Chapter 19 Annalise
Chapter nineteen
Annalise
“Lee! The healers didn’t tell me you’d woken up yet. I’ll be right there!” Matt says, picking up on the first ring as I gently close the back door of the infirmary. “I ran out to get coffee, but I’m coming back right now.”
I hear him tell someone to cancel his order.
“No, Mattey. I’m fine. I just left the infirmary. I’m calling to see where you are. Tell them to put your order back in and add one for me, please. I’m going to change out of these loaner clothes the infirmary gave me since mine were filthy, then I’ll come meet you in the dining hall.”
“Yeah, okay. Are you hungry? I can grab us some food too.”
My stomach takes that as its cue and lets out a growl that could rival a dragon. “Uhm—yea, please!”
After a quick stop at the barracks, I walk into the dining hall, looking around for the table Matt claimed for us and had sent me a photo of since “ours” was taken.
The picture is of a wooden table with chairs and a stone wall behind it—not even remotely helpful in a large room full of wooden tables and stone walls.
“Lee!”
Sasha’s voice finds me, and I’m grateful since it’s coming from the opposite side of the room from where I’m currently wandering.
“Hey, Sash!”
She rushes over, beaming and pulling me into a hug, “I’m so glad you’re feeling better! Matt said you got hurt on the obstacle course this morning, and the doctors had you resting. I was going to come see you tonight. How are you out so soon? I thought they’d keep you all day.”
“I kinda just walked out?” I say, feeling a little sheepish admitting that to Sasha, who is all about medical treatments and protocols.
“I already missed Combat Medicine, but there is no way I’m missing Spell Casting.
I don’t know who thought we would only need two classes of each track to pick, but it seems like we should have a month at least.”
“Most recruits come in knowing what they want to do, remember?”
Yeah, I definitely forgot that part. “All the more reason I can’t miss a class.”
She snorts, “No one can ever say you aren’t committed. A little psychotic but committed.”
“Maybe a little. But, let’s go before the girls all notice Matt’s alone, and we lose our seats,” I joke, already moving in the direction Sasha said our table is.
“Three seconds,” she mutters. “I give it three seconds before some girl walks up to talk to him.”
She may have thought we were together, but there’s no missing the number of girls who make flirty eyes at him every day.
Matt’s face breaks into a full-on smile when he sees me walking his way. He pretends not to hear the group of Bravo girls talking about him like he’s a celebrity, fresh from a photoshoot, but I can hear them from here.
Right as we reach him, a pair of giggling girls slow down near the table, eyeing him like he’s dessert. Unlike usual, he doesn’t even look at them as he stands and takes a step toward me.
“Told you,” Sasha flashes me a victorious smile. “Three seconds.”
“Two and a half,” I reply with a smile as Matt pulls me into a tight hug. Thank the gods for Spellcasters who make fast-healing tinctures—for ribs and matters of the mind—and an academy that doesn’t like recruits out of commission for long.
“You scared the shit out of me.” He quietly confesses.
“How did you know where I was?”
“You know I’ll always find you,” he promises, just like he has since the first time he found me broken and bloody. “I made it to the infirmary right after they had given you the tonics. I stayed and talked to you for a while in case I could get through to your dissociation.”
He starts to pull away, then quickly pulls me back in to add, “I only told Sasha about your ribs.”
Taking a step back, I smile at him in thanks. “Hey, I had to do something to catch up on sleep. I can’t be responsible for depriving all of Scion’s women of their fun if you have to keep sleeping with me.”
Rolling his eyes, he pulls out my chair in a silent order to sit, and then slides me a plate with a burger, baked potato, garlic mashed potatoes, and fries.
“Was one form of potato not enough?” I laugh, eyeing my plate.
“Don’t pretend like you won't eat them all. They’re your favorite carb.”
He’s obviously right, so I dive in. “Can you pass me the ketchup?
He reaches for the bottle, and something catches my attention.
“Wait—what the hell happened to your hand?”
Up close, it’s impossible to ignore. His knuckles are a mess: swollen and angry-looking, skin split in several places, faint smudges of dried blood still clinging to the cuts.
Bruising has already begun to settle beneath the surface, a dark purple spreading across the back of his hand.
It looks like he went five rounds with a brick wall.
He flexes his fingers slightly, and I see the flash of pain before he masks it with that too-easy shrug.
“Just banged them up working out earlier. Not a big deal.”
His jaw tenses, and I know there’s something he isn’t saying, but I can’t think of anything that would’ve set him off. If Lucas had pulled something, he would have told me as soon as I sat down, so it must not be important. Right?
I make him a little ice pack in my napkin before devouring my burger—and all of my potatoes, right on time for us to leave for Spell Casting.
The Spell Casting building was the first building we walked by when Matt and I arrived at Scion with the Corrections Transportation Officers.
The blandness of the exterior makes it practically invisible…
and that’s saying something since it’s directly across from the front door of my barracks building.
Maybe that’s why when I step inside, I’m rendered speechless. I don’t know what I thought the inside of a Spell Casting building would look like, but this was not it.
The only walls in the entire space are the four exterior walls. The open layout is accentuated by the vaulted ceilings adorned with iron crossbeams and magically flickering candelabras that never burn out.
The walls, which I think used to be white, are now a light grey from the thin coating of soot that coats them from experiments gone wrong. The floors are made from stone, a necessity when you are teaching students to make potions and weapons with volatile ingredients.
To the left side of the open room is a traditional classroom, complete with a green chalkboard and desks where the tables can collapse to the side.
And to the right is possibly the most impressive laboratory ever made. The windows all have plants growing in front of them—some hanging and some in window planters.
The long, heavy wooden tables in the center of the room are cluttered but organized in a way that only the people who created the chaos could navigate.
There are beakers, brass tubes, mortars and pestles, scales of various sizes, bowls of crushed ingredients, and vials filled with liquids whose beautiful colors can only be the product of magic.
The far wall shelves are packed with ingredients that have already been harvested or created, some familiar, others beautifully exotic.
Powdered petals and mushrooms, dried bat wings, crushed dragon scale, and even one with rat brains, according to the label.
Some jars bubble and steam while others sit like sludge, labeled with symbols I don’t recognize.
At the center of it all, a large, open spell book, its pages filled with spells and diagrams that shift subtly when you’re not looking directly at them.
Every surface is a testament to the art of Spell Casting: precision, patience, and the delicate balance between creation and destruction. Magic pulses from every inch of the room, thrumming against us like the room has a heartbeat of its own.
I’m drawn from my reverence when a short, older, thin man with a blackened leather apron appears from the bookshelf in the classroom to our left.
…Maybe I shouldn’t become a Ghost Walker if I missed an entire man…
He starts toward the front of the class but pauses, periodically picking up a flask or vial, inspecting each before putting it back on its respective table.
I thought this room had used up every ounce of surprise possible, but I was not prepared for what he does when he makes it to the front of the lab.
He smiles the most endearing, grandfatherly smile. If I had ever met my grandparents, I would like to think their smiles would have looked like his.
“Hello, recruits.”
As a class, we parroted, “Hello, Sir.”
“None of that. Not in here. Here, I am but another tool in your belt, a resource of knowledge for you to use, and your guide to creating a path to beat the unbeatable. You heard me right, because everything is unbeatable, until someone is bold enough to challenge it with all they have.
“In this room, you will focus on the unbeatable obstacles our military faces, and then you will find a path through for them. We lost millions of people to common sicknesses until a spellcaster made a cure to save her husband and saved the world in the process.
“We lost battle after battle with insufficient weapons until a Spellcaster’s only brother was the one who would be wielding those weapons. He worked day and night until he created the Mercurial Blade that changed war forever.
“You will all face challenges at some point in your lives that you would give everything for. My job is to give you the gasoline, so you know how to light the challenge on fire and use the flames to brew your solution.”
The class is speechless in a way that feels entirely different than the other tracks here.
What Professor Martinez offered the class was hope, pride, and a sense that we could be unstoppable. Maybe we won’t be the greatest dragon rider to live, or the healer that saves the king. But we can create change in a world that pushes us to lose our individuality.
When the class begins, we’re each given textbooks with ingredients and potions that we’ll be practicing with over the next few weeks. We then spread out to brew a simple tincture that relieves muscle aches instantly.
An hour later, I have the most beautiful jar of…nothing.
Apparently, no matter how inspiring a speech is, you still have to be able to follow the damn recipe to successfully brew a tincture—something I have perfected not being good at over the years.
Sasha’s vial, on the other hand, is filled with a beautiful lavender liquid that shimmers in the sunlight when we leave class.
“Well, I definitely need to head to the library now.” I groan. “Not one, or two, but three classes that I am abhorrent at is not a reality I can simply accept and expect to survive the next ten years of service.”
“I wish I could help, but I have my shift at the infirmary,” Sasha says, but I know she's been looking forward to it all week.
“Have fun!” I call after her, before Matt and I walk to the castle.
“Safe to assume you still haven’t heard from your dad?” I ask him once Sasha’s out of earshot.
Matt’s answering laugh is almost too cheerful.
“Nah, not that I’m surprised. He didn’t believe me any of the times I told him what your dad was doing to you.
Could I really expect him to believe me when I said that his idol was lying on the stand when he claimed we were robbing him so we could afford to elope? ”
“Never mind that he had just caught you messing around with Liz in the back of your pickup a week before.” I laugh. “A dumbass and a drunkard. It’s scary to think our dads are in charge of keeping South Hollow safe.”
“Right?” he says with mock seriousness. “Truly inspiring leadership.”
His phone buzzes, and a grin spreads across his face—mischievous and guilty all at once.
“Do you need me to come study with you? Or can I meet up with you tonight?” He asks while smiling devilishly down at his phone.
“Spill it, who is she and what did she say?”
“Who’s who?” Matt feigns innocence.
“Oh, I don’t know. Whatever girl is currently asking to rendezvous with you,” I sing-song.
“Rendezvous, really, Lee?” he snorts. “And she didn’t say anything. But the way she’s bent—”
“La, la, la, la, la, I can’t hear you! I’m leaving now!”
I can still hear him laughing as I stalk off toward the library.