Page 182 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

“Thought so,” he mused, making a clucking sound with his tongue as he rolled the information around in his mind.

Sweat beaded at my hairline despite the cool air in the dusky office. It was so silent you could hear a pin drop. As though all the sound in the universe had been vacuumed up, blocked out by the insulation of hundreds upon hundreds of tomes lining thick wooden shelves all around the space.

I shook off the miasmal feeling. I wished he’d just get on with it. There was no sense in dragging this out. I was sure he’d already decided on what my punishment would be. But you didn’t rush an Arcane Council member.

“Who were your parents?” he asked after a time, and I flinched at the question, sucking in a quick, sharp breath.

“I’m not sure. They died when I was very small.” I gave him a small shrug. “I never knew their names.”

It wasn’t total bullshit. I didn’t know my mother’s name, but I knew my father’s.

Alistair was his name. I only knew it because it was inscribed on the inside of the ring my mother left with me—a gaudy golden thing with a great bird on it.

An orange colored stone was set where its eye should’ve been.

His last name began with an H, but the engraving was worn down from too many years of wear.

I glanced down at it, twisting it round my thumb, the only finger it fit.

The delegate seemed intrigued by the ring but snapped out of his glazed over stare when I shoved my hands back between my knees.

He cleared his throat. “A pity,” he began, pursing his lips.

“A natural ability such as yours is wasted—and dangerous—if left unchecked on the streets. We cannot risk that kind of exposure. You understand?”

I did. Ever since our kind left the dying lands of Emeris and arrived here, we’d been persecuted. Bordeaux. Salem. London. It didn’t matter where we were. If they thought there was magic in our veins, they burned us. Buried us. Or let us starve.

Thousands of us were killed because of human ignorance. But that was a long time ago. Before cell phones, social media, and Twilight. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t exactly keen to risk it either, but I understood why some of our kind believed it was time to ‘come out’ to our human neighbors.

“I understand.”

“Good.” The finality in that one word gave me chills.

“I can’t go back, then? To… to where I was?”

His forehead creased. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”

Kalzir, then. I could already feel it—the cold bite of iron shackles on my wrists and ankles. The oppressive weight of the bindstone woven through the walls of my cell, supressing my magic, slowly driving me to madness.

I watched him from the corner of my eye as he gathered a quill, ink, and a sheet of parchment. My mind wandering, not quite settling on any one thing. My body light. Gaze blurred.

The metal quill-tip bit into the ink, coming out coated in the shimmery black substance.

In a state of total disbelief, I read the words as he wrote them, For Headmaster Sterling, and then I watched as they disappeared into the paper, seeming to evaporate before my very eyes.

Unbothered, he continued writing his letter, the words vanishing seconds after being written.

“Have you heard of Arcane Arts Academy?” he asked, pausing the scratching of metal on paper to glance up at me. A small smile pulled at the corner of his thin lips.

Of course, I had. How could I not? Arcane Arts Academy was a school hidden deep in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, I thought.

It was supposedly a place for the children of great and wealthy witches to study.

To develop, grow, and hone their natural abilities without the prying eyes of humans.

In other words—no place for a girl like me. A vagabond without a home or a penny to her name had absolutely no place within the hallowed halls of AAA.

He couldn’t be serious.

“Are you surprised?” he asked, continuing before I could pick my jaw up off the floor and attempt to formulate a response. “You’re welcome.”

Thank you? He really wanted me to say thank you?

They’d eat me alive in a place like that.

Spoiled rich kids. Know-it-all teachers.

Curfews. Exams. I wouldn’t last a damned day.

“But how long will I have to stay there?” I began, trying to keep the sour taste in my mouth from tainting my words. “Is this your sentence for what I did?”

The curve of his lips held amusement, as if he knew what would become of me there. “If you choose to see it that way, then I suppose it is. And I expect you to stay there until formal graduation.”

AAA students graduated at twenty-one. He expected me to stay there for four years! Students there started at sixteen, how would I ever catch up? My mouth went suddenly dry.

I’d rather he sent me to Kalzir.

“I’ll have someone escort you to gather your things and we’ll have you there by nightfall.”

My things? Did he mean my one lousy suitcase of clothes and headbands?

Or my hairbrush and toothbrush. It didn’t matter because I wouldn’t be going back to Leo and Lara’s caravan.

If I did, I might get out of going to AAA, but they’d be sitting where I am, and in much deeper shit.

I couldn’t imagine what the consequence would be for their ‘negligence,’ but I knew it would be far worse than the fate that awaited me.

I shook my head, letting the tension in my shoulders release. “There’s no need,” I told him. “This is all I have.”

He clucked his tongue, his gaze roving over my tank top, torn jean shorts, and frayed headband with a look somewhere between distaste and pity. “Very well.”