by Theresa Kay
Eying my bed, I sigh and drag the dress over my head and let the fabric fall to the floor before pulling on some pajama pants and a t-shirt and falling face first into my pillow. Sometime later, Isobel shakes me awake with a hand on my shoulder.
“Let’s get those bobby pins out or you’ll end up with a rat’s nest on top of your head,” she says.
I crack one eye open to the soft morning light filtering through the window then push myself up to a sitting position and drag a hand over my face. Patting at my head, I locate and remove as many bobby pins as my fingers can find, and the mess of my hair falls down around my shoulders. Isobel hands me a ponytail holder, and I pull my hair back into a messy bun. I’ll deal with a more permanent fix in a little while after a long, hot shower and maybe an aspirin or two.
“So . . . You got in pretty late. How’d it go?” asks Isobel as she hands me a cup of coffee.
I take a long sip, enjoying the steam on my face. Isobel is the best. “I guess it went well? My grandparents seem okay if kind of stuffy, and my little spy mission had some results.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” I glance around the room, confused, as I try to remember what I did with the journal. “Oh. Right. I left the stuff I found with Tristan. Remind me later to get it back.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Well, the most interesting thing I found was something that might be the actual binding spell along with a sigil that’s not in any of our textbooks.”
“Not possible,” says Isobel. “The textbooks list all the sigils.”
I shake my head. “Don’t be too sure of that. The sigil was called Seal, and I’ve never even heard it mentioned. Have you?”
“Seal?” Her brows draw together. “What would that be used for?”
“Um, maybe ‘sealing’ my powers for one thing,” I say.
She sits down on her bed, facing me as she thinks. “I suppose you’re right. The binding spell must’ve been really strong, and I’m still not sure how it worked, but an unknown sigil might be the missing piece.” She taps her fingers against her chin. “But that still doesn’t solve the issue of you not having a sigil on you anywhere.”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m not so sure all the information we’ve learned about sigils is correct,” I say. “I found a hidden study off the library, which isn’t strange in itself, but a sigil was used to conceal it, not a ward.”
“But sigils don’t work on inanimate objects,” says Isobel.
“Exactly, but this one did.”
“So, someone just took a marker and drew a sigil on the wall or whatever? How did it even last this long?”
“No,” I say. “The sigil looked like it was carved by a blade of some sort directly into the wood. And there were others, one on the window and one on the hidden drawer in the desk where I found the possible binding spell.”
Isobel walks over to her desk and pulls one of her textbooks out of the stack. She comes to sit next to me on my bed as she flips through the pages of the book. Once she finds whatever it is she’s looking for, she runs a finger over the page as if skimming the words.
“Here it is,” she says. “Due to the natural healing process, a sigil made by carving is unstable and unsustainable. Even a tree’s growth process can alter a carved sigil, and, as alterations of any kind are dangerous, there is no acceptable situation in which a sigil should be carved.”
“Maybe it was carved into the wood and then the tree was cut down so it wouldn’t grow anymore?”
She shoots me a skeptical look. “That doesn’t make any sense. The wood would still dry and it would have to be processed and preserved or whatever, all things which could change the shape of the sigil. Maybe it wasn’t a sigil at all?”
“It was definitely a sigil,” I say. “I wish I’d had a way to take pictures so you could see what I’m talking about.”
“Well, maybe you could go back? If your grandparents are okay people, what’s stopping you from announcing yourself?”
That is the question, isn’t it? I ponder over that while I continue to sip at my coffee. I can’t say much for Nikolas besides the fact that he’s very regal, but Thea was nice, and it certainly seemed like she misses my birth mother.
“So, what else did you find? Anything about your birth father?” asks Isobel.
I shake my head. “Nothing on bio dad, but there were some pictures of Helen when she was our age with Uncle Connor and my mom.”
Isobel’s jaw drops. “You don’t think Connor is . . .”
“No. Not a chance. They wouldn’t have kept something that big from me. Plus, I talked to Connor about it, and the pictures were from well before she got pregnant with me. He hadn’t seen her in a very long time before she contacted him out of the blue.”
“Wait . . . you talked to Connor? When?”
“Last night.” I blow out a breath then give her a brief overview of the two shifters in the library, what I overheard, and my subsequent trip to Connor’s house. I leave out the other things Connor and I talked about since I have no idea how to explain me being persona non grata to the other alphas and what that means.
A mischievous glint appears in her eyes. “Anything else interesting happen that I should know about?”
My cheeks heat at the memory of the kiss. Or kisses, actually. “Sort of . . .”
“You have to give me more than that,” she says, raising her eyebrows and shooting me an expectant look.
I sigh. “I don’t know. Things started off kind of weird, and he sort of forgot about me because he was so busy schmoozing, but then there was the whole thing with Adrian’s brother and the fae wine and—”
“Adrian’s brother?”
“Yeah, Louis. I ran into him outside after I went out the library window to escape the notice of the shifters.”
“And he gave you fae wine? And you drank it?”
I huff out a laugh and shake my head, heat gathering in my cheeks. “Believe me, Tristan already read me the riot act on accepting it.”
“How did he know about it?”
“Besides the fact that Louis told him . . .” Now my cheeks are a blazing inferno. “I kind of jumped Tristan and begged him to kiss me. Multiple times.”
“That’s quite a drastic effect for only one glass.” She raises her brows. “So, did he? Kiss you, I mean.”
“Yes.” I press my lips together, holding back a smile.
“And how was it?”
My fingers brush absentmindedly against my lips. “Kind of amazing.”
She claps her hands once and bounces where she sits. “Does this mean you two have worked things out now?”
“I guess so? I’m not entirely sure how we left it last night, but . . . I think there’s something worth exploring at least.”
“I’m so glad.” She hops up and bustles around the room, looking for her shoes. “Let’s go down to breakfast.”
I groan. “But that requires me getting out of bed. I didn’t get in until after two. I’m exhausted.”
“Come on.” She tugs at my arm. When I still don’t move, she says in a sing-song voice, “You can get more coffee . . .”
“Fine.” I huff out an exaggerated sigh.
At the dining hall, we find Adrian already sitting at a table. With Tristan. A smiling Tristan who looks as if a great weight has been lifted off his shoulders.
And maybe one has.
Maybe our conversation last night about his mother’s expectations and how much they conflicted with what he really wanted was a little more cathartic for him than I realized and he’s finally decided to let go and live his own life.
I sit down next to him, and he leans over to kiss my cheek as he takes my hand. I swear the entire dining hall freezes for a second. My face heats, and I almost pull my hand away, not interested in being the center of attention, but then action resumes and everyone acts as if nothing happened. I guess I don’t have to worry about figuring out where Tristan and I stand after all.
The rest of the week passes in a simple rhythm. Class. Homework. Studying. Tristan.
I pass off everything I found at the Andras estate to Basil. He’s disappointed we hit a dead end on my birth father, but he’s fascinated by the sigil even though he hasn’t been able to figure out what it does or how it might combine with the spell I found. Which means I don’t know any more than I did before.
Still, this is the happiest I’ve ever been at Ravencrest. Even though I still don’t have any answers about my magic and I miss Mom and Dad and the rest of my shifter family, I feel like I’m finally starting to belong. Both here and in the witch world.
And that’s what makes me anxious. Things are too good to be true.
Which, of course, means there must be something waiting in the wings to trip me up.
Like the fact that my powers have started acting wonky again, my control slipping up a little when I’ve been doing so well. Nikiforov did tell me I wasn’t supposed to take any other potions, so I’m pretty sure my new problem has something to do with the fae wine. Which is why I’m feeling a little apprehensive about telling Nikiforov what happened and asking for more potion. He told me not to take any other potions, and I went and did just that, no matter how inadvertent the action was.
But by the end of the week, I know I can’t hold off any longer. In PE on Friday, I’m just barely able to stop myself from blasting another student across the room. I spend the evening and the following morning holed up in my dorm room until it’s finally time to head to Nikiforov’s office.
When I arrive, the room is empty. I glance at the clock. Exactly three. I’m on time, so he must be running late or something. I walk into the room and sit down on the edge of Nikiforov’s desk to wait.
After five minutes with no teacher, my gaze starts wandering over the room, finally landing on the shelf filled with potions and ingredients. I walk over and examine the little bottles, entertaining myself by trying to figure out what each one is for. Some of them I recognize, like the fertilizer potions, but many of them I’ve never heard of. My eye catches on a familiar silver color in one of the bottles in the back. I’m pretty sure it’s the one Nikiforov used to make the potion to help with controlling my powers. I pull the bottle out and spin it to read the label.
Iron filings? Weird.
“Exploring?” Nikiforov’s voice makes me jolt, and the bottle nearly slides out of my fingers.
“Um. Yes. Kind of. Sorry,” I stutter out as I juggle the bottle back into place before moving to stand next to his desk with my hands clasped together behind my back. “I was curious.”
“Curiosity can be a good thing,” he says simply. “Is there a reason that particular bottle caught your eye?”
“It’s one of the ones you used to make the potion to help with my powers,” I say before casting my gaze on the floor. “Which I think I need some more of. My magic has been slightly off since last weekend. I was at a party, and someone gave me this drink that I later found out was actually a potion.”
He frowns. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from other potions? That they might affect the one I gave you?”
“I thought it was only champagne.”
“Something else you should not be drinking,” he says as he strides over to me. He holds my gaze for a moment before nodding. “I would be happy to make some more of that potion, but you have to promise to stay away from other potions. You are lucky nothing worse happened.”
“Yes, please. I promise.”
“Very well, then.” He bustles about, gathering bottles and then returning to his desk to set them down. He uses the key around his neck to unlock the drawer in his desk he got the purple powder from the last time. From my vantage point beside his desk, I catch sight of three purple flowers sitting in the open drawer, ones very much like the one I found in Helen’s cubbyhole. Nikiforov has the packet of powder in his hand now, and I realize the powder is the exact color of the flowers. Could the powder be made from crushed petals of the purple flowers?
I lean forward and point at the drawer. “Those purple flowers, what are they?”
Nikiforov’s jaw tenses for the barest of seconds before he responds with, “A plant from my homeland.”
His homeland? Does he mean Russia? I suppose that would fit considering I’ve never seen a plant like that around here.
“How do you preserve them like that?”
“Preserve them?” At that, he turns to me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, how do you keep them so fresh looking?”
“Longevity is merely one of their natural qualities,” he responds as he goes to his desk and begins his mixing.
Longevity? What an odd word to use. How long have those flowers been in his desk?
He glances at me. “So, the party you were at, was it here on campus? I don’t think Director Burke would approve of anyone handing out party potions to unsuspecting students.”
“No. My, um, biological grandparents had a party at their estate.”
He makes a humming noise. “I see. Did you enjoy it otherwise?”
“I guess so. The party itself was pretty boring, but my grandparents were nice enough.”
“Had you not met them before?” he asks as he lifts the bottle to the light to study the color.
“Nope. That was my whole reason to go to the party, to kind of scope them out.”
“I see,” he says absentmindedly as he adds a little more of the iron filings to the mixture. “May I ask who your grandparents are?”
The secret will be out eventually. I might as well practice telling people . . .
“Nikolas and Thea Andras,” I say.
He stops what he’s doing and turns to me, cocking his head to the side. “Your mother was Helen Andras?”
“Yes.”
He freezes for a second then makes that humming noise again. Otherwise, he doesn’t react at all; he just goes back to mixing but with sharper and more hurried motions.
“I’m not sure who bio dad is though,” I say, filling the silence. “It’s one of the things Basil is trying to figure out since he’s researching my magic and all.”
“Interesting,” he says, his face carefully blank. He hands me the potion bottle. “Here you are. Please be more careful in the future.”
I take the bottle, my brow furrowing. “Aren’t we going to work on spells today?”
He rubs a hand along the side of his neck and shakes his head. “No. I don’t have time. There are some . . . other matters I must attend to. There is something I must look into that is of great importance. It cannot wait.” He studies my face once more before his gaze darts away. “I apologize, but I must cancel our tutoring sessions for the rest of the quarter.”
Nikiforov doesn’t wait for a response, not that I’m able to put one together at this moment. He simply leads me to the door and shuts it behind me once I’m in the hall.
What the hell?
I expected him to be a little peeved about the fae wine and having to make me a new dose of potion, but he barely blinked at that. Then he finds out who my birth mother is and wants nothing to do with me? Why?
None of this makes any sense.
Except for the fact that Nikiforov is very clearly avoiding me, the rest of the weekend is uneventful. After my run on Monday morning, I stop in the dining hall to grab coffee. At first, I think the side eye looks and whispered conversations are because I’m sweaty and still dressed in my running clothes, but the looks continue in the hallways after I’ve changed into my uniform and am on the way to Basil’s office. I haven’t been the subject of this much scrutiny since my first day here.
What in the world is going on?
When I reach Basil’s office, the door is locked and there’s no light shining from underneath, so I sit down outside the door to wait for him. A few minutes later, footsteps come rushing down the empty hall and I look up, fully expecting to see Basil with a smile and an apology for running late.
But Adrian is the person headed
toward me, his brow furrowed with worry.
I rise to my feet. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
“Have you talked to Tristan this morning?” he asks.
“No. He said last night he had something to do this morning, so we didn’t meet up to go running.”
“Shit. He didn’t tell you.” Adrian lets out an irritated huff.
“Didn’t tell me what?”
He gives me a pained look. “His mother’s here.”
I jerk backward. “What? Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that she called Burke yesterday afternoon, and Tristan spoke with her.”
Tristan talked to his mother yesterday and didn’t bother to mention it to me? Why wouldn’t he tell me?
I glance up and down the hallway. Still no Basil. “Where are they?”
“Burke’s office,” says Adrian.
I’m glad Burke’s there and Tristan isn’t facing Bernadette alone, but something still feels off, and I have a few things I’d like to say to Bernadette St. James.
Adrian smiles and shakes his head. “You’re going up there, aren’t you?”
“Of course. You want to join me?”
He puts his hands up. “I try to stay as far away from Bernadette as possible.” One corner of his mouth quirks upward. “Go on and rescue lover boy. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”
I let out a nervous chuckle. If Tristan didn’t tell me about this meeting, he might not appreciate an interruption as much as Adrian thinks. I give Adrian an absentminded wave then make my way upstairs to Burke’s office. The sound of raised voices reaches me as soon as I get to the doorway.
Seth is nowhere to be seen, and the door to the inner office is open.
“. . . is final. I am withdrawing him, and there is nothing you can do about it, Desmond.”
What the hell? I knew Tristan mentioned she might try to pull him, but I didn’t expect her to actually do it. How can she possibly justify this?
The murmur of Burke’s reply is too low for me to hear. Unsurprisingly, Bernadette seems to be the only one yelling. From Tristan, who I assume is also in there, I hear nothing.