Page 52 of Charmed

The light faded andshe—notheas I had initially supposed—collapsed in a heap, as if she no longer had the strength to stand on her own after the transformative magic that had been sustaining her vanished…or perhaps she was no longer used to standing on human legs.

Shock rendered me temporarily still, but eventually I was able to stir enough to help her up. I gingerly hooked my fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face. She steadily avoided my gaze, so I moved into her line of sight. She hastily ducked her head, but not before I glimpsed the dark brown eyes I’d grown intimately familiar with during her time as a frog, finally realizing why I’d seemed to recognize them.

“Maeve?” I asked tentatively.

She finally peered up at me, her usual steady confidence strangely shy. “It appears I’m human again.” She lifted her hands to study them front to back before wriggling her fingers with an almost child-like fascination, as if experimenting to see whether this was really her body.

I continued to gape at her in disbelief. This entire time thefroghad been myapprentice?That explained why my first tracking spell hadn’t worked—her cursed condition had blocked the magic.

“I’m amazed at how accustomed I became to being a frog,” she continued. “My real body almost feels unfamiliar.”

Her voice wavered, betraying the illusion of calm. Her shoulders stiffened, as if bracing herself for my reaction…but I was too stunned to do anything but continue to stare. The facts didn’t align in my head—how the apprentice I’d left behind had not only been transformed, but had somehow made her way to me, allowing us to spend days in one another’s company without my knowing her true identity.

How had this happened?

I’d never given much thought to who had cursed my companion—whether it’d been done in malice or in punishment it did little to affect the unconventional friendship we’d forged as we worked towards a common goal. Yet now the thought that someone had done such a thing to Maeve…protective anger swelled up in my chest at the thought, an intense feeling similar to when I was defending my sister, Dahlia, only much, much stronger.

My fists clenched. “Who cursed you?” I growled, my mind scrambling for a possibility before settling on the most likely candidate. “Was it Demetria?”

Her brows drew together in a way I found surprisingly alluring. “Didn’t we already visit this conversation?”

I forced myself to take a calming breath. Right, wehadalready discussed this…but the situation felt more personal since learning my frog was truly myapprentice, leaving me dissatisfied with her initial explanation.

Her blush deepened as she bit her lip. “TechnicallyIcast the curse, but not on purpose. I was trying to brew a health potion and in my haste I accidentally mixed up the filipendula and the dryas, which is apparently the only difference between the brew I was trying to create and the frog transformation spell. I tried to let you know what had happened…but the curse prevented me from not only telling you but appealing for your aid.”

Hence the deal to acquire the human transformation spell should I win the competition…only for her to instead be transformed back without it. What magic had resulted in such an anomaly? As far as I could tell, I hadn’t performed any spells.

Midst my confusion I felt the urgency to fall back on magical basics that formed the foundation of our relationship and scold her for making such a basic mistake which I’d repeatedly warned her against, but shock smothered the words, leaving only disbelieving silence.

She tilted her head. “Alden?” Her voice was so different than her old frog timbre—so soft, so lovely…and distinctly feminine.

The reminder brought an onslaught of memories that tangled my mind, making them difficult to process—the confessions I’d made, the food we’d shared from one another’s plates, how closely we’d slept with her resting on my pillow directly beside my head…

I groaned. “I—you—”

Heat swallowed my cheeks and robbed me of my fumbling words. Her face also took on a lovely shade, the pink a perfect complement to her warm brown skin. The sight of her blush only reminded me of what had transpired between us moments before.

I’d kissed her.

Obviously it hadn’t been arealkiss, but in this moment it felt like outright scandalous, considering a mentor had no right to kiss his apprentice, frog or otherwise, even somewhere as innocent as the top of her head. “My apologies, I didn’t realize—”

Once again embarrassment seized my words, especially when my mind drifted to memories of all the embarrassing interactions where I hadn’t been behaving as a gentleman ought to in front of a lady, particularly the day we’d been caught in the rain and I’d rested my frog on my chest to keep it warm…mybarechest. My memory shifted, transforming the image to the reality…so that it wasn’t a frog I held, but Maeve tucked in my arms with her head resting against my heart.

Another memory assaulted me, worse than the last: the night I’d bathed in the pond while my frog gaped at me with bulging eyes from the bank. My arms instinctively covered my chest in a futile makeshift shield that couldn’t make up for all the times I’d bathed with her nearby.

With a groan I burrowed my fingers in my hair, the second best alternative to burying myself alive.

“Alden?”

I’d heard her speak my name many times in the weeks leading up to the competition when she served as my apprentice, but somehow it sounded different now. Gone was the perpetual annoyance that seemed to have frequently filled her tone before. Now it was softer, more gentle, and created the strangest sensation of reaching inside me to curl itself around my heart…a rather pleasant feeling, albeit an unsettling one.

I began to pace, as if I could outrun whatever strange emotion prodded my heart where it wasn’t welcome.

Other than her powers and common background, Maeve wasn’t a woman much different than the countless I’d met during my acquaintance…yet I couldn’t look away, my gaze taking in every detail with an interest even deeper than when I perused my favorite books on magical theory.

Her features were both familiar in my recognition yet entirely different, as if I were seeing her for the first time. Warm bronze skin, deep chocolate eyes, wild black hair, determination lining her jaw and amplifying the feistiness filling her expression, all softened by the friendship we’d built in our time together. The way she fidgeted beneath my attention and nervously smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirts only added to her charm.

She was…rather pretty.

---