Page 47 of A Witch and Her Dragon
A horn blows, echoing over the stands, and the players arrange themselves on either side of the field, seven per team. With another blast of the horn, the game begins, the players launching into movement. They converge on a glowing sphere—it looks like a ball enchanted with elemental magic—and the team opposing Aric’s takes control of it.
“Come on!” Lyra yells, fingers curling into a fist. A little tendril of smoke rises from her clenched fingers.
I’ve never seen this sport played before, and I have to follow the game closely to understand how it’s played. It seems the teams are trying to control the sphere and put it through their opponent’s goalposts. As they move through different areas of the field, the colors and characteristics of the sphere change, affecting the players’ ability to control it.
“See those runes?” Alina asks, leaning slightly closer to me. I can hear her just fine over the din of the crowd, but I make no move to shift away from her. “They activate when the arcane sphere passes through their zones. That one”—she points to the rune that just flared to life on the grassy field—“is the fire rune.”
Sure enough, the sphere bursts into flame, and the players have to change their tactics, using their wind magic to move it rather than kicking it or tossing it.
And I see now why Aric, being as big as he is, doesn’t necessarily have an upper hand on the smaller players. Each student has the choice to move the sphere using their magic rather than just throwing or kicking it, and those players with powerful elemental abilities seem to reign.
Aric seizes control of the flaming sphere, and he sends it flying through another rune zone. The flames sizzle out, and the sphere becomes covered in a layer of shimmering ice, making it difficult to catch or hold.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Lyra chants, very nearly vibrating out of her seat.
Finally, Aric’s team sends the sphere through the opposing team’s goalposts, and Lyra leaps to her feet with a victorious scream. Beside her, Poppy shrinks away from the raucous outburst. Alina claps politely. Maeve looks bored.
“You know this game well?” I ask Alina.
She smiles. “I used to go to runeball games with my father when I was young. Though it’s been many years now since we last attended one together.”
Of all the royals, I probably know Alina’s father the least. He’s the quiet sort, not given to extroverted activities, and when not holed up in his office or the library, he’s often away on royal business. Having never been assigned to his duty, I’ve not come to know him with any sort of familiarity.
The reminder that my own father left when I was so young makes my stomach squeeze.Sometimes, I wonder where he is, whether he’ll ever return. If he did, my mother would undoubtedly take him back. Even all these years later, I know she thinks of him, misses him. I see it in her eyes sometimes, the faraway look she gets as if watching for him to walk through the door like nothing even happened.
I picture my mother’s scars, the horrific injury that left her marked and blind in one eye. And when I look at Alina, with her soft brown cheeks and windswept hair, I can’t imagine ever doing anything to hurt her.
Her leg touches mine, our thighs brushing on the bench, and though I don’t know if she did it on purpose, I still pull away, reminding myself that I’m a danger to her, that despite how badly I want her, I can’t ever put her through what my mother experienced.
I’m not sure I could survive it.
And if not for the chain around my neck, warm against my skin even now, I know I would’ve needed to refuse this post as soon as the king assigned it to me. Because without the magic keeping my beast in check, I fear I would’ve already taken her, claimed her, perhaps even hurt her.
The thought makes my stomach turn. I shift farther away, putting more distance between us. Alina glances down at the gap between our thighs, the space I occupied beside her now empty, and a complicated emotion flicks across her face.
“Alina!” someone calls, and we both look up.
An instinctual growl rumbles in my chest when my eyes find the man she was talking to in the dininghall—Tristan.
Alina glances at me, then back at him, and I’m almost led to believe the flirty smile she gives him is done purposefully to piss me off.
And it fucking works.
She waves him over, then tells me, “Can you make room for Tristan?”
I’m so shocked that I actually snarl at her—good thing her roommates don’t hear over the sound of the crowd—but she just smiles back, undeterred, then scoots closer to Lyra, squishing their hips together to make room for Tristan between us.
And I have to use every ounce of my willpower not to take him by the back of the neck and throw him clean into the runeball field. I’d probably like this sport a lot more if he were the one being tossed through the goalposts.
He eases past the other students on this bench, then says, “Pardon me,” as he brushes by me to sit next to Alina. On my knees, my fingers curl into fists, and the warmth from my chain ignites against my skin.
What the fuck is she doing?
“Hey, I just wanted to check on you,” Tristan says, settling in next to her and ignoring me as if I don’t exist, as if I couldn’t snap him like the scrawny human boy he is. “Is everything okay? I was worried about you the other day.”
Liar, I want to snap. Instead, I narrow my eyes and focus on the field, trying to distract myself from the violent fantasy playing out in my head right now.
“Oh, everything’s fine. Just some family stuff,” Alina lies smoothly. “But thank you for checking on me.”
