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  The man who had brought the tea stepped forward. “Move over, brother, you can’t keep her all to yourself.”

  The next thing she knew, Rose was kissing him too. She lost track of whose hands were whose as clothes started coming off. The room was heating up as though the sun was rising just outside the window. Rose gasped for breath as she clutched at the strong arms holding her.

  She woke with a small cry, sitting bolt upright in bed. It took a moment to get her bearings. Rose glanced over to see that Annabelle was still asleep, her silhouette just visible in the dim light. She was still breathing hard and made an effort to slow down. It had just been a dream. An incredibly hot, realistic dream, but just a dream all the same.

  Rose lay back down and tried to get back to sleep. After tossing and turning for an hour, she realized that sleep wasn’t going to happen. She just couldn’t get the dream out of her mind. She quietly got up and went to the window, opening the curtains to give her a view of the moon.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Rose jumped violently before she realized it was just Annabelle. Annabelle turned on her bedside lamp, sitting up and squinting in the light.

  “No. I guess I’m just nervous about tomorrow.” There was no force in the universe that would get Rose to confess to the dream she’d just had. Having such a dream about dragons would surely be considered base treachery for witches.

  “Do you want a potion?”

  “A potion?”

  “I’ve struggled to sleep my whole life. None of the traditional human medications really made a difference, at least not one worth the side effects, so my family asked one of the healers here to make something for me. I’ve been on this for the past three years. One of the first things I learned when I came here was how to make it for myself.”

  “So, it’s like a sleeping pill?” Rose was overcome with curiosity. Something like that could make a real difference to people for whom traditional sleeping pills didn’t work. How many opportunities were there for magic to revolutionize modern medicine?

  “Not really. Sleeping pills are addictive and they come with a bunch of side effects. If you do a spell right, it doesn’t wear off, and it doesn’t have any side effects. It took them a few tries to come up with the right proportion of ingredients for me, but they managed it eventually.”

  “I’d love to try it.” Rose was already making a mental list of all the known effects of sleeping pills. She grabbed a notepad from her drawer, ready to jot down the physical effects of this potion as long as she could keep her eyes open.

  “It won’t make me manic if I don’t fall asleep right away, will it?”

  “No, as I said, it doesn’t have side effects like sleeping pills do. Everyone is different, so it may not be the perfect potion for you, but the worst it can do is not work.”

  Rose perched on the end of her bed as Annabelle poured her a glass of a bright purple liquid. She drank it slowly, analyzing the taste and texture, jotting down notes as she went.

  “You’d better lie down. It works pretty quickly.”

  Rose pulled her legs into bed and leaned against her knees as she wrote her notes. She was already feeling drowsy. Her eyelids and arms felt heavy as she clutched the notepad tighter.

  The next thing she knew, she was waking up to morning light streaming in from the windows.

  “What?” Her voice was groggy and hoarse.

  Annabelle laughed lightly. “I told you it would put you to sleep.”

  Rose looked down at her notepad, which was resting on her stomach. The last few lines were unintelligible, ending in a long streak down the page, where the pen must have dragged across it as she fell asleep.

  “I wanted to study the effects,” she sighed in disappointment.

  “You’ll have plenty of better opportunities to do that. For now, we’re all just learning the basics, but once you have those covered, you’ll be able to branch out into areas that interest you. I think Elaine works on the medical applications of magic.”

  That got Rose out of bed. She grabbed her clothes, pulling them on so quickly that she got her head through one of the arm holes of her dress. “That’s brilliant! How soon do you think I could start studying under her?”

  “No idea, ask Kaylee. Just remember that we have to keep our powers separate from the rest of the world. You’d need to make a deal with a drug company to package your potions in capsules or something.”

  Her mind was already racing ahead with the implications. As Annabelle had said, there were a lot of doctors. Rose could be something altogether more—she could be a doctor who had magic at her disposal. She wondered if Elaine would let her go to medical school and study magic concurrently.

  She waited impatiently as Annabelle got dressed, eager to get to their first class.

  “Asher had better not still be mopping that stupid hall,” Annabelle muttered. “I swear, they should make the dragons work at night so that the rest of us don’t have to see their hideous faces.”

  Rose was only vaguely aware of her books tumbling out of her arms.

  “Rose? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I said you look like you’ve seen—”

  “No, before that.”

  “That the dragons should clean at night?”

  “His name… you said his name was Asher.”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  Rose just stared at Annabelle. She didn’t dare confess her dream. She was still frozen, trying to figure out how she could have known. No one had told her Asher’s name. He hadn’t had a name tag.

  “What are the other dragons’ names?”

  Annabelle’s mouth twisted in distaste. “Jagger, Mace, and Gavin.”

  Rose clutched the back of the chair to keep herself on her feet. No, this was impossible. “Do you ever dream about them?”

  “About the dragons? Sure, all the time. My best one was where I had one of them all alone and I was finally allowed to start using some of the attack spells I’ve learned.”

  The image made Rose feel sick. “So you dream about torturing them? Not… other things?”

  “What else would there be?”

  “Well, they’re not exactly ugly, are they?”

  “Who cares what kind of show they put on? We all know who they are inside. The beauty of someone’s soul is what matters, not their body, and we know that their souls are foul. Rose, are you sure you’re okay? You look ill. You didn’t take another glass of the sleeping potion, did you? You’re only supposed to take one per night.”

  “No, I didn’t take another glass.”

  “Then what’s wrong?” Annabelle came close, peering at her in concern, before putting an arm under Rose’s elbow, possibly fearing she might collapse. From where Rose was standing, it didn’t seem an unreasonable fear.

  “Can dragons get into your dreams? I mean like consciously take them over?”

  “No, that’s not within their abilities. Not even witches can do that. Why, what type of dream did you have?”

  “I—nothing.” Annabelle didn’t seem mollified, so Rose quickly invented a story. “It was disturbing, that’s all. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Her ploy worked instantly. Annabelle’s expression changed to one of sympathetic understanding. “Of course. I’ve had nightmares of what they did to Vivian. The potion should block nightmares, but perhaps you just need the ingredients changed slightly to fit you.”

  The potion. Maybe that was what gave her the weird dream. Though that wouldn’t explain how she’d dreamed about the dragons’ actual names before being told.

  “We should get down to breakfast.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to see Maria? She’s the healer here.”

  “Healer? As in, doctor?”

  “Not really—she doesn’t have a medical degree. Traditional healers work to heal someone using pure magic. People like Elaine work to bring magic into nor
mal human medicine.”

  Rose nodded, trying to pull herself together. It was just a stupid dream. There could be a million explanations. Not that she could think of any of them right now, but she would.

  She picked up her books, forcibly banishing the dream from her mind. “Come on. I don’t want to be late.”

  Chapter Four

  Rose was practically vibrating with excitement when they finally sat down for their first lesson. It didn’t look like she thought a typical lesson would. There were no desks or projectors. Instead, they were in a comfortable lounge, all sitting in squashy armchairs arranged in a circle. Rose had her notebook balanced on her knees.

  “Well, good morning, everyone.” Kaylee smiled at Rose, Jade, Annabelle, and Wendy. “Since Rose is new here, we’ll be going over some of the basics. I know that you’ve all covered it, but it never hurts to brush up.”

  Rose glanced worriedly at the others. She didn’t want to hold them back in their studies, but none of them seemed put out. Wendy and Jade hadn’t been here long, at least, but Annabelle might have to recap several weeks’ worth of work. Annabelle smiled reassuringly as Rose met her gaze.

  “No one knows for sure how dragons and witches came to be. Some say it’s a genetic mutation. Others call it an act of God. Some people hold that there is no explanation that we are able to understand with our current intellect. What we do know for certain is that as long as there have been dragons, there have been witches.

  “The dragons are all descended from the Bond family, but fortunately, they have been dying out for a while now; obviously, we do everything we can to keep them from breeding. Such acts only happen when one of them manages to slip from our control. Currently, all of the dragons in existence are male, which means that they will die out within a generation.”

  Rose raised her hand.

  “Yes, Rose?”

  “Can’t they breed with human women?”

  “No. Such offspring are not able to survive. The human and dragon genes seem to be incompatible.”

  Rose wanted to ask if they could breed with witches, but decided to keep that question to herself.

  “Their leader, Atticus Bond, was killed in the Great Rebellion, along with three others. There are now ten left, divided between the three covens.

  “Even as reduced as their numbers are, they are still powerful enough to destroy the world if we let them get out of hand. Only the brute force of our magic can keep everyone safe. The Great Rebellion was particularly bloody even for a dragon uprising, but it had characteristics that are recognizable in all scenarios throughout history when the dragons have slipped our control.”

  As Kaylee continued speaking, Rose’s notes slowed. She’d studied history before, both in school and doing her own research afterward just out of interest. She’d been expecting Kaylee to point out parallels such as rising tension between the opposing forces, or areas of opportunity for a revolution.

  Kaylee didn’t seem interested in such common parameters for analyzing history. She went on at great length about how vicious the dragons were, and how the witches had a duty to keep them downtrodden and suppressed until they were finally able to kill them.

  Rose found herself becoming increasingly annoyed. She’d come here to learn magic, not listen to what was sounding increasingly like a propaganda speech. Learning history was one thing, but this wasn’t so much history as an ever-increasing list of reasons to hate dragons.

  They weren’t even well thought out or skillfully argued reasons. Rose had a number of logical objections to the things Kaylee was saying. If the witches were going to view dragons as evil because they had killed a number of witches, wouldn’t witches be equally evil because of all the dragons they had killed?

  The dragons at least seemed to act through self-defense or a bid to be free, reading between the lines of what Kaylee was saying. Witches, through Kaylee’s admission, wanted to kill every last dragon, with no thought to reforming them or even considering whether the current situation was unfair.

  A glance at Annabelle, Wendy, and Jade showed them drinking in Kaylee’s every word, despite having heard all of this before. At the end of her monologue, Kaylee turned to the four of them.

  “Right, that’s it for today. Discussion time—what does everyone think about what they’ve learned?”

  Annabelle spoke up that dragons were evil and witches should put all their efforts into killing them more quickly. Jade thought that they should focus on finding particularly painful ways to kill the dragons, to punish them for their crimes.

  Rose was going over calculations in her head, wondering how long she’d have to work for before she could afford to go back to medical school.

  “Maybe we should breed with them,” Wendy joked, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “They’re certainly attractive enough.”

  Rose chuckled, but her laughter quickly cut off at the look on Kaylee’s face.

  “How dare you? They are disgusting monsters, monsters who have killed more of our number than I can count!”

  “I was only joking,” Wendy said quickly. “I’d never let one of them touch me. I know they’re evil. I promise, it was a joke.”

  “If you find their visages attractive enough to joke about, then perhaps you should take the rest of the day off to consider your behavior,” Kaylee told her in an icy voice.

  “She didn’t mean anything by it.” Rose had never been good at speaking up, but she had to say something.

  Kaylee’s glare found her. “I don’t care what she meant. It was a totally unacceptable thing to say. Are you telling me you need to join her in her reflection?”

  Rose shook her head, her eyes falling to her knees. Wendy shuffled out. Neither Annabelle nor Jade said anything to defend her.

  Kaylee’s smile returned so fast it was dizzying. “Now, any other comments? Rose, dear?”

  “No, nothing for now,” Rose said quietly. She pushed everything she wanted to say to the back of her mind.

  Kaylee released them soon afterward. Annabelle and Jade were talking excitedly about the lesson. It was like Kaylee had been unveiling the secrets of the universe. Rose dully wondered if in a few weeks, she would be just as brainwashed as they were.

  No. She wouldn’t get anywhere here with an attitude like that—Kaylee’s reaction to Wendy’s comment had proven that much. If Rose left now, how many lives would be lost that she could otherwise have saved? Elaine was only one person; she couldn’t work to advance medicine to its full capacity with magic alone. There was just too much.

  If Rose was the coven leader, she would put all of her people on working out how to cure cancer and malaria, rather than finding spells to torture people. Obviously, she wasn’t going to be elected as coven leader with views like that, so she’d have to settle for doing her own part to work toward what she believed in.

  As she trailed after Annabelle and Jade, Rose resolved to make the most of her time here. She would become a great witch, just like her mother. She would avenge Aunt Noreen, and pass all of her lessons with flying colors, just like she did all her other classes.

  She wasn’t really listening to Annabelle and Jade’s conversation as she followed them to the dining room. Rose thought about Noreen, and wondered which dragon had killed her. She had no idea if the witches even knew.

  Noreen had been a good person and hadn’t deserved to die, but still, Rose would be hesitant to kill someone, even a murderer. Life in prison sounded perfectly fair to her, but of course, dragons couldn’t go to normal prisons. Breaking out would be way too easy for them.

  But learning more about the Great Rebellion brought her natural curiosity to the surface. Maybe it would give her closure to know.

  “Annabelle?”

  “Yes?” Annabelle broke off in the middle of a sentence to answer her, giving Rose a worried look that said she still hadn’t forgotten the incident from this morning.

  “Do you know… how I can find out who killed my aunt?”

  “Of
course.” Annabelle put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “We have records that will be able to give you a name. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Jade went off to get lunch while Annabelle led Rose through numerous halls. They passed a few other witches, who greeted them politely. Rose would have to see about learning everyone’s names another time.

  “Here we are. Do you want me to look for you?”

  “No, that’s okay.” Rose stepped forward and opened the thick handwritten book titled Crimes of the Dragons. It appeared to be not so much a book as a list of all the people the dragons had killed.

  Right near the end was a section titled “The Great Rebellion”. Rose found Noreen’s name halfway down the list. Killer: Atticus Bond.

  “He’s dead,” she murmured.

  “Your aunt is avenged. Don’t worry, though, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to gain some retribution. Kaylee has promised us.”

  As Rose looked up into Annabelle’s eyes, she didn’t see a bad person there, but she did see someone who was too easily swayed by hate and her own emotional scarring. She didn’t want to start an argument, so she simply nodded. “Shall we get some lunch?”

  Annabelle led the way again, and they almost managed to make it to the dining room without incident. Two halls away, they came across another handsome man carrying a tray. Annabelle kicked up the carpet, but the man managed to avoid tripping; he was very light on his feet. He leaned down to smooth the carpet while Annabelle sneered at him.

  Rose tried to summon some anger for Noreen’s death, but all she felt was overwhelming sadness at so much violence and tragedy. She found herself staring at the man, not in hatred, but with desire. His blond hair had a tousled look, as though he’d just gotten out of bed. He had blue eyes brighter than any Rose had ever seen.

  As her eyes traveled down to the rest of his body, her throat became dry. He looked like someone on the photo of a magazine—tall, lean, but still muscled in all the right places.

  Annabelle gently tugged on her elbow, urging her on. Rose read the warning in the touch. She couldn’t be seen ogling a dragon. The dream from last night was messing with her head. Rose had been attracted to guys before, but never to this extent. If any of the three dragons she’d seen over the last day decided to press her up against a wall and ravish her, she would have no objections.