Chapter 2
Two
Avery
The stairs really were that bad.
At least two years had passed since Avery had climbed the stairs to the council tower, and she had completely forgotten how steep the walk was between here and the main campus.
There had to be at least a thousand steps on this goddess-forsaken path.
That mixed with nausea from both the alcohol and a pit of nervousness that would not go away.
Her head swirled, and the tree-lined steps blurred as saliva pooled in her mouth and her stomach churned.
Halfway up the stairs, her body decided to expel the alcohol she had so lovingly bestowed upon it and spray the trunk of a poor pine tree that had done nothing but be in the wrong place, wrong time.
To make it even worse, the moon had completely disappeared, and her phone had died.
So with no light, an overwhelming urge to brush her teeth, and a whole lot of misplaced confidence in her footing, she somehow made it up the stairs with minimal scraping.
When she reached the top gate, the air was noticeably thinner.
Her breath came in ragged pants, forming little ghosts in the cool wind.
The dense forest canopy had given way to a manicured garden that surrounded a path of stone and arches.
Flowers bloomed the same blazing maroon as the ivy that coated the council tower.
The scent of it always confused her. The garden should have carried the smell of a florist; instead, it smelled of decaying leaves and damp earth. It hadn’t changed at all in two years.
She leaned against the iron posts, catching her breath. For a swimmer, stairs shouldn’t be her worst enemy, but in her eyes, they were worse than shifters, and given that they were a witch’s mortal enemy, it was saying a lot.
The council tower was easily the most ominous building on campus.
Built on a sheer cliff-side of jagged, mossy rocks, it was a thin, entirely menacing building that seemed to be shrouded in fog, no matter the weather.
It was visible practically everywhere you went in Caerwyn.
At the top sat a belfry. A sound that rang in only the most dire of situations.
One that maybe she should ring now, as seeing her mother was really reserved for the most dire of things.
An enforcer eyed her from the last arch encasing an iron gate that did very little to actually secure the building, given beds of flowers surrounded it rather than a fence.
With a nod, he opened the squeaking gate, the noise preparing her for the grating voice of her mother being disappointed in her yet again.
Giving him a curt smile, she walked past with every inch of confidence she could muster, which was abysmal, akin to a mouse that had challenged a cat.
Wren leaned against the stone building, looking minuscule in comparison to the statue of their goddess, Cerituen, that was carved into the building next to her.
Cerituen looked about as lifelike as Wren.
Their stony features were a mirror image of each other.
Her marble form looked so real, the way the fabric draped across her eyes and her body, even her expression, Avery wouldn’t be surprised if her lips started moving.
The stone bore three carved symbols: a sword, an open book, and a pair of wings. The sword was for the enforcers of House of Rhyfel, the book was for the scholars of the House of Doethur, and the wings were for the healers of House of Seren.
The three houses, the three symbols of witchhood, the three vestiges that granted you a sliver of her power.
After graduation, Avery aimed to join House Seren.
Her father raised her to be a healer. She was never one to fight.
Her sister used to try to spar with her for practice, yet she now knew that Wren had really just wanted to use her as a punching bag.
She had an enormous amount of rage as a child, but now she had settled it into a practiced mask, just as their mother did.
It had made sense that she had ended up as an enforcer.
Avery’s little sister, Gwyn, also had the same problem, yet she preferred to whack girls with lacrosse sticks instead.
Her father was the only one like her. He was dead, and she was dead inside. The family resemblance was palpable.
How he and her mother had gotten along at all baffled her.
They were the worst possible match the council could have made.
Still, she was grateful her father had been around long enough to leave his gentleness.
She missed him dearly. His stories about the outside world had inspired her to follow in his footsteps.
Healers, along with enforcers, were one of the few who could visit human territories, working in their hospitals and clinics under diplomatic immunity.
Because nothing says trust me with your appendectomy more than a witch with no formal medical training.
But at least they weren’t putting shifters in hospitals, could you imagine?
Something about the shifters was alluring, though.
Recently, there’d been a surge in human literature on a website you could only access through a series of archived forums. Many humans had written about getting freaky with a shifter.
She had stumbled upon this site during a random, totally unrelated search at three a.m. She wondered if humans and shifters really did mingle like that.
They were different species, so they couldn’t procreate, but she guessed it didn’t stop them from trying.
She was ashamed to admit that she had too much time on her hands that night, and she had devoured at least five different novellas describing in intimate detail how one could be pleasantly overpowered by the monsters.
The glutton in her tried to search for a witch-shifter pairing story, but that was too far for authors.
It was true depravity, and she liked it.
Maybe that was why the goddess was punishing her.
“Took you long enough,” Wren said, tightening her ponytail.
There were plenty of retorts on Avery’s tongue, but she didn’t want to give her sister the satisfaction of showing her she was indeed out of breath.
Instead, she pursed her lips, showing Wren that the little sister was, in fact, the bigger person here.
The amount of satisfaction she got from pissing off her family should really be studied.
She was an enigma, a statistical anomaly, a case study in petty behavior.
Wren and Avery walked side by side up the last twisting set of stone stairs that made it harder to hide the shaking of her breath through her nostrils. Would it kill them to put in an elevator? Apparently, it was noticeable enough to have Wren side-eyeing her more than a few times.
“Had a bit much?” she said.
“Shut up, Wren.” So much for being the bigger person.
When they reached the door to their mother’s office, Wren gave a quick knock against the oak in a peculiar pattern, letting the devil know they were there. After a moment, the door opened on its own, beckoning them into her lair.
Their mother’s office was as harsh as she was.
Bookshelves lined the walls, each book meticulously color coordinated.
A terrible way to organize your books, but she digressed.
Her mother’s black pegasus familiar was nowhere to be seen.
It was probably ominously hovering somewhere, trying to scare children.
The furniture was anything but plush and inviting.
This school had an obsession with hard chairs.
With all the money they had, you would think they wouldn’t have a problem putting a cushion or two somewhere.
Humans supplied most of witches’ income by paying handsomely for enforcers or healers.
One of either rank was worth fifty humans, and even then, they had abilities that were priceless.
Avery wasn’t sure what that made her, though.
Hated and powerless? Without a familiar, she would never fit in anywhere.
Too witch for the humans, too human for the witches.
Her mother sat behind her desk, leaning back into a tall chair that appeared more like a throne.
Her angular features met the aesthetic of the room.
She was gorgeous for her age. Avery would give her that.
Although she suspected her mother had gone through the same procedure, which put the stick up Wren’s ass.
Her dark hair was slicked back in a bun, without a split end in sight.
Avery’s fingers ran through her own hair, the loose waves falling in an unruly mess.
She felt a threatening need to pick the scab that healed whenever she was not around her mother and sisters. Instead, she picked at her nails.
“Thank you for coming on short notice, Avery.” Her mother’s tone was cold, its timbre as maternal as a praying mantis.
Avery didn’t say anything. She was quiet as a traumatized mouse.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Avery lied. She knew exactly why she was there.
Her mother slid a piece of paper toward her, her expulsion hand signed in fresh ink at the bottom by the chancellor. She knew it was coming, but still, tears blurred at the edges of Avery’s vision, the bookshelves swaying a touch bit more than they were before.
“Oh, for goddess’s sake, Avery, don’t cry,” her mother chided.
They were already falling, burning a path down her cold cheeks. She generally wasn’t so sensitive, but this past year had been a lot. “Sorry,” she murmured, wiping them away with the sleeves of her blazer. “I can’t help it.”
“Just like you can’t help your inability to summon even a rat,” her mother tutted.