by Theresa Kay
“I had no idea she was going to do that!” Ugh. I hoped to avoid any yelling, but I guess we bring it out in each other.
“You had no idea a shifter would bite someone? That’s the excuse you’re going with?” He blows out a harsh breath.
“I didn’t invite her to come. She volunteered. I thought she just wanted to help.”
“Oh, she helped all right. She helped my mother’s legislation become almost sure to pass, along with a rider regarding Bitten witches. After all, Bitten witches are unstable, Penny gave proof of that.”
“That’s not true. At all. How can she—”
“Do you think the truth matters to my mother?” he asks, his arms out wide at his sides, his breathing rapid, and his teeth bared.
“No,” I say quietly. “But it matters to me, and I thought it mattered to you.”
He tilts his head back as if asking the sky for patience. “It does matter to me, but that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it.”
“Of course there’s something you can do. We can—”
“You don’t get it, do you? She won. She cut me off. She’s not speaking to me. She won’t even let me see my father. I’m still here only because Desmond is kind enough to let me stay and there was a spot open in Dumont’s room. Eventually, she’ll try to force Desmond’s hand, and she’ll probably get her way.” His voice has lost that angry edge, moving closer to desperation and sadness. “Or, if she doesn’t get her way, she’ll find some excuse to pull me from Ravencrest.”
I can see Bernadette doing every one of those things except the last. “Why the hell would she take you out of Ravencrest?”
“Because if I’m not the best, then I don’t deserve to be here.” He sighs. “And she’s made sure I have no chance of climbing the ranks, not unless I do everything she wants.”
“What does that mean?”
He shakes his head and stares at his feet. “Nothing.”
I step forward and place a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t push me away. Instead, he leans ever so closer, and I wait for him to look at me. He does, his golden-brown eyes slowly coming to meet mine. He doesn’t bother with his typical mask, not out here with no one else around, and all the emotions swirling through his head are written on his face.
Anger.
Despair.
Confusion.
“You do deserve to be here,” I say. “Definitely more than I do, at any rate.”
He lets out a quiet chuckle.
“I know things have been stressful and weird between us, but I don’t want to fight with you,” I say.
He curls a hand loosely around my waist. “I don’t want to fight with you either.”
“I can’t do much about your mom or Ravencrest, but I might be able to help you get in to see your dad. If I could talk to Connor—”
“Your solution is to bring more shifters into this?” He jerks away from me, the vulnerable, open expression from before gone as if it had never been.
“Connor’s not just the regional alpha, he’s family. I’d trust him with my life, and he has a say in what happens with your dad, regardless of whether or not your mom wants him to,” I say, trying to hide the edge of heat entering my voice.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why don’t—”
“Oh my, look what I’ve found,” says a voice that makes me cringe. The last thing we need is Jason here to stir things up.
Tristan’s jaw tenses. He closes his eyes, swallows, then takes a slow, deep breath before turning to the newcomer with an emotionless mask back in place and a vicious smile twisting his lips. “Hello, Jason. Did you get lost? You aren’t much for . . . nature.”
Jason takes an exaggerated breath and chuckles. “Ah, but the air out here is so fresh.” His dark-blue eyes roam from Tristan over to me, and Jason’s mouth shifts into a smirk. “Lovely day for a run.”
I make a noncommittal noise of agreement.
“I heard an interesting story the other day,” says Jason. “The rumor is you’re not only a genius when it comes to sigils, but you threw a light spell powerful enough to knock Dumont across the gym earlier this week.”
Wonderful. Even if the rumors are true, I can’t afford for them to get back to OSA. At least my other secret—that I’m Helen Andras’s child and therefore the Andras heir—still seems to be safe.
I hold back a sigh and shrug. “It was an energy ball, and it was an accident.”
He doesn’t look convinced. Jerk he may be, Jason isn’t an idiot. It’d be good for me to remember that.
He makes a slow perusal of my body and then turns to smile at Tristan. “I think I’m starting to see the appeal, St. James. As unrefined as she may be, she is rather lovely.” Jason pauses, as if waiting for Tristan to make some sort of response as Jason’s gaze rakes over me again. “And according to everything I’ve been hearing, it turns out she’s actually rather powerful as well. There are rumors one of the lesser families might make an offer for her.” Another pause. “But no one is quite sure who to ask about that.”
My eyes narrow. Is he implying what I think he is? Adrian told me at the banquet that arranged marriages were a thing in witch society, something about combining and consolidating power, but I damn sure won’t be going along with that archaic practice, no matter who ‘makes an offer’ for me.
Tristan makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat and moves closer to Jason. “Do you have a purpose in being here or are you only here to mock me?”
“Mock you?” Jason smirks again. “I’m applauding your ingenuity for pulling the interest of a powerful Andras. It was certainly more than your father managed to do. It’s a shame that—”
“As you’re well aware, there’s nothing going on between Selene and me,” snaps Tristan.
Wow. That stings.
“Oh no, of course not,” says Jason as he makes another slow perusal of me. “Could I interest you in—”
“Piss off,” says Tristan, hissing the words through his teeth.
“Now, now, St. James, no need to be rude.” Jason grins at me. “Selene, if you would like more pleasant company for your morning run tomorrow, do, please, let me know.”
“No. Thank you.”
The smile on his face brightens, and his eyes light up to match. “So polite.” He winks. “But in all seriousness, when you become sick of St. James’s attitude, please come find me. I can be good company if you let me.”
“Not going to happen,” I say. Whether I mean becoming sick of Tristan or coming to find Jason, I’m not entirely sure.
Jason shrugs, gives Tristan a mocking salute, and then heads off down a side trail.
“Stay away from him,” snaps Tristan.
My brows rise. “Excuse me? Did you just give me an order?”
He huffs out a breath. “Barrington, he’s . . . not good news. I don’t . . . You shouldn’t . . .”
Emotional constipation, thy name is Tristan. The corners of my lips twitch into a smile. “So, you were trying to order me around for my own well-being?”
He won’t meet my eyes, and spots of red spread across his cheekbones. The embarrassed caveman thing he’s got going on would almost be cute if not for how quickly he’d denied there being anything between us a few moments ago.
“I want nothing to do with Jason. He’s already proven himself to be an ass,” I finally say.
“Oh,” he says, staring down at his feet.
“And even if he hadn’t . . .” I have no idea where I’m going with this.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” I repeat.
Why did this suddenly get so horribly awkward?
“Tristan . . .” I start. He still won’t look at me. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Okay.” He purses his lips and sends his gaze upward.
“If you want to . . . talk about it.” I place a hand on his arm, and the muscles under my fingers go rigid. “All you have to do is say the word. I want to help if I can. Or I could ask Co
nnor to do something.”
His jaw tenses, and he sucks in a breath through his nose. “If you think turning to shifters is the answer . . .” He jerks away from me. “You’ve done enough helping.”
And then he runs off, leaving me here, staring after him with my mind struggling to figure out how things between us went so very wrong.
I still haven’t figured it out by the time I get to my dorm room twenty minutes or so later. Letting out a frustrated huff, I collapse backward onto my bed.
“Morning,” says Isobel with a yawn as she sits up in her bed and stretches her arms over her head.
“Hey,” I say, my voice flat.
“Didn’t go so well?” She shoots me a sympathetic look.
“Huh?”
“Talking with Tristan.” She cocks her head to the side. “You have on running clothes, and I might be missing two weeks of memories, but that time period does not include when you two were under the binding spell. And I know he goes running in the mornings. I assumed you’d gone out to find him.”
“I needed to burn off some energy and ran into him. It was a coincidence.”
Isobel rolls her eyes. “Of course it was.”
“Fine, maybe it wasn’t entirely a coincidence, but I didn’t go out there consciously looking for him.” I sit down on my bed and stare at my hands. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be friends again. He hates me.”
She scoffs. “He doesn’t hate you. I do remember the whole kiss thing too, you know?”
Heat fills my cheeks, but I shrug. “It was nothing. He was probably drunk or something. Besides, there are so many more important things for me to worry about in my life right now than Tristan.”
She comes to sit down next to me, putting one of her hands over mine. “Look, I know I’ve been out of it this week and that’s not going to stop for another week or so until I get caught up in all my classes, but I’m still here for you.” She sighs. “And I’m sorry I haven’t been.”
“Don’t apologize. You’re working your ass off, and I’m not going to hold that against you.” I flip my hand over so I can squeeze hers.
“How’s the spellwork coming? Are you getting any better?”
“Eh . . .” I see-saw my hand back and forth. “Kind of? I’m not sure. I managed to pull off a light spell this morning without blowing anything up.”
“Well, there’s that at least.” She laughs. “I think I should be free by next weekend if you want to study or practice or whatever.”
“I’d love that.”
“It’s a plan then.” She smiles at me and then gets ready for her day.
I’m not far behind. Even though I don’t have as much work to get caught up on that she does, I still have a lot to do just to keep my head above water. I might be a genius at sigils and doing okay in the rest of my classes, but that doesn’t mean I have time to slack off.
For the next week I run every morning, though sometimes just a couple laps around the outdoor athletic fields, and then go to class. My grades continue to improve, and I actually do pretty well on my tests. But . . . I’m still crap at wards, and when Basil has me practice spells they can be hit or miss. Worse, we’ve started using spellwork in PE, and OSA has suddenly decided I’m not allowed to participate in any spell-related activities after the incident with Adrian until Agent Wright gives the okay, something I don’t see happening anytime soon.
Surprisingly, Tristan appears to have decided we have some kind of truce despite how we left things the other day. He even smiles at me occasionally, and one morning he didn’t ignore me when we ran into each other on the lake trail. He didn’t talk to me either, but he at least acknowledged me.
By the end of the second week of the quarter, my roommate is almost caught up with her classes, but she’s still struggling with sigils. Adrian doesn’t have a very solid grasp on them either, so I’ve been drafted to help both of them, something that makes me feel useful, like I’m finally giving back to the two people who’ve stood by me ever since I started at Ravencrest.
On Friday evening, the three of us are in the library for a study session with Isobel’s textbook out in front of us as I walk them through one of the comprehensive practice exercises in the back.
“I think what this exercise is trying to show is that with Awak—Awareness, if you draw the lines from top to bottom, you can get a different result than if you draw them bottom to top,” I say in a poor attempt at paraphrasing the language of the somewhat technical textbook.
Isobel tilts her head to the side. “I understand what you’re saying, but I still don’t get how it all works. The text is very detailed on the possible uses for sigils, but not on explaining the technicalities behind them.” She points at a passage in the textbook. “Like, why does drawing this curve of Quiet first change the effect of the sigil?”
I bite my lip. “I have no idea.”
But what’s weird is I kind of do. I just don’t know how to explain my weird gut feeling when it comes to sigils.
Adrian grins. “Well, I think you’ve found your concentration area, Selene. You’re shit at wards, but sigils . . .”
“Is that an option?” I ask, straightening in my chair. “I mean, wards and sigils are always taught together, and I don’t think I’ll ever be very good at wards.”
“They’re only taught together because hardly anyone ever wants to concentrate in sigils,” replies Adrian.
“Or has enough skill with them,” adds Isobel. Her voice is low, thoughtful even, and she’s got that look on her face like she’s trying to remember something, as if the thought is right there but she can’t quite find it.
“What’s up?” I ask, studying my roommate.
“I’m not sure. I feel like there’s . . .” She sighs, shaking her head. “It’s gone now. I think it might have been a memory.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yes. I’m not sure what triggered it. Maybe I was looking into sigils? That would make sense, I suppose. You said I told you I hadn’t found any binding spell strong enough to do what was done to you, but maybe if it was combined with a sigil of some sort.” Her brow furrows, and she scrunches up her nose. “But then you’d have a sigil on you somewhere since it’d have to be permanent, like a tattoo, and I think that’s something you would have mentioned.”
I shake my head. “Nope. No sigils here. Maybe it was just a coincidence?”
Her brow is still furrowed and her lips pursed. “I feel like it was more than that.” Her shoulders slump, and she lets out another sigh. “But what do I know?”
I reach across the table and rest my hand on hers. “You know plenty. You’re one of the smartest people here.”
“This memory loss is so damn frustrating.” She shoves her book across the table. “I never expected to stay at number one. Hell, I never expected to be there in the first place, but even though I’m mostly caught up, I feel like I’m still falling behind.”
“I could still ask—”
“I already said no,” she says, firmly. “You’re not doing that.”
“Not doing what?” asks Adrian.
“Not asking my grandparents for help,” I reply. “Burke gave me their contact info and said I was welcome to do with it what I wanted, but I’m not sure I want to reveal myself without knowing what type of people they are. Everything I’ve witnessed about the witch world has been . . . shitty.” I glance at my friends. “Current company excluded.”
The corner of Adrian’s mouth quirks upward. “Your current company is the best.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “Whatever you say. Your ego certainly is the biggest I’ve seen.”
“That’s not the only thing—”
Isobel slams a hand over his mouth. “Nope. Stop. Not going there.”
His eyes dance with amusement, and he mumbles under her hand.
“Do you promise to behave?” asks Isobel.
Adrian bats his eyelashes at her and nods, and Isobel releases him.
“Your grandp
arents are Nikolas and Thea Andras, right?” asks Adrian.
I nod.
“And you’re not contacting them because . . .?”
“Because they might be assholes like . . . well, pretty much everyone else I’ve met besides you guys.”
Adrian tilts his head to the side. “Why didn’t you ask me? I might not be exactly welcome in more ‘polite society,’ but I have met most of these people. Your grandparents included. I’ve only met them a couple times, and the most recent time was a few years back, but they seemed like okay people. They were more polite than anyone else at that dumb OSA party.”
“OSA party?”
“Did Burke not tell you anything but their names?” he asks.
“Not really.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Nikolas Andras is the director of some department or another. I think something to do with legal records, but I’m not sure, and he might be retired by now. He’s pretty important either way. That’s probably why Burke insisted you use the name. The Coven Council wouldn’t dare try to come after an Andras.”
“I know that OSA has power over the Coven Council so OSA jurisdiction trumps everyone else’s, but aren’t the two like buddy buddy or something?” I ask.
Adrian makes a see-saw motion with his hand. “Sort of? How much do you know about how OSA and the Coven Council work?”
I give him a blank look.
“I take it you never had any supernatural government classes then.” He smirks.
“I think you already know the answer to that,” I say.
“What exactly does Basil teach you every morning?” asks Isobel.
“We mostly go over history and maybe a little spellwork. Basil thinks having a good basis in history is important, and my spell sessions with him are like Witch 101. At some point, we’re supposed to get into government, but we haven’t gotten there yet.”
“You at least know the basics of what OSA does, right?” asks Adrian.
“I guess. They take care of the laws, disputes between supernatural races, the registry, and the other bureaucratic type stuff,” I say.
“And you know the purpose of the Coven Council?” asks Isobel.