It would mean spending more time with Nathan. The thought made my blood boil. And she’d already spoken to him, and had a chance to fall under his spell. I didn’t doubt that Nathan could be charming as fuck if he really wanted to. But she did have a point. I’d already started to cast summoning magic in my dreams. And was it remotely possible that I had already unconsciously harmed someone? The common denominator between Sadie’s murder and my haunting had been that, in both cases, Mara had seen only blackness—and that’s precisely what both summoning portals I had so far seen looked like. Flat, dead black.
Maybe… maybe I really had been responsible.
Letting myself go unchecked would be, like Hayes said, criminally negligent. I’d never be able to live with the guilt if I found out I had accidentally killed Sadie, and harmed other people. Or worse. How much damage could I do without even meaning to? One bad day, and a big black hole swallowed up Rosewilde? Or the state of Vermont? Or the world?
I sagged a little in the chair. “I guess,” I said, “if you think it will help me control my magic… I can meet with Nathan. And see how we… get along.”
That glass wasn’t half empty—there simply wasn’t any water in it. Still, it was my option, it sounded like. Headmistress Hayes reached across and patted me on the knee. “I think it’s the right decision. And in the future, Miss Cresswin, I beg—don’t doubt your particular abilities, or potential. In my experience, those magicians who are most cautious, but persistent, make the greatest names for themselves. I believe you have an abundance of caution, which is good. I’d counsel that you must also allow yourself to be ambitious. Ambition and realism, together, will take you quite far. And I believe there is no limit to how far you can go, if you apply yourself with those in each hand.”
“Thank you,” I said, and tried to mean it. It was hard to really take a pep talk to heart when I was dreading being in the same room as the only person who could potentially keep me from murdering my classmates on accident.
Because if Nathan had his way, I didn’t have a single doubt that our lessons would turn just as deadly as my rampant id would if I didn’t tame it in time.
Hunter
“Do you have a second?” Amelia’s Whisper came to me just as I was leaving the shower, and the tingle of stirred air in my ear gave me a shiver that crept over my skin and stirred up other things.
I tightened my towel and Whispered back. “Sure. A few minutes? I’ll meet you in the courtyard.”
“Thanks.”
It would probably be another moment like we’d had before. I’d told Nathan to lay off her. So had Lucas and Isaac. So far, none of them had come back and told me he was still a problem so… I hoped that even if they couldn’t learn to understand one another at least the active conflict was diffused.
I strode back down the hallway to my room to get dressed again. Nathan turned the corner and smirked when he saw me. I rolled my eyes. Before everything, that smirk would have led to more. Now, though… now it was a hell of a lot more complicated. The thought that if it had been Amelia to turn the corner and smirk at me as I only wore a towel made my gut clench with nervous anticipation.
“Headed back to your room?” Nathan asked as he paused beside me.
“To get dressed,” I jerked my head toward my room, a silent question in the movement. “How are you classes? Anything exciting?”
He turned on his heel to walk back with me. Nathan shrugged as we walked into my room, my roommate Mykal on his bed, a privacy shield erected between us. He was a good roommate, but I missed Amelia. The memory of sleeping with her in my arms still clung to me. I doubted Mykal would want me to sooth his nightmares.
“Not… yet… perhaps eventually. Do you recall the—oh.”
I looked up to find him watching me as I tugged a pair of boxers on. The towel was laid over the end of my bed. I paused, one eyebrow up. “See something new?”
He smirked, leaning against the wall. “I suppose not. You’ve been careful around me, though. I wonder at the sudden change.”
I pulled the boxers up the rest of the way and picked up the slacks. “You’ve made it clear where we stand,” I said. “I haven’t done it on purpose. Just… I don’t know, keeping boundaries is all. Didn’t think you’d really noticed.”
“I suppose I haven’t,” he mused. “Where are you headed off to?”
There was never any point in lying to Nathan, and I had nothing to lie about, really. Except that he got a certain look on his face whenever I mentioned Amelia. Still, I wasn’t going to play that game forever. “Amelia’s asked me for a word,” I told him as I zipped and fastened the slacks. “It’s not about you, is it?”
He pursed his lips, and for once the expression on his face wasn’t sour or angry, but… enigmatic. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve given her space like you asked, though, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t said a word to her. No idea what she wants.”
I picked up the plain white undershirt. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“You’re naturally suspicious,” he muttered. He looked me over and for a moment there was a familiar but long gone look in his eye. “It’s among your many admirable qualities.”
“Thanks,” I drawled sarcastically. A part of me wondered if the old Nathan would ever come back. This new Nathan hid things from us and lied too easily. Despite their teasing, I never thought he was perfect before. He could be an asshole, completely absorbed with himself and his work. He attacked his work like Amelia had attacked catching up. There had been a reason why I thought they’d hit it off had he never disappeared.
Now, though, rather than hitting it off—it seemed like sparks flew between them, but these sparks were going to explode eventually. I felt like I was betraying Nathan and I’s history because I knew he was the main cause of it. Amelia was a spitfire, but she was kind. Accepting. I’d been rough and callous with her and she hadn’t given up on me. Even after being a jackass and letting the summer pass without contact, she was still there.
Did any of us deserve her?
“You’d better get going, then,” Nathan said. “You wouldn’t want to keep Amelia waiting.”
I grit my teeth as I buttoned the shirt and snatched the jacket off the hook by the foot of the bed. When I did, Nathan glanced back at me. “What’s got you upset now?”
As I pulled the jacket on, I weighed the relative costs and benefits of bothering to say. A lengthy argument wasn’t something I cared to start just now. At the same time, Nathan always did tend to want time to form his own arguments. He wasn’t the sort that easily expressed himself at an instant. “I’m trying to figure you out, Nathan,” I said softly, with none of the irritation that he rightly deserved. “You don’t want me for yourself, and you’re uncomfortable with the idea of Amelia and me, or the guys. You don’t seem to want to reconnect with them yourself because you can’t get over this… obsession with Amelia and her supposedly written-in-stone destiny. I’m trying. I really am, and I’m…”
He frowned at me. “What? Go ahead. Say whatever it is while I’m listening.”
While I’m listening. As much as I felt for him, that about summed up who he’d always been, really. It was a hard truth, but the fact was that Nathan had, once upon a time, chosen his quest and his magic over me. Over all of us. Lucas and Isaac had seen it, told it to me time and again. I guess I just remembered Nathan… different than he really was. Now that he was back? There were times I preferred my memories.
My shoulders sagged. I smoothed my damp beard and raked my fingers through my hair. “I’m tearing myself in half, Nathan. Trying to… be your friend. To see you back to your old self and keep everyone else at a distance. I can’t do it forever.”
His expression cooled. “I’m not going to be my old self, Hunter,” he said quietly. “What I went through changed me. Forever. It’s up to you whether to accept that or not, but I can tell you right now—I’ve been through a crucible and that’s not changing.”
“Nathan, I…”
“Go have your meeting with Amelia,” he said as he turned and opened the door. “Just remember, All I’ve ever done, I’ve done in the interest of you three. That’s not going to change either.”
I scowled at his back, struggling to tell if the way I felt was because he wanted me to feel that way or not. He was a master of manipulation, saying things at the precise time to have the most effect. I couldn’t wade any further into it, though, and keep Amelia waiting after I told her I’d be down. So I followed him into the hall, where he’d already disappeared from, and took the long way to the courtyard as I mulled all of it over.
Amelia was waiting for me, perched on one of the stone tables in a yard that had mostly emptied for the evening. My heart lurched in my chest at the sight of her. I still remembered the first time I saw her, Lucas guiding her into my dorm room and announcing her as my new roommate. I’d been an asshole, obsessed with my work and not wanting a distraction. This year, when I found out my roommate wasn’t Amelia, I’d felt a keen disappointment.
I’d spent all summer with Nathan, trying to appease whatever guilt or lingering loyalty I felt to him, and I didn’t regret it. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been looking forward to spending time with her again, sharing our space, until I realized we weren’t. And now? It’s not like I could amble up to her and say if she were still having nightmares, I’d be willing to stay the night with her. Besides, she had Lucas and Isaac. They’d been brave with their hearts and I was still a coward.
It wasn’t yet totally dark but it was on the way, and the lights around the edges of the walls and in the trees gave the place it’s typical greenish yellow evening glow. She didn’t smile when she saw me, and while I tried to muster one it didn’t quite work out.
“I’m here,” I said, sitting beside her. “Sorry it took a little bit, I was in the shower when you—”
“Did you know?” she asked.
I had to search a moment for something I might have known and not mentioned. The sort of thing that would make her angry with me. I couldn’t find anything. “Ah… I don’t think I did. What?”
She sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair. Whatever it was, it had her upset. I balled my fists on top of my thighs, stopping myself from reaching out to her. She looked off across the courtyard. “Hayes wants me to keep mastering my Path,” she said, apparently frustrated by it. I supposed I could see why.
“That’s probably best,” I said. “A Path is a tricky kind of thing to just put down.”
Amelia nodded slowly. “Yeah. Except, there’s no faculty that can help me with it.”
I took a seat on the edge of the table next to her. “Is that what you’re upset about? The Academy can probably hunt down someone, it might take some time but there have to be more books—”
“Oh, they found someone,” she breathed. “Nathan. Hayes wants him to teach me, because he’s the closest thing in reach that can do the trick, apparently.”
I pulled a grimace at the thought of Hayes asking Nathan to do that. He’d backed off but… that didn’t mean he was ready to play nice. “Ah… I can’t imagine he’s going to agree to that.”
Amelia gave a soft snort and straightened, tucking her hands between her knees. “Actually, she already asked him, and he already agreed. With ‘enthusiasm’ she said, and apparently he had lots of nice things to say about The Harbinger of Az-Harad, Dreadmother, She with a Thousand—”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, shocked beyond the pale. “I didn’t… he said he’d teach you? He hasn’t said anything to me. I was just with him, I asked him…”
She glanced sideways at me, maybe critical for a moment but it softened. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make more trouble between you two. I’m not trying to break you up or anything, Hunter, I just—”
“Huh?” I shook my head quickly. “No, Amelia we’re not… that is, we haven’t been—we’re not together like that, or anything.”
That was the last thing I wanted her to think. But I instantly knew why she thought that. What other indication had I given her? We had almost kissed just before Nathan had woken up, and since then, I’d spent all of my time with him.
I was a fucking idiot.
“Nathan is my friend.” I spoke slowly, staring at the ground. I felt the tape holding my heart together strain at those words. “I fucked up, before he disappeared. He’s back now, but he’s… different. I know Lucas and Isaac don’t think I see it, but I do. And, maybe I’m an optimist, but it feels like if I keep trying the old Nathan will come back.”
“I,” she started before pausing, and I wished I was brave enough to look up at her. “Hunter, I know we’ve had our ups and downs, and we certainly did not… start well… but last year I felt like we finally had something. You were there with me in Sinclaire’s… dungeon, I guess, and almost no one knows what that was like. Isaac does, but Lucas doesn’t. And we came so close—this close—to being able to find out if we had something.”
The hope in her voice had me looking up, finding her eyes with mine. I could feel my heart racing against my ribcage and my palms were clammy. All I wanted to do was bury my hands in her hair, to taste her lips and see if they were as sweet as they looked. I wanted to find out if that pull we felt at the end of last year was still there, or if it had just been the atmosphere of the party.
“Hunter?” she wondered.
I turned toward her, moving slowly enough to project what I was doing. Slowly enough that she could pull away. I couldn’t bear to think about being rejected by her, not now as I carded my fingers through her soft hair. But Amelia didn’t pull away from me. She leaned into my touch, dropping her head back, her mouth parted in a quiet “oh”.
This time there was no interruption.
I don’t know who gasped, maybe it was the both of us, but the moment our lips touched it was as if I’d been hit by a spell. I wanted to devour her as a terrifying need radiated from where we kissed. I felt her hands grab my arms, pulling me toward her, her tongue darting out to trace the seams of my lips. Unable to refuse her, I deepened the kiss, savoring her taste and her eager response.
That single kiss alone was enough to have my cock aching and hard.
I pulled away, slowly, and rested my forehead against hers, my fingers still in her hair. We were both panting, breathless from the intensity.
“Sorry,” I whispered, “anymore and I couldn’t promise to not embarrass us.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered back, looking up at me under her eyelashes. “That was good—really good—and I want to do that over and over again. But”—I felt my guts turn to ice, cold water flowing through my veins—“Lucas and Isaac, we talked and we’re exclusive—”
I pulled away faster than if she’d slapped me. I stood up, despite her protests, unable to look at her as nausea and anger and jealousy and pain coursed through me. “My apologies, then.”
“Wait, Hunter—that’s not—”
I couldn’t stay there a moment longer. If I did I would lash out, screaming out my heartache for all of the Academy to witness. Or I’d collapse and become a fucking miserable mess at her feet. I stormed away, barreling through a pack of students who yelled curses at me. Even over them I could hear Amelia shouting at me. I couldn’t turn back, though. I wasn’t nearly strong enough to listen as she explained why we could never be.
Fuck, I had thought losing Nathan had been the worst heartbreak of my life. But losing the possibility of Amelia? It was an all-new level of hell.
Amelia
I could feel the frown marring my face as I tried to not run from the courtyard. Hunter hadn’t let me finish, and he’d just assumed I was saying it was too late. He had to have felt the same pull as I did. His kiss had made me want to purr like a damn cat in heat. I had tried to call him back, but the man was as stubborn as a brick wall it seemed like. Students had watched him, bewildered, before turning their looks to me, judgment in their eyes.
Just when it seemed like so
mething was going well for me, it turned into something more complicated than ever. Shit happens. That’s what my godmother always said. I’d love it if shit stopped happening. Shit could just go away.
That kiss though… I couldn’t help but smile.
“Why so happy?”
Sadie’s livid body loomed over me at the top of the stairs. I went cold as I stumbled back, realized too late that I was on the stairs and there was no floor behind me. I shot a hand out to the rail as I went backward and managed to just catch myself in time to get my feet under me and run back down to the first landing.
I was breathing hard when I looked up, expecting to see her coming for me, and found the stairwell empty.
“What do you want?” I screamed at the empty stairs. “Just come out and tell me what you want!”
There was no answer, and the strength in my legs gave out. I sank against the wall, pulled my knees to my chest, and just… sobbed. It was ugly, heaving, snot-nosed crying that I was grateful to do alone. For about thirty seconds that I was alone, anyway. A student came down the stairs, wide-eyed. A freshman, I thought, but I didn’t know her name. I was pretty sure I’d seen her around, though. She froze at the turn onto the landing. “Are you… are you okay? Were you screaming?”
I looked up, and quickly wiped my eyes on my sleeve, sniffling. “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t… I’m…”
She descended the last step and came to my side of the landing where she knelt and offered a hand. “I’m Nina.”
“Hi,” I managed and took her hand. It was small, soft, a little cool to the touch. “I’m Amelia.”
Nina bit her lip. “Uh… yeah, I know.”
I laughed, and it was probably more bitter than she deserved for coming to check on me. “Of course you do.”
A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts Page 12