Page 53 of The Witch They Crave

—L.V.

I read it twice and roll my eyes. Fold it back along the original crease.

Just us.

Yeah, how about hell no. I set it face-down on the nightstand.

But the dread creeps up the back of my neck anyway. I can refuse, I can plan to not show up, but at the end of the day–I can’t really get away from him.

And he knows it.

He’s betting that my curiosity outweighs my own preservation instincts.

I blow out a breath and sink down onto the edge of the bed.

He’s… correct.

Chapter 14

Combat class welcomes me with the smell of cut grass and sweat.

The training fields stretch out behind the academy, flat and green and hemmed by oaks, the sky a flat white heat overhead. I'm paired with a wolf-shifter named Beau who is approximately the size of a refrigerator and has been apologizing before every drill for twenty minutes. I appreciate it. He’s way more capable than I am and a little rusty after two weeks without class.

Plus, I don’t even want to think about who I’d be sparring with if…

Except I do think about it, because the body remembers what the mind won't.

Two staffs. A boy crossing the mat with one held out to me on the second day, easy, like it cost him nothing, like partnering the witch nobody would touch wasn't the bravest thing anyone had done for mes. Emric would be somewhere on this field right now. Stretching. Cracking that grin. Getting told off by Midus for talking through the warm-up.

He'd be here, and he isn't.

I hate that.

I clear my throat and squeeze my fingers around the staff in my hand.

We're doing staff drills—paired sparring, wooden staves, the kind of thing that's supposed to teach you to fight without leaning on what you are. No magic. That's the rule. Midus prowls the line, barking corrections, riding the slow ones—a drill instructor who treats every dropped guard like a personal insult and every flinch like blood in the water.

I'm trying not to think about Kage.

It's going great. I've only clocked his position across the field six times, updated every forty-five seconds without meaning to, and noted that he hasn't looked at me once since class started—which is itself a kind of looking.

I haven’t heard from him since the night he broke-in to the underground cold store I was held in and haven’t seen him for three days since the tribunal. The little connection I felt grow between us after I drank his blood feels more and more distant–a fading I didn’t expect after how close it felt like we were when we last spoke.

Maybe it’s all in my head.

Yeah… it is. And I have bigger fish to fry so get it the fuck together Calypso!

Beau swings. I catch it on my staff, the crack of wood on wood jarring up through my wrists, and shove back. He's stronger than me by an order of magnitude and we both know it, so when he leans into the push, expecting to move me, I cheat.

I drop my staff low and hook his ankle out from under him.

Beau stumbles sideways and catches himself before he hits the grass. Rounds on me, ears gone red.

"That's not the drill," he snaps. "Figures the witch fights dirty."

There it is. Twenty minutes of apologizing and all it took was one cheap shot to find what he actually thinks of me.

"You're twice my size, Beau." I roll my shoulder, settle my grip on the staff. "Dirty's the only lane I've got against someone like you."