“I was told you mate in front of your entire pack.”
Again the blank stares.
“That’s just simply untrue,” said Diana, sounding truly offended for the first time.
“Mating is a private thing,” Jarod adds, looking at us like we’re foolish to need this explained.
“Where would they get such ideas about us?” Diana asks, perplexed.
“I think nudity gets our people’s minds going off in all sorts of strange directions,” offers Rafe.
“Well,” says Diana with a sigh, “I’ve heard lots of fantastic rumors about your people, as well.”
“Like what?” I ask, curious if hers are as colorful as ours.
She leans forward, her voice low. “I heard that you force girls as young as thirteen to choose a mate.”
“That’s actually true,” I say, thinking of Paige Snowden. “It’s called wandfasting. It’s a magical way of binding people together as future mates. It creates the marks that you see on the hands of most of the Gardnerian women here. Sometimes the girls are quite young.”
Jarod and Diana stare at me gravely.
“But you can’t possibly be old enough at thirteen to choose your life mate,” counters Diana, shaking her head.
“They’re chosen for you, usually,” I clarify, thinking of Aislinn.
Jarod and Diana glance at each other, disapproval written all over their faces.
“But what if you don’t love the person? What if you don’t care for their scent?” Diana seems greatly upset by the prospect of such a thing. “Do you still have to mate with them?”
“Well, yes,” I say, realizing how awful this must sound to her. It is awful.
“That is truly terrible,” murmurs Diana. She glances at my hands then Rafe’s. “Yet neither of you are fasted.”
I share a quick glance with my brother. “My uncle wants us to wait,” I tell Diana. “He thinks we should be older.”
“You absolutely should,” Diana states with an emphatic nod.
“I heard that your men mate with seals...even if they have life mates,” Jarod blurts out.
Diana turns to her brother, a mortified expression on her face. “Jarod!”
“That’s what I heard,” he says, shrugging his shoulders defensively at her.
Rafe sighs. “Some of our men do this. The seals are called Selkies, and they can take human form.”
“What?” I choke out, really shocked. “Aunt Vyvian told me people kept them as pets.”
Rafe cocks an eyebrow and shoots me an uncomfortable look. “They’re not pets, Ren.”
Disgust washes over me as the obscene truth of things falls into place.
“This is very sordid,” mutters Diana, embarrassed for us. “Perhaps these shocking things would not come about if you mated at a reasonable age with people you care deeply for, like we do. This is very unnatural, the way you mate.”
“There are happy Gardnerian couples,” I counter defensively. “My parents loved each other very much.”
“Which is why you and your brother have good morals, unlike the others of your kind,” Diana states emphatically.
“What happened to your parents?” Jarod asks softly, catching my past tense where Diana did not.
“They died when we were very young,” I reply, staring down at my tea. When I glance up, Diana’s face is filled with sadness.
“I am so sorry to hear this,” she says.
I just shrug, momentarily at a loss for words and suddenly aware of how late it is and how tired I feel. I think about my quilt and how much I wish it was still here so that I could wrap myself up in it. Diana’s hand gently touches my arm.
“You must come home with us the next time we visit our pack,” she says, her voice kind. “They would like you very much. I think you would find many friends there.”
I’m startled to find my eyes filling with tears. Blinking them back, I struggle to maintain my composure. “Thank you,” I say, my voice cracking as I keep my eyes focused on my mug. “That’s very kind of you to offer.”
Diana gives my arm a warm squeeze before releasing it. I look up at her, her face an open book like her brother’s, devoid of guile. Aside from the uncomfortably blunt questions about mating, I have a sudden feeling that I would actually like Diana’s people.
* * *
“It seems as if we may have been mistaken about them,” Aislinn tells me a few evenings later as we sit on a bench outside, staring up at the waning moon and discussing the Lupines. We pull our cloaks tight around us as a cold breeze rustles the dry autumn leaves clinging to the tree above us, our heavy book bags on the ground next to us.
“I know,” I agree.
“But really, Elloren,” she says, “some of their behavior. It’s still...really shocking.”
“But not evil, really.”
Aislinn is silent for a moment, considering this before speaking again. “But I just don’t understand. I overheard my father telling my mother about the Lupines once. The Mage Council sent him on a diplomatic mission to the Northern packs. While he was there, a male Lupine suddenly announced to the entire pack that he was going to mate with one of the females, and then he just...well, he dragged her out into the woods. Why would my father say something so shocking if it wasn’t true?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, my face tensing at the puzzle.
“Maybe the Northern packs are different,” Aislinn says hopefully. “Maybe Jarod and Diana’s pack is more moral.”
“Perhaps.”
“I just can’t imagine Jarod doing something so shocking.”
I look back up at the moon, small gray clouds drifting lazily around it.
“You know,” Aislinn furtively admits, “Jarod gave me a poem today. About the moon.”
I’m not surprised by this. What began as a small trickle of stealth correspondence in Chemistrie lab has quickly become a steady stream, so much so that Diana flat-out refused to be a courier. Instead, she and I rearranged ourselves so that Jarod and Aislinn could have the aisle seats.
Aislinn opens one of her stealth books, fishes a neatly folded piece of paper out of it and hands it to me. I open it and read Jarod’s flowing script by the thin lamplight.
It’s a poem about loneliness and yearning, the moon a bright witness to it.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her as I refold it, feeling as if I’m intruding on something private.
“I know,” she acknowledges, her voice dreamy, far away.
“Aislinn,” I venture with some hesitation, “I saw you and Jarod together. In the archives last night.”
They were sitting, a book open before them as they huddled together, their heads and hands almost touching. They seemed oblivious to the rest of the world, enthralled with each other, both of their faces lit up as they talked in animated, hushed tones. Unable to hold back their shy smiles.
Aislinn blushes and looks down at her lap. She shrugs. “I guess we’re becoming...friends of sorts. Strange, isn’t it? Me. Friends with a Lupine.” She looks up at me. “It’s all perfectly innocent, you know. Jarod’s family is bringing him to visit the Northern packs this summer so he can look for a mate, and he knows I’m about to be fasted to Randall. We’re just...friends.”
“I know,” I said. “I just worry.”
Aislinn’s brow knits tight. “If my family knew I was on speaking terms with him...my father would pull me out of University. That’s why we only meet late in the evenings. It’s just that we both love books so much. It’s so nice to have someone to discuss literature with who’s so...insightful. He’s incredibly well-read.”
“Seems he’s as well-read as you,” I concur.
“You know, Elloren,” Aislinn says, her voice tentative, “talking to Jarod...it just makes me wond
er if...if our people might be mistaken about some things.”
I settle back, catching sight of a familiar constellation through the branches. “I know what you mean.”
We’re quiet for a moment, looking up at the stars.
Chilled, I slide my hands into my cloak pockets. My hand scrapes against hard, jagged pieces.
Lukas’s broken portrait. I’d completely forgotten about it.
I fish it out of my pocket and hold it in my opened palm. I push the two pieces together to form his ridiculously handsome visage.
Aislinn gapes. “You have a portrait? Of Lukas Grey?”
I nod, resigned. “I broke it by accident and lifted it from Fallon’s room.” I fill Aislinn in on everything that happened, including Diana’s outrageous nudity and how effectively she dealt with Fallon Bane.
Aislinn struggles to keep down the incredulous laughter that’s bubbling up, and I start to laugh, too.
Aislinn shakes her head as she fights back her grin, gesturing toward the portrait. “Fallon will freeze you if she finds out.”
I slide the pieces back into my pocket and pat the side of my cloak. “Not if it’s safely hidden away, she won’t.”
My fingers worry the portrait pieces through my cloak as trepidation pricks at me.
She’ll never find out. How could she?
* * *
It’s later that same evening when Ariel finally speaks to me again.
The room is a completely different place than it used to be. Wynter and I have cleaned it up, and the majority of the room, except for Ariel’s third of it, is now neatly swept and organized. A small rookery that Rafe has thrown together now sits by Ariel’s bed. It houses two stolen chickens and an owl with a broken wing that Ariel has been nursing back to health.
I have to admit, I’m a bit fascinated by the owl and enjoy watching the smooth way it can rotate its head almost completely around, as well as looking into its beautiful, wide eyes. I’ve never been so close to one before.
Ariel is an apprentice in animal husbandry, her desk a haphazard jumble of books devoted mainly to avian medicine. As unfocused and unhinged as she is around people, with animals, she’s calm and skillful. She loves birds especially, even to the point where she refuses to eat them.
I lie on my bed in the warm room, studying, a mountain of books and notes surrounding me, a fire roaring in the fireplace and casting a soft glow over everything. The owl and the chickens are perched on Ariel’s bed next to her, and Wynter is sitting on the floor, sketching the owl, while Ariel pats it gently.
Ariel unexpectedly looks over at me, eyes narrowed, her head resting on a pillow. “You could have had me sent away.”
The sound of her rough voice startles me, and Wynter’s sketching hand freezes in place.
It takes me a moment to find my voice. “I know.”
“I hurt you,” she insists. “You were bloody and covered in bruises. You could have had me sent to...to that place.”
“I know,” I say again, ashamed and uncomfortable. “I decided not to.”
“But,” she presses, becoming angry, “you were bloody...”
“I told everyone that I tripped down the stairs.”
She continues to stare at me as her eyes take on a glazed, pained expression. “I still hate you, you know.”
I swallow and nod. Of course she does. I deserve it. She destroyed a precious belonging, but I caused the death of something living, something she loved.
“I don’t expect you to ever stop hating me,” I finally say with effort. “But I want you to know... I’m sorry for what happened to your kindred. I didn’t know Lukas would do that... I didn’t think... I was so angry at you. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says flatly, cutting me off and rolling onto her back, staring blankly at the ceiling. “She’s better off dead than here. I wish I was dead.”
I’m shocked. “Don’t say that.”
“All right,” Ariel amends, her mouth curling up into an angry sneer. “I wish you were dead instead. And every other scholar here. Except for Wynter.”
It’s a fair enough sentiment, and I let it hang in the air unchallenged as Wynter regards Ariel with sad understanding and then turns to me, her expression softening to a warm look of approval.
I turn my attention back to my text, unexpectedly touched. And, oddly enough, I feel, for the first time since I’ve come to the University, a small sense of peace blooming inside me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Trystan
“Where’s Rafe?”
“Rafe’s out,” Trystan says absently as he lies on his bed, not bothering to look up from the large Physiks text he’s engrossed in.
The eleventh month has come, and with it a killing frost, the trees suddenly laid bare, the fire in the North Tower now a necessity.
It’s late, the end of another week, and I’ve spent the last hour wrestling with my History of Gardneria text, new questions clamoring for my attention as I read and reread parts of the large volume. Things aren’t adding up, and I want to talk to Rafe about it.
We’re supposed to be Gardnerians, the Blessed Ones, the First Children, blameless and pure. And all of the other races are supposed to be the Evil Ones, the Cursed Ones. But more and more it seems as if life has the disturbing habit of refusing to align itself into such neat columns.
It’s all extremely confusing.
“What’s Rafe doing?” I ask as Trystan continues to read.
“Hiking. As usual,” he says absently.
“Oh.” That’s disappointing. Rafe’s always out and unavailable lately.
“He’s hiking with Diana Ulrich,” Trystan says as an afterthought. “He’s been out hiking with her every night this week.”
My eyes widen. “He has?”
Trystan glances up at me, perplexed by my surprise.
“She’s the Lupine girl,” I point out.
“I know,” he says calmly, looking back down at his book, as if the idea of Rafe spending so much time with a shapeshifter is somehow normal.
I think back to that night in the dining hall, to the way Rafe and Diana seemed to instantly fall in with each other. The look on her face when she glanced back at him, just before leaving.
“Don’t you think that’s a little...strange?” I prod.
Trystan shrugs. “Life is strange.”
My worry spikes. Rafe can’t become interested in a Lupine. He’ll bring the wrath of two powerful races straight onto his head. And hers, too.
“Do you think they...like each other?”
“Maybe,” Trystan says flatly.
I blink at him, really concerned now. “She’s a shapeshifter.”
Both his eyebrows go up. “Translation: ‘she’s an Evil One’?”
“Sweet Ancient One, no,” I sputter, sounding shrill and defensive to my own ears. “Of course I don’t think she’s evil, but...but Rafe can’t like her that way. Our people aren’t exactly on good terms with each other.”
Trystan smirks, his tone bitter. “So you think affection respects diplomatic pettiness?”
I fume at his sarcasm. “Perhaps it should. When it’s hazardous to your future.”
Trystan rolls his eyes and goes back to reading.
“How can you be so calm?” I don’t know why I’m asking him that. Trystan is always calm. And right now it’s driving me up the wall.
“Ren, maybe they’re just friends.”
I snort derisively at this. “Have you even met her?”
“No,” Trystan replies, his tone clipped. “I haven’t.”
“Well, she can be infuriating. And arrogant.” And brave. And kind. But she’s placing our brother in potentially serious danger. “And she runs around naked half the
time!” I insist. “And now she’s trying to steal our brother away from us.”
There are things I’m growing to truly like about Diana, admire even, but I push them roughly to the back of my mind. I know I’m being wrongheaded, and I’m ashamed of my words even as I say them, but this is a road that could lead to disaster. There’s just no way around that fact.
Trystan’s eyes flicker up briefly from his book. He looks at me like I’m becoming mentally unhinged. “Do you honestly think someone could steal...Rafe?”
“She has bewitched him with her beauty.”
Trystan rolls his eyes at me. “They’re probably just walking around in the woods, Ren.”
How can he be so infuriatingly blind? “No. She’s trying to sink her claws, and I do mean claws, into him.”
Trystan smiles slightly at this.
I plop down on the bed behind me and glare at him in consternation, my arms crossed tightly in front of me. He goes back to reading his text, doing his best to ignore me as I sit there stupidly fuming.
Just then Yvan barges in, a bag slung over his shoulder, a pile of large texts under one arm. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me and freezes, his expression rearranging itself into the familiar intense appearance he always wears when I’m around.
“What?” I snap at him, stung by his persistent unfriendly behavior.
He doesn’t answer me, just stands there looking mortified, spots of color lighting both his cheeks. I suddenly realize, in complete embarrassment, that I’m sitting on his bed.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I quickly apologize, grabbing my books and bag as I shoot up, my face also coloring deeply. Gardnerian and Keltic girls do not sit on men’s beds, not unless the man is a brother. This is a huge breach of etiquette.
Yvan stiffly pulls off his dark woolen cloak and throws it on the bed, along with his bag and books, as if marking his territory, and fixes me with another intense, green-eyed glare. Then he grabs some texts and stalks over to the desk near his bed.
I, in turn, take a seat at the foot of Trystan’s bed, my back slumped down against the wall behind me, my face hot and uncomfortable. The room has become claustrophobic, but I’m determined to stay so that I can confront Rafe about all this gallivanting with Diana. I pull my own books out, and the three of us retreat into the transient escape of study.
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