“What are you guys reading?” I asked as I approached. They all looked up at once. Odette peeped and scrambled to hide the magazine behind her back.
“Uh… nothing,” she stammered, before giving a very unconvincing smile.
I reached for the paper. Delmare tried to hold me back from it, but I was able to rip it out of Odette’s grasp before anyone could stop me.
It was a Malovian tabloid, one famous for stalking the royal family. On the front cover blazed the headline,Royal Breakup! Are Prince Ethan and Emmaline Sosna No Longer Mated?
Beneath the headline were pictures of Ethan and I. On the left side was a photo of us last semester, cozied up at the ballet we’d gone to together. On the right, a separate picture of Ethan and I walking apart from one another blazed. It’d been taken the day we got back to school. We obviously looked pissed.
I rifled through the pages to find the main story. I scanned the article. One quote stuck out in particular.According to a royal insider, Prince Ethan Nowak and commoner Emmaline Sosna broke off their engagement sometime in the spring. The division is an unexpected blow to the royal family. The insider believes the prince ended the relationship after reconciliations to get over the devastating loss of the King’s Contest failed.
I scoffed. Who the fuck was this royal insider? I certainly didn’t know them. I bet the reporter was making stuff up… but they were right. Ethan and I weren’t a thing anymore. And the press had caught on to that.
Of course they were blaming me. Nobody had any idea that I was the one who’d left Ethan, not the other way around, and it was because the guy couldn’t get over his fascination of running around in tights.
I skimmed the rest of the article. It was a bunch of hearsay and bullshit, but the one thing they’d gotten right was Ethan and I were no longer together.
“How’d they find out about this?” I waved the magazine in the air. “Did somebody tell them?”
“We didn’t say anything, Emma, honest,” Kiara swore. “But the paparazzi have spies everywhere. Everyone at school knows you’ve broken up by now. You two haven’t exactly been acting cozy since you got back, and people have noticed.”
I glanced around the room. Melissa and Morgan were smirking at me from beside the fireplace. Morgan had a brand-new designer purse at her side, and was shuffling through another copy of the magazine with glee.
I bet Morgan was the one who’d gone to the press about Ethan and I. That big paycheck the tabloid had given her for the story probably paid for her new purse. I knew I was right by the smug look on her face.
I tossed the magazine in the trash. “Whatever. I don’t care. The whole world can know Ethan and I broke up. News was going to come out eventually.”
Kiara scowled. “I’m worried about you, Emma. Losing your mate is a big blow to your status. You won’t be respected as an Arcanea.”
“Big deal. It’s not like my reputation can sink any lower.” Anger at the article burned in my throat. This was the part I hated about being connected to a royal. Everyone made your life their business. I was just a puppet for the public’s entertainment.
Maybe Ethan was right about not going to the high priestesses. If a breakup was considered humiliating in the fae world, being possessed was probably unforgivable.
“Are you all right, Emma?” Odette blinked. “I worried the cut on your side wouldn’t heal.”
“It’s all good.” I lifted my shirt to show them the scar. It was a slight pink line now, and fully healed, but sometimes it was still sore when I moved in the wrong way. The girls frowned when they saw it. It was like a permanent reminder of Ethan’s betrayal, so I fucking hated the thing.
I’d had to take two months off of skating in order to fix the wound. I’d only just gotten back on the ice recently, and had to re-learn nearly everything I’d been practicing last semester.
The reset had done me good, though. I’d been shit at the start of the year, and after taking some time off, my jumps were higher and my spins were faster. I felt confident I had a chance at the podium in the big competition coming up this fall. In a fucked up way, Ethan had actually forced me to rest, which is what I’d needed most of all.
In the meantime, I’d been working on translating the grimoire all summer. The skating camp I’d gone to hadn’t taken place until August, and I was off the ice since then. After getting back from Poland, I’d spent most of my time in a vacation cabin in Upper Michigan practicing dark magic.
I hadn’t gotten very far. I’d been too cautious to experiment with Unseelie magic alone, and I knew if my mother found out I’d been messing with it, she’d flip a nut on me. Shehatedthe Unseelie. I’d had to keep the grimoire a secret while we were vacationing. Half the book was translated now, but I hadn’t dared to practice a single spell.
I nudged Odette. “Hey, why don’t we practice some spells in the grimoire? I’ve been looking forward to it all summer.”
“It’ll certainly take your mind off things,” Delmare said. “The alchemy classroom is open. Let’s go.”
We hurried off to the empty classroom. Kiara locked it once we got inside, and I took the grimoire out of my bag, along with a leather notebook I’d been using to write down the translations. “There’s a spell I’ve wanted to try,” I began. “It might be useful for locating the next stone. It says it’s a spell for finding what your heart desires most.”
I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted more than uniting the Crystals of Harmony and saving the fae. This location illusion might give us the direction we needed.
“What do you need?” Kiara began rummaging through the cupboards. Unseelie magic pulled from objects that weren’t your own magic, and as such, you usually always needed items to perform it.
“One flower, preferably a rose, but any will do,” I said. “And a dagger.”
Kiara took out a cypress vine and handed it to me, along with a small knife for cutting up alchemy ingredients. I put the vine on one of the alchemy desks and held the knife before my thumb.
