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Chapter 23

“I only need twenty minutes.” Rowan tried to reassure an irate Alessandro, who was glaring at her through the mirror.

“I can go.” He tried to state rather than ask.

It was really such a shame that Rowan, a professional at getting her way, knew how to curb this attempt.

“If you wait, I will take you on a proper date.”

His irritation fizzled out to fresh incredulity. “A date?”

Rowan turned on her vanity stool and raised an eyebrow. “Yes. You know we go out, get to know each other, get really lucky later on?”

He steadied his thunderous red gaze on her as he put a contemplative hand on his chin. “I’ll wait, but I want to plan the date.”

She sighed and raised her hands in surrender. “Oh, okay, if you must.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Did you just trick me?”

She grinned, standing on the tips of her toes and laying a kiss on his chin. “I’ll be back, okay?”

He growled. “Fine. But only twenty minutes. I still don’t trust the witch.”

She held a pinky up and he glanced at it, confused.

“Oh, come on! No way you don’t know what a pinky promise is!”

“I’ve never made one.” His sincerity melted her heart a little.

She shaped his pinky into a hook and connected her own to his.

When the world reformed, Rowan found herself in front of a black Victorian-style home so out of place in the middle of a cookie cutter suburb neighborhood.

She stepped forward and laid a palm against the barrier she could see as clearly as if it were solid with the aid of Odin’s Eye.

She shot a tendril of magic at it to let the witch know she stood right outside.

The door creaked open of its own volition.

There was a certain smell of moths and flame that Rowan associated with Chloe and Master Japhet’s home, but as she walked past the threshold, Rowan realized it might be all witches who carried this scent.

Her heels clicked as she walked through a cozy, dimly lit living room, past a set of curving stairs and into what she assumed was the kitchen of the home.

Cherry was lighting a cauldron when Rowan set her eyes on her.

The last time Rowan had seen the witch, she’d been a bloody mess, her face unrecognizable from Barros’ strikes.

Miasma had never failed to erase every trace of Rowan’s most troubling wounds; a deep slice that had reached bone after one of her most intense spars with Axel came to mind.

It was therefore a testament of the dire conditions the witch had been in as scars of her attack were still present even weeks after Miasma’s treatment.

To Rowan, it didn’t detract from the beauty Cherry Young held. In fact, it seemed to deepen her allure. There was now a certain air of mystery to her, a certain power.

“You’re a week late. I was wondering if I’d have to go through with my promise.” Cherry spoke without even a single glance up.

Rowan placed the leather-bound book down on the cluttered counter, “Wouldn’t want you to flex your fragile power just yet, Ms. Young. Sorry it’s later than promised. Life got in the way.”

Cherry shrugged her shoulders, “So the news reports say. Every. Single. Day. You’re making a name for yourself, Ms. Dahl. Do you know how much more powerful you could’ve been under our tutelage?”