Lyra
AT THE EDGES OF MY awareness, I feel a featherlight touch on my cheeks. It’s pleasant. Comforting. At least at first. But then it turns a tad cold. And a tadwet.
I crack one eye open. It’s somewhat dim in our loft, with the drapes still drawn over the window.
And I’m being snowed on. Indoors. In mybed.
Snowflakes fall around me silently, drifting down to land on my cheeks and in my hair. On the pillow beside my head, Juniper twitches her whiskers but doesn’t wake up.
“You awake yet?” Alina asks, voice still thick with sleep. She has the curtain around her bed pulled back and is staring at me through heavy eyes.
“No,” I grumble.
In response, more snowflakes start to fall, and my irritation spikes.
“Stop it.” I bat a few of Alina’s magical snowflakes away. “What areyou—”
“Your community service,” Maeve says from her bed. Her curtains obscure her from view and distort her voice slightly. “You’re going to”—she yawns audibly—“be late.”
Shit.
My irritation spikes again as I recall that today is my first day of “community service,” as Headmistress Moonhart so gently put it.
She should’ve just called it what it is: punishment.
I’m never up before the sun, so it feels sacrilegious to push my warm, cozy comforter aside and sit up in bed. The chill nips at my skin. I glare at the snowflakes still falling around me.
“Can you cut it out with the blizzard now?” I say.
Alina gives me a sleepy smile, then plops back down in bed. The snowstorm stops immediately.
“What is it?” Juniper asks from where she’s still lying on my pillow.
I look down at her. She’s now awake—but just barely—and stretching out her little paws.
“Community service.” With a groan, I scrub my hands down my face, trying to wake myself up, then reach back and start untwining my hair from its braid.
“Oh, yeah.” Juniper pads around on my pillow, then flops right back down in the warm spot where my head was a moment ago. “Forgot about that.”
“Wait, you’re not coming?” I ask, tone aghast. Is she going to make me go bymyself?
In answer, she closes her eyes and wiggles her nose into the warm pillowcase.
Guess I’m alone for the punishment, then.
“I thought you were my spiritcompanion,” I grumble down at her. She doesn’t respond, but I swear she’s smiling.
Afterforcingmyself out of bed and into a comfortable pair of trousers and a sweater—Headmistress Moonhart at least had the decency to assign me to community service on Saturdays only—I plod down the stairs and find Poppy already sitting in front of the fire, reading a book and sipping a cup of tea. Her legs are tucked up under her, a knit blanket draped across her lap.
“Why are you up so early?” I ask around a yawn.
Poppy holds up her book and smiles. “I like to get some reading in before the world wakes up. More peaceful this way.”
I shake my head at her while I pour a cup of strong black tea—I’m gonna need the caffeine. “I’ll never understand you, Poppy Waverly.”
With a shrug and a smile, Poppy goes back to reading her book. And I think I can already hear Juniper snoring.
Another flare of irritation goes through me. The teacup I’m holding grows warmer from my fire magic, and steam rises from the dark liquid.
