Page 32 of Coven Relics
I grabbed Loki’s hand and squeezed it. I think Kaine’s speech got through to Reyson, but he wasn’t as personally invested in this as Loki was. He was furious about what Valentine did to me but helping the hybrids that betrayed him was just like Valentine had betrayed him back in the day.
“Beating Valentine up isn’t a good use of that big, beautiful brain of yours, Loki. You got a law degree for a reason. Wouldn’t it be a lot more satisfying and fun to really fuck up his life in court?”
“Oh, shit. That would be glorious.”
Church’s phone rang. He shushed us all to answer. Church looked utterly fed up with god drama.
“Yes? Names and race? What time? I’m on it.”
Church hung up and glared at all of us.
“While everyone was trying to explain to the gods in the room that actions have consequences, even if the Aether shat you out, I was working. I had my professors give their roles to my assistant to see if anyone was missing. Two freshmen missed all their classes today, and no one has been able to find them on campus. These two are legacy students. They are woefully behind the rest of their peers, and it’s common for them to skip class because they think if their parents throw enough money at my school, I won’t kick them out.
“Topaz is a witch, and Hazel is a rabbit shifter. They’ve been in my office more than once for skipping class. They both like to skip their defense classes because they’ve told me to my face they won’t need it because they’ll find a powerful husband. Even though my freshmen have technically only been at the academy for two weeks, the curriculum should be grueling enough to fight off an adult werewolfifthey attend class. These two are already on my watch list for expulsion because they don’t. So, the gods need to learn to behave so we can go fetch them because if Valentine wanted easy prey, he now has it.”
Oh, fuck. Iwentto the Academy of the Profane. It was grueling from day one. It was nowhere near the oldest magical academy in the world, but it was known as one of the best. People from all over the world put in applications because they knew they’d come out more powerful when they graduated.
I went to the academy with women like Topaz and Hazel, too. They bought their spots and took them away from people who actually wanted to learn rather than shop for a powerful husband. The men were just as guilty. Some of them were just there to find a wife from an influential family.
It was all just so stupid, but I didn’t wish physical harm on any of those people. I just wanted the system changed, so that spot went to people who earned them, not bought them.
“Shit,” Ripley groaned. “We need to get to Shrieking Woodsnow.I don’t know either of those girls, but I went to school with students like them at the academy. Right, so we sneak up on the cabin without wrecking the garden, and no one is beating up the cheating wolf. We can do this.”
“Not so fast,” Church said. “There are magical alarms throughout Shrieking Woods. I’m not a warlock, soIcan’t disable them. I also don’t go to Shrieking Woods because I don’t want a student following me. I have a map, but I don’t know exactly what is where. Technically, Shrieking Woods is on the academy lands, but it belongs more to the healers that use the garden.”
“That’s no problem,” Minerva said. “Ravyn, do you happen to remember that potion I caught you making in the potions lab in the middle of the night when I asked you to do independent study with me?”
“I wrote it down in my grimoire because I thought I had it perfected, but you said it wouldn’t work, and you kept me too busy to try again.”
“Oh, it was quite brilliant for any witch, much less a sophomore. Itwouldhave disabled any magical alarm system. If you brew a batch and give everyone a spray bottle, the group should be able to temporarily disable the alarms long enough to get in and save those girls.”
My mouth fell open, and I didn’t know what to say.
“I worked foragesin the potions lab after hours to get that right! So, why did you tell me it wasn’t going to work?”
I was devastated. Sophomore year, I spent all my free time on that potion. It was a revolutionary potion that no one had done before. So, why would Minerva lie to me about it not working? And why were Killian, Ripley, and Minerva laughing at me right now? Killian pulled me into a bear hug, and Ripley poked me in the side.
“Sweetie, you were trying to come up with a potion to disable magical alarms so you could break into the Museum of the Profane whenever you wanted. I tried to talk you out of it, but you certainly weren’t listening to your familiar about this,” Killian said.
“It’s true. I personally was rooting for you to pull it off because, seriously, it would have made you famous, but I didn’treallywant you busting up into the Museum of the Profane to play with nasties whenever you felt like it. Even with the alarms disabled, you would have been caught. You weren’t listening to your twin either,” Ripley said.
“And I was glaringly aware of this when I caught you in the potions lab, and you told me what you were doing. I can’t see the future, but I knew you'd end up at the Museum of the Profane anyway with your drive and the fact that you actually pulled the potion off. So, I told a little fib so you could do itlegallyand not torch your entire future when you got caught.”
I couldn’t see the future then either. I justreallywanted to see what they were hiding in the areas of the museum they didn’t allow the public to go to. I could sulk about the lie, but I knew why she did it.
And I had a potion to make for all these people trying to stop Valentine.
Chapter24
Sleipnir
This was getting way more complicated than it should be. Valentine was a criminal who didn’t know how to treat women. Back in my time, anything was fair game to steal if someone couldn’t protect it. If weknewit was unlucky or cursed, we left it behind and stole everything else. Thorunn and the hybrids were infamous now, and he knew what he was doing stealing that page.
First, we couldn’t kill him, and now we couldn’t even smack him around a bit. I understood a good bit about this century once they explained it to me, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand this. Maybe it was because all these people had nevermetThorunn, but two younglings were at risk here.
I was going along with this because everyone else was. Ravyn wasgloriousin front of her cauldron. From what I was understanding, what she was brewing had never been done before, and every witch and warlock in the room was peering over her shoulder.
The dragon was grumpier than usual. Kaine knew we needed this potion if he wanted to pull this off his way and not the Viking way. He also seemed very concerned about it getting out to the general public. But I’ll tell you what, Viking culture wouldn’t have died out if we had access to this potion and could get where we needed to go without magical warning.
