21
The Two Kinds of Witches
Melody
Shay points to her side for me to sit, and I slump down wedged between her and Ryder—after Ryder shoves a boy with small horns in his wild blond curls down one seat.
“Get lost, Goldie. I, mighty alpha of the woods, need your spot.”
The boy frowns but swallows a comment and quickly scurries away when Ryder snarls at him in a very wolfy way.
He shoots me a look from his new table three rows behind ours.
I ignore it, focusing on the woman striding in.
She’s beautiful in the way of all fae: long white-blonde hair falling in waves, a shock against her ebony skin.
High cheekbones, sensuous mouth, and intriguing green eyes.
And they go straight to me.
Heat rushes to my face when she announces, “We do have a new student, it seems. Melody.” Her voice is curious, but strong. “A half-mortal.”
I wish the ground would open and swallow me as all heads turn, staring at my telltale round ears. No, no. No.
“Are you alright?” Aris’s voice cuts into my head, his wisdom and grounded dragon-calm flooding me. I lower the gates between us to let it in, his steadiness washing my anxiety—if only for a moment.
“Class,” I shoot back, clipped, wishing he were here to hold onto.
But just knowing he’s close enough to use the bond eases a weight on my chest. I hate it when our bond is blocked and I can’t reach him.
Blocking bonds hurts. I sigh when I think of the bond next to Aris’s, dark and glittering with starlight.
Caryan’s. Blocking him out hurts too. Even now…
a stupid, dangerous part of me wants nothing more than to see him.
Touch him. Speak to him. It’s stronger here in the fae world—as if the gap between worlds had also muffled that bridge between our souls. Now it’s a constant longing.
Professor Evanalora’s voice demands my attention once more and rips my mind away from red-flagged territories it definitely shouldn’t go to. “And a friend of Blair Alaric.”
Hushes ripple through the classroom. I catch monster, traitor , and worse, and have to resist the sudden wish to get up and scorch them with my magic for calling Blair all that.
Evanalora must hear it, too, because she snaps, “Silence.” Her voice is like a switch. The class instantly goes quiet, and the students stare back at her as if they are starving for what she’ll say next.
“I think not many of you know that Miss Blair Alaric is the savior of Avandal. Most of you were children when the witches attacked. But the city held.”
“I know my parents only live because the Dark Lord brought them back,” a girl in the front row pipes up. A few nod.
Evanalora pins her with a burning glare. “No one speaks in my classroom without permission.” She flicks her hand. A gust of air knocks the girl off her chair and onto her butt.
I stare in shock. What kind of university is this, where professors attack students? My heart thunders as I look around. But no one seems shaken. They all look back at Evanalora as if this is perfectly normal.
“She knows better than to touch a hair on your head, Melody. She saw you’re bonded to a demon—known for their wrath—so calm down,” Aris tells me, and I realize I let my shields slide. Oh great. Sweet negligence.
“Concentrate,” Aris agrees.
“It is true that Avandal suffered no death because of the Dark Lord, who lived in the temple at that time and brought all the fallen back, thanks to his necromancy,” Evanalora continues. “But the witches did suffer tremendous losses.”
My heartbeat skyrockets—for a different reason now.
What? I know that Caryan can bring people back if they’re freshly dead.
That many call him the necromancer. That those he brings back carry the “curse”—they grow fangs, and need to drink blood from time to time.
The curse makes them wilder, at first, and they have to be controlled by the high lords—until they learn control.
Oh, and the cursed ones are oath-bound to him, so technically, Caryan can control them.
But I thought only the town Niavara at the foot of his desert fortress was turned .
That he brought back so many fallen in Avandal, that my classmates’ parents are among them… .
Do they know Caryan could make them do anything he wishes? The way they speak about him, the shine of awe and admiration of their auras—I’d guess they don’t. Or don’t care. Here, he’s a hero.
“But we would have been taken by surprise if Blair Alaric hadn’t come to warn Meanara, who then warned Queen Daphina. Thanks to Blair’s report on when and how the witches would strike, Avandal didn’t fall. No one can say what would have happened otherwise.”
My stomach sinks. Blair betrayed her own kind? Why? To save Avandal? Or to save Caryan? I shoot the question down to Aris and get a rumble.
“ Likely her never-dying adoration for Caryan—who came here to heal after Gatilla nearly killed him, before he killed her,” he admits. “Although—” I can feel how much it costs him to say it “—I wouldn’t put it past Blair to go against her own kind, for reasons beyond him.”
“Why?”
“You should ask her yourself, little one.”
“Tell me now, Aris,” I beg, and literally feel him rolling his eyes.
“A lot of Gatilla’s witches were cruel. They killed for fun, not just to harvest magic.
Women and children, if they found them. My take?
Blair didn’t support that. Many of those witches fell that night, while others, less cruel ones, miraculously survived. ”
Whispers break out again, eyes wide. A boy with coppery hair and hooves lifts his hand, and Evanalora nods at him. “Yes, Marriot.”
“But why don’t we know that, Professor?”
“Because Miss Alaric never wanted this known. It would have put her in grave danger among her own. But since she has officially broken with the witches and sought refuge in Avandal, it’s time the world knows.”
“I only know her as the Crimson Death,” a lavish-haired blonde chirps. “My parents said she’s the most fearsome and cruel of all witches. That her red coven burned whole villages.”
She’s flung from her chair into the far wall without warning. Her scream echoes, followed by a grunt of pain as she hits stone. I flinch. I’d have broken bones, but undoubtedly, thanks to her fae blood, she’ll just bruise for a minute and then be fine.
“No talking in my classroom, Morgana,” Evanalora says dryly. Then she looks back at me, true interest shining in her intelligent eyes. “It is so good to finally have a witch back at the university,” she says.
More hands shoot up. Evanalora points to a girl with candy-pink curls and red eyes. When the girl talks, I spot fangs and gasp. She’s cursed too. “Yes, Ceranelle.”
“Why is that good?”
“Because,” Evanalora says, clearly having been waiting for this, “we can learn so much from witches. Witches once held classes here. Were professors here. Their knowledge of potions is unmatched among the fae.” She turns and writes with her finger on a half-translucent board that pops into existence out of nowhere, and glowing blue letters appear:
THE TWO KINDS OF WITCHES
“So—who can tell me more about that?” Evanalora turns back to the class once she’s done writing.
“Why is that important for potions?” a boy asks—and is hurled into the wall like Morgana.
“It’s important, because all we know of potions, we know because of the witches,” Evanalora says without blinking. More letters bloom:
SUN WITCHES and MOON WITCHES
Frowns appear on the faces of my classmates.
“Sun witches are witches like Blair Alaric—the kind we know. History says there were once two sisters—elder elves and hellborns.”
“Hellborns?” I ask Aris, because it’s clearly something they learned already.
“Not all fae are born in the fae world. There are the nine hells, and there have been other worlds too,” he explains.
“One sister married the king of Baarator, the third hell. He was one of the first dragons, a dragon-shifter. Their offspring were born silver-clawed and silver-toothed, sun magic in their veins, bonded to a magical wyvern protector and drawing his power from the sun. The other sister married a forest sprite. Myths say the forest bundled his essence into a unicorn, as sprites do. He fell in love with her, left his unicorn form, and became a man to be with her. Their offspring could wield the arcana—using magic in ways lost to us. Those women are said to be the ancestors of two bloodlines: sun witches and moon witches.”
“Arcana?” I ask Aris again.
He scoffs, amused by my reliance on him to explain things. “The wild magic that runs through this world.”
“The one you channel?”
“Yes. There are two forms: dark magic and wild magic. Both are called arcana.”
“Not if you wield the dark arts,” Morgana adds—after raising her hand this time, and receiving Evanalora’s chin tip as permission.
Evanalora’s mouth thins, but she nods. “Sadly, true.”
“What are the dark arts?” someone whispers my own question.
Evanalora must have heard it, because she says—after flicking the whisperer off his chair and against the wall, “The dark arts. Who can tell me more about what those are?”
Shay’s hand juts up and Evanalora nods. “The dark arts are a way of channeling dark magic from the ground itself and twisting it to one’s will. But those practices were banned centuries ago.”
“Correct, Shay. And why is it called ‘dark’?”
“Because using it corrupts the wielder’s soul—takes a piece every time,” another student says, fear shining clear in his aura.
Evanalora seems to let his interruption pass, because his answer was true. “Correct. And how do you recognize a dark-magic wielder?” She starts pacing up and down, her long, black, witchy robe billowing behind her at the movement.
“Their eyes turn darker and darker. In the end, they’re totally black.”
I shudder as I think of Caryan’s eyes. And his twin’s.
“Are Caryan’s eyes black because he wields dark magic?” I ask Aris, not sure I really want to know.