at each other, not wanting to be the one to look away first.
Had he left me speechless?
Queen Elizabeth would be ashamed if she saw me now. My mother would be, too.
But there was something about Rohan…
“I promise that my brother is no threat to you,” Queen Deidre said. “But if you prefer me to escort you to the start of the Angel Trials, then I’m more than happy to grant your request.”
Rohan watched me, challenging me.
After what he’d just said to me, I’d seem weak if I accepted the queen’s offer—even though I was the one who’d asked her to be my escort.
But having the queen accompany me would be far more appropriate than going alone with Rohan.
Screw what’s more appropriate, I thought. What do I want?
“Thank you for the offer,” I said to the queen. “But I’ll go with Rohan.”
22
Harper
Rohan led me down a huge hall more decadent than anything I’d ever seen. It was so beautiful that I wanted to slow down to take it all in.
“You coming?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Sorry.” I hurried to keep up, although I kept looking around as much as possible as we walked.
“The palace is French in design,” he explained, like he was giving me a tour. “This specific hall was inspired by the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.”
“Interesting.” I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about.
He smiled, like he could tell I’d never heard of the Hall of Mirrors, but he didn’t call me out on it. Instead, he slowed down and walked at my pace as I took in the beauty of the palace.
Eventually, he turned a corner into a smaller hall and stopped at a plain wooden door at the end of it. The door was the most unremarkable thing I’d seen in the palace so far. It looked positively medieval.
“This is the start of the Angel Trials?” I asked.
“You think we’d make it that easy?”
“No,” I said, since when was anything in the supernatural world ever easy? “Of course not.”
He took an iron key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, revealing a stone staircase that circled downward. Torches lined the walls to light the way. The path was so narrow that we’d have to walk single file.
“Follow me,” he said, and he started down the stairs.
I followed, and jumped as the door shut loudly behind me.
“You spook easily?” he asked.
“No.” I bristled.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The door gets most everyone.”
I was hardly “most everyone,” but he was so full of himself that I didn’t feel like arguing.
“It takes a bit of time to get to the bottom,” he said as we walked. “How about I use that time to tell you about myself?”
I rolled my eyes, even though he wasn’t looking back to see it. “By all means,” I said, since it would be better than walking in awkward silence. “Go ahead.”
“I was born in 1897, in India. But my life didn’t truly begin until the summer of 1918, when a beautiful witch named Kavya moved to my village,” he said, and while I couldn’t see his face, it sounded like he was smiling. “Of course, I didn’t know she was a witch at the time. She claimed to be a healer from the city, and she’d come to my village because the sickness that had been ravaging the country was headed our way. She wanted to try and save as many of us as possible.”
“That was the year of the Spanish Flu,” I said, since of course I’d learned about it. “Witches around the world tried to create a potion to cure it.”
They hadn’t been successful, since no potion had ever been created that could cure a naturally occurring human illness. But it hadn’t stopped them from trying.
“You know your history,” he said.
“Of course I know my history. I’m a high witch of Utopia.”
Was a high witch of Utopia.
Past tense. Utopia didn’t exist anymore.
I had a feeling he was thinking the same thing, and I braced myself for him to say it out loud to make some kind of point.
Instead he spun around and stared at me, still taller than me despite the fact that he was standing two steps below me. The fire from the nearest torch flickered across his eyes, and it was like he was staring into my soul.
“You’re more than just a high witch,” he said. “You’re also a vampire. Which probably makes you the strongest witch in the world.”
“It might.” My magic tingled with happiness inside