by Elena Lawson
“What are you doing down here?” he asked, looking up the hallway the way I’d come, and back toward the fork that led to the faculty offices and living quarters. All was quiet.
His Adam's apple bobbed.
“Looking for you,” I replied, remembering why I had to come find him and frowning. “I have to talk to you.” I looked at him seriously, my voice breathy with anxiety. He tucked his book under his arm, and reached out a hand to reassure me, setting it lightly on the spot just above my elbow. His palm was warm against my perpetually cool skin, and I quivered at the contact.
He recoiled as though shocked, snapping me from the momentary euphoria.
“What is it?” he asked, his tone clipped and voice low. “Is everything alright?” Elias tucked his hand—the one he’d touched me with—into the pocket of his jacket, glancing at it as though it was a wild animal that needed leashing. He wore a beat-up leather coat with what looked like woolen lining. It suited him.
He must’ve been on his way out to his cabin for the night. I was certain he’d never dress in leather and jeans in front of the students or other faculty. They seemed, I don’t know… too poise for that.
After a deep and calming breath, I relayed to him everything that’d happened in the woods as quickly as I could—omitting only the part about telling Bianca. I watched as his expression became more strained, his eyes more dark with each word I spoke.
“You did what?” he nearly shouted when I’d finished, and suddenly I felt very small.
“I had to see what they wanted,” I snapped, the words coming out laced with indignation and something more like venom. “What would you have had me do?”
“Not put yourself in danger,” he spat back, his eyes stormier than usual, shrouded in darkness.
Just then a door clicked open and the headmaster’s voice floated down the hallway toward us. I jumped, letting loose a short gasp before Elias grabbed me by the hand and whirled my body into a small alcove a few feet from where we’d been standing.
He pressed his own body flush against mine so we both could fit. His fingers drew the simple warding sigil behind us, it lit up and glowed blue before it faded into a rippling shield at his back.
There were two voices coming closer to the hallway. Two deep, aged baritones, one I recognized to be Atticus Sterling. But I wasn’t focusing on them.
Elias stood very still, and with my back against the wall, I had nowhere to move. My hands rested against his chest, and I could feel the strong, insistent thrumming of his heartbeat beneath the wiry muscle. His cold mountain pine and vaguely citrus scent clouded my mind and before I realized what I was doing, I had rested my cheek against him.
I couldn’t help but notice how his hand still grasped my waist, keeping me pressed against the wall. I arched my back and lifted my chin to look up at him. I found him staring down at me, his nostrils flared slightly, his eyes hungry and intense. His lips parted and something did a little summersault deep in my belly.
And then he froze.
He cocked his head, tilting one ear closer to the ward to hear.
Oh, no! Were they coming this way?
I struggled to hear them, too, forcing the drumming of my pulse to calm with shallow, quiet breaths. Compelling the tension to ease from my limbs.
“...I can assure you the girl knows nothing, and all the other loose ends were taken care of long ago.” Who was the headmaster talking to? I listened harder.
“Mmmm,” said the other man. “And this professor of yours—the woman who was asking questions?”
Elias and I shared a look, his grip on my waist tightened infinitesimally. They were talking about Ms. Granger. They had to be. She was the only female professor at the academy. But what had she been asking questions about? And why was that so bad?
I got the distinct feeling that this was not a conversation meant to be overheard.
“A former friend of Alistair’s, but no more than that.” My hand flew up to cover my mouth, and my breathing hitched at the mention of his name. Could they have been talking about my father? What were the chances that I’d only just learned of him the day before—from Ms. Granger no less—and now the headmaster was speaking to this other man about someone with the same name. It seemed too big a coincidence.
Elias narrowed his eyes at me, mouthed, you okay?
I didn’t respond. Just held up a finger to hush him. I needed to be able to hear.
“She is no threat,” Headmaster Sterling assured the other man. “I’m sure of it.”
“See it stays that way,” said the other man in an offhanded, bored sort of tone.
“Yes, Magistrate. I shall.”
No. Freaking. Way.
The Magistrate was here. Freaking Godric Montgomery—the head of the Arcane Council and the guy who oversaw the entire witching community in the USA was at Arcane Arts Academy, talking to the headmaster about... about my dad?
Elias was shocked, too, and searched the airspace above my head for an answer. His expression was thoughtful as he tried to make sense of it. When he met my gaze, his expression softened, and he brought up his hand to rest against my cheek. I sighed at the comfort the small contact brought. “What is it, Harper?” he whispered when Godric’s retreating footsteps grew further away, and the door to Sterling’s office clicked back shut.
I looked away, unable to hold Elias’ gaze. “They were talking about my father.”
* * *
My tea had grown cold. I was too frazzled to drink it, or to do anything more than sit stupefied on the tiny loveseat in Elias’ cabin. When the hallways were clear again, Elias had wrapped a ward around us like a cloak and we’d snuck out to his cabin.
I was impressed. Not just anyone could hold up a ward while in motion, and not for as long as it took for us to cross the academy grounds and get under cover of the trees. But he’d done it without breaking a sweat.
That didn’t matter, though. And I hardly noticed how effortless his power came—the riot of thoughts crashing and running in my mind made any other mundane thought evaporate. I couldn’t make sense of it. They had to be talking about my dad. But why?
“Your father was a powerful witch,” Elias said from where he sat in one of the wrought-iron chairs opposite me. I’d told him who my father was, and he’d known the name right away. I supposed dear old dad had made something of a name for himself before he died.
“What do you think they meant?” I asked him, setting down the cold tea-cup on a small pedestal table beside the arm of the loveseat. “And why the hell was Godric Montgomery here?”
He blew out a breath and scratched at the short hairs at the back of his neck. The glow of the simpering fire in the hearth to our left cast an orange glow over his cheek. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never seen him here before, but Sterling being on the Council… well, it may not be uncommon.” He shrugged.
I squirmed against the soft cushion beneath me, leaning in to rest my elbows against my knees and rub my eyes. A dull ache had formed behind them, alluding to the migraine to come. I was prone to them when I was younger, but I hadn’t had one in years. They were so strong that not even magic could soothe the pain.
When I looked up again, Elias was studying me, and he quickly looked away.
“Why do you do that?” I asked, frustration edging my voice, and watched his temple twitch with the flexing of his jaw.
He steeled himself before he turned back to me. “Do what?” he asked, palms up as though he was genuinely confused. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was wrong about the connection I felt between us. A fiery blush sparked up the back of my neck. I shook it off.
“Nothing.” I bit the inside of my cheek to check my emotions. “Can you,” I started, then paused, unsure whether to ask even more of him. I had to know, though, and connection or not, I somehow knew I could trust the man before me. “I mean, could you possibly find out exactly what happened to my dad? I’ve never known how he died.” I laughed nervously. “I�
�ve never known anything about him actually. I only just learned my own last name yesterday.”
Elias nodded to himself, considering my request with pursed lips, his hands clenched tightly together. He cracked his knuckles. “I can tell how much it’s bothering you, and if it matters that much, then I will do my best to find out,” he said. I sat up straighter and smiled, some of my vigor renewed. “But,” he added, and I visibly deflated. “I believe we have more pressing matters to attend to, like breaking your witch familiar bond with those two Endurans.”
Right.
“Have you found anything?” I asked him. I’d noticed how much more filled the small bistro table was with documents and tomes, and how they’d spread like a disease to cover the top of his nightstand and the kitchen countertop. Some were even piled beside his bed, where I saw Fallon, his familiar, napping in the shadows.
“No,” he breathed. “And honestly, I’m starting to think such a spell doesn’t exist.” My blood curdled in my veins. I had only six more days until I became dog chow, and we had nothing. “The only solution I can think of is to create a new spell.”
But that was crazy. There was a reason new spells hadn’t been created since the Codex was written hundreds of years before. It was dangerous and yielded unpredictable results. The sigils and incantations created almost always ended catastrophically—or, more commonly, did absolutely nothing.
“That’s insane,” I told him, sitting back and throwing my hands up, exasperated. My head throbbed even more than it had been a moment before.
“It is.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Why was everything in my life so horribly unlucky? Sometimes it felt like the universe just dumped random things on me and laughed while I scrambled to survive its unpleasant surprises. Like my attraction to a certain History professor.
The cushions rebounded as he sidled up next to me. I dared a peek at him, gritting my teeth against the urge to reach out and run my fingertips along the stubble on his jaw. Elias pulled my hand away from my face, holding it lightly as though it were made of porcelain. He set it down in my lap and sighed. “It may be the only way.”
* * *
That night I tossed and turned in my sleep, falling in and out of consciousness. The migraine was so painful, it felt like my skull would split in two. No longer a dull ache behind my eye sockets, the stabbing, throbbing sensation radiated from my forehead over the precipice of my skull and down the back of my head.
I cried out, but I couldn’t be certain if I was awake or dreaming. Snippets of hallucinatory visions and nightmares danced against my eyelids, interspersed with periods of deep, fathomless blackness that had me questioning my sanity.
I thought I heard Bianca murmuring an incantation sometime in the night. And at one point a searing yellow glow assaulted my eyes. I didn’t know if it was real, or if it was a vivid nightmare my mind created from the pain. And later, the high-pitched whine of animal cries outside echoed down my ear canals, making my blood run cold.
Or maybe that was the fever.
I shook with an intense chill, unable to get warm no matter how tightly I wrapped the blanket around my frail bones.
My magic roiled within me, stinging at the inside of my flesh and making me spasm and contract with the effort of holding it in. My bed shook beneath me. The migraine stabbed at my brain with each jolted movement. I cried out and a reverberating groan of thunder shook the window pane in the room. Or maybe it had been a growl.
My throat was so dry, and my heart skipped several beats before it came back with a fury, pounding forcefully as though my blood had thickened and it needed to work twice as hard to pump it through. My eyes flew open at the strength of it, and in a lucid moment I realized I was floating and moving.
I caught a glimpse of wavy brown hair with streaks of gold and bronze and worried deep brown eyes. It was Ms. Granger.
“Will she be alright?” I heard Bianca’s shrill voice call out to Granger as the professor levitated me quickly down the hallway behind her.
I moaned, clutching at my head and trying to keep it from bursting. I cried out when a lance of pain shot through it from one end to the other, and the hair-raising crackle and crash of lightning resounded all around me. The electricity in the atmosphere sparked in my veins and I felt the small hairs on my arms stand up.
“The new girl’s finally lost it,” I heard Kendra say. Her voice trailed behind me through the hallways, along with the snicker of her loyal band of followers. I gritted my teeth, and the lightning came down again, hitting some part of the academy with a boom loud and powerful enough to wake the dead.
The lights flickered, and the girls in the hallways squealed and screamed.
“Clear the hallways! Get back to bed!” Granger shouted and I heard her heeled shoes walking a little faster.
“It’s alright,” she said more calmly. I felt the brush of cool fingertips against my sweat-slicked temple. “It’ll be alright.”
I sealed my eyes back closed against the onslaught of light flashing through the windows from the storm, and my breath caught at the sound of two wolves howling. The sound haunting and beautiful. The twin howls came together to form a tormented harmony that wrapped itself like a vise around my heart.
And then my pulse slowed...
Slowed....
Then there was only darkness and blissful silence.
14
Cal
The breath whooshed from my lungs as I landed on my back. I was on my feet in a heartbeat, shoulder slamming into Adrian’s unprotected stomach. My chest ached, as I was sure his did, but we fought through it, pretending for the sake of our pack that nothing was wrong when, in fact, everything was. The witch, Harper, had confirmed our worst fears.
We were fucking familiars.
Neither one of us had any idea what, exactly, that entailed, but being bound to her in the first place was humiliating on its own. Regardless of the incredible strength it gave us after we’d seen her, the biggest downside was how weakened we felt after we left or when we stayed away for more than a day. Atlas hadn’t said anything yet, but we knew he was watching us closer after we started volunteering for more second ring patrol shifts just to get closer, to snoop around, to see her.
Pain lanced through my skull, making my vision double and letting Adrian get the upper hand for a minute before the pain ebbed and I regained my footing.
Nice as she was to look at, there was no way in hell we were going to let her continue to wield this kind of power over us. Adrian had given her a week, however much good that little time would do us, so we had a week to keep our secret from reaching our alpha.
Even as I thought of him, Atlas circled the training ring, his rust-colored eyes following our movements. His dark, shoulder-length hair rested on his bare shoulders, the loose shorts most of us wore hung low on his hips. I flipped Adrian over my shoulder, slamming his thicker form into the dirt with a resounding crack. He grunted, but didn’t stay down long before he tackled my knees out from under me.
“Alright, you two,” Atlas called. Behind him, the sky was a color to match his eyes, the sun hidden below the mountains now. “You’ll give the rest of the pack a complex if you keep it up much longer.”
Adrian grinned at him, flexing his pecs. “Don’t be jealous of our youthful stamina, old man.”
Some of our audience chuckled and Atlas gave him the barest smile. He didn’t always show it well—being the alpha came with stresses of its own and occasionally put a sharp edge on his orders—but he cared for all of us. Personally, I was content with the status quo. I didn’t want things to change.
But change was inevitable.
“Go get some food and rest,” Atlas said. “You two have been wearing yourselves out for days, now. You need it.”
As soon as he and the others turned away, Adrian’s smile fell and he glanced at me. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and I nodded. We hadn’t had headaches since before our first shift, when our wolves kicked our
healing factor up to twelve, but the tingling sensation between our eyes told us something else was going on. If it wasn’t us, then maybe the girl, Harper.
“You think she’s okay?” I asked him quietly.
Adrian wrinkled his nose. “It’s a headache, Cal. She’ll be fine. I’m sure they’ve got potions or whatever to fix it.”
Apparently pain sharing was a thing between a witch and her familiars. As if there wasn’t already enough to loathe about this bond.
I glanced up at the sky, the brilliant orange fading to a dusky purple. Energy rippled under my skin in anticipation and I hesitated at the edge of the training ring. Adrian stopped a couple paces away and turned back.
“You don’t think it’s our fault, do you?” I gestured to the sky. “We’ve had our wolves under control for years, but there’s no way to know what kind of effect the full moon will have on her ever since we… you know.”
“Bonded?” he hissed distastefully, taking another step toward me. “Whatever’s wrong with her is not our fault. We didn’t ask to be bonded to a damn witch. She did this.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then snapped it shut again and looked away. He had a point, I knew, but maybe she had one, too. I didn’t know the first thing about familiars, but if witches didn’t have a choice in their bond, then we were just as at fault as she was.
We were the ones on her territory. We had nearly attacked her. All she’d done was look at us, and she couldn’t have done that if we weren’t there in the first place.
Then again, maybe I was just making excuses for her.
Adrian growled and stomped away, his temper flaring up as it did almost every damn time we talked about it. For some reason, it bothered him a lot more than it did me, which was unusual. I was the one with alpha blood in my veins. It was a large part of why Atlas kept his distance from me. I assumed he though be fighting him for the title one day, but I didn’t ask for my alpha blood any more than I asked for this witch bond thing.