Page 128 of Storm of Shadows

“What the fuck?” some obnoxious shadow weaver shrieks from the front row.

“Silence!” I boom, my irritation getting the better of me. “Take out your pens and paper. I will not be teaching you until Miss Storm is good enough to join us. You will sit in silence, copying the following lines from the board.” I brush my hands through the air and my shadows race towards the blackboard, scribbling nonsense sentences in white chalk.

“This isn’t fair,” Lynette Smyte moans.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“She’s such a little bitch. Someone needs to put her in her place – once and for all,” her sister whispers in her ear, so quietly I expect she thinks no one would hear.

“And I suppose, you think, you are the person who should do that, do you, Miss Smyte?” I ask her.

She peers through the shadows at me with a whole heap of disdain. “Yes.”

“How?” I ask, the danger obvious in my voice.

“Fry her like a slice of bacon. It would be good practice.” She smirks.

Anger crackles inside me. I’d like to fry Henrietta Smyte like a slice of bacon. Somehow, however, I manage to keep it together.

“It’s not her fault,” Briony’s friend starts to protest, but any further words are interrupted by the opening of the door and the girl herself strolling through without a damn care in the world.

“You’re late!” I roar.

“I am,” she snaps back, meeting my angry glare with one of her own. For a moment, our eyes are locked together like that and her scent slithers towards me, softening everything inside me, making me hungry instead.

“We’re copying lines from the board, Miss Storm. Take a seat. You can see me afterwards.”

“Now she’s here, can’t we–” the first shadow weaver starts to argue.

“No,” I say, then I lean back in my chair and spend the next ninety minutes watching her. Transfixed by her. Mesmerized by her.

“This is becoming a habit,” I growl at her when we’re once again alone. “Tell me what the hell makes you think you can miss my lessons? Because I’m pretty certain I made it clear last time that I won’t tolerate it.”

Perhaps being alone like this is dangerous and foolish. Perhaps I shouldn’t fall for the temptation.

But we’re here now. Once again alone.

She rolls her eyes at me like I’m being unreasonable. “It wasn’t my choice.” I snort. “Madame Bardin asked to see me.”

An icy cold sweeps across my skin and into the pit of my stomach.

“Madame Bardin?” I say quietly.

“Yes, she asked to talk to me in her office. I couldn’t exactly say no.”

“Talk to you? Talk to you about what?”

The obnoxious expression falls away and the blood rushes to the surface of her cheeks. For the briefest of seconds it distracts me, my stomach moaning in agony.

“I’m not sure …” she mutters. “It was private.”

I stalk towards her and grab hold of her wrist. “What did she want to talk to you about, Briony?” It’s the first time I’ve used her name, and the sound of it takes both of us by surprise. It sounds so personal, so intimate.

“You,” she hisses. I nod. Me. I’m not surprised at all. But does that mean the Madame is aware about how I feel? I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m only surprised the girl herself has not realized. It must be written all over my face. Clear in my every move. “She seems to be under this deluded impression that the two of us are … I don’t know what!”

My fingers are wrapped tightly around her wrist. Her pulse thunders beneath her skin – skin that is so delicate, so paper thin, so fragile.

I say nothing and my eyes stray to the pulse in her neck, thundering away too – the skin there just as vulnerable.