Page 60 of Magic in the Woods
I pulled my arm off my eyes, giving her the best glare I could muster. “Where do you think?”
Brooke’s eyes bounced down between my legs before returning to my eyes. “Oh. Oh, my.”
“Yeah, and it feltgood.”I tried to gauge her reaction, tried to read her face with my eyes. She kept her features neutral, her eyes trained on me. “And I let him know it felt good.”
Brooke giggled. “That doesn’t seem all that bad.”
“Not until I have to see him again, see his face, knowing what we did yesterday.”
She fell back, lying next to me on the mattress. “Maybe he’ll want to do it again.”
“Not anytime soon. I’ve got to get to class today, and then the air task is tonight.”
“Promise we’ll sit next to each other?” Brooke asked.
“Of course,” I said. “We need to watch ourdear roommatecompete.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Petunia will do whatever she can to win. She hasn’t been back in our room since she attacked you. She must be spending all her time preparing.”
We both cringed.
I pulled my extra uniform from the closet and went to the bathroom to change. I felt the loss of Gideon’s scent as I removed his shirt and pulled on my uniform. The waterelements’ evaluation would be in a couple days. I needed to prepare as much as I could, so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself in front of the entire Academy.
Withoutthe distraction of Gideon’s hands.
“I’ll see you tonight,” I called out to Brooke as I left our room in search of a cauldron.
Witches squished Brooke and me between them on the bleachers, our boots stacked on top of each other.
“There she is!” I whispered, nodding toward where Petunia walked in with the rest of the air elemental witches. Her ringlets were tight, and she held her nose high in the air. She scanned the crowd, narrowing in on where Brooke and I were sitting. The way she stared at us turned my stomach. She looked at us with such intensity, like she was challenging us—and we weren’t even competing.
Some of the surrounding witches looked nervous, their eyes bouncing around the cavern. Other, more experienced witches stood tall, facing forward with their arms at their sides.
The cavern looked different from the last task. Instead of dirt, the ground was covered with several feet of sand. The witches walked gingerly through it, their heeled boots sinking.
“There he is…” Brooke bumped my shoulder before tilting her head toward the stage. Toward where Gideon was sitting.
He was sitting in the same wing-backed chair he’d been in during the last task—though this time he didn’t look relaxed or bored. There were lines in his face from the way he flexed his jaw. He had his forearms resting on the armrests of the chair, his hands gripping the ends so tightly that his knuckles were white. The knuckles that had been between my legs. My cheeks instantly heated. And his eyes. They were staring at me.I looked away as quickly as I could. His gaze was hungry, and I didn’t need to feel the way his eyes consumed me.
Robinson took the stage, his voice booming throughout the cavern as he gave his welcome speech, explaining the rules and what was at stake. I let the sound of his voice wane, and instead of paying attention to him, I looked around the cavern, at the faces of the witches in the audience as well as the witches on the floor. They all had different colored hair and skin, were different heights and builds, but they all had the same expressions on their faces as he spoke. They pulled their brows down, focused their eyes as they glared at the stage, and closed, tucked, and tightened their lips.
I brought my hand to my own face, feeling the downward tilt of my eyebrows, the wrinkles between my brows. The way my neck tensed involuntarily every time Robinson’s voice fluctuated.
Rage. I was feeling rage, and so was everyone else.
Everyone hated Robinson.
He had a definiteickabout him—the way he stared at us, the way he saw the female witches as vessels instead of people. Robinson wasn’t unlike my mother in that way—wanting the best and discarding anyone who was less than perfect.
From high up on the bleachers, Robinson looked small. He was a crumb surrounded by a colony of ants. It would only take one of us—one witch to nibble, and the rest would follow. We could swarm him.
“Look.” Brooke tapped my leg before pointing over at Petunia. She was pushing the other witches aside, running to the side of the cavern.
“I missed it. What are they supposed to be doing?” I asked.
Brooke stood as everyone around us did, trying to get a better view. “They have to make it to the top.” She pointed to the ceiling of the cavern. “First one to touch the top wins.”
The witches on the sandy floor looked around, locking eyes with each other, as if they were daring each other to go first. Witches began pointing their fingers at the ground, gusts of air traveling down their fingers and into the sand. This created a plume of sand and only propelled the witch a of couple feet in the air before she fell back down.
