Page 40 of The Witch Queen

I find Hawthorne leaning against the wall when I return to the hallway, the perfect picture of masculine charm. His broad shoulders strain against his tunic above his crossed arms, and his assessing eyes scan up and down my body as I walk toward him. I ignore the way it makes my spine tingle, determined to keep todayflirting free.He grins with mirth when I reach him, like he’s intentionally trying to annoy me.

“Ready?” I ask.

The Prince lowers his upper body into an exaggerated bow, one of his favorite gestures of late, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Yes, Your Majesty.” I roll my eyes, then aerstep us to my usual training spot, not even thinking twice about bringing him to a place that’s so special to me.

When we arrive, he frowns as he surveys the environment, shivering in the northern air. “Where are we?”

“The Spined Moors—the northernmost part of Thayaria. It’s sparsely inhabited, so this is where I train my magic.” The wind howls, and the Prince puts his hands in his pockets, trying to disguise his discomfort. “I’m sorry, it’s much colder here. I should have warned you. Here.” I will the gusts to stop blowing. “Maybe stopping the wind will help.”

“It does, thank you,” he says as his eyes search mine. I let out my own shiver as those mossy eyes assess me, though I pretend I too am cold and rub my hands together to disguise the real reason. “Laurel, did I do something wrong?”

“Wrong? No, why would you think that?”

“It’s just—back in the apartment, you were so pleasant toward Silene, and then, I don’t know, it felt like you closed off when I spoke with you.” There’s the tiniest glimmer of vulnerability in his expression before he quickly locks it away behind a wide smile, the mask of the nonchalant prince returning. “I know I’m prone to making an ass of myself, but I don’t think I did this morning, at least not yet. Andthenyou didn’t even laugh at my bow.”

I stare at him, deadpan expression firmly in place. “You were clearly trying to annoy me. It worked.” We both know I haven’t answered his question, but he doesn’t press it further, only widens his perfect grin. I ignore the way it makes my blood heat.

“Well, at least I annoyed you. That’s always my backup plan if I can’t get you to smile.” He winks. I can’t help the twitching of my lips at his remark. It’s impossible to stay stoic around this male.

“You’re a light and water channeler, is that right?” I ask, trying to change the subject back to training and magic.

“I am. But I’ve never been able to combine the two, like you did at the ball. It’s either light or water, never both. Teach me your ways, witchling,” he croons, eyes dancing with mirth. It takes the centuries I’ve spent as the Witch Queen to keep my lips from twitching again.

“Focus on how the two conduits are similar or how they might exist in the same space,” I instruct. “Water and light are both gentle in small quantities but can also be deadly with enough volume and force. Try to connect them in your mind first before attempting to channel.”

With a nod, his eyes close and his brow furrows in concentration. His lips part slightly, and the sun hits his face at just the right angle, illuminating that hard, angular jaw and the closely shaved beard that lines it. He looks… remarkably handsome. Devastatingly so, and I can’t keep my eyes from scanning up and down his toned frame, admiring every inch of him. He’s wearing navy fitted trousers that show off the strong muscles in his legs and backside, and an equally fitted cream tunic that strains against the muscles in his arms as he moves his hands up to conjure. A stray lock of his hair falls across his face, and I reach out to brush it away before I know what I’m doing. His eyes suddenly open with my hand in front of his face. His lips twitch, like he knows exactly what I was doing. “Can’t keep your hands off me, witchling?” That cocky grin makes me clench my fists to keep from punching him in the face.

“No, I was… uh… just going to conjure light and water into my hands to see if that helps you.” The excuse tumbles out of me too quickly, and I internally groan. Trying to restore some modicum of dignity to myself, I do just that, so flustered the magic sputters for a moment before two swirling balls of water and light appear in either hand. “Focus on bringing them together into a gentle mist of light,” I murmur, cheeks still heated from embarrassment. That pesky piece of hair drops in front of his eyes again, but he shakes his head to move it out of the way, returning to his task without teasing me anymore.Thank the aether.

His attention focuses on the two orbs. The ball of water slowly moves from my right hand and covers the light, then both grow larger, moving out and away from my body until a glowing mist surrounds us. We’re encased in shimmering light, and he looks every inch theShining Princein the gleam. He smiles at me through the bright mist, unadulterated joy erupting across his features. The smile resembles the ones I glimpse briefly when he’s laughing with Silene and Fionn, the practiced, simpering pursing of his lips nowhere to be seen. My breath catches in my throat, and I’m frozen to the spot as his olive eyes find mine. We stare at one another, something shifting between us.

My cheeks hurt, and as I bring my hand to my face, I realize it’s because I’m beaming, the kind of smile I rarely—if ever—display. It only makes me grin brighter, and now it’s Hawthorne’s turn to look up and down my body. His smile disappears and his expression heats, eyes burning with a fire that makes me want to squirm. He takes a step closer to me, his own large hand reaching for me before dropping it.

“Look at that. You’re a good teacher,” he murmurs, voice low and throaty—intimate, I think. It’s the voice of a lover in the dark, praising and assessing and seductive and wicked all at once. I imagine that voice whispering dirty things to me, words I’ve never fantasized about as something inside my chest flutters.

“Good,” I say, and the word comes out breathless and lilting. “Keep practicing.”

With that, I turn, walking away from him before I forget who his father is, keeping my eyes locked on the mist barrier as a reminder of everything I’ve lost at the hands of his kingdom. I make it all the way to the edge of the cliff, half a mile away, before my emotions are fully locked away again behind my own misty wall.

When I return from my walk, Hawthorne is fully engaged in his training. He continues to create and destroy the phenomenon of lighted mist, losing himself in the exercises for nearly an hour, while I admire his dedicated practice. He clearly enjoys training his magic. That’s something we have in common.

With nothing else to do, I run through my own magical exercises, calling aether and releasing it. All a study in measured control. Remarkably, my magic somehow feels lighter and easier to conjure today. The heaviness I’ve felt lately is nowhere to be seen. I chalk it up to finally having a real plan to take down the rebels. We stay like that for a while, side by side, comfortable in the silence. Finally, when it seems Hawthorne can complete the exercise with ease, I say, “Good job. You’ve mastered it pretty quickly.”

“It’s all because of you, witchling.” His features beam back at me.

I blush. Trying to cover my reaction to him, I narrow my eyes and say flatly, “Are you actually combining them, or just channeling both at the same time and using their proximity to make the mist look lit up?”

He winks. “What’s the difference? This is more progress than I’ve made in centuries. And I find that the appearance of magic is sometimes just as powerful as the magic itself.” To prove his point, he surrounds us in another misty glow.

I burn away the water, leaving only a few orbs of light behind. “Because if they aren’t combined, a water channeler can remove the water and expose you for the fraud you are.” I give him my own wink. “It’s a great start, but for them to really work together, you need to think of them as one small piece of a whole, one part of the larger aether that flows in and through everything around us.”

Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.

He frowns. “Aether only flows through the leylines.” The floating balls of light disappear.

I’ve said too much, but I have no choice but to move forward. “That’s a misconception, actually. The aether flows most strongly through the leylines, but everything around us has a tiny current of aether. Well, everythingmagicalaround us, and that includes basically everything but humans. The aether is pure magic, and our entire world is made up of that magic.”

He studies me, eyes keen and assessing. My body hums under his scrutiny. Olive eyes draw me in as he asks, “Are you… more sensitive to aether? Is that your power? Because I’ve never heard or read that fact, and I grew up with access to the most extensive magical library in the world.”

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