52
Paint, Prophecies, and Nougat Cream
Melody
Faye turns back to the painting of Blair, her hand outstretched, as if she wants to touch it. Then she spins toward me. “I’ve never seen anything so realistic…as if the picture is moving.”
“Yeah, I actually planned on painting her dragon, too, but—”
“Her dragon? Have you seen it? Do you know what it looks like?” Faye’s eyes are wide and glittering like a lake in the sun, filled with sudden intrigue, the tiny dragon pendants on her earrings dancing at the sudden movement of her head.
“No, I haven’t.” I don’t tell Faye that Blair lost her magic. And her dragon along with it. Instead, I point to the ceiling. “She said it looks like this one though.”
Faye leans her head back to peer up at the ceiling I’ve painted halfway, filled with all the magical creatures I once saw on the tapestries that hung in Riven’s rooms. A badger with pixie wings. A silvery fox with tiny horns. Part of the ceiling is still empty, still just chalk.
“That’s the most beautiful dragon I’ve ever seen,” Faye breathes.
I laugh. “Blair would hug you for that.”
Faye smiles, too, but she stays like that, her eyes roving over the ceiling and all its details. “I’ve seen those before,” she says, pointing a finger at the badger. “Those are the Newmoon Woodlands.”
“You know them?”
“Yes. Well, my father sometimes told me stories about it when I was little. Their queen had a huge library before the whole forest was destroyed. I think we might even have one or two books from there that were saved.”
For a second, so much pain shimmers in her aura that I don’t say anything. I just let her be.
Eventually, she says, “Why are you painting the walls?”
“The campus wants me to. Those paintings were here once. I guess it wants them restored.”
“Huh…” Faye bends over the book that holds the drafts I need to restore the walls to. “That’s fascinating. Where did you find it?”
“The campus gave it to me.”
“We better not tell Beeatrisa that the campus holds books I’ve never seen in the archives,” she says thoughtfully.
Then her head whips up. “Oh, I actually almost forgot. I found a book with old recipes from Silvander, and I asked the house to try one and bring it to you, you know. After the training. To…cheer you up.”
She bends down, and only now do I realize she’d brought a bag. With something in it. An oven form.
“It’s called nougat cream. Made from hazelnuts and chocolate.
And butter. And honey, I think. Oh, and whipped cream.
Definitely loads of whipped cream.” She sinks down gently next to me on the bed, offering the form to me.
“It’s…terribly good. I couldn’t help trying it and had to ask the house to put it away, or I think I would’ve eaten it all by myself,” she admits, a huge flush rising beneath the freckles on her cheeks.
As if on cue, two spoons appear between us, plopping down on the sheets.
“Thank you,” I say quietly—to her and to the campus. For a moment, I’m lost for words. No one has ever done something like this for me before. I carefully dip the spoon into the cream and can’t stifle my sigh as I taste it.
“It is…so good,” I say, staring down at the brownish cream.
“Isn’t it? How could we have survived without it so far?” Faye laughs, scooping out another spoonful.
“I have no idea,” I say, taking another bite.
“I think that it is rude not to offer your demon a spoon.” Aris actually sounds hurt.
“I thought you didn’t like chocolate.”
“I don’t. But you could offer me something else as compensation. Let’s say cooked ham.”
“Right,” I say aloud. “He is grumpy because we’re not sharing,” I quickly explain to Faye. Then I look up at the ceiling. “Dear campus, would you take pity on my poor, grumpy, scaly friend and give Aris a cooked ham, please?”
There is the fainteststir of airbefore a plate with a whole pork knuckle slumps down next to him on the bed.
“Tell the campus I love it.”
“It knows,” I say asanother playful gustbrushes my skin, setting the long curtains dancing.
“Oh—and I read that book you gave me. You know, the one from the human world.” Faye gives me a conspiratorial smile as she takes another spoonful of the heavy, dark cream. “And it’s…” She shakes her head, color creeping into her cheeks again as she looks down at her bowl.
“That bad?” I ask, barely holding back a smile.
“Not bad—just…different,” she says, lowering her voice. “I didn’t know you…did it like that.” She presses her lips together, clearly embarrassed, then leans in a little, her eyes shimmering.
I can feel Aris rolling his eyes in my head as he deliberately pulls up the shields between our bond again, as if to make a point.
“Ahh, a little romance is all it takes to make you stop eavesdropping.”
“Girlish fantasies put even the bravest demon to flight.”
“Uh, and I thought you never fled a battle before.”
“That’s because I know what battles to pick,” he rumbles and starts to chew very noisily on his ham.
“But once I finished it, the campus dropped three others next to me on the desk, and—I brought you one of them and thought we could read it together.” Faye pulls out the mentioned book and hands it to me.
“ Liaisons with the Alpha Ram. ” I read the title, and Faye buries her face in her hands, squeaking.
“There’s another one with werewolves,” she offers, her cheeks flushed deep red when she finally puts her hands down.
“Old gods save me,” Aris mutters . “And give me hands so I can cover my ears.”
“You can theoretically shapeshift hands, can’t you?” I ask back. “Or let your ears be gone,” I suggest, laughing down the bond.
He grunts, “Surprised that there’s no romantasy with monsters yet.” Then he turns his butt my way.
“Oh, there is.”
“Ho ho ho, I smell trouble.”
Blair appears in the doorway, gesturing for me to let her in. She’s clad in leather pants, a skin-tight pink tank, and flashy cowboy boots, golden glitter dusting her eyes and temples. Honestly, she looks hot as hells.
I wave my hand, undoing the wards so she can come in.
She strides in, pauses, then sniffs the air. Her eyes narrow as she undoubtedly smells Caryan on me, and I mentally prepare myself for her to lose it. But, to my surprise, she doesn’t react at all. Not even her aura shifts. There’s no pain. No anger.
“Miss Alaric,” Faye says, no fear in her.
Blair’s white eyebrows shoot up, clearly surprised to find Faye on the bed.
Her amber eyes flick over her, taking her in from head to toe.
Faye holds the assessment, holds Blair’s stare without breaking it or dipping her head in submission.
I really admire Faye’s courage, because Blair is nothing short of intimidating, the way she flicks her long nails and runs her tongue over her silver teeth.
Blair finally clicks her tongue. “Bold for a scribe.”
“Not as bold as what you did to the high lord the other day,” Faye answers, unperturbed, and there is pride lacing her words—her aura too.
Blair’s eyes narrow. “And I thought you spent all day down there, hiding.”
I throw Blair a scowl, but she ignores me, watching Faye like the predator she is. A predator who assesses whether Faye is a mouse or a honey badger.
To my big surprise, Faye just shrugs. “You’re right, I usually do hide in the archives. But word’s spread, and everyone came to watch. Even the acolytes.”
Blair frowns. “You really all came up there to watch me fight?”
“Yes, we did. You are some sort of celebrity now. Thanks for agreeing to train me. And now I want to ask whether you’ll train the others too.”
“What? What others?” Blair seems confused.
“The other acolytes and scribes.”
“I thought you were married to your books.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t admire strong women,” Faye says with a glint of awe in her voice. “Like you. The others realized that I went to the training and asked me whether you’d train them too.”
“I can. But what for, if you never leave those caves?” Blair asks in her usual straight-out, no-bullshit way. “Seems like a bit of a waste.”
“Subtle,” Aris cuts in, annoyed.
I look at Faye, unsure what I spot in her aura.
She takes a moment to consider, then she tilts her head and says, “We are all women who would have liked to fight in the past but weren’t born with a drop of magic.
Maybe our lives would have turned out differently, and we wouldn’t spend the whole day hiding in the dark, if someone like you had given us the means and the training to defend ourselves—power in our veins or not.
We know we’re still scribes, and maybe most of us will never be warriors, but the next time something bad happens, we’d at least be able to defend ourselves, even if we don’t have magic.
I thought you might be able to understand that. ”
I stare at Faye’s fiery speech. She’s pulled her chin up, her shoulders back, and for a second, she indeed looks like a warrior, the tiny dragons in her ears shimmering when they catch the fae light.
Blair angles her head, and I ready myself for her sharp retort. But to my surprise, she says, “Do you really want to become a scribe?”
Faye briefly seems caught off guard.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she hedges. “Why?”
“Because it would be a damn waste, that’s why,” Blair says. Then her eyes find the cream between us in the pot and the book Faye handed me. She pouts her full lips. “Well, that’s curious. I think I read one of those once. They’re quite filthy.”
Faye tries to shove the other book under my blanket, but Blair grabs it before she can and holds it high in the air.
“Uhhh, it’s the one where the fae prince finds that young dryad in the woods.”
She grins suddenly, noticing the treacherous deep red flooding Faye’s face.
“My, my…if you’re planning a girls’ night with smutty books, you could have called me, you know. And what in the sweet hells is this?”
Before I can answer, she’s dipped a long nail into the cream and licked it.
“It’s from a cookbook of Palisandre I found,” Faye says. She’s still not recovered fully, her voice quiet.
Blair plops down on her belly next to us before she plucks the spoon from my hands and scoops up more cream. She lets out the same sigh as I did before as she swallows. “That’s heaven. You know, in the human world, they make ice cream out of it.”
“Ice cream?” Faye asks, her eyes darting between us, clearly unsure how to behave around Blair.
“Yeah, well, it’s like that, but frozen and stirred so it stays creamy—or something like that. They do have machines that do it for them, but I guess, with a little bit of magic, you could achieve the same.”
I glance up at the ceiling at the same time Faye does.
“Can you make ice cream out of it?” she asks.
The campus hesitates—we all feel it. But then the box is suddenly gone, only to reappear a moment later.
Blair leans over it. “Hells, that looks dangerously close to ice cream.” She scoops up another bit of it. Faye follows suit, and one more spoon appears for me. We all keep eating until the box is empty to the dregs.
“They should sell that in Avandal,” Faye says.
“They should so do that,” Blair hums her agreement. “They would sell out in a minute.” She licks the rest of the cream from her fingers, sucking on each nail. How she manages without cutting off her tongue stays a mystery to me, though.
“So—what kind of flimsy books do you have down there?” she asks with a jut of her chin. “I thought acolytes didn’t have much of a sex life.”
Faye flinches slightly but then tucks a strand behind her arched ear, the blush still on her cheeks.
“Actually, Melody started it when she gave me a book from the human world. And suddenly, when I went to bed, three more of those lay on my bedside table. I guess the campus caught on and thought it would make me happy. So I read them.” She blushes again, and even her pointed ears turn red this time.
“Huh, if this makes you blush, then grab anything written by Kaneira. Or Ciaccara. Hells, that steamy scene where they are enemies first, but then there’s a night under the moon and they finally fall for each other…
and there’s only one dragon. It’s chef’s kiss .
” Her voice trails off, and we both stare at her.
“What?” she asks, grabbing the pot to lick it out.
“Nothing, I just…I didn’t think witches would read,” Faye counters.
Blair barks out a laugh. “Where do you think I learned all that stuff? The things you can do with your tongue—oh, all Kaneira. Entirely her fault. And how do you think I survived my bleak teenage years? Locked away in my aunt’s tower, we had a secret stash.
Traded them. Fought over them. Those books were so thumbed-through we eventually had to put spells on them just to keep the pages together.
And there were definitely not enough men around to fuck, so—” She makes a broad, unapologetic gesture that very clearly means what were we supposed to do?
My brain has just tripped, fallen down a flight of stairs, and is still rolling when—
“So,” Blair says, suddenly cheerful, brisk, and horrifyingly normal, “how are your classes going? Ready for the final exams?”
The shift is so abrupt it feels illegal.
But Blair looks at me like she’s just slipped on an invisible pair of professor’s glasses, and I blink at her, brain scrambling to catch up, still mentally stuck somewhere betweenenchanted smut booksandtongue techniques, while she looks back at me like she didn’t just say any of that.
Exams.
Yeah. Right. Academics.
I bite my lip. “I’m not sure I’m going to pass.
There’s still the warding class I’ve never been to, and, according to Faye, Professor Marryll is a bitch.
I don’t even know what grade Riven’s going to give me in elemental magic—never mind Kyrith.
And potions…yeah, I really suck at potions, so I’m definitely not passing Professor Evanalora’s class with Basic Wolf’s Howling.
I tried again. And again. And it pretty much always ended with the cauldron exploding. ”
Faye watches me and Blair curiously. Blair turns around and lies on her back, propping herself up with her elbows. “Well then, I guess it’s about time you show Professor Marryll what you can do. And Riven’s gonna let you pass, I know it. Not to mention Kyrith. He won’t dare sabotage your progress.”
“And potions?” I ask hopelessly. “Are you going to help me with that?”
“I could,” Blair muses, but a knock at the door cuts her off as Shay pokes her head in. Behind her, I spot Ryder and Cassius.