Her grinning face made her sound inauthentic, but it didn’t matter since she was able to do as she pleased anyway.
The clouds cleared up while we followed a little path downhill.
“Don’t you use a carriage?” I asked, and she scoffed in return.
“What? Because I’m rich?”
I've made a grave mistake.
To my surprise, she shook her head. “I mean, I don’t like the noise.”
From now on I had to be more careful around her.
“The air temple,” she said.
We reached the foot of the mountain. A tiny building of columns that let the breeze travel through appeared before us, and I realised why Tonio hadn’t specified the house.
Claire pointed at a mansion, the only one in sight of the temple. “Castle Di Centi.”
I swallowed down my nervousness, my throat stiffened. “I’ll bring you to the door.”
Roses welcomed us to the yard. Their number outgrew Claire’s description and seemed to never end. The neatly placed stones invited us in and I felt like royalty, stepping on them.
“Curly!” Tonio called when he noticed us. He was working on a piece of machinery that looked like a bike. Beside him crouched a dark-skinned boy, seemingly going through calculations. “Are you girls fine?”
Claire raised her brows and rolled her eyes.
“You are curly. I’m great.”
And indeed he was. His short cut allowed his hair to coil while Claire’s length weighed them down, leaving her with lavish waves.
“What about your girlfriend? What’s her name?”
She threw her arms around me. “Ve-rra. She’s a Mage just like you.” She pronounced my name correctly unlike Professor Rose. “We’ll drink a cup of tea, don’t annoy us.”
Tonio and I held eye contact, and his smile disappeared as soon as Claire turned around.
“Mage,” he mouthed and pinched his eyes as we slipped through the door, and I knew I was doomed.
The foyer was decorated with freshly cut flowers and paintings of faces that looked somewhat similar to one another. They all had olive skin and light hair.
Thankfully, the dim candlelight warmed me up a little. I was freezing when we approached the gigantic marble stairs. Until then, I couldn’t believe that someone stepped on them daily. Even less on the fine carpet that had been tailored accordingly.
Claire didn’t let go of my hand until we reached the dressing-room inside her bedroom. She called it a ‘closet’ and made me wonder if she ever knew what real closets looked like.
The amount of clothes was incredible. To fit them, they had to be squeezed together tightly.
She pulled out a black robe for me and made me change in front of a large mirror while she promised to get us some tea.
When I took off Harriet’s wet trousers, I dared to look at myself and regretted it immediately. Claire’s glow made me wish I was prettier, too, or at least well-fed. Thankfully, the robe was hiding most of my insecurities.
I left her clothing vault and plunged myself down on a wooden chair by the table.
Her room was as I expected it to be because it looked like she didn’t design it herself. The dark colour scheme contradicted her light personality. But I recognised a touch of her in the mess she left on the table and bed, like the pile of empty bottles underneath her nightstand.
Claire entered the room clapping her hands. A maid behind her brought the teapot and cups on a silver tray. After placing it on a table in the middle of the carpet, she bowed down and left.
“Tonio made that,” Claire said. “The chair, I mean.”
Just as she finished praising him, he appeared in the doorframe and smirked. “Do you like it?”
They both looked at me awaiting an answer, and I nodded. His demeanour reminded me of the interrogations I had been forced to endure.
“You’re scaring her.” Claire jumped up and shooed him away.
“Fine,” he said. “Leave the door open.”
She rolled her eyes and ended up closing it.
I didn’t expect to be served tea by the, I assumed, wealthiest person in town a day after arriving at the academy. She offered me various fruit teas, and I shuffled through them all, though I knew I would pick chamomile like I always did.
While she let it steep in a glass pot, she laid down on the carpet and put her legs on the bed. Her skirt followed gravity and collected itself on her pelvis, luring my attention towards her chunky lap.
Finally, I got over the fact that she had a say over my future and voiced my thoughts.
“Spirit,” I said, suppressing my laughter, “is that the secret to your potions? You need to cover the taste somehow if you want it to stay a secret.”
Her eyes widened when she pulled a box from under her layered bed. “Give me your hands,” she whispered.
The warmth of Claire’s thick fingers radiated through the gloves. She placed rose petals in my palms, pushed them into the air and let them rain down on us. Inside the box laid a bottle of spirit.
“Spirit and petals of the flower known as thorny, mix them up and it leaves you…,” she sang and let me finish her dirty rhyme.
My ears flushed red.
“Did it work?”
“I lied about the lavender. If that’s what you wanted, yes.”
After she started picking up the petals, I found some of them trapped in her icy locks and helped pull them out. I admired the length of her hair, as I could never grow out mine and therefore kept the same hairstyle for a decade.
“You only caught me because you’re a Mage, that doesn’t count,” she said, and I laughed about her desperate attempt to make herself feel better.
She poured some spirit into our empty cups and pushed one to me.
“The berry was literally drenched in alcohol, you don’t have to get me sloshed now,” I declined, and she emptied both cups, squinching her face.
“Weakling,” I laughed at her, and she slapped me on the shoulder before she jumped up and danced around me—trying to provoke a playful fight.
I grabbed her by the ankles and
