Page 131

Setting my jaw, I say, “I wouldloveto go to the bonfire tonight.”

Two hours later, Sybil and I step onto the back patio of the residence hall, the two of us wearing dresses, tights, and combat boots. Sybil slathered a store’s worth of gold glitter around my eyes and hers, and honestly, it is cute as shit.

Resting near an overgrown love-lies-bleeding bush are two brooms. There’s nothing particularly special about them, except that they look old and handmade, their bristles uneven and their handles worn with age.

I side-eye Sybil. “You’re not thinking…”

“Yes. We’re going to fly to the party! The wards for curfew apparently don’t extend higher than the buildings on campus, so if we fly above them we can get past them unnoticed.”

My lips part. “But…I haven’t learned how to fly.”

“No one taught you half the spells you regularly use. You just wing it.”

I have a 62 percent success rate with winging it—which means I’m only a little likely to eat shit flying this thing.

And you know what? Caution. Be. Damned. I grab one of the brooms.

“It’s second nature,” Sybil adds, grasping the other broom. “See, watch.With air I lift, with wind I fly. Keep me airborne inthe sky.” Once she finishes the incantation, the broom rises up and levels out. Sybil swings a leg over it, her dress hiking up with the action.

I turn to the remaining broom, a thrill running through me. Sybil’s right. Icando this.

I open my mouth to incant in Sarmatian when I hesitate. It’s one thing for my best friend to know there’s this ancient side to me, and it’s another to openly display it. So at the last moment, I slap a spell together.

“Broom, fly high and carry me far.” Shit, what rhymes withfar? “Steer me onward toward the star…sss.”

My broom leaps upward, and I have to throw myself on it.

Sybil snickers. “Goddess, you may have gotten your memories back, but your spells still suck.”

I adjust myself on my broom, a thrill running through me when it levels out next to hers. “Your dad didn’t think so last time I saw him.”

She cackles from where she sits. “Fuck you, Selene. What did my dad ever do to you?”

I shift my weight as the broom floats slowly up. Seriously, why are flying brooms still a thing? There is literally no room for my ass cheeks on this thing.

“Better question is whatdidn’the do?—”

Sybil screams and clutches her ears. “Don’t end that sentence.”

Now it’s my turn to cackle.

Sybil brings her hands back to her broom and throws me a look. “Bet yourfiancéwouldn’t like hearing you talk about other men like that.”

I lift a shoulder. “He’d probably just spank me. I think I’d enjoy that. I might even call him ‘Daddy,’ just like I did your?—”

Another scream, and then Sybil’s off, racing ahead of me. Which leaves me to figure out how to follow her.

Most magic is intuitive. It knows what its caster wants; spells just help funnel and fine-tune that intention. So I envision myself following after my best friend.

I’ve no sooner willed it than my broom shoots forward, propelled onward by my magic and my shitty spell. And maybe it’s that shitty spell that causes it to bank sharply upward.

I use every last ounce of my upper-body strength to hold on as it rapidly ascends. Once I’m far above the buildings on the coven’s campus, the broom levels out, and I exhale.

Holy Goddess, I’m flying.

Beneath me, the lamps of Henbane Coven glow softly, casting the campus in soft, warm light. To my right, I can see Cauldron Hall. Behind them, I see Beldame Library and the domed roof of the Lunar Observatory. And with a quick glance over my left shoulder, I catch sight of the illuminated conservatory. It all looks particularly magical at night.

Ahead of me I can barely make out Sybil’s dark form before she’s swallowed up by a cloud. I follow her, the wind whipping my hair behind me.