Page 30 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

“Okay.” Breaking through the protective paralysis that grips me—my ingrained instinct to hide so the bullies don’t find me—I steady the open grimoire, held open to the correct passage in Neo’s helpful hands.

The faded ink of the spell writhes over the yellowed page and makes my eyes blur.

Nausea twists in the pit of my belly, but I swallow it down and square my shoulders.

“Master Aries, can you please hold the flashlight so I can read the incantation?”

“ I can’t even read the incantation,” Neo murmurs, blinking at me behind his glasses. “What is that, ancient Latin?”

“Yes. It’s the Book of Flame and Breath. From the rare books collection in the library. I signed it out,” I explain earnestly, just so no one thinks I stole it. “It’s not even overdue.”

“Oh, that’s a relief.” Vasili jibes, in a tone that cuts like the hidden cache of knives the whole school knows he carries. “At least, after those hyenas have torn us limb from limb, snapped our bones, and sucked out the marrow, we won’t have to contend with late fees.”

“Don’t be a jerk, V,” Neo says to him with a level of fearlessness I find astounding, then gives me a sympathetic look. “Just ignore him, Mallory. He’s in the doghouse right now in this harem, and it makes him pissy. I mean, more than usual.”

“He is ?” I sneak an astonished peek at the terrifying Vasili, who purses his lips in a discontented pout.

Of course, that bully doesn’t answer.

“The important thing is,” Neo says patiently, “can you actually read that spell? I mean, are you sure you know what it says?”

My shoulders hitch in a modest shrug. “Yeah, sure. I studied ancient Latin in prep school.”

Neo blinks at me and looks impressed.

“I do seem to recall that commendable detail from your academic transcript, Ms. McSnicker.” Master Aries gives me a respectful nod.

“Unfortunately, this particular grimoire is normally locked away in the rare books collection for an excellent reason. I fear there’s more than ancient Latin in play in some of the less savory spells. ”

Clearly, if he thinks that would deter me from signing the book out, my History of Witchcraft prof has underestimated the lengths I’ll go to in order to earn an A.

“Yeah, I know. This particular spell is hexed. I mean, the text is all jumbled under a major confusion curse. That’s what drew my attention in the first place, when I was writing my research paper for your class.” I frown over the open page while my prof looms helpfully over me with the flashlight.

“Indeed.” He trains his light directly on the page. “It appears you’re correct, Ms. McSnicker.”

“Five points for class participation,” Vasili purrs. “Well done you.”

Zara nudges him with an elbow, paired with a look that hovers somewhere between reproach and laughter.

But I don’t have time to be bullied right now.

The hexed words of the opening spell dance across the ancient parchment like imps around the fires of hell. I bite my lip and steady the book with a gingerly hand.

“Pardon me for stating the obvious, do, ” Vasili drawls. “But shouldn’t we be inside that protective pentacle you’ve just drawn?”

I smack my forehead with my palm. “Um, yes. Obviously. Everyone inside the circle.”

“You’re making her nervous, Goblin King,” Zara murmurs to Vasili as we all grab our gear and crowd into the chalk circle, which is barely big enough to hold us. “Be nice.”

“Oh, certainly, that’s what I’m known for,” Vasili says with poisonous sweetness. “Being nice .”

Carefully I position Neo with the book before me, my prof at one side with the flashlight, and Jae holding my bespelling candle aloft at the other.

Everyone else crowds around me, subtly nudging Zara into the safe spot between her headmaster and her dominant alpha.

Beyond the dim circle of their worried faces, the blank wall of the hidden passage looms.

Are the shadows getting thicker? Or is the daylight leaking through the slit in our ceiling getting dimmer? The dragon’s increasingly frustrated bellows, bouncing off the walls at erratic intervals, make my ears ring. But I can’t hear the hoot and chuckle of those hyenas at all anymore.

Which probably means they’re… hunting.

With a bone-deep shiver, I dig out my lighter. But before I light it, I hesitate.

“Um, shouldn’t that… Dark Fae aquatic of yours…

come inside the circle too?” I ask Zara carefully.

Even though the idea of letting any Unseelie into my safe space flies squarely in the face of every survival instinct that’s kept me alive.

“If the spell backfires, it might get really gnarly in this chamber.”

“Gnarly?” Neo blinks at me through his glasses. “Can you be any more specific?”

“Any spell uttered from the Book of Flame and Breath that fails,” Master Aries murmurs, “either suffocates the casting witch or sets her afire. Nor is the Book known to discriminate when choosing a victim for its malice. Anyone within range who’s breathing is a likely casualty.”

“Cheese on toast.” Zara clutches her duffel to her chest (for some reason I haven’t figured out yet, she’s carrying a kitten in there) and looks worried.

“However, I believe Mordred may be shielded from both effects, so long as he remains fully submerged.” My prof furrows his brow. “At least in his current form.”

“Ah, oui ?” Jae gives the cistern a narrow look, even as he wraps a possessive arm around my waist. “I thought I smelled shifter on that one, me.”

This is all super intriguing, but I can’t afford to get distracted.

I flick on my lighter, cup a careful hand around the bespelling candle Jae is holding, shield it from the dank and foul-smelling wind that’s just kicked up from nowhere, and touch my tiny flame to the wick.

As the taper begins to glow, I whisper the spell that unravels curses.

I’m a weak witch in general, like really weak. But curse-breaking is similar to healing. Both are meant to restore the natural order.

These are magics any Light Fae can summon.

A pale green flame flares to life and dances on the wick. The dry scent of sage and a fresh green whiff of dill tingle in my nostrils. Then a finger of olive smoke twines from my candle and curls over the spellbook’s open pages.

I hold my breath and pray for luck to Saint Raymond, the Catholic saint of secrets. Sure, I’m Seelie, but I’m baptized and educated in Catholic prep schools, another way we hide from the mortals.

And maybe my patron saint is listening.

Because, under all our expectant stares, the words of the spell blur and waver. The handwritten letters squirm and wriggle across the page like worms.

“Bon bagay,” Jae whispers, soft as breath.

I sneak a hand down to clutch his warm fingers, still firmly gripping my waist.

The squirming letters settle into stillness.

“Oh, crap,” I whisper into the spellbound silence. My eyes fly over the text. “That’s… like… a really archaic dialect.”

Zara gives a little hop that broadcasts both excitement and impatience. “Well? Can you still read it?”

I blink at the strange accents and sigils that bedizen the letters and nibble my lower lip. “I mean, it’s still Latin. I think I can pronounce the words. It’s just—I don’t totally know what they mean or what they’ll do—”

From the smothering shadows, a diabolical chuckle rises.

Every follicle of hair on my head crinkles and lifts. The back of my neck crawls.

In reply, a low hoot echoes. From the clotted darkness near the door, two round eyes glow an eerie electric blue.

Scattered here and there in the darkness (because it’s definitely gotten darker in here), matching eyes wink into sight.

Master Aries mutters an oath in Hungarian and slips from the protected circle on silent feet.

“Lucius!” Zara whispers. “Wait!”

But my reliable professor is gone. Vanished. Lost in the dark.

“Shit!” Zara hisses. “Aren’t we safe here inside this circle?”

“We’re only safe from witchcraft, babe,” Neo tells her earnestly (and accurately). “Not flesh-and-blood shifters.”

Now every eye in the circle turns to me.

“We’re out of time to indulge your insecurities, McSnicker,” Vasili snaps. “Cast that spell now if you want to live.”

Without even waiting for me to nod, he levitates and zips off into the darkness.

Darn it.

Every gnawing niggle of insecurity I’ve ever felt, every insidious whisper of doubt I’ve ever heard (and they’ve been filling my ears all my life), every haunting fear that I’ll never be good enough, never be brave enough, never be worthy enough, roots my feet to the floor in a paralysis of dread.

What are you even doing here, McSnicker? You’re a pathetic excuse for a witch. You’re a reject. A freak. A failure. You’re going to fail and get everyone killed—

“Steady, chere,” Jae murmurs in my ear, because of course he feels what I feel. He hears what I hear—that din of corrosive voices that’s eroding my meager supply of courage. “I believe in you, me. And Draco, he believes in you too. Time to be showing the world what you can do now.”

I’ve never fought for what I love.

Never.

I’ve always just hidden .

So it feels way beyond the realm of the possible to believe a weak witch like me—Mallory McSnicker, the class klutz, the school geek, the laughing joke of the whole Icarus Academy—can even save myself.

Much less all of us.

But Jae believes.

Believes in me.

Maybe he believes enough for both of us.

I duck my head over the thicket of impenetrable text, press a shaky hand to my gut to quiet the butterfly nerves doing backflips in my belly, fling myself headlong into the first incomprehensible sentence in a blind leap of faith…

…and speak aloud the words of that awful spell.