Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(14)

Still, I dutifully read my assignments. I tried to tackle A Comprehensive History of the Coven Guild, but eventually, the complex explanations of the origins of magic and the first generations of Guardians to experience the magical “spark” made my eyes cross with boredom. To my shame, I only reached page thirteen.

Mrs. Winter had drifted from the pond to one of her experimental herb beds. Though it was difficult to imagine the ever-coiffed Mrs. Winter dirtying her hands, the magical garden was her passion. When she wasn’t orchestrating the social lives of the Guardian elite, Mrs. Winter ran meetings of the Demeter Society, a prominent women’s research guild devoted to the advancement of magical botany. Mrs. Winter used the talents and social clout of her fellow members to further her research, “bettering magical society” while maintaining and advancing her power base. Similar guilds existed for nearly every specialty – healing, metallurgy, astronomy, divination and more.

Entrance into the Demeter Society was even more coveted than most positions within the ever-competitive guilds. To be admitted, new members had to be legacies, related to other Demeter ladies, or have shown meteoric potential at Miss Castwell’s. Lesser botanists were admitted to the not-quite-as-illustrious Epona Society, or worse yet, the Lightbourne Garden Club, which was barely a guild at all. Still the Garden Club was better than being left out of a guild entirely, which was considered a great disgrace among Castwell graduates.

From what I overheard while serving tea, Mrs. Winter was cross-breeding different varieties of tansy so it wouldn’t burn so quickly when dried specimens were added to spellwork. I had no idea what that meant, but Mrs. Winter seemed very focused on growing heartier, less flammable specimens.

Closing my book, I stood and took a few steps away from the bench, waiting to see if Mrs. Winter noticed. She hadn’t, because she’d slipped through the iron gate to her “restricted” garden where she grew the specimens so dangerous that she didn’t dare mention them in conversation over tea. My father wasn’t even allowed to enter this section of the garden, nor Mrs. Winter’s restricted greenhouse, both of which were kept under keys and wards only accessible by their mistress.

I took a few more steps toward the kitchen herb garden, the one full of plain old cooking grade mint and thyme, smells I would always associate with my mother. She would be baking the lemon-rosemary cakes for tea by this time of the morning. Could I sneak to the kitchen entrance before Mrs. Winter noticed?

I took another step.

Nothing.

With hurried, quiet movements, I picked up my skirts and moved toward the kitchen door. Every step I took that wasn’t interrupted by Mrs. Winter’s yelling, had me moving faster. I saw my mother through the window, hunched over a sink full of dishes. Mary was nowhere to be seen.

Was my mother angry with me, like Mary? Was she upset over seeing me all dressed up in a dress my family could never afford? I barely resembled the daughter she knew. Was she afraid that she’d lost me permanently? Or was it too scary to see this spit-and-polished Guardian version of the little girl who clung to her skirts all those years? And if she felt that way, what would my father say? Did he remember that I was gone, or were the empty bottles simply piling up by his fireside chair without me to collect them each night?

In that moment, I didn’t care about the lies and the pills and the magic. I just wanted to see my mother. Just as Mum looked up and spotted me, I grasped the door handle.

And I was thrown back as if a horse had kicked me, hind end over tea kettle with my skirt thrown over my head. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning, my skin tingling with the shock of running into a ward keyed to keep me out.

“I think I hate wards,” I grumbled.

I rolled to sit up, shoving at my skirts until they were no longer over my head. I blew my hair out of my face. Mum was pressed against the window, her eyes wide with fright. I couldn’t hear her, but I could see her mouth forming the words, “Are you all right?”

I nodded, and waved away her concern. I pushed to my feet with some difficulty and brushing the stray grass from my skirts. I looked back to the window to try to have some sort of conversation with Mum through the glass. However, once Mum had assured herself that Mrs. Winter’s ward wasn’t going to do me permanent damage, she’d disappeared.

I knew I shouldn’t let that disappoint me. Mum had been putting distance between us ever since I could remember, always shooing me toward work that needed me to be done or away from the boiling pot she was watching. I used to think she was just too busy to be a mother, but now I wondered, knowing that she’d known about my magic from the start, had she been afraid of me? Ashamed of me? Had she been afraid to get attached, knowing that I could be taken from her if people found out about my magic?

Still staring at the empty glass, I heard a sharp shout from behind the brick wall that separated the kitchen garden from the plot where Mrs. Winter grew plants for magical purposes. I glanced over to the little table and saw that the tarts had been reduced to crumbs. My shadow stretched far across the yard, almost to the feet of the statue of Queen Mab. How long had I been sitting out here?

I heard the angry voice again. “Mother, I can’t believe you followed through on this ridiculous idea!”

At the commanding, but somehow petulant, tone, I nearly dropped my book. Only one person in the Winter household could get away with speaking to Mrs. Winter like that – Owen Winter, the darling boy of this proud household and the object of my sister’s affections.