by Eva Chase
His voice held a smolder hotter than before, as if watching me lash out had turned him on. The heat of it sank right into me. “Maybe you should keep that in mind when you’re trying to mess with me,” I shot back.
“Mmm. I don’t mind if you pay me back for this kind of messing around.” His mouth grazed the back of my head. His fingers caressed my hip again, and the heat he’d provoked in me pooled between my thighs.
“Oh, yeah?” I made myself turn to look up at him. I’d known how I meant to end this, but the hunger in his gaze stopped me for a second, radiating into me.
I remembered that one kiss. I remembered how good it had felt. An echo of the sensation tingled over my lips.
Malcolm was obviously thinking along similar lines. His head dipped down, and I snapped out of that momentary daze. He’d just given me the perfect opening.
“What if I pay you back by leaving you hanging?” I said, and slipped out of his grasp just before his mouth could catch mine. I walked off along the edge of the clearing behind the other gathered students, not gratifying him with so much as a backward glance. As if nothing we’d just done had any impact on me at all.
It had, though, in ways I hadn’t even expected. Simply walking away from him sent a weird thrill through me even hotter than what his touch had stirred. My nerves were humming with it.
It turned me on, knowing I could provoke that hunger in him and leave him wanting.
I came to a stop several feet away from him to focus on the demonstration again, but that sudden piece of understanding settled inside me with an uncomfortable jab. What did it say about me if I could enjoy jerking someone around like that, even someone who’d jerked me around as much as Malcolm had before? How much of the predatory fearmancer instinct was innate, something waking up inside me rather than something I’d escaped when the joymancers had taken me?
Had my birth mother even liked my dad… or had he simply been useful to her in some way I couldn’t comprehend yet? Maybe I was following her footsteps in ways that never would have occurred to me.
A sour flavor filled my mouth. I made myself raise my chin as I listened to the next planned illusion with its swell of music.
I didn’t have to be as cruel as most of the fearmancers I’d met could be. I didn’t have to be as calculating. But if I had the instincts to fend for myself in a community full of predators… was it really so wrong to use them?
Chapter Fifteen
Rory
I wasn’t so naïve as to think that my take on the summer project would go undisturbed. After some research in the library, I’d constructed a spell that I’d attached to the soil around Benjamin’s chosen building site that should send a jolt of magic my way if anyone expended much of their own magical energy there. I’d had to bolster the spell’s power a couple times a day to make sure it stayed effective, but the time and effort I’d put in proved to be worth it when the first jolt hit me just as I was rinsing my dinner dishes.
The signal shivered up my spine, and I nearly dropped the plate I was holding. I set it down on the other, unrinsed dishes that my dormmates had left behind—I still couldn’t quite bear to leave all the work to the maintenance staff—and headed straight out the door, wiping my wet hands on my pants.
I took the stairs at a swift pace, my shoes clattering against the hard surface, but I could tell something had already gone wrong as I came around the outside of the building. Someone was talking in a raised, anxious voice.
Benjamin and his three friends from the architecture program were standing by the site. Earlier today, the maintenance staff they’d been allowed to rope into their plans had prepped that spot for the foundation of their scholarship clubhouse. The smell of freshly dug earth reached my nose on the breeze.
One of the girls was flinging her arm toward the cleared and flattened ground. “It’s going to look awful,” she was saying. “This whole idea was stupid.”
“Come on,” Benjamin said. “We’ve gotten so much done—we got the whole ball rolling. We can’t stop now. I still think it’s going to be great. You did awesome work on it, Cassie.”
She shook her head before he’d even finished speaking. “It’s taking up so much time too. I have—I have other things to get done.”
Other things like whatever her various assigned fearmancers had planned? I set my jaw, staying where I was. In the fading evening light, no one was likely to notice me there beside the building. If I walked closer, onto the field, they might get nervous and scatter. None of them knew I was on their side.
Benjamin was my official “target,” but I hadn’t heard anyone say we couldn’t cast magic on other Naries too. I trained my eyes on Cassie and gathered the energy thrumming at the base of my throat.
“You remember how great it would be to have a place where the regular students can’t hassle you. Think about all the work you’ve put in. You’re just feeling a little overwhelmed. You really do want to see this through.”
As I watched, she hesitated. Then she swiped her hand across her mouth. My persuasion might have swayed her thinking, but she wasn’t expressing those new thoughts to her friends.
“The staff don’t really want to help us either,” she said after a moment. “We’re architects—and not even real ones yet—not builders. If they’re going to take forever…”
Had my classmates been messing with the maintenance workers too? I made a mental note to stop by while the three guys I’d seen handling this project were out here tomorrow. But in the meantime…
My gaze slid over to where a few other students, also with the gold leaf pins that marked them as Naries, had wandered onto the field nearby. The more support my bunch had, the harder it’d be for anyone else to shake them from their goals.
“Ask what they’re doing,” I murmured, training my attention on the nearest guy, and then shifted my focus to Benjamin. “Tell them the truth.”
As the one guy asked and the other explained their plan for the clubhouse where they could relax without worrying about harassment from the rest of the student body, satisfaction unfurled in my chest. I shouldn’t get complacent, though. While the other Naries exclaimed over what a great idea the building was, I whispered a few more lines to shape my warding spell across that distance.
I thought I could get it to not just warn me about magic being cast, but deflect at least some of that energy. It wouldn’t protect the Naries all over campus, but it’d shelter them a bit while they were joining the work out here.
Cassie had brightened with the other students’ enthusiasm. It looked as though I’d kept them on track. I drew back around the building, meaning to head back up, but as I reached the green I caught a flash of copper hair as a lanky form stalked into Nightwood Tower.
Where was Jude going? There weren’t any classes this late.
He must be heading up to the piano room. That was the place I’d seen him retreat to after Malcolm had torn him a new one for expressing his interest in me last term. I didn’t think he turned to his music when he was in a cheerful mood.
I wavered for all of half a second, and then I hurried after him. Whatever had gotten into Jude, it clearly wasn’t getting out again easily. I’d taken a chance confronting Connar the other day, and that had worked out just fine. Maybe I could figure out what Jude’s problem was just as quickly.
At the very least, I wanted to try. Maybe I was angry about the way he’d treated the Naries and his lack of remorse, maybe I couldn’t see us being anything more than colleagues, but I was allowed to worry about a colleague who was going off the rails. I didn’t wish misery on Jude. He might have messed up priorities, but I didn’t think he was an awful human being. If there was something making him miserable that I could help with… I’d do what I could.
This time, I was far enough behind that I didn’t need to use any magic to disguise my approach. I knew where I’d find him without trailing close behind.
After more than three months of tramping up and down the tower’s stai
rs, I managed to make it to the piano room on its high floor without getting winded. I stopped outside, leaning close, and a clang of aggressively played keys reached my ears. Yeah, he didn’t sound happy at all.
I nudged open the door. Jude’s hands jerked to a halt where they’d been moving over the keys. He stared at me for a second, his expression tight with an emotion I couldn’t read. Then he said, flat and dark, “Get out.”
“No.” I shut the door behind me. “Whatever’s going on, I think you should talk to someone about it. Drinking, skipping classes, and being a jerk to everyone around you clearly isn’t fixing anything.”
“And you think you can fix it?” He let out a hollow chuckle. “Let it go, Rory. You didn’t want me anyway.”
“So I’m only allowed to care what happens to you if I’m also willing to date you?” I came over to the side of the piano. Jude studiously kept his gaze on the piano. A chill tickled through me with a sudden thought—what if he’d found out something to do with me? That was, something to do with whatever malicious plots were still going on around me. Something that disturbed him but that he didn’t believe he could fight against, so he was shutting me out.
His father was a baron, after all. Jude might not have known much when Declan had talked to him, but that could have changed.
“Look,” I said, “you’re going to tell me, or I’m going to pick it out of your brain. I’d rather it didn’t come to that. You know I wouldn’t ask so I could hurt you, Jude. Please.”
He shifted his gaze back to me then, his dark green eyes steely. “You can try to take a peek in there, but I don’t think you’ll get very far. I’ve got plenty of strength in Insight.”
I had actually thought I’d turn to my chosen area of magic. But in the face of his defiance, the memory swam up of how Malcolm had turned the tables on me my first day back. While I’d been shielding myself against insight magic, I’d left chinks where a persuasive spell could slip through.
Jude wouldn’t expect persuasion from me. I’d been getting a lot of practice with the summer project, though. “We’ll see about that,” I said, and focused on his head, willing a surge of magic up my throat and onto my tongue. I shot out the spell with all the power I had in me. “Tell me what’s been bothering you.”
I felt the spell pierce through and saw its success in the flicker of Jude’s eyes. The color drained from his face even as his mouth opened by my compulsion. “Rory, don’t— I found out my parents are expecting.”
“Expecting…”
“A baby.”
“Your mom’s pregnant?” I said, puzzled. “What’s so horrible about that?” He’d never seemed close enough to his parents to be devastated over the arrival of a sibling who’d take up some of their attention.
My spell was still wriggling around in his mind. He knew he hadn’t given the full explanation. His jaw clenched for a second before the words wrenched out. “They don’t need me anymore.”
“What are you talking about? You’ll still be the senior heir.” Connar’s explanation of the barons’ system of inheritance was fresh in my mind. “You don’t even know what this kid will turn out like. Will they even be old enough that your dad could make them baron when he’s got to step down?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jude’s shoulders sagged. All at once he looked utterly hopeless, as if he couldn’t see any point in even fighting this conversation anymore. He turned to the piano and gazed blankly at it. “They have a real Killbrook heir now. Out goes the fake one with the trash.”
“The fake one,” I repeated, staring at him. None of this made sense. Was he speaking metaphorically? “How could you be—I don’t understand.”
“Are you really going to make me spell it out?”
My throat tightened thinking of how I’d forced this confession out of him. I’d had no idea it’d be something this fraught, something that clearly had nothing to do with me and my security at all.
“No,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’ll go if you want me to. But do you really think you’ll feel better if you send me off with nothing to do but speculate?”
He considered that for a long moment. Then he tugged out the keyboard guard to cover the keys and set his elbows on it, tipping his head into his hands.
“I’m not my father’s son,” he said in a rough voice. “I’m not a Killbrook.”
My jaw went slack. “What? How… Why…?” My mind couldn’t wrap around that idea to figure out the question I most wanted to ask.
Jude sort of answered all of them. “It was some stupid plan… They tried to have a kid for years and nothing worked, and Dad must have gotten scared about his younger brother getting ambitions if he wasn’t continuing the family line, so he and my mother arranged—I don’t think she even wanted to; it was all for him—that she would get pregnant with some other man, and they’d say the kid was theirs. It worked. That’s me.”
Holy fuck. My legs wobbled. I sat down on the edge of the bench, leaving as much space as I could between Jude and me. “How did you find out?” I ventured.
He sighed. “I overheard them arguing about it when they thought I was someplace else. My dad… has basically regretted it from the start. For twelve years, I had no idea why he acted like he couldn’t stand me, and then—and then I find out it’s all his fault in the first place—” He ran a hand over his face. “They don’t know I know. I’ve wanted to scream it in his face so many times… but I have no idea what he’d do with me if he realized the secret’s out.”
“And this new baby…?”
“Means they don’t need me, like I said. It was always going to come out eventually. There’s a ceremony when you take the barony. But I had years and years to go yet. Now, as soon as that kid is born… He’s going to want to cover up his lie. It’s basically plotting treason.”
Something clicked in my head through the swell of horror I was feeling on his behalf. I paused, but it gnawed at me too insistently for me to set it aside.
“Is that why you started wooing me? You figured you could ditch the barony that wasn’t really yours, but stay part of the circle by marrying me?”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the barony,” Jude said. “I just… Like I said, the truth was going to come out, one way or another. And you’re the only mage I’d ever met who I didn’t think would care. You think it’s all bullshit too. And you’ve got the balls to say so. Why the hell wouldn’t I like you? The ridiculous thing is it took me so long to realize how fantastic you are.”
The flattery wasn’t enough to dissuade me. “If you didn’t think I’d care, why didn’t you just tell me to begin with?”
“I was going to. When things got serious, I’d have told you. But then… shit went down. You got kind of judgy.” He glanced at me sideways, his forehead still propped on his hands. “I wasn’t going to start spilling secrets when you’d hardly talk to me.”
“Jude…” With the distress he was obviously in, I couldn’t bring myself to be annoyed by the way he’d described the situation. “I had no idea you had something like this weighing on you.”
“Would you have been less pissed off at me if you had?” He shrugged. “I didn’t know about the baby factor until a couple weeks ago. The rest is old news. You didn’t want us to be anything other than colleagues—well, I’m not even that. I’m a lie. A con. I’m fucking treason.”
“No,” I said with a rush of vehemence. I scooted over on the bench to clasp Jude’s shoulder. “Your father lied. Your father conned people. You had no say in it. I—I might get ‘judgy’, but it’s never going to be about who your parents are or what they did or what position you’re supposed to inherit.”
“No? It doesn’t even matter that I’m a weaker mage than everyone thinks? My father arranged to be on campus to skew the assessment results. I’ve only got two strengths, not three.”
I let out a sputter of a laugh. “Who the fuck cares? Jude, you could be a Nary and that’d still have shit-all to do with whether I
want to be your friend or—or whatever else. All that matters to me is what you do and what you believe.”
He raised his head, his gaze holding mine, a furrow creasing his forehead. “You really mean that, don’t you?” he said after a moment.
“Of course I do. It’s part of how fantastic I am.” I pushed my mouth into a smile to go with the weak joke.
Jude just blinked at me. His eyes had widened, his pupils dilating. Then he gave a breathless laugh and wrapped his arms around me in a tight embrace.
“Yes, it is,” he mumbled into my hair. “You are fucking fantastic. Apparently I still hadn’t really realized it.”
I hugged him back, abruptly choked up. “You know this doesn’t mean—I still don’t think us being a couple is a good idea—”
“I know,” he said. “I promise I’m not angling for that. Can I just… hold onto you for a little while?”
“Yeah,” I said, bowing my head next to his. “I can give you that.” And I sure as hell wasn’t letting his father or anyone else get rid of him. Maybe if I could figure out how to take this place down before it came to that—there could be some sort of asylum for people like him who needed it—
But that was a long ways away still. Right now all I knew for sure was my heart was aching for the guy in my arms and all the pain he’d been enduring behind the jokes and the smirks. Even if I couldn’t see any solid future with him, I didn’t really want to let him go.
Chapter Sixteen
Rory
Imogen let out a huff as we left the tower after a class, the hot July air smacking us in the face. She swiped at the sweat that had instantly started beading on her forehead.
“You know what we need?” she announced. “A swim. Let’s go down to the lake.”
Even thinking about the water gave me a rush of relief. “Sounds perfect.”
We grabbed our swimsuits and towels and went down to the shore. We hadn’t been the only ones with this bright idea. A few senior girls I didn’t know particularly well were drifting around just past the boathouse. I set my towel down at the end of the dock, eyed the rippling water, and decided to take it in one jump.