Page 26 of Fate’s Sweetest Curse (Mirrors of Fate #2)

You Like It

Hattie

A rainstorm rattled the windowpanes of my childhood bedroom, thunder rumbling in short intervals—but shrouded by the cloth canopy of my bed, tucked safely under the covers, Raina and I were giggling.

We were talking about boys: Noble, Brendan, and some of the sons of servants and soldiers who lived in cottages within the castle walls. At fourteen and fifteen, boys were one of our favorite topics.

“I know you fancy him,” Raina teased. “And I know he fancies you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “Noble’s just nice, that’s all.”

“I think Brendan fancies you, too,” Raina continued, pushing up onto an elbow. “He’s always trying to impress you.”

“I despise Brendan.”

“He’s not so bad.”

“That’s because he’s not trying to impress you .” I turned onto an elbow, too, facing her. “What about Ren?”

The hour was late, and in the inky blackness, I couldn’t see much more than Raina’s silhouette—but I could still hear the blush in her voice. “What about him?”

“Half the reason you visit the stables is for him,” I accused.

She shoved my shoulder. “That’s not true!”

Raina’s parents had just publicly announced her arranged marriage to the heir of Lothgaim.

She hadn’t even met Archer Loth yet, and probably wouldn’t for another few years.

The idea of her one day being sent off to live with a strange man in a strange territory disturbed me, but she’d taken the news in stride—an arranged marriage had always been in her future.

Ren, on the other hand, worked in the stables. He had his sights set on becoming a soldier one day. Raina was not allowed to fancy him—or really even speak to him—but I knew she did.

Raina flopped back against my pillows with a sigh. “I wish…”

She didn’t need to finish the thought. “I know.”

A gust of wind sent rain pattering against the window, rattling the hinges.

I sat up. “I’m hungry. Want to raid the pantry?”

Ten minutes later, Raina and I were downstairs. The kitchens were dark, empty—spooky on a stormy autumn night. I lifted my candle holder a little higher, creeping deeper into the cavernous space—only to halt when I heard rustling up ahead. Raina gripped my arm, wide-eyed.

“Hello?” I whispered into the dimness.

A figure emerged from the pantry, a mischievous grin on his face. “Hattie?”

Raina’s grip on my arm tightened, a high-pitched, teasing little squeal coming from her throat.

“And Raina,” Noble said, sounding amused.

Mildly panicked, I glanced down at my frilly, floral nightdress; had I known we’d run into him, I would’ve worn something a little less…matronly.

I padded farther into the kitchen and set my candle holder on one of the butcher block tables. “Noble? What are you doing down here?”

“Same thing as you, I reckon,” he said, holding up a peach.

My shoulders relaxed. When it came to snacks, Noble and I already had a rapport. “What are we having?”

“Dessert,” he said.

“Wonderful!” Raina exclaimed, clapping her hands .

While I found bowls, Noble got to work slicing the peaches and sprinkling them with sugar, cinnamon, and clove.

When our treats were prepared, I hopped onto the table, sitting with my feet dangling.

Raina did the same, though she required some assistance from Noble, her legs kicking out as he helped her up.

He’d always been that way with my cousin—brotherly—and it warmed my heart the way he looked after her.

He looked after me, too, sometimes—holding my hand when we traversed the fallen log on the way to our secluded picnic spot by the river or giving me a leg up when we rode horses with Raina—but the way he treated me was different somehow. A little less doting and a little more…something else.

He fancies you .

I might not have had an arranged marriage to an heir of a territory, but I knew there was an expectation about the sort of man I’d marry one day.

Noble and I were of different social classes, and while I didn’t care, Loreena had scolded me a time or two: Don’t give him the wrong impression .

A dalliance with the wrong boy could ruin your prospects .

I wasn’t concerned about my prospects, but Loreena’s wrath was enough to make me think twice—not to mention the threat of negatively impacting my family’s reputation with a scandal.

With Raina and I situated, we dug into our treats. Noble stayed standing, facing us, his green eyes occasionally darting to mine.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked after a while.

“I can never sleep when it’s stormy,” Raina complained.

I maneuvered a peach slice onto my spoon and bit it in half. The fruit was perfectly ripe, tasting of sunshine and sweet nectar, its flesh soft on my tongue. Juice dribbled down my chin as the other half fell back into my bowl.

Noble’s keen eyes tracked every clumsy movement. “What about you, Peach? ”

My stomach flipped. He’d never called me Peach before, and it sounded…I didn’t know how it sounded.

Raina poked me in the ribs. “Yeah, Peach , what about you?”

Oh, she was going to bring this up later. Relentlessly .

I swallowed hard. “What about me?”

“Can you sleep in this weather?” Noble asked.

“I could , if Raina didn’t keep me up,” I said, feigning annoyance. Then I met his eyes. “What about you?”

“I’m a sound sleeper.”

And now I was picturing him in his bed. Hair rumpled. Face open, lips parted in slumber—

“Cute nightdress, by the way,” he said. “Did Loreena pick it out for you?”

Raina barked a laugh, then clapped a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking.

I flushed—furiously. “ Ugh , you’re insufferable,” I said to him.

He smirked. “You like it.”

“She does, she definitely does,” Raina said.

I elbowed her in the side, and she descended into a fit of laughter.

“ Shhh ,” I urged. “Someone will hear us!”

No sooner than I’d said it did we hear footsteps approaching from down the hall. When the butler arrived, he didn’t look surprised, but he did break up our midnight soiree and send us all back to our respective rooms. The moment he was gone, Raina snuck back into my bed, nestling close.

“He definitely fancies you,” she said on a yawn.

“Even if he did, it wouldn’t be allowed,” I whispered. “Your aunt will insist I marry someone of status.”

“Maybe you can come to Lothgaim with me,” Raina said. “Meet a southern man.”

“Maybe,” I mumbled, but as I dozed off it was Noble’s face I saw, his lips curving over the nickname, Peach .

Standing in the archway of the Noble’s workshop, I watched as he used a pair of pliers to remove a molten-orange rod from the forge and plunge it into a vat of water with a spitting hiss of steam.

When he removed it, the metal glimmered, its slate-gray surface oddly luminescent.

Compared to the delicate work of herbology, metal alchemy was a hazardous blend of fire and force.

In such close proximity to the forge, my face flamed—but it wasn’t just the heat. It was him .

The expert strike of his hammer.

The molten metal just inches from his capable hands.

The focused crease in his brow.

The confidence. The power. The rugged—

“You know I have sight magic, right?”

I cleared my throat, eyes darting from Noble’s hands to his stubbly jawline to his prying gaze. “Excuse me?”

He cocked his head. “I can see you standing there, staring.”

“I didn’t want to startle you.”

A short laugh.

Exasperated, I lifted my eyes briefly to the ceiling.

Noble set the metal rod on his anvil with a clatter, wiped his hands on a rag, and walked over to me. His voice was low when he spoke again. “Is there a reason you’re standing here, breaking rules one and two?”

I met those stunning green eyes and pretended they had no effect on me. “We have a problem.”

He inclined his head, waiting for me to continue.

“Phina has instructed me to assist you with your notes. She wants me to cross-reference them with mine. ”

“Ah.” Noble jutted his chin in the direction of a small table to my right. It was heaped with loose papers. “Feel free.” He turned away, about to return to the forge—

“ Noble .”

He faced me again, expectant.

I pointed at the mess, incredulous. “What is that ?”

“My notes?”

The papers weren’t even in stacks—they overlapped in a giant mountain at least two feet high.

I strode over to the mound and lifted one off the top.

When I did, a couple other loose pages slid sideways, and I had to catch them before they fell.

With my hands still planted on the stack, preventing an avalanche, I glared at Noble. “Your organization is atrocious.”

He walked up behind me and shifted the pile into a steadier position. As he did, his chest brushed against my shoulder blade, his breath tickled my neck. I glanced toward the doorway, afraid someone might see our closeness, but we were hidden from view.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Helping.”

I slid out from the shelter of his frame, my whole body tingling and on high alert. Clearing my throat, I craned my neck to read the page on the top of the pile. “This one is just a column of numbers with X ’s and question marks.”

“Alchemical knot numbers. X ’s mean no , question marks mean maybe .”

“Why aren’t you using proper notation?” His system—if we could even call it that—would’ve given my Notation Basics professor a headache.

Noble just shrugged.

“This is a disaster, Noble,” I said, gesturing at the pile.

“Good thing you’re here to fix it. ”

Irate. I was irate . “ Ughhh ,” I groaned. “At least help me carry all this to the reading alcove.”

Noble hissed through his teeth. “Not sure that’s a good idea. You better work here.”

I arched a brow at him.

His expression remained impassive.

Which only made me angrier.

This would take days to get through. Days of sharing space with him. Days of listening to the strike of his hammer and the hiss of steam and the steady thudding of my traitorous heart. How could I focus with him so near?

“Won’t I be in your way?” I asked.

“No.”

“What about our rules?”

“This is research related. We aren’t breaking any rules.” A meaningful pause. “Except rule number three.”

Court faces . “What are you talking about?”

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m angry.”

His smirk turned patronizing. “I have sight magic, remember? You can’t fool me.”

I groaned again. “You’re insufferable.”

Our exchange from fourteen years earlier seemed to echo in the space between us.

You like it , he’d replied back then. But now, he stiffened, his expression icing over. “Good luck with the notes,” he said, turning his back to me—returning to the forge.

I touched the corner of a page. “I’m not sure the Fates themselves would know what to do with these.”

Two hours later, I was seated on the floor of Noble’s workshop, surrounded by papers, with my head in my hands. Noble had left a while ago, not bothering to say goodbye—which was for the best, as speaking with him usually proved…insufferable.

You like it .

I used to like his goading—when we were adolescents, and there was a playful fondness to it. But here, his quips carried an edge, and the constant reminders of the connection we used to have weren’t amusing—just painful.

I let out a long, aggravated, grumbly sigh.

“Everything all right?”

My hands dropped from my face. An apprentice stood in the archway. She wore an apron over a butter-yellow tunic that complimented her olive skin and black hair.

“Yes? No? I don’t know.” I gestured at the papers surrounding me. “Is it possible to perish from confusion?”

She walked closer, chuckling. “I see Phina has tasked you with organizing Noble’s notes.”

“Generous of you to call them ‘notes.’”

To my surprise, the apprentice lowered herself to the floor, sitting on her heels. She picked up one of the papers and gave it a once-over. “Fates, I’m not sure we can call these notes.”

I laughed.

She frowned, still staring at the page. “This is practically meaningless.”

“Apparently he has a system, though I can’t figure it out.” I lifted the page I’d been trying to make sense of. “What do you think this symbol means?”

She leaned forward to look. “Oh, that’s for iron.” She pointed. “And that’s Gildium. It looks like he’s using metal alchemy shorthand in some places, but the rest is…” She trailed off with a humph .

“My Notation Basics class hasn’t covered shorthand yet. ”

“That’s because it’s advanced notation—and rather antiquated.”

I tipped my head back, facing the ceiling. “ Great .”

“I can write up a key, if you’d like?” she offered. “Won’t help with the rest of it”—she waved at the mess on the floor—“but at least you’ll be able to discern the legible symbols.”

“That would be incredible, thank you.”

“Happy to help.”

She rose to her feet, and I followed suit, feeling done for the day.

“My name’s Viren, by the way. I’m a third-year apprentice.”

“Hattie,” I replied. “I’ve been here a month.”

Viren’s lips twisted into a small, charming smile. “How is it so far?”

I gestured at the papers littered on the ground around our feet.

She laughed.

“I’ve seen you around,” I said. “Are you a metal alchemist, too?”

She tipped her head from side to side—not a yes , not a no —her glossy hair brushing against her shoulders. “I’m a healing apprentice. My specialty is blood.”

My forehead creased. What did blood have to do with Hylder and Gildium? Was she studying monster blood?

I opened my mouth to ask, but she cut me off.

“That’s all I can say.” She gave me a weighted look; her Oath must’ve prevented her from divulging more to a first-year apprentice about her role.

But maybe she could clarify something else for me. “Do you know much about Noble’s work here?”

“Beyond Gildium? No.” Viren cast his notes a meaningful glance. “I’d say you probably know more about his work than I do, but…perhaps not.”

“His notes make me wonder if I even know how to read at all.”

We both chuckled as we walked together out of his workshop .

Then my mind began churning with more questions. “Does blood mean—”

Viren turned to me, her expression kind and patient. “Apologies for interrupting, Hattie, but can I give you some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Keep to your assignment,” Viren said. “I know that sounds harsh, but trust me, it’s for the best.” She leaned closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. As she did, the sounds in the lab seemed to soften. “Around here, it’s dangerous to know too much.”