43
The Witch, the Healer, and the Idiot Who Challenged Me
Blair
After a healthy breakfast with Melody, Aris, and her ridiculous but cute new friends in the main hall, I spend the day carrying heavy clay pots and planting everything from olive trees to lemon trees to fragrant rosemary bushes until my back hurts, my knees protest, and my skin is tanned as hells.
“Sword fighting is nothing compared to this,” I grunt.
Meanara laughs when I heave myself up with a sigh, my spine screaming in agony.
“Don’t laugh, healer. What about you doing something about it?” I snap—not too unkindly.
Not that I would ever admit it—certainly not to her—but gardening is actually fun.
Meanara wanted to cut back the hedges of various herbs that had grown too wildly during the heavy rains this spring.
I watched her as she cropped them and tied them into drying bundles for the students’ potion classes, while I dug holes where she wanted to plant the new trees.
She smiles at me—a few flower petals caught in her long hair, her pink eyes glinting mischievously in the glowing afternoon sun. Hells, I hadn’t realized how quickly time passed. “And I took you for a warrior, Blair Alaric.”
I snarl at her, but not in earnest, pat off my hands on my pants, and stalk over to the roofed space where she’s hanging the herbs to dry over a long, rustic worktable.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask, taking a long swig from a silver chalice filled with chilled ginger infusion.
Abyss, I’m so drenched in sweat—my leather pants sticking to my hard, peachy ass and muscled thighs—that wiping it off really makes no sense.
So, after a moment of more or less careful consideration, I rip off my white tank and use it to pat my back dry.
Meanara’s eyes travel over me—and my candy-crush pink lace bra that actually matches her eyes, I notice with a twist of annoyance.
It does a fair job of holding my huge, quite perky, tits in place.
It doesn’t escape me that her eyes linger at my cleavage for a split second longer before sliding back to mine.
I wait for her to reprimand me and tell me to put my damn clothes back on because this place is oh-so-sacred-blah-blah-blah—but, to my surprise, she doesn’t.
“I plan on holding classes here,” she says instead, fussing with bunches of freshly cut rosemary and lavender before tying them together, too. “A space where students can come and spend time with each other—or brew healing potions, if they wish.”
“Come to think of it—can I take a few of those?” I ask, eyeing the herbs above my head and a few dried blusher mushrooms that have been laid out on the table next to some glistening crystals. “Melody asked me for a Wolf’s Howling potion.”
“And you’re making it for her?” Meanara asks with the outright indignation of a teacher who’s caught a student trying to cheat.
I laugh. “No need to scowl at me like that, healer. I think she’s got a lot on her plate already, and it’s really easy, so yeah—this time I’ll let her cheat a bit. I’ve let her down too many times already as it is.” I start plucking off the herbs I know I’ll need.
Meanara gives up with a sigh. “You might be right. Do you need the scroll?”
“Nah. I know all of them by heart.” I wave her off and only look back when I feel her still staring at me a solid minute later. “What?”
“You know a potion that complicated by heart?”
I shrug. “I had a mean witch as a teacher. If any of us did something wrong, she’d whip us three times.
Took a lot of blood until I learned—I wasn’t exactly a fast learner.
My mothers always made me a healing ointment and rubbed it on.
” I cut myself off before I can say more, my already shattered heart aching painfully.
Why the hells did I say that? Why the hells did I have to bring them up now?
Meanara looks at me in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and this time, I hiss at her in warning. She quickly looks away, crossing her arms over her chest, clearly knowing better than to push. Good.
I grab a cauldron and light a fire, add some water, then throw in the ingredients one by one. When I look at Meanara out of the corner of my eye, I catch her watching me again.
“Something wrong with my face, healer?”
“It’s beautiful, that’s all. Especially when you’re concentrating,” she says in such a calm way it disarms me completely. What the hells? Was that a compliment? Why?
“Yeah, I swear it’s even more beautiful when you sit on it.” I wink at her, making quite a show of licking my lips, tracing a slow circle with my tongue.
Meanara looks away, rolling her eyes.
“There she is—the witch who defeated Kyrith Kriannon.”
“Those claws look terrifying.”
A few hushed whispers reach my ears while I decant the potion into a glass flacon.
“That witch can hear you just fine,” I snarl and whip around. I swear I can practically hear them flinch—the predator in me picking up the change in their breathing. “And I assure you, these claws are terrifying. They cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter.”
The students who’ve gathered blanch, clutching their books and whatever else they’re carrying.
The beautiful Professor Evanalora, who’s probably brought the students to hold her class here, just laughs. “Well, thank you for taking over my class today, Meanara. See you tomorrow,” she says, then turns and leaves down the hill back to the campus.
I glance at Meanara, curious what she’ll do next—and again, this fae surprises me.
She claps her elegant hands once. “Come closer. Don’t be shy.
Miss Alaric is not only one of the best sword fighters Avandal has ever seen—and undoubtedly the scariest—but also a very gifted potion brewer.
We are fortunate to have her here today. You can learn a lot from her.”
“But we’d rather fight like her,” a boy with moss-green hair quips, running a hand over his pixie wing and shedding glitter. To my surprise, he isn’t a student, but rather clad in a healer’s robe.
“Yeah, that was amazing,” a beautiful, honey-blonde elf drawls, her blue eyes skimming over my bra and lingering at my boobs a little too long.
“She was called the Crimson Death,” yet another one whispers.
I frown. Wait a second. What does he mean— was ?
I turn fully when I feel the tug on my bond to Melody that announces her presence before I can even smell her on the wind.
I turn and meet her brown eyes. She gives me a smirk, biting back a grin as she stands next to her new friends—that werewolf she seems to get along with well, a harmless-looking bark-skinned and white-haired girl, and a pretty blond boy with his arm slung around her shoulders.
It doesn’t escape me that she looks happier since she’s spent her magic. And it warms my heart in a strange, unfamiliar way to see her like this. Well, a part of me still hates Caryan for his undying arrogance and dominant assholeness—but maybe he was right to come and train her.
“Well, maybe, if you ask her nicely, Miss Alaric will think again about training you,” Meanara suggests casually.
“Miss Alaric, unfortunately, has other important things to do,” I deadpan.
“So—does Miss Alaric not deem training defenseless students, so they could stand a chance against the elves from the north, more important than these ‘other things’?” Meanara asks innocently, her face the picture of fake surprise. Damn wretch.
I straighten at the bold provocation in her pink eyes—visible only from my angle—tempting me to answer it.
Hells, does she know I never resist a provocation?
That that’s actually a big part of my big damn problem?
I plant my hands on my hips and turn fully to the students. A few of them gasp, others grin as they ogle me in the lacy pink thing that barely covers my nipples.
I gesture down at myself. “Fighting begins with training. It begins with building muscles from scratch—muscles like mine. It starts with working on stamina. No technique I could train you in will ever be enough if you don’t have a body that can support your movements.
” I click my tongue as I survey every student.
“The problem I see is that most of you will quit before we even begin. Because training is gruesome. Brutal. It takes discipline. Cunning. So, with all due respect to all of you present, I appreciate the gesture—but I don’t waste my time on unused potential. ”
I grab my tank from the table and yank it over my body.
“Train us. Torture us all you want. Make us creep and howl and whine. Kick everyone out who fails you, but train those of us who are worthy. Let us prove it to you.”
I frown when the blonde beauty steps into my way, jutting her chin to look me directly in the eyes.
Morgana, was it? Cunning little thing. For a brief second, I wonder whether her unusual fae name has anything to do with our great witch queen, Morrigan—because her reckless spirit comes damn close to that of a witch.
“Get out of my way,” I snarl. I bare my silver teeth at her—normally enough to send every non–high lord running. Not this one.
“No.”
I sniff the air. What is this woman? A high fae, no doubt. But what else? Interesting.
“I said make way.”
“No. Fight me. Fist to fist. And if I manage to keep standing for thirty seconds, then you’re going to train us.”
I crack my neck, looking her up and down, a little surprised because she looks more like someone who would be worried about breaking a fingernail than about fighting. “I’m gonna eat you alive, girl. You’ve heard the old songs. I’m a monster. So leave. It’s the last time I warn you.”
She just juts her chin higher. “We have the great healer of Avandal here. I’m not afraid. I, Morgana Nyrandrian, hereby challenge you, Miss Alaric.”
I snort. A fae can’t back out of a challenge—not if you don’t want your reputation down the gutter.
So I lunge—and thereby accept the bargain.
Magic weaves around her and my wrist, marking the deal. I ignore it and focus on my target. The little thing is fast, sidestepping, but I’ve already swung my leg out, aiming right for her center mass. She takes my kick with a grunt but keeps standing.
She grabs my damn leg with surprisingly strong muscles and wrenches me closer, briefly throwing me off balance before letting go.
She tries to throw a punch at me—I parry as easily as breathing.
I deflect, only to strike her hard in the jaw with my elbow when she steps to the side I predicted. I cringe when I hear bone cracking.
Blood gushes from her mouth, and honestly, I expect her to fall. But she just spits it out, her beautiful lips spreading into a wicked smile.
I strike again. She doesn’t scream when my fist batters her no-doubt-broken jaw. I swing again.
She ducks—surprisingly fast—and then comes for me. Her head slams into my solar plexus with the force of a ram, her arms shooting out to lock me into place.
Around us, the students start to count down. “Three. Two. One—”
As if she’d just been waiting for those words, she collapses to her knees, that manic grin still on her face as I stare down at her. Hells, she reminds me too much of a witch. That recklessness and badassery mixed with outstanding beauty could be Sofya.
Meanara rushes to her side, and seconds later, healing magic flares under her palm.
“So, training us, Professor Alaric?” Morgana asks, a little too satisfied with herself, despite the fact that her lip is swollen like a fish’s. “As long as we keep up with all the challenges you throw our way.”
Meanara also turns to me—and damn it, she too looks damn pleased—while I scowl down at the marking on my right hand. The magic had been creative, planting a damn little star right beside the magical tattoo—the silhouette of my beautiful hellbeast that marks the bond between Melody and me.
“As if I have a choice now. Meet me after your training with Kyrith, and we’ll see how much you’ve really got,” I growl and stalk off. The students part to make way for me as I head back—ready for my laundry shift.