Page 26 of Wings and Shadowthief

Which were all but useless against a fire witch able to melt her icy stick with a wave of her hand.

They were walking back to the dorm when she felt it. Him.

It had been weeks since last she’d stood in front of Jack, but she could distinguish his presence so clearly.

Her magic brewed under the surface, immediately aware, and a wave of anger crested inside her before she could even see him.

“Hey!” His voice had no right to feel this familiar to her.

Gwen had been one of the last to know he’d returned to New York, and no one had told her he was coming back—not even Tris, whom she’d spoken to hours earlier over the phone.

“Wait up!” His steps approached at an accelerating pace. She kept her head up and walked forward as Blair halted to greet him.

“Hey back! I heard you saw my mother,” Blair said, friendly as ever.

“Yeah. She’s scary. Hang on a sec.” He kept running, catching up to her just as she reached the dorms. “Gwen. Long time. You’re looking good.”

“I’m covered in mud.” She rolled her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Would you like the alphabetical list, or in order of priority?”

She wasn’t going to smile. Shewasn’t. Not when the very thought of him still made her feel so damn enraged.

Part of her couldn’t explain it. She wasn’t even one to hold a grudge. They were tiring and pointless.

“Come on, Gwen. I want us to be friends again.”

“We’ve never been friends,” she retorted, not slowing down as she made her way to the room where she’d been moved after her shift.

“Friendly, then. Besides, I need you.”

She laughed out loud. Oh, that was going to be rich. “You need me?”

Now, she was smiling from ears to ear.

“Wait, why are we heading toward my place?”

She owed him no answer, so she didn’t attempt to give him one, walking up the stairs of the right wing.

She wasn’t about to complain. There was no more grumpy roommate and no more busy common room in her future. Still, moving her things to this wing had felt like an end. Maybe a beginning too. Certainly a change.

At her doorstep, she asked again. “You can tell me what you want in the next sixty seconds, or I’m going in and locking the door.”

“You’re here?” he asked. “Down the hall from me?”

“I don’t know your room, Hunter.”

“But I know yours.” He said it probingly, almost like a question.

Gwen glared into his annoyingly beautiful light eyes. “Let’s never talk of this again, shall we? That leaves you thirty seconds.”

“I need you to activate a spell.”

She huffed. Seriously?

“Daily,” he added.

“You have to be kidding me.”

---