Page 82 of Faerie Gift

How is this possible?

* * *

I spent the next several minutes wondering what Hoarfrost had been thinking in giving me a nearly perfect grade for my oral exam. I mean, considering his personal feelings toward me. Was this a way for him to knock me off my stride? To be nothing but hateful until the end and suddenly turn nice?

I wasn’t about to find out, either.

The afternoon loomed large ahead and with it the final leg of our examinations—the practical. The professors gathered the few of us who’d made it through the first two rounds on the first floor of the castle. Mike and I passed between several people standing around and stepped through the narrow, arched entrance into the classroom. A teacher stood near the door to direct traffic and guided the two of us to a small table with a pewter cauldron.

The potion master at the front of the room was a teacher I’d seen before but had only had class with a few times. She rubbed her hands together in gleeful anticipation.

She stood slightly taller than me, leaner, her narrow chest cinched into a tight leather vest. Although her left hand was bare, she wore a thick leather glove on the right, a blue glass bottle clenched in her fingers. Short birch-gray hair, clear green eyes, and a no-nonsense attitude.

She waited until her assistant led each student to their table before addressing the class.

“Look at the lucky few,” she started with a smile. “I can’t wait to see how you perform in my class next semester. The best of the best, eh? I guess we’ll see. I’m Professor Larch, for those of you who don’t remember me from January.”

“What do you think she has in her hand?” Mike asked out of the corner of his mouth.

I shook my head, not wanting to speak in case I jinxed myself. I never claimed to be the best at potions. In fact, the few practice classes we’d had, well, they hadn’t ended well for me. At least I’d never blown off my own eyebrows, like some of my other half-human classmates, but I never claimed to be good.

Maybe I couldconvincethe potion to make itself? It was worth a shot.

“For those of you wondering,” Professor Larch said with a pointed look toward Mike, “this is theEius Repellere. It’s a one-use concoction to repel anyone or anything from you without harm and can be used on upwards of twenty people at a time. It’s extremely effective. And extremely complex to make. This is your final test, boys and girls. Your final test to determine whether you are Halfling Academy first-year all-stars. We take only the best into the second year. And trust me, what you’ll be doing today? It only gets harder from here.”

The potion master snapped the fingers of her free hand and a scroll appeared on every desktop.

“These,” she continued, “are the instructions on how to make theEius Repellere, with certain ingredients left out. It’s up to you to not only fill in the blanks but follow the precise instructions and let your magic guide you toward the correct answer. Let me tell you, I know plenty of full-blooded Fae who can’t get this one right. It’s quite advanced.”

Persephone, seated at the front table, raised her hand and batted golden eyelashes at Professor Larch. “Then how do you expect us to make it?”

“I don’t.” The potion master fixed Persephone with a look, not unkind but not yielding. “I expect you to do your best and I’ll judge you on how far you get. It’s not meant to be completed to perfection. It’s meant to weed out those of you who simply can’t hack it.” She shook her head at the few gasps her statement roused. “This is a hard truth many people will not tell you, but the king doesn’t want the weak to come to Faerie. It’s that simple. It’s my job to help him discern those of you worthy enough to advance. Like I said. Simple.”

A shiver ran through me. Yes, simple. A simple and terrifying truth.

It wasn’t long before Professor Larch set us off with a sharp whistle, and around me the rest of the first-years got to work. A bevy of ingredients were stored at the front of the classroom on wide oak shelves and I hurried with the rest of the class to gather what we needed for the preliminary potion. Mike was hot on my heels, watching what I did. Watching what I grabbed.

Fine with me. I’d rather he studymeand keep up than get cut too early.

Time ticked by and one by one, students were pulled from their desks. There were some mini explosions, smoke rising from the cauldrons. We were not witches. We were Fae. That didn’t mean we were above learning the basics, potion making among them, and many of our kind chose to amplify their own magic with ingredients given to us by the earth.

So while I understood why I needed to learn this, the added pressure of needing to make it across the finish line wore on me. My teeth clenched. My fingers turned stiff to the point where I made rookie mistakes and burned myself more often than not.

The blanks on the recipe threw me off my game. When I wasn’t sure what herb to choose, or what crystal to throw in, I used my intuition.

You can do this.You got this.

It was a pep talk I didn’t believe but one that served me well as one by one the rest of the students were tapped out by Professor Larch. Leaving only Mike and me.

Down to the wire. Holy crap.

I stared into Mike’s guileless eyes and knew he would do whatever it took to win. We were both safe, sure, but this final showdown belonged to the two of us.

“You’re going down, Alderidge,” he boasted in a whisper only to me.

“Oh, you think so, Thornwood? Well, let’s just see who the last man standing will be.”

He pretended outrage. “Do you really think you’re going to beat me?”

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