Page 92 of The Witch They Fear

I do, actually. I am realizing it in real time the way I always realize things—three seconds after I should. Nellie pounded on my door because she was scared I was hurt. I have not had a person worry about me like that for a long time. The last person who did was Mom, was Lila, was—

I roll my eyes hard so I don't have to feel it.

"I'm fine, you drama queen, get in here."

She sweeps past me into the cottage like she owns the place, which—after a week of dropping by for tea, leaving tins of her mother's ginger cookies on my counter, and staring at my counter-rune for forty-five minutes trying to make sure it, in fact, works—she basically does. She drops her bag on my couch. Toes off her shoes. Plants herself in my kitchen.

"You're coming to the unveiling tonight."

"No."

"Yes."

"No, Nellie. I have a sling. I have a bandage. I'm cleared to attend classes tomorrow and I would like to attend them having slept and not having spent an evening watching Leopold Vassard do whatever it is Leopold Vassard is going to do tonight—"

"It's a bonfire."

"Cool. Still no."

She sets her hands on her hips.

"Calypso. Attendance is mandatory for all enrolled students, and you have been cleared to be an enrolled student as of seven o'clock this morning, and the headmistress has personally signed off on the assumption you'll be there—which I know because Odette is friends with the bursar's wife and she texted me an hour ago. So now I am here to drag you out of this cottage. Because if you skip an event with your name on the attendance list on your first day cleared, you are giving Leopold Vassard a free shot to spin a story about you, and I am not letting it happen." She is breathing hard by the end. "Also you can't sit here for nine more hours alone and I refuse to let you. Call it friendly concern. Whatever you need."

"…fine."

"Good." She moves toward the bedroom. "Where are your formal blacks?"

"Wait. Hold on. What is the unveiling, exactly? You said the Revel was on All Hallows'."

"Oh, sweet child." She comes back into the kitchen with my one black dress over her arm. "Tonight isn't the Revel itself. Tonight is the unveiling. Theme drop, formal invitations go out, a hundred and fifty outside guests fly in to inspect us. Old families. Council. Dignitaries. And then we all get to enjoy a month of activities."

"Activities?"

"Activities." She lays the dress on the couch. "Pre-Revel salons. Charity dinners. A tasteful ball or two. Each one hosted by a different old family at a different historic property, but the whole month is technically Vassard's. He's at the center of all of it. King of the festivities."

"Lovely."

"And you—" she points a finger "—are technically a unique student status, the only first-year witch on a council oversight track in the history of this academy, and your absence at the unveiling would not go unnoticed. Particularly not after the library. Devenir would benefit from you visibly being alive in a public place where people can see you are alive."

I look at the dress.

The dress is fine. Short-sleeved black thing that goes to my mid-calf, one of the three things Marion picked out for me when I left the facility, on the principle that nothing about me should attract attention. The sling will be visible over it. The bandage on my neck is not going anywhere either way.

"Fine," I say.

Nellie tips her chin up. "That was less of a fight than I expected."

"I'm tired. Don't push it." I grab the dress and change before she decides to push it.

The walk from my cottage to the central quad is fifteen minutes if I take it slow, which I do, because Nellie has slowed her stride to match mine and because my shoulder still complains when I move it wrong. The dress fits. The sling sits on top of it. Nellie has done my hair into a low knot at the back of my neck that hides as little of the bandage as possible, which is the point—I am not pretending nothing happened. I am just walking through the consequences of what happened.

The smell of woodsmoke hits us before we round the last corner, the orange hue of the fire illuminating the night sky.

"Oh," Nellie says, "they went for it."

The central quad has been transformed.

The fountain at the center is gone. In its place is a fire pit the size of a small swimming pool, walled in old stone and stacked with cordwood, the flames already five feet high. A ring of long tables runs the perimeter of the quad—white linens, candles in glass globes, dark food fitting of a medieval kingdom feast after a hunt, a service line of humans in blacks pouring something the color of pomegranates into long-stemmed glasses. The trees around the quad have been wrapped in iron lanterns. Woodsmoke and bodies and the kind of humid October that doesn't bother to pretend it isn't still summer. The music is something I do not recognize—strings and a low drum, traditional, old.