by Eva Chase
My throat closed up. The hand Rory wasn’t holding had clenched against the grass.
“I broke his back,” I forced myself to say. “And fractured his skull. He’s paralyzed from the waist down, and the brain injury—he’s still in there, but he can hardly communicate, can’t get his words out well enough to do much in the way of casting. Which is why there wasn’t any point in him coming here. But I can’t say that I feel like I won.”
“Of course you don’t,” Rory burst out. “Your parents—Christ—they tortured you until you broke, like anyone would if they were beaten up enough.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, but I broke first. He never came at me.”
“Connar…” She squeezed my hand so tightly the bones ached. “I still don’t think you’re a horrible person. They’re the horrible ones. I can’t even—to put your own kids through that—” She let out a wordless sound of fury. As if I were worthy of defending.
It occurred to me that I did owe someone else one more thing. “You should know,” I said, “even after that, Malcolm never treated me any differently. Declan and Jude—well, they’d been wary from the moment my mom stole the position, and that just made it worse. And everyone at school, when I got here, just knew that I’d beaten my brother to a pulp to claim scionhood, so they kept their distance. Malcolm was the only person who made being here bearable. Who made me think maybe I could move past that. The last thing I ever wanted to do was turn on him too.”
Rory got what I was saying. “When you put it that way, I can see why you’d have picked him over me. Not that you had to go that far—”
“I know. I panicked and I overcompensated and—there’s no excuse. I was awful to you. I just wanted you to know it wasn’t blind loyalty. Malcolm really has been there for me when no one else was. I just hope he can snap out of this furor he’s gotten into now, because it’s not good for any of us.”
“No.” Rory looked down at our joined hands. Her jaw worked, and she raised her eyes to meet mine again. “But I want you to know that I’ll never be like that. I’ll never expect you to hurt anyone else, to betray anyone, on my behalf. You decide what you do on your own. I just ask that you don’t hurt me.”
For the first time since she’d brought up my brother, I felt capable of a smile, if only a small one. “Yeah,” I said, gazing back at her with a hum around my heart like nothing I’d ever felt before. “I think I can manage that.”
Chapter Fourteen
Rory
“Well, now, I suppose we can order anything on this menu without it being a hardship to your accounts,” my grandmother said with a twitter and a fluff of her silver-white curls. The laugh was supposed to tell me she was only teasing, I thought, but the ravenous gleam in her pale little eyes told a different story.
How had Jude described my paternal grandparents? “Grasping” was the word that came to mind first, maybe because I’d seen plenty of evidence of that just in the first five minutes of this lunch I’d reluctantly arranged. My grandmother had immediately vetoed the nice but casual restaurant I’d picked because I liked the food in favor of one of the town’s few posh offerings. While my grandfather was more subtle, he’d already made an inquiry about the Bloodstone collection of vehicles hinting that I couldn’t possibly need all of them and should gift one to him.
I’d have been happy to hand over a car or three if it meant the senior Evergrists would have gone away and never hassled me or Declan again, but I had the feeling they’d be like a toddler handed a cookie to soothe a tantrum. As soon as you gave in once, they’d come back kicking and screaming for another even more insistently than before.
Thankfully, the Bloodstone accounts could handle the entire menu with no trouble at all, so I pretended I’d only heard the comment as a joke. “Order whatever you like,” I said, and picked out a Cobb salad for myself. I could get through that and therefore this lunch pretty fast.
It was hard to imagine what kind of son these people might have raised. If he’d been anything like them, it was even harder to imagine what my mother, as the heir of Bloodstone, would have seen in him beyond the grasping for power. But then, people didn’t always follow in their parents’ footsteps. Connar was clearly nowhere near the monster his parents had tried to bully him into being.
The memory of that recent conversation brought a fresh ache of sympathy into my chest. God, to be raised by people like that—to be brutalized and battered into brutalizing in turn… I restrained a shudder.
I wanted to think that my birth parents hadn’t been anything like that. That if I had been raised by them, my life wouldn’t have been horrific. But… I really didn’t know, did I? How a mother responded to a newborn might be very different from how she’d act as that kid grew up, as the expectations grew. From the pictures in their photo album, my Bloodstone mother had been friendly with Malcolm’s dad, who was his own brand of asshole.
And she’d also connected herself to the two people sitting across from me, who turned on the viciousness in their falsely sweet way the second after our meals arrived.
“So,” my grandmother said with a sharp smile as she speared a piece of her pasta, “you’ve become quite fond of that Ashgrave boy, have you?”
My fingers tightened around my fork instinctively. I kept my expression and my tone as blasé as I could manage. “Well, you know, he’s a fellow scion. It’s good for us to get along.”
My grandfather cleared his throat. “It looked as though you were more than ‘getting along’.”
Declan had stonewalled them, so they were looking to get some telling admission from me. Fuck that. I smiled back at them, my mind leaping to a possible diversion. “Oh, at the country property? That was more like a study break. I’ve had a lot of catching up on my magical practice to do, as I’m sure you can imagine, and sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on campus. I’ve actually found I’m enjoying the company of the other scions more when I’m not studying.”
That wasn’t the direction they’d wanted to steer me in, but my grandmother’s gaze lit up eagerly anyway. She just loved gossip, no matter what information she was getting. “Oh, really,” she said in a cajoling tone. “I suppose they are all a fine lot of gentlemen.”
Gentlemen was probably not the word I’d have used for all the scions, but I could go with that.
I set my face in a dreamy expression. “They are. Jude can be so charming—and Connar… There’s something about a guy that physically powerful…” I shook my head as if in bemusement, although my mind had slipped back to the awe-inspiring form he’d shifted into the other day. That dragon—I couldn’t have drawn or sculpted anything so vibrantly spectacular. “The hard part is deciding who I want to focus on. But I guess there’s nothing wrong with playing the field, right?”
“Of course not,” my grandmother said, but she looked a tad disgruntled. Me dallying with those two scions didn’t give her any blackmail material. She obviously hadn’t let go of her main goal, though, because a few bites later, she remarked, “The Ashgrave boy should be more careful about appearances. I don’t think it’d do for him to seem to be getting too close to a student he’s supposed to be helping teach, scion or not.”
“I’m sure he’s well aware of that concern,” I said, resisting the urge to grit my teeth.
My grandparents prattled on about this thing and that—what I should do with the Bloodstone properties, how much they’d like visiting access to one of them, various possessions of my father’s they wondered pointedly about—until our plates were cleared. I couldn’t summon the bill fast enough. I’d thought I’d make my escape then, but as we stepped out of the restaurant, my grandmother grabbed my elbow and tugged me in the opposite direction from the road to campus.
“It’s been so long since we had you with us, we must extend the visit a little longer. We can have a stroll and window-shop.”
Somehow I suspected “window-shopping” was going to turn into “make noises about how lovely it’d be if Rory bought one th
ing or another for us.” And even if it didn’t, I had zero desire to spend one minute longer in the company of these people, family or not.
“I actually have to get back to school for class,” I said. The class in question wasn’t for another hour and a half, but they didn’t know that.
“Oh, what are they going to say if you miss one? You’re the Bloodstone scion! You deserve to enjoy some freedom.”
Walking around with her clutching my arm wasn’t exactly what I’d consider freedom. I suppressed a wince as her fingers dug in tighter, groping for a way to refuse more firmly without totally pissing her off—because Lord only knew how she’d retaliate against me or Declan then—and of all people, Professor Viceport came ambling down the street toward us.
I tensed automatically, expecting my difficulties to multiply, but my new mentor glanced over the three of us, and something shifted in her reserved expression. She strode right up to us.
“Miss Bloodstone,” she said. “I believe you’re wanted on campus, as soon as you can get there. A concern about your project.”
She put a slight emphasis on that last word and gave me a meaningful look. I stared back at her, only fully comprehending when she turned her gaze on my grandparents with a tight slant of her lips.
I’d finally found someone the Physicality professor liked even less than she liked me. She must have recognized my discomfort, and she was offering me an escape route.
“I’d better get on that right away,” I said gratefully, extricating my arm from my grandmother. “So sorry to run, but my summer project has a tricky balance to maintain. The whole thing could end up ruined.”
“But—” my grandmother started.
Professor Viceport interrupted her with a curt little cough. “Miss Bloodstone’s education must be a high priority to her family, I’m sure, considering the time she’s lost from it.”
My grandmother snapped her mouth shut. My grandfather, at least, looked chagrinned. “Of course,” he said to me. “You do us proud now.”
Gladly. “I’m sure we’ll talk again,” I said. I couldn’t quite bear to add a “soon” to the end of that sentence. With a brisk wave, I hurried away.
The afternoon class I actually needed to attend had been labeled as Illusion, but when I looked at my schedule again as I got ready to leave, I noticed the location wasn’t a classroom but someplace called “Casting Grounds.” Where the hell was that?
To my relief, when I set off to figure that out, I ran into Imogen on the green. “Hey,” I said. “Can you tell me where the Casting Grounds are?”
“I can show you,” Imogen said with a quick smile. “I’m heading there too. Looks like we’re learning by example today if they’re calling everyone out there. It’s a clearing in the west woods not too far from the lake for larger scale practice in conjuring and illusions.”
She led me past Nightwood Tower and across the west field to the woods. When we reached the clearing after about a ten-minute walk through the forest, it turned out to look pretty much the same as the Shifting Grounds where Connar had shown me his mythic transformation: a wide circle of trimmed grass framed by trees on all sides. I guessed there had to be wards up here too, preventing Naries from wandering out this way when we were working magic.
As Imogen had suggested, it looked like all the fearmancer students currently on campus had been called to this lesson. A few dozen students already stood along the edge of the clearing. Professor Burnbuck, who’d taught my Illusion seminars so far, was poised in the middle of the grassy space with a woman whose name I didn’t know but who was probably the junior Illusion instructor.
“Come around, spread out,” the woman said with a sweeping gesture. “No need to cluster together. We want you all to have a good view.”
“What’s happening?” one of the other students asked.
“Some of our most advanced students will be giving a demonstration in the full capabilities of illusionary magic,” Professor Burnbuck said with a tip of his head toward a few figures gathered at the far end of the clearing.
I drifted away from Imogen, studying that bunch. Jude wasn’t with the group or anywhere else around the clearing that I could make out. Surely he should be part of this demonstration? I might not have appreciated his prank with the illusionary bears last term, but there was no mistaking he had plenty of skill in that area. As scion, he was probably the best in the school, just like Connar was in Physicality.
Was he off somewhere getting drunk again? Or getting into some other kind of trouble? My stomach clenched at the thought.
The rest of the students must have arrived. As Professor Burnbuck began his introductions, I spotted Victory and her crew across the clearing from me, Victory shooting me a narrow look before turning her attention to the professor.
The first advanced student stepped forward to show off his skills. I stepped closer to the trees as he sent a streak of light singing around the clearing—and nearly bumped into someone I hadn’t heard coming up behind me.
“Careful there.” Malcolm’s voice came out smooth and quiet. He set his hand on my waist as if to steady me as I caught my balance, but it lingered there. His thumb traced a line up over my side like he’d caressed my leg through his magic the other day, and a flicker of warmth I didn’t like at all raced over my skin.
“Sorry,” I said flatly. “You can let go of me now.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want? I think you like this.” He teased all of his fingers over my side with a slow stroke, pulling them together and then splaying them.
So we were ramping up the game, were we? For a second I was torn between pulling away from him and pushing back, but the second impulse won. Walking away was backing down, wasn’t it?
Even if I liked the sensation a little, he wanted this more than I did. That gave me the power.
I eased backward half a step so my body came to rest against his. The faint hitch of his chest at the contact brought a smile to my lips. “Are you sure you don’t like it too much? I’m not the one getting hot and bothered.” Just… warm and slightly distracted.
There was a moment when I thought Malcolm might be the one to back down. Then his hand clasped my waist a little more firmly. “Usually it’s the people who play with fire who get burned.”
“Hmm. So your mistake is assuming that you’re the fire in this equation when it’s actually me.”
I adjusted my stance just a smidge, just enough to create a bit of friction between us as I moved. Malcolm’s hand slid to my hip, his voice rough when he spoke next.
“Not so good anymore, are you, Glinda?”
“I guess that depends on your definition of ‘good’.”
The glide of his thumb over my hipbone sent a deeper flare of heat to my core. I concentrated all my attention on the display the first advanced student was just wrapping up, willing my body’s reactions to fade into the background.
It was kind of ridiculous, wasn’t it? My grandparents had been all caught up in the idea of me with Declan, and I’d fed them that story about bouncing between Jude and Connar, but I’d been more physically intimate with the guy behind me than any of those three in the last couple weeks.
That thought might have given me more pause, except as the student giving the first demonstration stepped back, Victory made an odd gesture with her hand. My back stiffened in recognition that she was casting before I even saw what she’d produced. Then my entire body froze.
She was playing with illusions too. A white mouse shimmered into being in the middle of the clearing between us, floating in mid-air—larger than Deborah was so people could see it from the fringes, but I had no doubt it was my familiar she intended to represent.
In that moment, I forgot Malcolm completely. I sucked in a breath, and the mouse’s body began to tear apart limb by limb. It shuddered and spasmed as one leg wrenched off its abdomen, then another, then the chest flayed open with a spurt of blood—
My stomach heaved. I had to clamp my mo
uth shut to avoid spewing half-digested Cobb salad all over the grass. Across the clearing, a triumphant grin had curved Victory’s lips.
She still hadn’t learned her lesson.
I balled up all my horror at her display and whipped a surge of energy toward the illusionary mouse with a tautly whispered word. My magic flung the image straight at her, so abruptly she had no time to dodge.
The white ball of fur exploded in a burst of far more blood than any mouse’s body could really contain, splattering Victory’s face and blouse.
It wasn’t real gore of course, any more than the mouse had really been Deborah. But I’d thrown a metallic stink and the tacky feel of congealing blood into my casting, and she’d be experiencing all of that as if it were real. With a yelp of dismay, she swiped at her face and arms—but she couldn’t dislodge an illusion like that.
She caught my gaze from across the clearing, looking twice as fierce with red streaked across her forehead and cheeks. I didn’t have to find out what she’d have tried to do to me next, though, because Professor Burnbuck lifted his voice right then.
“Thank you for the additional demonstration, but I’d appreciate it if we could get back to the ones planned now.”
He shot a firm glance Victory’s way. I wasn’t sure he’d even realized who she’d been sparring with. She took a step back and then faded farther out of sight between the trees, presumably to dispel my illusion.
Malcolm leaned close enough that his breath spilled warm over my hair, bringing me back into tingling awareness of his presence. “Not so nice at all, Bloodstone. You do have that fearmancer viciousness in you somewhere, don’t you?”