“Bran,” I murmured, reaching for him. He leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. Moaning softly, I kissed him back.
Then I turned to Lachlan. He kissed me too.
“Little one,” he murmured. “Your lips are so sweet.”
I might have gone on like that, kissing each of them in turn, if Avery hadn’t cleared his throat, reminding me that there were other people in the room.
“Well…” He and the rest of my Coven-mates had been standing back by the fireplace, watching anxiously as Lachlan and Bran healed me. “That was some magic, Emmers,” he said to me.
“And we can definitely tell the three of you have Marked each other,” Megan added.
“How do you feel?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Yes, how do you feel, little one?” Lachlan asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Better.” I sat up slowly and he and Bran helped me do it. I put a hand to the side of my neck—it didn’t hurt anymore.
“The bite is gone,” Megan said, coming forward to look under my hair. “Like it never happened!”
“It shouldn’t have happened,” Avery said, frowning angrily. “What does Morganna Starchild think she’s doing, sending poisonous spiders into Emma’s bed?”
“She’s gone way too far,” Megan agreed. “She has to be stopped!” She drew out another hairpin she had hidden somewhere and prepared to prick her own finger. “Maybe it’s time to let Morganna have a little taste of Blood Magic!”
“And get yourself kicked out of the Academy? No!” I exclaimed, shaking my head. (Thankfully, I could do this now without making myself horribly dizzy.)
“Emma is right, my Witch Queen,” Griffin murmured. “There is no faster path to expulsion than to use your Blood Magic to start a war between the Others—because you know the other Fae would spring to Morganna’s side.”
“And then we would be on Emma’s side and if our drakes got out…” Kaitlyn shook her head as she and Ari exchanged a look. “What a mess.”
“We have to do something, though!” Megan exclaimed.
“I already have—I have removed the doubling spell while we were healing Emma,” Lachlan said calmly. “So no more crawling or flying creatures will come after her.”
“Thank the Goddess for that!” Avery muttered. “But Princess Latimer is right—we can’t let Morganna get away with this.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe you should send that nasty spell back to her, the way you did in the cafeteria the other day, when she fast-aged your food and made it grow black mold,” he suggested.
But Lachlan shook his head.
“Revenge magic can turn dark pretty quickly,” he said to me. “You don’t want to escalate things if you can help it, little one.”
I knew he was thinking about how half of his soul was already corrupted, because of his parentage. And possibly, half of mine was, too. We didn’t know who my real parents were, after all—all we knew was that one of them was presumably from the Winter Court, because of my hair color.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said, lifting my chin. “I’ll let her know that it ends here. If she tries anything else, I’m going to take it to Headmistress Nightworthy—we know she won’t tolerate this kind of thing at Nocturne.”
It seemed like a weak response—threatening to tell the teacher, basically. But I could understand Lachlan’s concern about my magic turning dark and I also agreed that starting a magical war with all of us in the Norm Dorm on one side and the rest of the Fae on the other, was probably a really bad idea. So this seemed like the best—and most adult—way to handle things.
But I hadn’t counted on Morganna’s pure, vindictive pleasure in being a bully.
65
“Oh hello, Emma—how did you sleep last night?” There was a malicious glint in Morganna’s pretty blue eyes as she looked at me.
I had chosen to confront her in the hallway outside the Biology class, right before the bell rang. Mostly because the Dining Hall was too crowded and I didn’t want to make a scene. Bran and Lachlan were standing behind me, waiting to back me up if they needed to—but I didn’t think they would. I planned to tell Morganna to back off in no uncertain terms and once I threw Mistress Nightworthy’s name into the conversation, I didn’t anticipate a problem.
“You crossed a line last night,” I told her. “One of the spiders you sent bit me—I could have died.”
If I’d had any hope that the serious circumstances her malicious magic had caused would make her sorry, it died when she smiled at me—a vindictive, vengeful smile that said she wouldn’t have been sorry a bit if the spider bite had killed me.
“Is that right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “And what a shame that would have been.”
I looked at her blankly.
“You’re not even denying it was your spell that sent the spiders?”
“Why should I?” she shrugged. “It’s just too bad you somehow removed it before the next doubling happened.” She pursed her lips and got a mock-thoughtful look on her face. “I think the next step was scorpions. Or was it murder hornets? The creeping creatures of the human world are so hard to keep straight…”