Pennyroyal Academy by M.A. Larson Page B

exultant cheer went up as the carriage crested the hill and the girls pushing it collapsed. Demetra sat up, mud sluicing from her dress, and beamed down at her friends.
She looks like a princess as well.
Evie was happy for her, of course, but Basil had shifted her thoughts away from the hill. She looked beyond Demetra, beyond the trees that fringed the top of the hill. Her eyes focused instead on the low ceiling of clouds covering the sky from horizon to horizon. Fingers of black swirled through the dull gray, dark and darker rivulets stretching across the entire sky.
    One eye remained on those clouds as she and her friends crossed through campus for their first classroom lecture, something called Witch Tactics with Lieutenant Volf. To Evie’s frustration, Maggie, Demetra, and Anisette had welcomed Basil into their group. So it was the five of them, sapphire uniforms marred by mud and, in Anisette’s case, blood, hurrying across a bailey of packed dirt and gravel toward the Wolfseye Keep, a massive structure with glassy, obsidian walls. While the others bantered about their first successful drill at the Academy, Evie just couldn’t wrest her focus from the skies.
    â€œOne round of field training and I can’t feel my arms,” said Demetra.
    â€œCome to me da’s shop, hey? We’ll show you what real work feels like,” said Anisette.
    â€œOr,” said Basil with a sheepish grin, “she could send a servant round to do it for her.”
    Anisette laughed with surprise. “That’s quite good, Bas,” she said, punching him in the arm.
    Evie caught a glimpse of something across the courtyard. She stopped walking while the others continued on. There, partially obscured behind a copse of bloodapple trees, stood Remington. He laughed easily with his companions, and wore the black Thrushbeard doublet like he had been born to it. His smile contained such surety, as though he always knew a secret no one else did. A memory flickered through her mind. His eyes closing . . . his lips lowering to hers . . .
    And then a hand fell lightly on his arm. It was sleeved in white, dotted with mud. Malora bent forward, eyes closed in laughter, leaning against him for support. He said something else, and they both laughed even harder.
    â€œCome on, Eves!” called Demetra.
    With a frown, she followed her friends into Wolfseye Keep. Through cold passageways and claustrophobic tubes of spiral stairs, Remington remained on her mind. And she was still thinking about him later as she sat behind a carved wooden desk in Lieutenant Volf’s classroom. The air was hot and dry, thanks to a small, glowing hearth next to her desk. Out the window, the Queen’s Tower shimmered, its spire enveloped by clouds.
    â€œHappiness and joy are as intolerable to the witch as anguish and misery are to the princess,” said the old man, his white hair fanning off in all directions. This was Lieutenant Volf, the foremost authority on princess lore and history in all the land. He was slight of frame, with a sharp chin that seemed to pull his mouth into a permanent frown. His voice was mostly breath, and labored breath at that. “Calivigne and her Council of Sisters have only one goal in mind: the extinction of happiness. This is not a choice she has made. This is simply
who she is.
    â€œIt is most important that you understand this concept,” he said, brittle joints crackling like firewood as he shuffled around a desk so ancient it looked like it had been cut from the world’s first tree. “The witch hates you because she must.”
    He strode slowly across the front of the room, arms folded behind him. Evie noticed Maggie scrawling notes on her parchment. Nearly everyone else was doing the same. She looked down at her own and frowned. The words
witch tactics
were written across the top and nothing more.
    â€œMany years ago, I had a cadet called Rose-Red who could never