by Eva Chase
Jude’s head twitched toward his bedroom, but he must have had the same awareness of the thin walls as I did.
“Come on,” he said, setting a tentative hand on the small of my back to guide me. “There’s the scion lounge.”
His hand dropped away as we went down the stairs, but he sidled a little closer. “So, that kiss,” he said in his teasing tone. “Was that just a one-time, ‘thank you so much’ kiss, or was that a ‘you’re the love of my life, Jude, and I never want to stop kissing you again’ kiss?”
I elbowed him, but I couldn’t help smiling. “Maybe give me a little more time to decide?”
“I suppose that’s fair.” His cavalier attitude faded for a second, his expression turning serious. “I didn’t help her only because I knew you’d appreciate it. It wasn’t just some kind of ploy to win you back. I—I wanted to do the right thing. I don’t want to be responsible for screwing up people’s lives. Maybe that’s a little hard to believe—I’m not sure I’d have believed it a few months ago—but, if you want to poke around inside my head to see I mean it, or—”
“It’s okay.” I touched his arm, the earlier pang coming back at his fumbling earnestness. “I believe you.” Something had changed in his perspective, something that hadn’t quite clicked all those weeks before. It would’ve been easier to pull off a scheme like this when Shelby had first been injured, and I’d have been just as happy about it then, but he’d needed time to find his way there.
And after our conversation in the piano room the other evening, we were way past lying and pretense. Maybe it’d been something about the vulnerability of his confession that had opened him up in other ways too.
I hadn’t given much thought to the location he’d suggested until I was descending the basement stairs and my chest clenched up. It squeezed tighter as I stepped into the lounge room with its cluster of seating, the pool table, the bar cabinet.
The last time I’d been in this room, the guy standing next to me had made me believe he was feeding Deborah to his familiar. He’d smirked at my panic.
Jude noticed my reaction and stiffened with a wince. “Maybe this isn’t the best place after all. We could go outside somewhere…”
I shook my head, letting the emotions well up inside me. “No. What happened here really happened. If we can’t face that, then we haven’t gotten anywhere.”
He turned to me, his head bowed. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said hoarsely. “If I’d known—if I’d seen—” He let out a frustrated sound. “I should have been the one bowing down to you.”
He dropped to his knees as he said it, in a motion every particle in my body rejected, especially after what he’d told me about his parentage. I grasped his shoulder with the urgent need to bring him back onto his feet. “No. You’re not less than I am. You’re never less.”
I wasn’t sure he believed me, but as he got up, his gaze searching mine, it struck me how it must have felt to him back then. What it must have been like for a guy who’d spent the last seven years knowing he was wearing a false crown, that at any moment the rug could be pulled out from under him and he’d lose everything, faced with a girl who’d had all the same handed to her in an instant only for her to try to throw it away.
Of course some part of him had hated me. He hadn’t known any of the other things I was going through.
I leaned in again, seeking out his lips, wanting to confirm the connection we had now. Jude cupped my face as he met me. This kiss, I let linger on, soft and tender. The two of us, together. Understanding each other. There was something miraculous about how far we’d come to unite in this moment.
Jude’s hand lingered against my cheek as our mouths parted. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad to know it was at least a two-time thing.”
A laugh tumbled out of me, but I didn’t think his question before had been totally in jest. “I’m not making any declarations about the ‘love of my life’ anytime soon, just so we’re clear.” I thought of Connar in the forest, the comfort I’d taken from his embrace. “I can’t even say you’re the only one I’m going to be kissing. You should know that.”
“You’re a woman who wants to keep her options open,” Jude said with a nonchalance I could tell took some effort. “I can respect that. I’ll simply endeavor to continue to be the most appealing option.” He paused, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “You and Connar…?”
And Declan. And Malcolm. Although I supposed the former didn’t matter since he’d rejected any possibility of a real relationship, and the latter didn’t because no way in hell was that happening again. So, Connar. I decided it couldn’t hurt anything to admit this much. “To be fair, he was there first, before anything ever happened between us.”
“He—what?” Jude looked so flabbergasted by this announcement it was almost funny. “When—how—you’re joking.”
“Nope. While you were busy figuring out ways to make me miserable, he and I ended up talking and getting to know each other, and one thing led to another…” I spread my hands.
“But—I saw him lay into you.”
My expression tensed. “That was after. I’m not saying there weren’t any hitches along the way. But you’ve had plenty to sort through too, haven’t you?”
“Still. Connar.”
I socked him in the arm. “I don’t think the rest of you give him enough credit. He’s more than just a musclehead, you know.” How much did the other scions even know about what had really gone down with Connar’s parents, with his brother? That part wasn’t my story to tell, though.
“Okay, okay. He’s a great guy. I just need to be greater.” Jude winked at me, having recovered his composure, and I relaxed again.
I nudged him toward the couch. “We’ll see how that goes. Are you going to tell me about your grand plan to restore Shelby to Blood U or not?”
He grinned. “Well, I can start by telling you that I’d better not need any other favors from Ms. Grimsworth in, oh, the next few centuries or so…”
Chapter Twenty
Rory
I wasn’t sure I trusted Lillian Ravenguard and her assistant all that much more than I did my grandparents, but at least brunch with them was a hell of a lot more pleasant than that earlier lunch. Lillian had encouraged me to pick the place and ordered off the menu without any hinting commentary, and she was paying for her and Maggie’s meals anyway. Why Maggie had come along when her employer could be present no one had explained, but the younger woman was enthusiastic enough company that I didn’t mind.
“So what’s your summer project this year?” Maggie asked not long after we’d sat down in the café. “I remember having some pretty intense assignments during my school days.” Which, from the look of her, couldn’t have ended more than a few years ago.
When I explained the gist of our task, Lillian leaned her elbows onto the table with an intent expression. “And how are you approaching that mission?”
“Oh,” I said, feeling abruptly awkward. “My Nary is in the architecture program, and I’ve got him designing and arranging for the construction of a small building on campus.” I hesitated to say anything about the intended purpose of that building or how I was attempting to protect as many other Naries as I could from the other students’ influence. From the calm way the blacksuit and her assistant had reacted to the general idea of the summer project, they obviously didn’t see Naries as worthy of protection.
“Make use of his strengths.” Lillian nodded. “That’s a solid approach. I look forward to hearing the final outcome. Your mother won the summer prize at least once during her school days.”
“Did you ever win?” Maggie asked with a little smile.
Lillian laughed. “No, I don’t think I was quite creative enough.” She waved a finger at me. “The professors like to be surprised, in a good way. Keep that in mind.”
Well, I was pretty sure they’d be surprised by the angle I’d taken when the whole thing was finished, although whether it’d be in a good way by thei
r standards was debatable. If the clubhouse actually got finished, that was.
“If there’s any aspect you’re finding particularly challenging, I’d be happy to talk it through with you,” Lillian added as our food arrived with a buttery whiff of fresh-baked breakfast rolls. “You can be sure all the other students are drawing on their parents’ and other experienced mages’ expertise.”
There were probably all sorts of facets of my project that a blacksuit could advise on, but that would mean admitting my intentions. Between my strengths and Connar’s, we seemed to have the situation under control.
“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “I think everything’s going to plan right now, but I’ll keep that in mind if I run into any problems.”
Besides, I hadn’t accepted Lillian’s brunch invitation to talk about my summer project. I had another, unofficial project to tackle that was both much more important and much more secret. I’d spent a good part of the night figuring out the best questions to ask that might help me find what I was looking for in those papers I’d stolen from Professor Banefield’s house.
“I was wondering,” I said carefully, digging my fork into my slice of feta and spinach quiche, “I found a couple of notes in the Bloodstone house that my mother wrote that suggested she’d sent a few valuables to be stored off the property, but I haven’t been able to figure out where. Is there sort of a standard company or bank or whatever that fearmancers would normally work with for something like that?”
Lillian considered me with evident curiosity, and I kept my expression as innocent as I could. I hadn’t found any notes like that at all, and as far as I knew all of the Bloodstone valuables had stayed on Bloodstone ground, but I didn’t think even a best friend would assume she knew every little thing a person had done with her possessions. And I couldn’t exactly ask where Professor Banefield might have stashed important materials without raising a whole lot of other questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
“What sort of valuables?” Lillian asked.
“There weren’t any details—it was all pretty vague.” I offered a sheepish shrug. “Maybe she never ended up doing that. I just wondered so I’d have the right context if I stumble on any more information.”
Maggie tapped her lips. “Most of us have our accounts with Yewsley,” she said. “They’ve got a few fearmancers in the upper management, so there’s that extra level of security. Most of their branches would offer safety deposit boxes.”
“You’d have to know which branch to narrow it down,” Lillian said. “Do you want me to look into that for you?”
“Oh, it’s really not urgent,” I said quickly. “I’m sure you’ve got a ton of much more important things to take care of. I’ll see what I can find the next time I’m home and if I’m still stumped then maybe I’ll call in that favor.”
Yewsley. I did remember seeing that name on some of Banefield’s records. I’d have to scrutinize those more closely.
The other question required even more care. My heartbeat sped up as I braced myself, pushing through a moment’s doubt. “There was also—do you have any idea what she’d have meant if she mentioned a ‘reaper’?”
Maggie frowned with what looked like genuine puzzlement. Lillian… If I’d had any hope of breaking through a top blacksuit’s mental shields, I’d have given all the magic in me to use an insight spell on her right then. Her face went blank, but so perfectly it was hard to tell whether she was completely confused or making very, very sure she didn’t give anything away.
“A ‘reaper’,” she repeated, with a quizzical tip of her head. “Where did you see that?”
“It was just—she liked to write thoughts in the margins of her books sometimes, you know?” That much was true, to make this story plausible. “I was looking through the library and one of them said something like ‘tell reapers’… I don’t remember exactly. It didn’t make much sense to me. There aren’t actually, like, mages who go around like the grim reaper deciding on deaths or something, I assume?”
I added a giggle to show how absurd that idea supposedly was to me, even though it actually sounded reasonably plausible given how many deaths this community seemed to orchestrate.
“Odd,” Lillian said, in a voice as carefully even as the blankness on her face. A prickling sense crept over me that she did know something. The blacksuits should know more than just about anyone when it came to the inner workings of fearmancer society, right? But I couldn’t even tell whether reapers were a good thing or a bad thing from her response. Damn it.
She swirled her fork in the yolk of her eggs benedict. “You’ll have to show me that book some time. Maybe with the proper context there, I’d be able to connect the dots. Your mother had a poetic side—it might have been some kind of metaphor.”
“I’ll see if I can find it again,” I said. There were a few thousand books in the Bloodstone library, so it wasn’t likely Lillian would be able to determine I’d been lying about the note in the first place. I didn’t think Banefield would have answered my question about who’d wanted him to attack me with metaphors, though. Some group literally called themselves reapers. And that group had wanted to destroy me.
I’d have felt a lot better if I’d known whether Lillian was trying to protect me from that fact or protect them from threat of discovery.
The tension that had balled in my stomach while I’d maneuvered through that conversation didn’t leave much room for hunger. I forced myself to gulp down the rest of my brunch and switched to talking about some of the videos Lillian had sent, with honest appreciation of the gift. By the time she and Maggie dropped me off back on campus, though, my whole abdomen felt like one giant knot.
I had an hour or so before class, so I figured I’d wind down in my room for a bit. The common room was empty—always a relief. Victory hadn’t lashed out at me since our bloody tiff during the illusion demonstration, but I wasn’t naïve enough to assume I’d cowed her.
I started toward my bedroom, scanning the door for signs of intrusion, and my gaze slid along the rest of the wall. It stopped at Shelby’s room. A ragged bit of red fabric protruded from under the door by about an inch. Just far enough to be easily spotted if you happened to be looking, but not so obvious it looked deliberate. I had the sinking suspicion that was a pretense, though. Someone had wanted me to notice.
If Victory or her friends had gone after Shelby, it wouldn’t be because they hated her returning so much. It’d be to strike a blow at me, because they knew she was my friend. Not much different from Victory setting her cat after Deborah.
I knocked on the door tentatively. “Shelby?”
When she didn’t answer, I nudged the door open, since of course she didn’t have any lock on it at all. The whole school was set up to make the Naries as easy targets as possible even before you considered this year’s summer project.
My jaw clenched as I stepped inside. Torn fabric in all sorts of colors and of all kinds of textures scattered Shelby’s bed, desk, and floor. And not just random swaths. There was a chunk of sleeve. There a shred with a beltloop from a pair of jeans. And the doors of her wardrobe hung open. Nothing remained inside.
Nausea swelled inside me. This was cruel in so many ways. They’d destroyed every piece of clothing Shelby wasn’t wearing. Some of those pieces she’d probably loved. Some might have had special significance, like my charm bracelet had. And even if none of her clothing had meant all that much to her, she was here on scholarship. A fearmancer could have ordered a bunch of replacement outfits without batting an eye. Shelby’s family wouldn’t have that kind of money.
All the more reason for Victory and the others to hit her like this instead of me.
I closed my eyes for a second as my queasiness rose to the bottom of my throat. Professor Banefield had warned me about this once—that being friends with someone “weaker” than me would make me vulnerable too. But I didn’t regret being Shelby’s friend because of how it hurt me, seeing this. I just hated that it was my fault
she’d been attacked. She might have been better off if I’d never given her the time of day.
No. I couldn’t let myself believe that. The other girls had been tormenting her long before I’d arrived at Blood U—and if I hadn’t finally gotten through to Jude, she’d have lost her spot in the music program forever.
Still, I had to make this mess as right as I could.
I picked up a few scraps that looked like they went together, and hopelessness washed over me. Victory and her crew had shredded the clothing so thoroughly that I wasn’t sure I had the skill to put even one item back together, let alone all of them.
Okay. First priority then: reducing how traumatic this would be for Shelby. I could at least clean up the mess so she wouldn’t have to walk into this horror show of fashion carnage.
Partly with my hands and partly with gusts of magic, I gathered all the bits into a heap. I nearly threw it all in the garbage, but then it occurred to me that if there was a particularly special item in the mix, Shelby might want the pieces of that. Instead, I stuffed it all into a few bags and shoved those under my bed in my own room.
Now, how was I going to arrange for her to get new clothes? I worried at my lower lip as I came back to her room.
Maybe it didn’t have to be all that complicated. There were plenty of assholes at Blood U, but Shelby knew she had at least one benefactor. It might seem totally reasonable that someone could be both at the same time.
I scrawled a quick note on an envelope, tensing my hand to disguise my handwriting. Your clothes needed an upgrade. Take this and refill your wardrobe. Then I stuffed it with a bunch of the cash I’d started hiding away in my room in case I decided I needed to make a quick run from the university and didn’t want to risk accessing the Bloodstone accounts. I’d accumulated about ten thousand dollars over several withdrawals—I gave Shelby half of that. She should be able to get more than enough clothes to replace what she’d had here with that amount, and it wasn’t even a dent in my family’s holdings.