Page 12 of Monster's Mistake

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” I ask Anja.

“Mmhmm, the entrance should be just here.” She gestures to a painting of some fruit.

“Really?”

“Have a little faith, Nati.” She steps forward and presses on the stone to the left.

My eyes widen as the painting swings towards us, revealing a corridor hewn into the wall of the castle. “Whoa. How do you know about this place?”

“Cethin is very knowledgeable about the secret passages in the castle,” she responds. “You know Afan, right?”

“The merman?”

She nods. “That’s the one.”

“He doesn’t seem to like us much,” I muse.

“Cethin says he’s grumpy because he refuses to believe in fated mates, nothing more than that.” She steps through the hole in the wall, and I follow her.

“Why would that make him grumpy at me?” I muse.

Anja looks away, though I could be reading into that and she’s just checking we’re in the right place.

Frank lets out a soft hiss, but I think it’s more of the curious kind than anything else.

“Do you believe it?” I ask when she doesn’t respond to my former question. “Fated mates?”

“Yes. How can I not? I know how I feel when Cethin is around, and I don’t think there’s anything else that could explain it.” A smile spreads over her face, replacing all of the uneasiness from before.

“The glow of all the orgasms you get from good sex?” I mutter.

Anja laughs and flips her long silver-white hair over her shoulder. “I guess there is that. But when he explained it to me, I realised that his explanation felt right to me. Like the pieces were in place.”

“And you never considered he was lying to get you into bed?”

She snorts. “Hardly. He kept saying no because of the fated mates thing at first.”

“Oh.”

“Why are you asking?”

I sigh and run a hand over my face, accidentally catching a snake tail with my fingers and causing them to hiss in response. “We’re doing tea leaves inDivinationand mine said I was going to accept my fated mate.”

“Ah, so you’re questioning whether it can be true?”

And if the things I’m feeling whenever Meic is around might be because of that. It’s the only real explanation I’ve got. “Basically.”

She shrugs. “They’re just tea leaves, how accurate can they be?”

“No idea.”

“Then I wouldn’t worry about it. It’ll happen when it happens.”

“Mmm.” Though I don’t know if I want it to happen.Fated matemakes it all sound so serious.

We lapse into silence. Or almost silence, I can hear the music echoing around the corridor from where the party is presumably being held. I never once thought about students doing this kind of thing in the secret passageways at the academy, but it makes sense. We’ll find any way possible to break the rules.

We turn a corner and find a few dozen students milling around, several with drinks in their hands, and others already dancing.

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