“Your guardian is our patron, and what he sends becomes mine,” Juni replied. “I’ll share it with whoever I please. Right now, it displeases me to share it with you. Your Food Privileges are revoked for twenty-four hours.”
Lysander’s face fell. “Professor…”
“Would you like to try for forty-eight?”
Magenta dropped the cucumber sandwich in her hand like it’d become infested by slugs. Was that an apologetic look that she was shooting Lysander?
Juni’s expression darkened. “Start the divination spell.”
“Shall I be mother?” Magenta poured two cups of steaming tea. Then she sniffed the herbal aroma with a sigh. “What a delightful blend.”
“Concentrate on the liquid and the power that you wish to infuse it with,” Juni instructed.
Magenta nodded. Slowly, her sparkles lit up the surface of the tea like a flaming cocktail, before sinking beneath the surface.
Lysander tilted up his chin, marching around the table to drop his strand of hair into one of the cups.
I stiffened. What happened next? A puff of smoke? The undead howling out Lysander’s sins? Lysander’s hair falling out?
Nothing.
Well, that was anticlimactic. Until, Lysander snatched the cup and turned to crouch in front of Midnight. Instantly, Midnight pulled away from me, folding his wings behind him like a soldier smartening himself up into parade position, even if he was strung up.
Lysander’s expression was disturbingly gentle, as his fingers clenched around the cup. “Your duty is to help us win today by drinking this. I assure you that it won’t harm you, but it will let me read the future through you. What you see is private between us two alone.”
“You don’t ask a whipping boy’s permission,” Juni snapped.
“Such wasn’t my intention.” Lysander’s hard gaze didn’t leave Midnight’s. “One sought merely to make sure that he understood.”
When Midnight nodded, Lysander held up the cup.
After Lysander had poisoned Bask last night in the café, would Midnight trust him today? And I hadn’t had a great experience with Co-Co and its never-ending coming power either.
Just say no to potions. It could catch on as a slogan.
Yet did either of us have any choice? I mean, I had my neck on the line and Midnight had his wings.
Midnight darted out his tongue, licking with difficulty at the tea in an act of submission that was greater than anything Lysander had shown last night. When Midnight gasped in pain, Lysander laid the cup to the side with shaky hands.
Pan’s hairy balls, I knew it…
Midnight thrashed wildly, and I understood at last why they bound us. His wing accidentally caught my nose, and I howled.
“You deserve this. You’re a disgrace of a fae. Whoever heard of a prince who was too weak to obey or kill?” Midnight growled in a voice that terrifyingly was not his own.
Chills ran down my arms at such a commanding and cruel voice snarling from Midnight’s sweet mouth at Lysander, who’d stumbled back onto his ass and looked pinned to the floor in fright at the blazing contempt in Midnight’s eyes.
“Touch your whipping boy’s forehead,” Juni ordered.
Lysander shook his head. Who terrified him so much that he looked nothing but a pair of gleaming emerald eyes, as he tried to cover himself in his wings?
“Do you wish to lose today on cowardice? I’ll cast a Shame Hex on you if I even suspect such a thing possible.” Juni prowled closer.
Lysander’s trembling hand rose to press against Midnight’s forehead. Then he screamed, arching against the floor. Willoughby vaulted across the table to his side, dropping to his knees. His hair had frozen to ice, and his eyes flashed. Juni raised her hand, however, and Willoughby flew backward, crashing against the table.
“What have you done?” Magenta demanded.
“Granted Crown the power to see the future. He has enough pain in his past for me to guess that it lies ahead of him as well.” Like a crow, Juni settled next to Lysander, where he lay shaking on the floor, before cradling his head on her lap. “Are you back with us?”
Lysander nodded, weakly.
“Do not fear to divine the future because we see only one path based on our past.” When Juni stroked Lysander’s hair away from his face, I had the sudden urge to bite off her fingers.
I blinked. Why was I so desperate to show her what it felt like to be the prey? As she continued to pet Lysander like reducing him into a shuddering wreck was a personal victory, I realized that it was because she pretended to be better than the other witches and that made her worse. She was a predator who loved the hunt. If the Princes didn’t break for her, then she brought their predators alive for them.
“Can what I saw be changed?” Lysander asked.
Say yes, yes, yes…
Juni cocked her head as if in thought. “Fate is woven every day by many hands. We merely catch glimpses, which help us to see our path.”
“She means of course it can.” Magenta’s gaze became flinty.
Lysander’s relief was like a living thing. “Thank you.”
Take that Miss Fate: your prince is thanking an Immortal.
Juni’s expression hardened. “Time for my dear sister in the House of Crows to face her future.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, this oracle attraction has been shut down for health and safety reasons.” I cradled my bruised nose. “Look, it’s damaged and not worth seeing. Come back next month, year, or how about not at all?”
“How about I close it permanently,” Juni demanded silkily, before muttering, “at least it’d be quieter.”
I eeped, but before Juni could move towards me, Lysander had tugged on her sleeve. “Please, don’t ask the witch to go through that. She made the potion, and it was demonstrated on me. Could that not be enough?”
Was that the first time I’d heard Lysander say please?
Juni eyed him dispassionately. “Why, if that isn’t what I call teamwork. Yet I still have to decide the Punish and Reward Game. Any thoughts?”
“It could please you to make it a draw?” Bask said, hopefully.
Juni huffed. “Nonsense, who’s been putting such thoughts into your head? Crush earned a Privilege Point for the Princes, which swings the lesson to them.”
“What about Lysander losing Food Privileges?” Sleipnir demanded, and Mist snorted his agreement from his pocket.
“That’s his own personal punishment, unless you wish to join him?” Juni said, frostily.
Sleipnir shoved a scone into his mouth just in case she followed through with the threat, then he did a thumbs up. “I’m good.”
I shrank back, as Juni’s dark gaze met mine. I scowled because when I was both one step closer to punishment at the Princes’ hands and being killed (I was so haunting her with visions of my crooked tailed self getting funky to “Super Bad”), how much worse could things get?
“After the rudeness, refusals, and in the witching heavens does he never hold his tongue, of Confess this lesson, I select him as the worst behaved student.” Juni’s eyes blazed with spiteful smugness. “He’ll suffer in the Memory Theater. Why finally, nothing to say?”
Oww, how many times did I need to mentally slap myself before I learned?
“Now you’ll wish that you’d disciplined your whipping boy,” Lysander said, wearily. “At least, you shall after tonight.”
I swallowed, paling. My pulse pounded. The way that Midnight twisted closer to me, cocooning me once again in the darkness of his wings only made me shake worse.