Chapter 159: witchcraft fundamentals

Chapter 159: Witchcraft Fundamentals

POV: Astrid Vale

The classroom looked nothing like any other room I’d stepped into at Moonshade, chalk circles etched carefully into the floor, shelves lined with jars of unfamiliar ingredients, stacks of old books with cracked spines scattered across every surface. Eliza moved through it with obvious ease, settling into her seat like she’d been born for exactly this environment.

"This is so much cooler than I expected," Ivy whispered, eyeing a shelf of glass containers filled with something that shimmered faintly even in the dim light.

I found myself fascinated despite having no real reason to be, something tugging at a memory I couldn’t quite place. My mother had always gone tense whenever I’d asked questions about witchcraft as a child, her expression closing off the moment the topic surfaced, redirecting me toward something else entirely before I’d even finished the question.

A woman stood at the front of the room, introducing herself as Professor Mirelle, her presence commanding immediate attention despite her otherwise unassuming appearance. "Witchcraft is about directing magical energy through intent, structure, and control," she began. "Magic itself isn’t inherently good or evil. What matters entirely is how it’s used."

Something in that statement caught at me immediately, contradicting everything I’d absorbed throughout childhood. Witches are bad. Don’t trust them. My mother’s warnings, repeated often enough that I’d never once questioned them, suddenly felt less certain against Mirelle’s calm, matter-of-fact delivery.

I didn’t say anything, filing the contradiction away as the lesson continued.

Mirelle demonstrated a basic elemental spell, frost spreading delicately across the surface of a small stone table, and the sight of it pulled an old memory loose before I could stop it.

I remembered the attic above the brothel, the woman who lived there freezing the wooden floorboards solid even in the middle of summer, impossible sheets of ice stretching across the attic floor that I’d snuck up to skate across nearly every night as a child. I remembered the cold biting at my bare feet, the thrill of something that shouldn’t have existed in that sweltering summer heat, and my mother’s face the night she’d caught me sneaking back down the stairs, worry tightening every line of her expression as she warned me again to stay away.

I hadn’t thought about that memory in years.

"We’re going to practice a basic exercise," Mirelle announced, pulling my attention back to the present. "Feel the magical energy in the object in front of you, and guide it through a simple pattern. Don’t force it. Let it move."

I picked up the small stone placed in front of me, trying to follow the same technique other students seemed to be using, and produced absolutely nothing. A few classmates managed faint flickers of light or warmth, Eliza’s object glowing steadily within seconds, while mine remained stubbornly inert no matter how hard I concentrated.

"You’re forcing it," Eliza said quietly, leaning over. "Stop trying to copy what everyone else is doing and just let it happen naturally."

I set aside my frustration and tried again, breathing slowly, letting go of the deliberate effort I’d been pouring into the attempt. The stone warmed gently in my palm, a small, controlled glow spreading across its surface, steady and easy in a way that surprised even me.

Mirelle noticed from across the room, her eyes lingering on me a moment longer than necessary before moving on without comment.

"That was unusually easy for someone with no formal training," Eliza said, studying me with open curiosity.

"I don’t know why," I admitted.

"Neither do I," she said, though she didn’t push the observation any further, simply filing it away alongside everything else about me that didn’t quite fit the ordinary pattern.

After class, I found myself asking the question that had been sitting uncomfortably in my chest since Mirelle’s opening statement. "Are witches actually dangerous?" I asked Eliza. "I mean, genuinely."

She looked surprised by the question. "Witches can be dangerous," she said, "the same way Lycans can be dangerous, or anyone with power, really. But witchcraft itself isn’t evil. It’s just energy. What someone does with it determines whether it causes harm."

I thought about my mother’s warnings again, repeated so often throughout my childhood that I’d never once thought to question their foundation. For the first time, I wondered what exactly had made her so certain witches couldn’t be trusted, what experience had shaped that fear so deeply that she’d passed it on to me without explanation.

As we were leaving, Mirelle demonstrated one final small spell for a student who’d stayed behind with questions, cooling the air near her desk with a simple gesture, frost spreading delicately across the wood in a pattern that pulled the attic memory back into sharp focus one last time.

Beneath the surface of my thoughts, Sapphire stirred, something quiet and attentive settling through her at the sight, though I couldn’t understand why a wolf would react to witch magic at all, let alone with something that felt less like alarm and more like recognition.

I left the classroom turning the question over without any clear answer, Sapphire’s strange response, my mother’s old warnings, the unexpected ease with which I’d produced that small glow despite having no training whatsoever.

I thought, too, about the way Mirelle’s eyes had lingered on me after that small, controlled glow, the same careful attention she might give a student worth watching more closely. It wasn’t suspicion exactly, more like quiet interest, the kind that made me wonder whether she noticed something about me that I hadn’t noticed myself yet, something buried just beneath the surface, waiting.

I decided I’d pay closer attention to her next time, just in case.

I knew, walking away from that classroom, that I wanted to take witchcraft seriously, not out of obligation or curiosity about my own abilities, but because something I’d once been warned to fear felt, for reasons I couldn’t yet explain, strangely and comfortingly familiar.