The Herbwitch's Apprentice by Ireen Chau (great books to read txt) 📕

“To last you a lifetime.”

He raised his brows.

“You and your mother are very similar,” I said.

He laughed. “I’m afraid we are.”

“And what about your father?” I instantly regretted the words as they came out of my mouth. He stopped smiling and bent down to busy himself with gathering more parchment. I wanted to slap myself. He must’ve thought I was trying to weasel out information about his illegitimate birth.

“He spends more time with Bennett. My brother is the crown prince, after all,” he said. There was hardly any emotion in his voice as he said this.

I thought back to the countless nights I had to spend alone when Lydia began etiquette lessons with Genevieve. I was only eleven at the time and I was forbidden to join lest I be a pest. As I got older, I started running from them instead.

We shelved the books in silence for several minutes. Somewhere along the way, the tension dissolved into a companionable silence as the sun climbed up the sky. When I tucked the last book into the shelf, I broke the silence.

“Is that all?” I asked, standing up.

“Seems like it.” Prince Ash said.

“I should get going, then.”

He nodded. I was halfway down the aisle of shelves before he spoke again. “Amarante? Make sure to come back next week. I have a feeling the east end will be particularly dirty by then.”

I caught a glimpse of his smile between the shelves before he disappeared.

He called me Amarante.

14

Papa once told me that books were treasure chests of knowledge. It was the winter after I turned seven. We were in his study taking our tea near the warmth of the fireplace. The velvet drapes were pushed back from the window, heavy droplets of rain pounding against the roof and peppering the glass in clear, crystalline orbs.

I was leaning over his shoulder, watching him flip over the worn pages of a thick volume. The print was so small I had a headache looking at it.

“Papa, why must you read that book?” I whined, tugging his ears. “Can’t we join Genevieve and stepmother in the parlor?”

He laughed, the sound like warm honey to my ears. “Lydia has her own plans with Genevieve, my flower,” he said. He closed the book anyway, just to please me. I climbed onto his lap, glad to have his undivided attention.

“Would you like to learn how to read, Amarante?” Papa asked after a moment. I stopped playing with his cravat and looked up at him. He hadn’t shaved that day, the whiskers on his chin shadowing his face.

“To read? Mrs. Handel said I was too young to learn,” I said.

“You mustn’t always listen to your governess,” Papa said. He lifted me from his lap and set me down, reaching for a thin book on the shelf behind him. “Here,” he said, placing the book on his desk. “I will teach you.”

I stood on my tiptoes as Papa opened the covers to reveal vibrantly colored illustrations and large letters.

“That looks difficult,” I said.

“Ah, don’t you know, Amarante? When you read, you will learn about the world, or be swept on fantastic adventures you could never imagine,” he said with great zest, pointing at the window to the great beyond. The rain had stopped and a hint of golden sunlight peeked through the dense, gray clouds.

“Really?” I said.

Papa smiled his knowing smile. “The more knowledge you gain, the wiser you’ll be. And books, my flower, are treasure chests of knowledge.”

I had never been a great reader, regretfully, for I was easily intimidated by the books Papa so loved. He often read volumes on philosophy or economics, or novels as thick as my mattress. I never could imagine myself comprehending any of it.

As a result, the books Lana gave me sat under my bed for several days. I was almost afraid to let them touch daylight, as if they would crumble to dust if the sun made contact with the pages. But I knew that Lana’s books were nothing like Papa’s. Even after days out of my sight, they held my curiosity. I eventually asked Tori if I could take a peek at their library, where I stripped off the dust jacket of Lady Strongfoot’s sappy romance novel to conceal what I was actually reading. This garnered some strange looks from Tori and Genevieve as I devoured the pages at every meal.

“Ah, the prime age for young girls to fill their heads with mush,” Lord Strongfoot said when he noticed my undivided attention to what he thought was A Sailor’s Seduction: Tales of Romance at Sea.

I was too distracted to be embarrassed. It turned out that Papa was right—books were treasure chests of knowledge. And books on witch magic were like pirate coves of rare gems and antique gold. My muddled ideas about magic and types of witches finally made sense. Like Lana had said, every witch’s magic worked differently. Whereas one witch could hear the thoughts of plants and animals, another could sense their usefulness or purpose in a potion or charm. I thought about the colors I saw and how I instantly knew what they meant.

The crystal Lana gave me was another odd change. With each passing day, I became more familiar with it and sensed that it became more familiar with me. It hummed whenever I touched it, as if emitting its own energy. Slowly but surely, I called upon the colors with ease and made them disappear just as quickly. I knew the jar on Tori’s desk emitting puffs of pale pink was meant to get rid of freckles and the tube of paste oozing indigo blue in Lord Strongfoot’s pocket tamed his hair and beard.

I stopped being startled by my witch traits and instead began to admire them. My cheeks glittered as if brushed with gold dust. My eyes, instead of the dark earthy brown I was used to, caught the light in quite an entrancing way. Genevieve teased