Page 43 of Marked By His Hunger
Protected it.
Buried it beneath skepticism and science and anything that made the world feel safer.
Here?
It was out in the open.
Practiced.
Taught.
Expected.
And I—I wasn’t crazy.
God.
That part still hit the hardest.
All those years. All those doctors.
All those quiet, careful voices telling me I was imagining things.
And now?
Now I was in a castle in another realm, surrounded by Witches and creatures I didn’t even have names for yet—and somehow that made more sense than anything I’d been told before.
“Um—here.”
I turned to see Ursula in the doorway, holding out a steaming mug.
“I brought you peppermint tea.”
Steam curled from the plain ceramic, and I took it like it was sacred, inhaling deeply.
Warm.
Grounding.
Real.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it.
Ursula leaned against the doorframe, watching me with that same steady calm she seemed to carry everywhere.
She was the opposite of me in every way.
Composed.
Confident.
Certain.
I followed her to the common room where we sat and sipped in silence.
“Kitchen Witch,” she’d told me earlier when I’d asked.
Potion adept. Herb specialist. Twelve generations of her family had studied at Runevald.
