Defiance

1.8

Chapter 18

E L Y S I A

I wanted to erase the smile on my face. Talking to Aldric, just learning about him made me so happy. I wanted to hate him, I wanted to find that reason. Instead, I could only find reasons to be happy around him. 

I had so many reasons to hate him - for what he did to the Mae Coven, for the way he treated me - switching between acts of caring and then saying cruel things. I had so many reasons but my heart could only flutter. 

Gods. 

I shouldn't feel this much. Was I forgetting he was a wolf? However, the time I spend around him made him more human any than the humans I knew. I sighed and quickly decided to put my focus back into learning magic. 

I had to stop thinking about him.

High Priestess Augela wrote about an invisibility spell in this chapter. This was a spell I was determined to learn. There was a permanent invisibility spell, one that would last a full day and there was only one for minutes. The permanent spell had many risks involved, I realized. High Priestess Augela described the other one as one that could interchange between invisibility and visibility.

I set myself up in the mirror in Aldric's bathroom. This was a spell that intrigued for nearly all my life. The ability to turn invisible. And to think I could be one of the witches who could also learn this spell. I excitedly turned to the page with the spell.

"Mystefor, mystedor, mystenor,"  I chanted.

At first, I watched myself partially disappear. Then, I realized I said the spell wrong, there had to be an emphasis on the third line and third vowel. The second time I said the spell, it worked almost immediately. I was getting better at magic, I realized. 

Spells were coming more easily to me, I didn't have to beg for them to work anymore. Instead, I could feel the rush in the veins every time I said a spell. My blood wanted the magic; every spell I'd use, there was a strange euphoric feeling. 

Did other witches feel this?

As I said the spell again, I watched myself disappear. I couldn't believe it worked. I had seen witches become invisible but I couldn't believe I would be one of the witches that would have the magic to actually perform this spell. 

I didn't know what kind of invisibility spell I used but I also disappeared in the mirror. The invisibility spells witches used in the village only masked their appearance in the physical world; in the mirror, they were still visible. 

There was so much I could do with this spell. I knew there was a lot I could do.

I wanted to leave Aldric's bedroom. I had been here for so long I forgot what the outside world tasted like. But I remembered even though I had been marked invisible, my scent wasn't. 

The wolves could smell me. 

Aldric said his room was the place where my scent could be masked; I didn't know how or why but I trusted him. I turned through the pages in High Priestess Augela's magic book. 

In the mirror, I caught sight of a floating book, spiralling through the pages. I imagined the ways I could prank Aldric with this spell.

What if I closed off all the candlelights in the bedroom except one tonight and held it before him, floating it around as if a ghost would? 

He wouldn't be scared, I realized. He'd probably just stand there with a monochrome look telling me to shut off the last candlelight because he wanted to sleep. I rolled my eyes and focused back into the book.