands.
I sensed her approach before she grazed my shoulder to gain my attention, a touch that felt like a jolt of heat similar to when I cast a spell. “Are you alright, Alden?”
I’d never been less so. There was so much I wanted to tell her in this moment, but despite the many long, deep conversations we’d already exchanged, I suddenly had no idea how to interact with her.
Before she’d been a common girl with magical talent, then she’d been my apprentice—during which she’d been a woman who both challenged me and drove me insane—only to become my dearest friend and comrade as a frog, to now…
My heart gave another unexpected lurch, as if trying to tell me something. I’d never experienced a feeling more confusing or frightening, not even when forced to interact with the conniving women of the royal court. What was this feeling? The aftermath of my shock, or perhaps the lingering effects brought by her broken curse?
I seized hold of both magic and my role as her tutor and lifted them over my vulnerable and thoroughly confused heart, a familiar entity I could rely on midst the unfamiliar emotions raging within me. “I told you not to mix up filipendula with dryas.”
Anxiety caused the words to come out more harshly than I intended. Reverting to the basic facts of ingredients and potion-making felt like I was wrapping myself in a protective shield, even as I wasn’t quite certain what I was protecting myself from. Only that in this moment I’d never felt more vulnerable.
She drew her shoulders back. “You don’t need to scold me; experience has made me well aware of the differences between the two ingredients. I doubt I’ll ever mix them up again.”
Fire flashed in her dark eyes, and I couldn’t help catching my breath, certain I’d never seen their equal in beauty, emotion that drew me in until it seemed impossible to look away. I felt the familiar thrill when she put me in my place…but it was different now, deeper somehow.
She lifted her chin to a defiant angle. “There’s no use scolding me when the entire situation turned out rather well, considering we’ve been able to assist one another.”
In that moment the full implications of my frog turning out to be my apprentice overcame me. Horror seized my breath, trapping it in my throat. “This entire time…you’ve been my apprentice.”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “Is that bad?”
“Bad? It’s a catastrophe. I’m not allowed to get help from anyone in this competition.”
Her eyes widened before remorse overcame her. “Oh Alden, I didn’t think…I know how important it is for you to prove yourself.”
The sincerity of her apology did little to ease the escalating tension tightening my chest, nor the implications brought by this realization. “I need to be disqualified.”
With a gasp she was at my side, so close…much too close. She leaned in farther to rest her hand on my arm. I experienced a myriad of sensations at once—energy pulsed in the spaces of our proximity, heat pulsated from her touch, and I noticed a rather intoxicating floral scent in the air around her.
Surely the startling intensity of our response was merely our magic making contact, nothing more. I tried to convince myself of this over and over…but I was having a rather difficult time of it.
“I’m so sorry, Alden. I didn’t realize my identity as a witch would put you in such a predicament. But please don’t give up on the competition. You must hold fast to your dream.”
Her reassurances only reminded me of how much of my heart I’d laid bare before her. It pounded wildly at her nearness, as if trying to burst from my chest.
“Surely my knowledge and experience with magic is far too limited to have been of any real help,” she continued.
She had given me far more assistance than she realized. Without her insights and support, I doubt I would have made it this far. My expression faltered at the realization, which only caused her to become aflutter with panic.
“Regardless of my advice, all the actual magic was performed by you. In fact, I only hindered you in the healing potion. You can’t give up.”
Earnestness filled her wide-eyed gaze, a look far different than any she’d ever given me before…which made me reluctant to confess just how damaging her unintentional interference had been, especially when her companionship had brought me more joy than I’d ever experienced, even midst my favorite hobby.
I sighed. “It’s too late.” I didn’t need to supply further explanation. Our time together had created deep friendship and understanding, made all the more confusing now that I realized the truth of whom I’d bared my soul to.
Her glassy eyes searched mine. “But even a little help is enough for you to feel as if you’ve cheated. Ever since you entered the competition, I’ve realized how important it is for you to earn your position by your own merits. I’m so sorry, Alden.”
I panicked at the sight of her faltering expression, a look that twisted my heart and made me feel as if the situation was spiraling beyond my control. “Maeve, I—”
But she knew me too well for me to get away with lying, even to reassure her. While I was still working to familiarize myself with her facial expressions, she’d had plenty of time to become intimate with my own, especially during all the moments I’d taken her into my confidence.
“You don’t need to explain; I understand I’ve put you in an unfortunate position. If anyone discovers your apprentice accompanied you…the best thing for me to do would be to leave. Not just for your sake; I need to return home. My brother needs me.”
Her brother. Of course. Maeve had a life outside of me. A wave of sadness accosted me. She hadn’t even left and already I missed her.
Even midst the emotion, sense confirmed that this was the wisest course of action, but despite my desperation to remain in the competition when my lifelong dream was finally close enough for me to almost reach out and touch it, logically I knew she couldn’t remain.
Even so, when she turned to leave, without thinking I seized her hand and gently tugged her to a stop. Her breath caught and her hand twitched in mine, as if tempted to pull away…only for her fingers to curl around mine, causing my heart to give an unexpected leap.
What was happening? This strange dynamic hadn’t been present during her apprenticeship. Was it an aftereffect of the curse being broken through a kiss? As if magic rather than sense controlled my movements, my fingers twitched to caress the warmth of her soft palm, a reaction to our powers that had never occurred whenever I came into contact with my magical mother and sister.
What was this?
Her eyes widened as she stared at our connected hands before she slowly lifted her gaze. “I won’t hold you back any longer.” She slowly extracted her hold from mine, leaving me feeling empty.
“Maeve, I never thought you were holding me—”
But she talked over me, her eyes looking over my shoulder rather than meeting mine. “You’ve demonstrated nothing but kindness—whether I was a common girl, your apprentice, or a frog. Yet in the end, I repaid your thoughtfulness by hindering your greatest ambition.”
I ached to protest but words felt impossible to form, seemingly held at bay by a curse…as if a charm lingered on her skin to make speech impossible.
When the silence stretched on too long, she turned away with a sad smile. “I have to go.”
I felt as if everything I’d been desperate to cling to was slipping from my grasp beyond my control. I was desperate to seize control over this conversation and steer it back to its proper course, but the dream that had guided me for so long held me back. I needed to win the competition, to prove myself as a wizard, to find where I truly belonged. Without magic…I had nothing.
Yet in this moment, for the first time in my life I felt that I’d finally discovered something else, as unexpected as the day my magical light had been drawn to this feisty yet lovely woman and brought her to me. Her presence had changed me, much like ingesting an enchanted potion.
Whatever she’d done to bewitch me, my heart lifted the moment she paused to glance back. For a long moment she stared before slowly returning to my side long enough to cradle my hand within hers.
“I sincerely hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Magichad always been my purpose, and yet now…
The puzzle riddling my thoughts became a tangle of chaos when she stood on tiptoe and brushed a soft kiss to my cheek in parting that made my heart feel on the brink of bursting. I almost seized her and enfolded her in my arms so she wouldn’t leave.
While my kiss had broken her curse to transform her back into a human, hers had rendered me frozen so that I could only watch helplessly as she pulled away and stepped through the portal I created to transport her quickly back home. The sound of her footsteps against the undergrowth faded as the transporting magic cradled her body to take her to her destination, followed by suffocating silence and darkness as the enchanted light faded, leaving me staring long after she’d disappeared, fighting the urgency to go after her.