Page 48 of The Witch They Crave

"Chosen," says someone else.

"Exactly." Malloy caps the marker. "Warmth. Domesticity. A place in the household that was valued and elected, not assigned." She looks at the diagram. "The historical record is more complicated."

I scribble down as much as I can, but particularly that last line.

"The arrangement worked as follows." She pulls up a second slide—a timeline, dense with dates. "A house identified a practitioner whose abilities were useful to them. Useful meaning: rare, powerful, or some combination of the two. The house then extended an offer of sponsorship. The practitioner received room, board, access to the house's resources and social capital. The house received the practitioner's magic, on call, for the duration of the agreement." She sets the marker down. "The duration of the agreement was, in most documented cases, the practitioner's lifetime."

Pens scratch from the witch rows. Someone shifting in their seat.

I write: lifetime.

"Now. The polite terms." Malloy moves back to the board. "You'll encounter several in the primary texts and I want you to know what they actually mean. A sponsored witch is a witch whose living expenses and legal standing are covered by a noble house. A house agreement is the contract formalizing the arrangement—typically negotiated between the house's legal advocate and the practitioner, or, in earlier centuries, between the house and the practitioner's family." She pauses. "A formal protection arrangement is what you called the situation when you wanted to emphasize what the witch was receiving rather than what she was giving."

I realize… I'm taking notes on my own job description.

Interesting and horrifying in the same breath. I don’t really know how to process this.

Leopold's arm settles across the back of my chair.

Not touching me. Just—there. Draped easy along the top rail, his sleeve brushing my shoulder if I breathe wrong, close enough that the cold of him reaches me through my blouse. He doesn't look at me. He's watching Malloy with polite attention, one ankle crossed over his knee, the picture of a student with nowhere else to be.

I write another line of notes.

His arm doesn't move.

I try to focus on anything but the prickling closeness of Leopold Vassard.

"What did the houses actually do with these witches?" Malloy asks. "Beyond the obvious. Beyond magic on demand. Miss Carew."

A witch two rows below me—I don't know her, third year from the look of her notes—sits up. "Counsel. Witches with divination abilities were kept for decision-making. Harvest timing, political alliances, that kind of thing."

"Good. What else?"

"Healing," someone says.

"Warding," says another.

"Yes. And socially?" Malloy waits. Nobody answers. "A house witch was a status symbol. Having one meant your house could afford the liability. Could manage the power. Could attract a practitioner powerful enough to be worth keeping." Her voice stays the same throughout—measured, dry, giving nothing away. "The terminology shifted in the early nineteenth century, when the reform movements pushed for formal abolition of the practice. Official accounts credit growing awareness of magical autonomy. The gradual consensus that a witch's power belonged to the witch and not the house that happened to claim her."

She says happened to claim in a tone that knows exactly how loaded that phrase is.

"Do the houses still keep records of these arrangements?" The question comes from the witch rows—careful, making it academic.

"Some houses maintain historical archives," Malloy says. "Most of those records are privately held."

"Meaning not accessible."

"Meaning privately held," she says, and turns back to the board.

Leopold leans in.

"She's left out the best part." Under a whisper, calibrated for only me. His breath hits the side of my face and I don't turn my head. "The hearth witches who managed their own arrangements fared rather better than the ones who had terms assigned to them. Historically. Fascinating, the correlations."

"I'm sure Malloy will get there," I whisper.

"She won't." He tips back in his seat. Unhurried. "The ones who negotiated for themselves—before the language of negotiation was taken off the table—tended to accumulate leverage rather than lose it. Access to the house's intelligence. The goodwill of the staff. The bloodline's ear during counsel." A pause. "The interesting arrangements were the ones that looked like captivity from the outside and functioned as something else entirely from within."

I look at the board. Malloy is writing dates.