Page 18 of The Witch & the Dragon

Chloe took his hands in hers, almost without thinking, probably just to comfort him, and her thumbs ran lazy circles over the tops of his knuckles. “Whatever you’re thinking about now, it’s probably best to let it go, at least until the morning. You’ve received a lot of information today. You’ve found out about some creepy fae assassin. It’s probably your uncle. But there’s not much you can do about it right now.”

“Yes. But I have one more thought. What if Professor Umber is in on the whole thing?”

Now, this caused the thumb movements to still and her eyes to widen. “Come again?”

“I didn’t get the impulse until after he gave me the news when I went to his office.”

Chloe bit her lip. “That’s an accusation. Do you have anything to back it up?”

“I…” He replayed his thoughts, trying to remember the incident as best he could. Being called into the spacious office. His uncle liked to keep it neatly organized. He tried to picture everything in the office. The file cabinets, the neat desk, and the leather chair. The computer was in the corner, and some dragon figurines were in the background. His uncle had gotten a phone call. A call that he handed to Tiran as proof of what was being said was true.

A man on the other end, voice full of pity, identified himself as the sheriff who had gone to the scene of the accident. They had already visited his other uncle, Randall, and now they were calling to inform distant relatives. How sad it must be for him.

Then… when Tiran tried to think further, he just couldn’t. It was as if his memories had become knotted, weighed down instead by grief and despair, and he was unable to rise above it.

“My uncle handed me the call from the sheriff who had been at the scene of the accident. That’s all I really remember.”

“A sheriff, you say,” Chloe said, a tinge of suspicion in her tone. “Is it normal for them to call?”

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly versed in what happens when people suddenly die in fake car accidents.” He then winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out so harshly.”

“It’s fine.” Her thumbs continued to rub, and honestly, the motion was a little distracting because he found it quite… stimulating. “If this is the case, we can’t know if your uncle knew or if he was just an unwitting messenger. If we think this, uh, ‘sheriff’ might have been the one responsible for whatever you felt. This is, assuming, that you were enchanted by magic and that it wasn’t just a moment of despair and madness.”

That was the infuriating thing about it, wasn’t it? Not knowing for sure. He decided to take Chloe’s advice at that moment, as he didn’t want to keep agonizing over all the information delivered.

“Thank you for being here with me,” he said, taking a moment to flex his fingers and rub her hands like she’d been doing. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to want to help me out with this type of madness.”

“Helping you is a pleasure,” Chloe assured him before flushing slightly. “And you helped me with the dryad thing as well – you didn’t need to come.”

“It was my pleasure, too,” he said, looking deep into her dark eyes and now feeling a little more positive about everything. It was easy to feel positive when in her presence.

Perhaps he studied her face for too long, for she examined him in return, one crooked eyebrow denoting curiosity.

Their hands remained locked together. Maybe that was the curiosity. He pulled away from her with a guilty smile. “I should… go to sleep. As you say, there is a lot to think about and not enough hours in the day.”

“That’s one way to put it.” She grinned, gently releasing his hands. Still smiling at each other, they parted, and when she completely vanished from sight, a warm, fuzzy feeling continued to linger in his body, along with something else. A growing desire to run after her, grab her, touch her cheeks, and… well. Those thoughts would follow him to bed, along with all the other chaotic knowledge he’d learned, knowledge of a stirring happiness and that of a sinking darkness, of suspicion and worry about the uncle he thought he could trust.

Hard to know whom to trust these days. Hopefully, Chloe was one of the good ones. He needed her to be one of the good ones.

Chapter Seven - Chloe

What people didn’t tell you was that being a student in a magical school was hard. Sure, they dealt with a wide variety of magic, and gained some of the convenience that came from the magic as well, but you needed to learn so much as well as practice your own individual magic abilities. Since there were, essentially, thousands of different types of magic, academies like Dreadmor offered a normal curriculum for anyone here, even if their magic was weak to the point of non-existence.

Chloe assumed you needed an abundance of magic to attend Dreadmor, but it seemed that having family connections also mattered, as some people attended the academy who had never displayed a single ounce of talent. They just happened to hail a rich family that usually had magic in their bloodlines but, for some reason, just skipped over them.

Chloe got paired up with these types of people more than she would have liked since her magic was considered unreliable at best. (None of them knew about the true power of the pendant the dryad had given her, of course.)

It felt strange to keep such a secret, even from her friends. She badly wanted to tell someone, but the thought of losing the pendant if the word was passed along to the teachers made her hesitate. With the close of a new day, she scurried once more to her room and sought to get her on-demand visions and dream diary at her side to scribble down anything worth noting.

Nothing again, although the one about the bananas was quite interesting.

Her phone buzzed, and she scrambled for it, already feeling the ache of exhausted magic from stretching it through the pendant. There was a message from Tiran.

Hiya! So, we haven’t seen each other for a bit. Do you want to meet up?

By “a bit,” he meant “since this morning.” A warm flush crept over her skin, reading his words. The fact that he wanted to spend time with her really gave her this lovely feeling, as if her back was against a radiator, warming her through as the weather outside turned cold.

Sure! I haven’t got any homework for today. Do you have anything in mind?

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