Page 6 of Fate’s Sweetest Curse (Mirrors of Fate #2)

Apprentice

Hattie

Y our drinks are so much better than these, Hattie,” Uriel said, frowning at her glass of brandywine and bitters.

“She’s right, you have a gift ,” Sani slurred.

I pursed my lips in a proud little smile, even as I waved my hand to clear away my new friends’ compliments.

We were seated around a narrow table in the back corner of Fenrir’s Charm, the tavern that adepts frequented.

Across the street, a raucous clamor of metal and voices came from Fenrir’s Ire, the tavern where knights spent their off time.

If I had learned anything in the past two months as an apprentice at the Collegium, it was the willful disconnect between the academic Orders and the weapon-wielding Orders.

“You just like my concoctails because they’re free,” I said.

Uriel threw back the rest of the golden liquid. “That certainly does not hurt.”

In my first week living at the Collegium, I’d made my signature “concoctions to avail merriment” for my new roommates: mixtures of spirits, citrus, herbal bitters, and syrup.

While winning friends with alcohol wasn’t the most genuine tactic, it did promote bonding.

It took only one late night of giggle fits and tales from our trips here for our friendship to blossom (Sani, a scent magician, had traveled from Lothgaim, while Uriel, a touch magician, hailed all the way from central Tuul).

Amidst the uncertainty of moving to a strange city and the sudden rigor of my studies, their friendship made my homesickness for Waldron tolerable .

I pointed a thumb over my shoulder, toward the overcrowded room. “I’m going to mingle. Want to come?”

Sani hiccupped, eyes going wide.

“Why would we do that?” Uriel asked.

“Because it’s why we’re here?”

Fenrir’s Charm was currently filled to the brim with professors and apprentices like ourselves for an official gathering put on by the academic Orders. The event was meant to give students the chance to make connections, but the three of us had been rooted in our corner all night.

Unlike knights—who, aside from the Mighty, usually received the bulk of their training after joining their Order—adepts earned their roles with vast amounts of studying and testing.

Even so, only about one in thirty apprentices managed to earn an Adept Oath and access the exclusive knowledge, prestige, and power that entailed.

I was not here for prestige or power; while it would take me only six months to receive my apothecary license, Uriel and Sani’s pursuits of adepthood—with the Order of the Arcane and Archives, respectively—would take years. Gaining a mentor would greatly increase their chances of succeeding.

But Uriel scoffed. “Mingling will not make me a better adept.”

“Connections could help you gain a better mentorship, though,” I pointed out.

Sani bobbed her head. “Hattie has a point.”

Uriel lifted her chin, the hoop in her left nostril flashing in the orange glow of the surrounding sconces.

“I do not see you mingling,” she said, pinning Sani with a pointed glare.

With her shaved head, piercings, and persistent smirk, Uriel was by no means approachable —but she was unapologetically herself, which I admired.

“Besides,” she added tartly, “my merit is not predicated on my friendliness.”

“You should thank the Fates for that,” Sani quipped.

Uriel gave her a playful shove that had Sani teetering on her stool .

“What about you, Sani?” I asked. “Want to come?”

She wrinkled her nose. “In truth, I’d rather be reading.”

“We know ,” Uriel quipped.

All three of us giggled.

Sani was Uriel’s opposite, with cautious eyes and birdlike features. While Uriel could pass as a knight if only she carried a sword, Sani looked just as delicate and bookish as the archivists she idolized.

“Well, unlike you two, I’m feeling social,” I said, tossing back the last of my cider—a Maronan brew, too sweet for my taste—before hopping off my stool. I didn’t need a mentor to receive an apothecary license, but I was here to learn.

Uriel tipped her empty glass in my direction, as if to say, Suit yourself .

“Have fun,” Sani sang in a teasing lilt, sounding content to watch from her quiet corner.

I flashed them a cheeky grin, then turned, trying not to lose my nerve as I wound my way through the crowded pub in search of a conversation to join.

I might’ve read every book on alchemy I could get my hands on, had been studying herbs since I was a girl, and knew enough magic weaving to turn tinctures into potions, but compared to my fellow classmates—all much younger than me, who’d already mastered techniques I’d only read about—I felt out of place.

Extremely grateful, enthusiastic, intimidated—and out of place.

My self-doubt was probably a remnant of an adolescence filled with guardians, governesses, and tutors all telling me that alchemy was an improper trade for someone of my lineage.

No amount of time, distance, or self-awareness had dispelled the constant and unshakable cloud cast by those long-ago voices telling me all the things I wasn’t allowed to love.

Herbology.

Noble.

Myself .

I tried to silence the constant chorus of inner naysayers with humor and warmth, but no matter how friendly or funny or lighthearted I acted on the outside, there was still a part of me that felt wretched, small, and unwelcome.

No more , I told myself, resisting the oncoming swell of self-pity. I might not’ve been able to be completely honest about my upbringing, but no one was keeping me from becoming an apothecary anymore.

A barmaid breezed past me, and I stepped out of her path—only to narrowly miss a student carrying two pints in the opposite direction.

Fenrir’s Charm was filled with a cacophony of laughter and debate, with clusters of conversationalists standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the cavernous space.

I paused by a wooden column, feeling my cheeks heat.

Great . I had a propensity for blushing whenever I felt anything other than calm.

My pale skin and overabundance of dark freckles was a trademark of my mother’s family.

She’d died in childbirth, but my aunt—who’d raised me in the absence of my father, whom I’d never met—was proof enough of the claim.

Every woman in my matriarchal line appeared constantly flustered.

Not that flustered was an incorrect descriptor of me in this particular instance. I’d just rather my professors not see the extent of my nervousness painted on my cheeks.

Back at the Pretty Possum, I knew how to own a busy room—how to float confidently from table to table, take orders, make drinks, flirt for tips, and keep up with countless conversations.

Having been born into a world where connections were the third-most important currency after bloodline and deep coffers, I’d been a master at navigating busy shindigs since I learned to talk.

But this was different.

The people in this room hadn’t been born into prominence like those who’d surrounded me in adolescence, nor were they friendly small-town folk enjoying a well-earned supper at the end of a long workday.

The people in this room were here because they were among the most intelligent in all the Seven Territories.

My rusty court etiquette and barkeep charm probably wasn’t enough to impress an adept, but I had to at least try to fit in. Where I lacked Uriel’s self-assuredness and Sani’s encyclopedic knowledge, I would have to make up for with earnest participation.

Mustering up a false air of easy confidence, I perused the room, half expecting to see Noble lurking at a table in a dark corner.

After a year of living in the same town as him, I’d fallen into the habit of seeking him out, caught between wanting to know where he was so I could avoid him and simply…

wanting to know that he was near. He might’ve been the one with sight magic, but it was my eyes that had attuned to him, growing sensitive to his movements as the months went by.

Of course, Noble was not in Fenrir City.

He was still in Waldron.

So why was I still looking for him in every crowded pub, down every side street, among the tents of every weekend market?

Because you’re a hopeless sap, Hattie, that’s why .

I rolled my shoulders back, forcing Noble from my mind, and refocused on tonight’s objective. When I spotted a tall, svelte blonde at the opposite end of the room, I made my way over to the circle of apprentices surrounding her.

Phina Farkept looked particularly professorial in a pair of brown trousers and a matching waistcoat.

Her hair was cropped close to her head, accentuating her strong jaw, expressive mouth, and youthful skin.

As a skilled herbologist, she’d looked after Anya and Idris after their harrowing journey into the Western Wood last autumn—when Anya had shared that particular detail with me, I’d squealed .

In the alchemy world, Phina was a phenom .

Though she was not much older than I was, she had earned her Adept Oath in her early twenties and was now more accomplished than half the other professors at the Collegium—a fact I found impossibly impressive.

Phina also happened to be an expert in my favorite subject.

The way she spoke of even the most common herbs was a direct reflection of my own feelings: reverence, passion, excitement.

It didn’t hurt that we had taste magic in common, too, so her methods and limitations for imbuing tinctures with magic were similar to my own.

I’d also already read all her books.

“What about the intersection between metal alchemy and herbal alchemy?” a young woman with stringy shoulder-length hair asked Phina.

“What about it? They’re separate fields,” the man beside her cut in. I recognized him from my mathematics class, an opinionated metalworking apprentice with a square head, torso, and personality.

The woman met his scowl with one of her own. “I know a Mirror Knight who says—”

“Oh, here we go,” the man interrupted. “Mirrors this, Mirrors that. Don’t waste Professor Farkept’s time.”

“I believe professor Farkept can manage her own time without your input,” another young woman interjected.

The man glowered but didn’t continue.

Phina—who’d been listening with an arched brow—extended a hand in the first woman’s direction. “Please continue, Gillen.”

Gillen tucked her hair behind her ears. “I heard a theory that it was the algae in the water interacting with the Gildium that caused the Mirrors’ creation.”

“That is one theory, yes,” Phina said, glancing around at the other students. “Though over the years many adepts have endeavored to theorize the exact conditions that created the Mirrors of Fate.”

The Mirrors of Fortune and Death were famed relics in Fenrir.

Every year, a collection of knights took the two seven-foot-tall Mirrors on a tour of the territory to allow citizens to gaze into the magical reflections and glimpse their Fated futures.

The Mirrors were created seven hundred years ago, when ornate Gildium frames had fallen into a magical pool called the Well of Fate, located somewhere in the treacherous geothermal flats south of the Bone Mountains.

Most particulars had been lost to history. The only reason I knew as much as I did was because Anya and Idris had ventured there and had returned to Waldron… changed .

But even my best friend had been unwilling to share with me exactly what had happened at the pool.

The less you know, the safer you are , Anya had told me late one night, huddled under the silent shroud of her sound magic.

Knowing too much almost got me killed, Hattie, and I couldn’t bear to put you in danger .

If Anya only knew how well I understood the importance of keeping dangerous secrets.

Still, it seemed strange that there were apprentices asking about the Mirrors’ creation so soon after Anya visited the location of their inception. Had word gotten out? Or were the Mirrors simply a common topic of debate in Fenrir City, given their mysterious power?

When Phina spoke again, her voice took on the resonant quality she used in class: measured, curious, authoritative.

“What you need to understand here is the bias among adepts,” Phina said to the group.

“Ask an archivist, and they’ll cite only the known history of the Mirrors—dismissing all else as conjecture.

Ask an Adept of the Arcane, and they’ll insist it was magic weavers who wove power into the Mirrors in much the same way that their Order weaves Oath magic.

Ask an Adept of Alchemy, and they’ll insist…

” Phina trailed off, eyes sweeping across the crowd expectantly.

Apprentices were quick to finish her sentence: “Alchemy. ”

“What all adepts lack is irrefutable proof,” Phina concluded. “The Mirrors are an enduring mystery. Best not to try to solve it in your first year at the Collegium.” She winked, and a few students chuckled.

“But you’re trying to solve it, aren’t you?” Gillen asked. “Is magical water not a part of your study?”

Phina appeared amused by the bold question. She lifted a shoulder, feigning ignorance about the topic of her confidential research—a program which the Lord of Fenrir himself was a benefactor. “You know, I really couldn’t say.”

Others in our circle began talking over one another, jumping in with more questions, but a commotion from the front of the pub stole my attention. A pair of knights were arguing outside again, and— no , not outside, they were coming in through the front door.

And heading straight for me .