Page 47 of Magic in the Woods
I was getting ahead of myself—just like my comment to her earlier, about moving into my room. The way she’d reacted had told me I was out of line…had taken it too far. She didn’t see it yet. She didn’t see what I saw.
I’d have to go slow. Taking down the Academy and the Coven would come later. Somehow I had to get to know her better so she could get to know me, know that I wasn’t some stud…I wasn’t someone who took the attention of all the witches at the Academy seriously.
It’d taken a couple witches two years ago to help me realize there was nothing real about them. They wanted my attention for clout, for power. They were blind to what the Coven and the Academy had done to them…made them minions of their so-called army. I couldn’t even listen to them talk. All they spoke about was the future of the Coven, the evaluations, becoming the chosen. It’d become robotic at this point, the same words regurgitated over and over again. I no longer spoke to the witches here, instead spending time in my room or searching for more words etched into the brick around the Academy.
But I’d speak to Dafni…I’d speak to her all day. She didn’t make me feel like I was good forone thing—she treated me like I was good fornothing. And that was…refreshing.
There was a challenge there, a motivation I hadn’t felt before. She wasn’t dazzled by my position here at the Academy like the other witches were.
I could have any witch here, willingly, except her.
Someone who didn’t like me. How odd.
How odd that I really liked her. Liked her more than any witch I’d ever met, and that’d been a lot of witches. I’d heard the adage—that everyone wanted what they couldn’t have, and maybe that was the case with Dafni, but something told me it wasn’t. Dafni was special. It wasn’t her red hair or the sparks across her nose. It was the way she carried herself, the way she wasn’t intimidated by me or anyone else here. She was a strong, powerful witch. If no one else saw that, that was their own fault.
Dafni had cut me deep, given me so little hope of capturing her attention, I felt like I could do nothing else wrong. I’d do anything to have her look at me, to simply glance my way. With her, I was at rock bottom. There was nowhere to go but up.
I had to do something to connect with her…to show her that she was special, that she had my attention when no one else did.
“Come, let’s have our weekly chat.”Hisvoice always gave me goose bumps—and not the good kind. Arthur Robinson was a scary witch. He had influence in the Coven, and he knew it. He used it to his advantage, never caring about those who got hurt because of it.
I followed him to his room, walking through the halls of the Academy and through the doors to the covenstead. The covenstead reminded me of an anthill I’d read about in a book about insects. Made of tunnels underground, the hallways twisted and weaved. Rooms for the witches of the Coven were designated with wooden doors at uneven intervals. We always had a long way to walk. Robinson’s room was deep within the covenstead.
“Gideon.” His voice always made my stomach flip, sending swells of stomach acid up my throat. I nodded at him as he stood there, holding the door to his room open. He used his room both as an office and a bedroom. The entire room was sterile, with white-paneled walls he must’ve had installed to hide the dirt and minimal furniture. He had a bed, big enough for just him—I’d heard rumors of how he took witches back to his room, only to kick them out fifteen minutes later. Not that anyone had ever complained. Attention from a male witch, even fifteen minutes of it, earned bragging rights among the Coven.
This was the only time I was allowed to exit the Academy and enter the covenstead. Once a week, just for this meetingwith Robinson. At first, leaving the Academy that imprisoned me and seeing more of the witch world was exciting—but over the years, it became tiresome. We were still underground, in windowless hallways and rooms that held witches that cared only about their legacy, about growing the Coven. I knew I was about to listen to Robinson drone on and on, lecturing me about my place as a male witch in the Academy and eventually the Coven.
I always felt itchy during the meetings—like my skin was crawling. The feeling was getting worse the closer I got to the end of the evaluations. That itchiness and stress only amplified my urge to leave. I needed to get out, get up to the surface.
“I’ve chosen your partner,” he said.
I choked on my spit. “What?”
“The human-born witch with air magic—Petunia Fox.”
I opened my mouth to protest. Nothing came out. My hands were shaking. I needed to busy them with something, so he didn’t notice. I picked up the papers on the table next to me and aimlessly paged through them.
“Now I know, I know…she’s human-born. Not what you were expecting. But I’ve been watching her during her instruction time. She’s powerful. She’ll easily win the air magic task.”
I stopped flipping through the papers. There was a timeline on one of them—a sort of calendar of events. It was the schedule listing the evaluation tasks.
“What about the water element witches?” I asked. What I really meant was, what about Dafni? I kept replaying the words I’d said to her—that I was going to earn her trust. I’d meant what I said, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that. It was hard to trust anyone here. No one was consistent or showed any vulnerability. It was all survival and fighting for attention. I’d always kept to myself to avoid conflict. Earning Dafni’strust would take time. I had to be there. Show up. Prove to her that she could trust me.
“There’s nothing profound to report from the water element witches.” Robinson picked up a remote from his side table and flipped on one of the two televisions mounted on the wall. “It has to be Petunia.”
“I’m not choosing Petunia.”
He flipped through the channels of the closed-circuit cameras the Coven had positioned around the Academy. “You’ll choose who I tell you to. I’m your elder.”
I bit my tongue, instead, reading through the papers as quickly as possible.
“See there—she’s right there.” Robinson clicked more buttons on his remote, zooming in on Petunia coming out of her room. She looked disheveled, a scowl on her face.
Behind her, right before the door closed, I could seeher. Dafni sat slumped against the wall of her room, her red hair covering the sparks on her face.
I dropped the papers on the table, stood, and pulled the door to his room open. Something was wrong with Dafni.
“Hey! Gideon! Where are you going?” I heard Robinson yell down the hall as I ran back to the Academy.
