It was a dream and no more, just as always. No cruel thorns pierced my own throat now that I was awake; no bloody marks showed along my skin where piercing vines had seemed to pin me moments earlier.
Sunlight filtered in through the curtains, lighting the room. Wrexham had simply left, as promised, at dawn, leaving me to sleep on...and that cursed dream had kept me buried too deep in its smothering embrace to even hear my husband leave. That was all.
It was all that it could be.
I let out a muffled scream of frustration. IfonlyI could cast a simple spell to check his safety! I would have given anything for that reassurance right now. Dread crawled through me with every breath, like spiders creeping across my skin, whispering threats and warnings...
...Which was patently absurd. It was only a dream!
Taking a deep breath, I scooped a hairbrush from my side table and yanked it hard through my thick hair as I pulled the cord to summon my maid. Just by where the hairbrush had lain, I spotted a scrap of paper startlingly out of place; with a gush of relief, I recognized the sloping handwriting across it.
Take care of yourself for my sake, will you, darling Harwood? I’m still waiting for our wedding night. - W
There! I brushed my fingers against it, letting out my breath. No vines had stolen him from our bed; he’d merely left me to sleep, considerate as always. So he was absolutelyfine, no matter what that devilish dream had made me fear. It was time to leave behind the murky land of dreams and see what nightmares awaited my school in waking life.
...Beginning with my first class in front of the Boudiccate’s inspectors.
I’d planned to begin with a stirring five-minute lecture that would have lit a fire in any young woman magician—but it would have outraged any member of the Boudiccate. So, with my critical new audience members in mind, I regretfully crossed out that plan over a hasty private breakfast.
As I’d told Wrexham only a few hours ago, there was no point in handing the Boudiccate any gift-wrapped excuses to be rid of us. But it was with a sense of vengeful satisfaction that I decided to begin my first class, instead, with a simple demonstration of every politically inconvenient truth that I had planned to blast out in that original speech.
“Miss Hammersley,” I said as my students took their whispering, giggling places in Thornfell’s back parlor. The air jangled with their gathered excitement and nerves, a chaotic, nearly tangible force that sent goosebumps skittering across my skin. “Would you please join me at the front of the room?”
Miss Hammersley gulped, while the other eight students rustled with interest. The Boudiccate’s inspection team sat in the back corner, and Annabel Renwick raised one expressive eyebrow as she pointedly looked my most impoverished student up and down, from her plainly dressed red hair to the hem of her faded and much-mended dark blue gown.
As Miss Banks had told Wrexham, Miss Hammersley—one of my two students without an alibi for last night’s mischief—hadn’t had the opportunity to raid any libraries of magic in her own home. She’d grown up in a practical farming family with hardly any access to spells, so she had none of the cultural or magical experience so prized amongst the fashionable young gentlemen who arrived at the Great Library after years of preparation.
...Which served my purposes today exactly.
“Miss Harwood.” Her pale green eyes were wide with what looked like panic, but her low voice was firm and beautifully resonant. She raised her strong, freckled chin high as she stood before me and clasped her hands together under the gazes of her classmates and our inspectors.
Brave girl. I gave her a small, approving nod.
It had taken courage to apply to my school by letter, too, as the first magician in her family, with no one to vouch for her suitability. Of course she couldn’t pay the fee that Amy and I had settled on as both appropriate and impressive to families used to the Great Library’s charges—but the passion and fierce intelligence in her letter had won her a place before I’d even finished reading it.
I was married to a former scholarship student. I knew exactly how little that web of aristocratic social connections really mattered when it came to a magician’s true abilities—andexactlywhat it felt like to thirst for magic without an outlet.
“I’d like to perform an experiment,” I said. “Miss Hammersley, would you please take up one of the textbooks from this table?” I gestured at the polished oak side table behind me, which was stacked with books of varying sizes.
She hesitated with one freckled and calloused hand hovering above the pile. “Does it matter which one I choose?”
“Not this time.”
She bit her lip, then nodded decisively and scooped up a slim volume from the middle of the table.
“An excellent choice.” I took it from her and held it up for the rest of the class to see. “This is Aguirre’sElements of Spellcraft—a book traditionally studied in the third year at the Great Library.” Smiling, I passed it back to Miss Hammersley. “Why don’t you open it to page fifty?”
Her throat moved with her swallow, but she did as I’d asked.
“Now,” I said, “I’d like you to read it out loud.”
For the first time, she balked. “Miss Harwood...” She took a deep breath, lowering her voice to a pained whisper. “I don’t know any of these words.”
“You don’t need to...yet.” I put one hand on her shoulder, ignoring our audience to firmly hold her gaze. “Trust me. I don’t care about pronunciation or meaning. All I want you to focus on as you speak is yourwill.”
“My...will?” She frowned as the other students leaned in, listening intently.
“Your will,” I repeated firmly. “You have a strong will, Miss Hammersley. Youalldo, every one of you.” I looked across my class, taking the time to meet each gaze in turn: nine young women of different heights, skin colors, fashions, and ages, all united in one room and one radical endeavor. “You wouldn’t be brave enough to be here in Angland’s first class of women magicians if you didn’t.”
