Page 18 of The Midnight Blizzard

“Here.” Jack pulled the dogs to a standstill in front of the small room adjoining the dog barn. “The feast starts in a few hours. You can start getting ready.”

“I can help feed the dogs, then I’ll go back to the library. It doesn’t take me five hours to get ready, you know, and I don’t want to waste any time.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” As Jack handed me the lines and stepped out of the sled to open the barn doors, a whim popped into my head. “Hike!” I called to the dogs, cutting the line some slack. With a jolt, the dogs leapt forward. Kodiak sprang after us with a joyful bark.

“Hey!” Jack burst out of the barn, but he was too late. The dogs were off in a flash, circling around the perimeter of the yard while I whooped and urged them on.

Jack held his hands out and shouted as his dogs completed a full circle and came, panting, back to where we’d started. “Whoa!” He shook his head at me but was unable to repress the smile tugging at his lips. “You can’t be trusted with anything, can you?”

I offered him the lines as he slid in next to me. “Nope. I can’t be left alone or I get into trouble.”

“You know, I believe you. You’re a downright hazard.” His fingers tightened around my own as he took the lines.

“I hope you don’t give the prince advice on how to talk to women,” I joked, lingering a few seconds longer than necessary before I withdrew my hands.

“I give plenty of advice. I just never said it wasgoodadvice,” he quipped.

It didn’t take long to put away the dogs and sled. I helped brush the dogs down and hung their paw coverings up to dry as Jack divvied out the food into bowls on the floor.

“You have fur all over you,” Jack pointed out, nodding at my dress. I brushed away the hairs as best I could, but some of the fur from grooming the dogs still clung to hard-to-reach spots.

“Can you get the rest?” I asked, turning my back to Jack and pulling my hair over my shoulder.

He did so, but so lightly and hesitantly that I could barely feel him touching me. Would he avoid physical contact as much as possible? It would probably be prudent to do so, but I couldn’t rid my mind of images in which Jack had no such reservations, and my heart rate increased until it felt like a hummingbird was trapped within my chest.

“Back at Beryl’s shop,” I began, eager to saysomething, “how could you just stand there and take everything that woman was saying about you? She was so rude.”

“What else can I do? If I say anything back, it only confirms to the world that mages are dangerous. That’s what lost mages their rights in the first place; people feared us.”

“So you just allow people to slander you? There must be a better way. You’re the prince’s advisor.”

“That doesn’t matter when all people see is my white hair. There, I think I got off all the fur.” Jack brushed the handful of fur onto the floor to mingle with the straw.

“Father drafted several laws before he passed away; all we need is to find them and secure the rest of the signatures from the other lords so we can get mages morerights. We could even set up an awareness campaign or—” I broke off, wondering why Jack was smiling so brightly when I was getting so worked up. “What?”

“I just love how fiery you get. You aren’t even a mage and you care so much.”

“Of course I do. It’s your life and the lives of my students. I don’t understand how people refuse to see that mages are just as human as anyone else, and if that woman even had a shred of decency…stop laughing!”

Jack shook his head, still chuckling. “I can’t help it.”

“Fine, then. Laugh all you want.” I stuck my nose in the air in an exaggerated, dramatic way and adopted the sort of prissy voice my stepmother always had. I took a few prancing steps toward the exit before I dropped the feigned offense and falsely high voice. “Where should I meet you for ice skating tonight?”

“Meet here. It’s private enough.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong by being friends,” I reminded him softly. “We shouldn’t need to hide.”

“I wish everyone saw it that way,” he responded. “You saw how one person reacted today just being in the same room as me.”

“I should’ve slapped her. I wanted to.”

“I thought you might and was prepared to hold you back if you tried. As much as I appreciate your defensiveness, I’m glad you didn’t. She’s allowed to be wrong.” Jack held my gaze for several long moments. “If you read in the library, I’ll look into how the records room is organized and check the schedule of when scribes are in there. I can get that information better than you can. I’ll let you know after the feast what I find out.”

“Thank you.” I stared back at him, wishing desperately that we could be more than just friends.

Chapter 6

Satisfied that Jack would make far more headway than I would with the records room, I returned to the library for the rest of the afternoon, but once again was disappointed. Even though I asked every assistant to help and examined every shelf, I was unable to find anything that would help me ascertain the necessary course of action when a deceased lord’s estate was being claimed by both his second wife and his daughter. Everything even remotely related to the topic indicated that inheritance of such an estate would be left up to the discretion of the lord in their will and whichever scribe had drafted the will.

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