Page 110 of Fate's Sweetest Curse
“Oooh!” Sani squealed, breaking through my miserable thoughts. “Look how pretty!”
She led us over to a weaver’s stall, where colorful silk scarves were draped over lines strung up between the tent poles, billowing in the warm nighttime breeze. While Sani fawned over a particularly vibrant pattern, I held her half-eaten skewer and stood with Uriel by the mouth of the tent.
“Still pining after the poet in your writing class?” I asked, nudging Uriel with my elbow.
“As much as I find her…pleasant…” Uriel scrunched her nose, the metal hoop in her left nostril twinkling. “My heart belongs to my studies at this time.”
I thought of the past two weeks studying alongside Noble. “Romance and dedication to our disciplinescancoexist.”
“Can it, now?” Sani teased, tucking her new purchase into her satchel and taking her skewer back from me. “Couldthatbe the reason you’ve been sleeping elsewhere for the past two weeks?”
I pinched my lips together with my teeth, hoping the colored lanterns of the market obscured my blush. “I’ve been studying late.”
“Studyingwhat, exactly?” Sani prodded.
Noble’s wicked mouth. Noble’s toned stomach. The taste of his sweat as I—
Now I wasdefinitelyblushing.
Sani giggled and clapped her hands.
“Ibelievewe were talking about Uriel’s studies,” I squeaked, shouldering my way into the center of Rose Street again to keep pace with the steady flow of the crowd. “Have you decided on a mentor?”
Uriel’s face brightened. “I delivered a formal request for Professor Gour, the instructor of my Arcane Materials class, this morning.”
“What’s their area of expertise?” Sani asked.
“He studies water,” Uriel said.
A flash of yellow flame gusted toward us as a fire dancer blew a mouthful of alcohol across a lit torch. I stopped short, watching the flames arc over the performer’s head in a rainbow of fire.
But it wasn’t the display that caught my attention—it was Uriel’s statement.
Phinastudied water, too. I thought back to my first day in her lab, all those jars of blue and green liquids on the shelf in the mezzanine…
I gripped Uriel’s wrist, skirting the outside of a gathering circle of onlookers. Sani trailed after us as I dragged Uriel away from the cheers, gasps, and rhythmic drumming of the fire dancer’s performance. Up ahead, along the market’s fringes, there was a gap in the endless stalls where a cross-street bisected Rose.
I paused there and whirled on Uriel. “What about water, specifically?”
Uriel rubbed her wrist where I’d gripped it. “Why are you…intense?”
I opened my mouth, faltered.
Sani narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t think Hattie can say why.”
“Water?” I prompted.
Uriel folded her arms. “Have you not takenanyArcane classes?”
“I’m studying to be an apothecary,” I said impatiently. “You know I haven’t.”
Uriel lifted her gaze to the stars above. “Alchemists,” she muttered. When she looked at me again, her expression was patient—if a little patronizing. “Alchemists work with the magical threads in materials, either weaving their magicaroundorintosaid material—yes?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently.
“Arcane magic comes solely from within and requires a neutral material that magic is wovenonto, like a scribe writing on paper.” Uriel mimed holding a quill, scribbling words into the air. “There are three neutral materials onto which we traditionally weave: stone, wood, or skin.”
Sani visibly shuddered. “Skin?”
