Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
This place is where people like us do.
I stare at the board. Floating chalk writes symbols in a language that isn’t mine and draws shapes that look like they’d crawl under your eyelids. I can’t read it. Not yet. Maybe never.
My face gets hot, and I want to break something.
I can’t do this. Spell casting? Hell no. The only thing I know how to cast is my fist.
I don’t even think I’ve ever heard a spell before.
“Haide?” The teacher calls. I lift a brow in answer. Her lips twitch. Not a smile. A dare. “Since you’re so eager to participate, why don’t you demonstrate?”
My lips roll beneath my teeth. “Um, at what point between”—I point to the door and back to myself—“did I give that impression?”
A few snickers ripple through the room. Fuckers.
I stand, slow, deliberate. The book presses against my thigh as I make my way to the front of the class.
“What’s the spell?” I ask, voice rough. As if I know shit about spells.
“Something simple.” Professor Astra flicks her fingers. The chalk scribbles out a sigil consisting of three jagged lines that intersect like a broken star. “Light a candle.”
I stare at it. Then at her.
She doesn’t blink, and I swear I see a hue of purple swim through her blue eyes. “Magic isn’t just about power, Haide. It’s about precision.”
My eyes snap toward hers, narrowing slightly.
Precision?
Excitement, or something close to it, unfurls low in my stomach. A hum of promise I’ve never felt. Precision, I understand, and the idea that magic might answer to that makes the air taste suddenly stupidly sweet.
Because I know precision.
Instinctively, intimately.
I mean, no shit, right? It wasn’t a choice, but a requirement when you come from where I do. Especially when you’re born there as the witch of the isle informed me I was. I am nothing if not the picture of survival. And survival comes from instinct and instincts are a product of precision. If not the other way around. Either way, I’m made up of both. Back home, there was no better fighter, no better hunter or builder.
Precision.
Professor Astra’s lips twitch and I swear she can see it, but she’s no longer the object of my attention.
I reach out, fingers hovering over the sigil. The air hums, but it’s not for me. It’s laughing.
Fine. Let’s see what happens when I improvise.
Chalk dust powders my fingertips. I exhale through my nose, slow, before pressing my palm flat against the sigil.
The class holds its breath. I hope they fucking choke on it.
I don’t whisper the incantation. I growl it, like a curse. A promise. The sigil twists under my hand, the lines moving off the board. My palms begin to warm, and heat spreads through my arm. It’s warm and…right, somehow. Like the fire isn’t rising in me but waking for me.
A low thrum rolls beneath my skin. It’s primal and hungry, as if something buried in my bones has been waiting for this exact spark. The heat curls up my wrist, as comforting as a wood flame fire on the beaches of my home. It tingles like recognition, like my body is remembering something my mind has never even learned.
Is this what magic feels like?
I focus harder.
A pillar of black flame erupts, skating the ceiling, casting the room in eerie, flickering light.
My smile splits my face.
I fucking did it!
The professor’s braid unravels a fraction, just enough to see the pulse in her throat jump.
I turn my head, just slightly. Thirty pairs of eyes stare back, wide and white-rimmed. One girl snatches the grin off my face. Seated in the front row with blond hair and wearing the same prissy face that most Argents carry. Her hand’s covering her mouth, a pearl—fucking pearl—choker around her neck.
The professor’s voice cuts through the white noise ringing in my head. “Well. That’s…one way to do it.”
I smirk at the girl, slow and feral, before blowing out the flame. “I might like this class after all.”
Professor Astra clears her throat. “It appears you may have found your niche, Ms. Haide.”
Twenty minutes later, I jump up to hurry out with the rest of the class, but a barrier pops up before me, trapping me.
My brows furrow. I search for the source of the spell and find the professor staring right at me.
She puts her palm up, curling her fingers as if to call me to her in the creepiest, unnecessary witchy way I’ve ever seen. The barrier falls and I head right for her.
She smiles at someone behind me then seals us off once again. “That was good work today.”
“I know.”
Professor Astra chuckles, dipping her chin, but then her expression turns serious. “As soon as you depart today’s lesson, crossing the threshold from class to hall, your codex will grow in knowledge.” She points to the book in my hand. “Inside, you’ll find many spells you may practice outside of class. The grounds surrounding the university are protected, so stay within the wards. You may use the Casting Fields or Flying Grounds should you wish to practice. And something tells me that you will.”