Page 225 of The Black Witch

“I know what I’m doing,” I tell her uneasily.

It’s the right thing to do, I reason with myself.To stay on Lukas’s good side and pretend that everything is fine and normal. I’ll wear it every day so that he finds it on me when he arrives.

I can picture him now, spotting the chain, sliding his pianist fingers along my neck to guide the necklace into the open, closing his palm around the tree pendant as he smiles at me.

A prickling flush heats my cheeks at the thought of him, and I’m instantly ashamed of my imaginings.

I slip the pendant’s chain around my head, drop the tree inside my tunic and attempt to push thoughts of Lukas out of my mind.

But I can feel the wood of the small tree pulsating against my skin, like a warm, unsettling heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Two Hundred and Fifty-Six

An icy wind rattles the diamond-paned windows as I sit with Tierney in Professor Kristian’s cluttered office.

It’s late evening, and a throbbing ache pulls at my temple like taut fishing line, the scar along my thigh tingling.

* * *

All day I’ve held my breath, waiting for an arrest that never came as my friends and I stolidly went about our usual lectures, work and tasks, all of us trying to blend in unobtrusively—nothing but harmless, hardworking scholars, the lot of us.

But I saw the Verpacian and Gardnerian soldiers questioning scholars and professors, the military presence growing throughout the day. It sent a cut-glass fear straight through me.

This is bigger than just us now. And we need help.

Tierney and her family need to get out of here.

Professor Kristian sits behind his desk, eyeing Tierney and me with somber concern. Tierney looks like a rabbit tensed for flight, her knuckles white as she sits forward, gripping at her chair, frozen in place.

“What’s the matter, Elloren?” Professor Kristian asks me, his eyes flitting to Tierney and back to me again.

Heart racing, nerves primed, I jump off the cliff. “Yvan Guriel. He told us...that you might be able to help someone who might be—” I take a deep breath “—glamoured Fae.”

Professor Kristian’s brow rises, and he’s silent for a long moment, frozen in place like Tierney.

“You know Yvan Guriel?” he finally asks.

I blink at him, surprised by the question.

A bit, I think, with wry hurt.He almost kissed me.I nod cagily.

Professor Kristian spits out a sound of amazement and narrows his eyes. “Surprising. Yvan hates Gardnerians. Quite a lot.”

It stings bitterly to hear it. I push the hurt aside.

“We have a common goal,” I tell him, straightening.

“Transporting glamoured Fae east, I would imagine,” he says matter-of-factly. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

Tierney and I glance at each other, and the jumped-up fear in her eyes jolts me into remembering what the stakes are for her and for her family.

“Yes,” I tell him definitively. “That’s exactly what I’m getting at.”

He takes a deep breath, nodding, lets it out and clasps his hands together, his forefingers steepled in thought. His lip lifts with amusement as he sets his eyes on me. “Flirting with the Resistance, are we?”

I let out a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’ve jumped clear into bed with them.”

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