Charlotte, Beckett, Swanmere lives as her father's untrimmed hedge.
Merlot Rainbaum searches for a miracle cure to heal her mother, who is none other than the Queen of the Mermaids.
Railey Ferntoss, renown across the Western Sector as the Dragon Mas...
اوووه! هذه الصورة لا تتبع إرشادات المحتوى الخاصة بنا. لمتابعة النشر، يرجى إزالتها أو تحميل صورة أخرى.
My inner peace squashed under the chilling cheerfulness from the other side of the door, I let my shoulders droop. Just a little. Just for one blasted second.
I turned the long, red handle, its shine doing nothing to quell the sudden weight of my legs as I fought to move them across the threshold.
Headmaster Ralph's office wasn't red. It had probably been red before, under a different Headmaster's reign. But this Headmaster had been here for longer than the 24 years I'd been alive, so I guess he had a right to change the scenery from making his eyes bleed every time he blinked.
So it was white. From the cracked, leather loveseat, to the sweeping drapes. Each book spine along the built-in, white shelves was covered in a white paper filament. Each picture frame sitting in a row on the edge of his, you guessed it, white desk, were white. It was all white. Even the ceiling fan. Even the blazing dangly things to control the pressure of the fan tinkled in white pearls that clinked and clanked against one another. The only background noise in a room that was effused in nothing else but white.
It scratched at my ears, the silence so loud I felt I could actually die from it.
"Hullo, Charlotte," the Ice Elf smiled, those pointed teeth patterned after spears or bears or some other yewing thing.
The weight in my legs refused to take me much further than the doorway. They simply gave up trying.
"Headmaster." I dipped my head, unable to curtsy given the unfortunate situation of my limbs. "Have I done something to upset you?"
Headmaster Ralph raised his furry white brows. The only way one could distinguish his eyebrows from his skin were their fluffiness, sticking off his face. Old and wizened, Headmaster Ralph had no choice but to dress in the long, silk-like robes of his position. One single red stain amidst all the white, the inhabitant of the fabric so ghastly pale as to have lost all his blood and pooled it on the robes to give them their color.
"Charlotte," the Headmaster said, his voice like a cold breath on the edge of a dark lake. There was an intimacy, a whispering secrecy about it, one that chilled me to the very core of my soul. "When have I ever been upset with you?"
My lips puckered up against my will, giving the Ice Elf my unwanted reaction that simultaneously gave him pleasure.
"I'm...I'm sorry, sir," I said, my voice thin and weedy like the grass beneath that dying tree of mine. "I, uh, if you just tell me who I need to apologize to..."
"No, Charlotte," Headmaster Ralph shook his head, the white beard hanging off his chin pointing about stiffly as he moved, "this is a new situation. A new, unprecedented, and...sorrowful situation. Please, dear, take a seat. I would think you should be sitting for what I am about to say."
