Page 24 of Fate's Sweetest Curse
I’d dabbled with a few courtships during my time in Waldron, but nothing ever felt right. No one had ever compared to the boy I’d loved in my youth.
“You’re blushing so furiously you look sunburnt,” she’d added.
The delicate skin underneath my eyes had certainly stung like a burn. “Just flustered, is all,” I’d replied, forcing an eager smile. “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”
My best friend had shrugged. “I like my men a little more rugged.”
For the next year, I’d done my best to minimize my pining glances around Hugh, Martha, and the other gossips in town, but with Anya… Well, if I couldn’t be honest with Anya about my past, I could at least be honest with her about my emotions. I wasn’t great at pretending with those, anyhow.
But now, for the sake of my studies, I had to repress them evenmore?
I didn’t see how that was possible.
Thankfully, Phina’s lecture was interrupted by the ringing of the clocktower bells, announcing the end of the day. Students began packing up their things, chatting and laughing, while a pair of mentees entered through a side door to clean the workbenches.
Tucking my notebook under my arm, I hurried toward the exit, catching up to Uriel and Sani. I was eager to escape with them into a balmy spring afternoon of reading under the big oak in the courtyard and drinking cheap wine. Most importantly, I wanted to get far away from the ever-growing discomfort of embarrassing myself in front of my academic idol—and my lingering unease after confronting her in the alley.
“Hattie.”
When I turned, my professor’s arms were folded across her chest. The plain burgundy tunic she wore brought out the amber flecks in her eyes, which currently felt like hot embers pressing into my skin.
“Do you have a moment?”
When just a week ago I would’ve loved to have a one-on-one chat with Professor Farkept, I now dreaded the notion. Was thisit? Was I about to be dismissed from the Collegium for what I’d done? “I, uh.Um.” I scrambled for an excuse,anyexcuse, that might keep me from the impending conversation.
“We’ll meet you outside,” Sani said.
My gaze swung to hers, then Uriel’s, latching onto them with wide-eyed terror in the hopes they’d get the hint and help me out of this. But I was met with two grins that—Fates, were they mistaking my panic for excitement?
Phina extended her arm, gesturing at the door directly across the hall. “Let’s go to my office, shall we?”
9
Opportunity
Hattie
Professor Farkept clasped her hands and rested her forearms atop her heavy wooden desk. “Do you know why you’re here, Hattie?”
Seated across from my professor, I felt crowded on all sides by the bookshelves that lined the walls of the cluttered space. Dread swirled through my stomach, acidic. “I…can’t say that I do.”
The curtains were drawn, casting the room in darkness; surrounded by formidable, oppressive furniture, Phina appeared almost as out of place as I felt. I knew from the backs of her books that she’d grown up here in the city, often visiting Castle Might. Her parents were Fenriran aristocrats of some kind, her brother a prominent knight. But if I had to wager a guess as to where she feltmostat home, it wouldn’t be in a room like this, but the countryside somewhere, collecting herbs in a big basket, a summer breeze ruffling the ends of her hair.
Had Phina resented growing up among nobility, as I had? Had her guardians discouraged her studies in alchemy, as mine had? I’d traveled to Waldron at first out of necessity, but there was something about the fresh country air—green, earthy, vibrant—that lent itself to alchemy.
“Please don’t dismiss me from the program,” I blurted, gripping the smooth wooden arms of my chair. “I know I shouldn’t’ve eavesdropped the other night, but studying here meanseverythingto me.”
“Hattie,” Phina said patiently, ending on a chuckle. “You’re not being dismissed. Quite the opposite actually.”
Still gripping the arms of my chair, I sat back just an inch, regarding her. “The opposite?”
“I’d like for you to join my team of research apprentices.”
The offer was a high honor, a rare opportunity.
I found it suspicious. “I…don’t understand.”
“The offer? Or what it entails?”
