by Eva Chase
“Brake,” I said, tapping one with my foot. “Gas.”
“There you go,” Jude said. “I barely need to teach you anything. One tip: Take the car out of park before you try to go anywhere.”
“Um. Right. Obviously.” I pulled the gear shift into drive and then, rethinking that move, into reverse. Then I slowly eased on the gas. The car edged backward inch by inch.
“Turning the wheel also helps for steering clear of nearby buildings,” Jude said, watching my progress with amusement. “Left to go left, right to go right, even when you’re heading backward.”
I would have glowered at him if I hadn’t been keeping all my attention on the movement of the car. I tugged the wheel to the side, and the Lexus glided around, leaving me with a clear path down the lot. All right, first challenge met. I stopped, switched to drive, and pressed the gas a little harder than before.
My pulse hitched with the lurch of the car, but the engine settled into a not totally terrifying pace.
“Nice,” Jude said. “Take us down to the end and then turn around and go back. We’ll go in a few circles before we aim for a longer straight line.”
Was he thinking we’d leave the parking lot on my first time out? My gut twinged with nerves, and at the same moment someone’s cat familiar came darting across the lot in front of the car.
I was going slow enough that it shouldn’t have mattered. The problem was that in my jolt of panic, I jammed my foot down—on the pedal I’d already been pressing.
The Lexus surged forward. The cat’s sudden terror flooded me. I let out a yelp and yanked at the wheel instinctively. The car roared around toward the edge of the lot.
Jude jerked forward, his hand skimming over my knee. A hasty word tumbled from his mouth, and the car screeched to a halt right at the edge of the pavement. He’d hit the brake with a smack of magic.
He pulled back as quickly as he’d leaned in, curling his fingers into his palm rather than letting them graze my leg the way he could have if he’d wanted to cop a feel, and casually shifted the car back into park. I exhaled my jitters, but my heart kept thumping double-speed. Shit.
Jude glanced over at me and tsked his tongue teasingly. “So ambitious. I know you like to carve your own path, but I think the staff would appreciate it if we avoid literally cutting one across campus.”
An unexpected laugh tickled through my lungs and spilled from my mouth. Slightly hysterical, maybe, but it felt good. God, when was the last time I’d really laughed, not in a bittersweet or self-deprecating way but just because of the absurd humor of the moment?
Who would have thought when I did, it’d be because of this guy? Who’d have thought he’d be sitting there looking so happy about it?
I took a shaky breath and leaned back in my seat, adjusting my grip on the wheel. “Okay, let’s give that circle another shot.”
Chapter Nine
Declan
A show-off from the front row topped off the afternoon’s Insight seminar with a sudden sprouting of thorns from the tops of all the desks. Professor Sinleigh took in the sight and the startled yelps, looking rather unimpressed by the display.
“I’ll give credit to Physicality if you can remove those protrusions as quickly as you conjured them up,” she said, and the guy whipped the desks flat again with a few mumbled words and a jerk of his hand.
Rory came up beside me as the other students headed out. “People are really starting to ramp up all the credit-seeking spells.”
She wasn’t standing particularly close, but my skin still warmed with the awareness of her presence. I directed my focus to slinging my bag over my shoulder. “This always happens as we come up on the end of term. We’re halfway through now.”
“You mean it’s going to get worse?” Rory made a face.
“All part of school life.” I couldn’t resist glancing at her to raise an eyebrow. “You’re an official student now. Better get used to it.”
The wry smile she gave me in return reminded me why I should have resisted. It set off a flare of a sharper heat that brought our kiss in the library racing to the front of my mind. I averted my gaze and steeled my defenses to protect my own mind from my idiotic impulses. “Ready for your next lesson?”
“Absolutely.”
She followed me down the tower staircase, keeping a couple of steps behind rather than staying beside me through some sort of unspoken agreement. I wasn’t sure how aware she was of the delicate balance I was maintaining after the one piece of my struggle I’d confessed to her last week. I was aide and tutor and fellow scion, strictly professional, helpful but not friendly, available but not open.
I couldn’t let her find out just how many pressures were attempting to yank me even farther in the opposite direction of my personal feelings. That could be disastrous for both of us.
“The pranks don’t just become more frequent—they get bigger too,” I said to fill the silence in which my thoughts seemed to blare. “Everyone’s always trying to top the ones they’ve heard about from previous terms… There was a stunt for Physicality my first year here that I don’t think anyone feels has really been beat yet—a girl who was adept enough to perform a full shapeshift took on her bear form and charged into the middle of this awards ceremony for the Nary students.”
“You mean some people can literally turn into animals?” Rory said, sounding startled.
“No one’s mentioned that to you yet?”
“I guess… My mentor did say something along that line, but I didn’t really think it through. It hasn’t come up in my seminars.”
“It wouldn’t,” I said. “Pulling off a full shift is hard—unless you devote yourself to physicality, you’re not likely to get there. Holding it for long enough to rampage around a gathering for several minutes is even harder. The students who practice shifting spells have special sessions devoted to that aspect.”
Whatever had gone on between her and Connar, the transformative side of his studies mustn’t have come up. I’d only seen him shift a couple of times. It was impressive, but also unsettling.
“More surprises to look forward to,” Rory muttered.
“At least the better you get with the shielding, the more you can prevent the persuasive gambits from affecting you.” I slowed as we came out of the tower, and she fell into step beside me as we crossed the green to the building that held the aides’ office. “It’d be exhausting fully guarding against every possible spell all the time, but if you suspect someone might be going to cast, you can always prepare.”
“And once you get particularly good, you can cut off an intrusive spell even after it’s gotten into your head, right? I think I did that kind of accidentally in my first Insight class.”
I winced inwardly at the memory of the way Jude and Victory had torn into her that day. But she’d held strong, gathered the will to shove them back rather than crumpling under the attack.
That moment, watching her stare defiantly back at them while they realized they couldn’t break her wall, might have been the point when I’d really started falling for her. She was a fighter, just like I’d had to be—more than anyone else here at the university had.
I yanked my mind away from those thoughts. “Once someone’s in, it’s harder to kick them back out. It’s easier with Insight than with Persuasion spells, where they’re not just looking through your mind but actively affecting your thoughts. But anyone who’s a master at Insight can block everything if they’re in good mental shape—not overly tired or similar. You just might have a while to go before you get there.”
“Are you a master yet?” Rory asked in a lightly teasing tone. I didn’t let myself look at her, but I heard the smile in her voice.
“Maybe journeyman at this point.”
We’d slipped into this dynamic so easily: tutor and pupil, advisor and advisee. The two sessions we’d had so far, Rory had followed my lead, listened to my guidance, and avoided bringing up anything I’d shared during that uncomfortable moment
in her room. I doubted she trusted me completely, but the fact that she was trusting me even this much left my gut in a tangle.
If I could see her through this without her taking any permanent wounds, I would. I just wasn’t sure whether I was capable of it yet. The one thing I absolutely couldn’t do was warn her. Someone would find out. My life would be over. A baron who betrayed the other barons didn’t keep his title—or generally anything else.
They meant to betray her too, to break her down and mold her to their will. I didn’t have the power to challenge three ruling families directly on my own, but maybe behind the scenes I’d manage to give her the chance she deserved to really fight for herself. I’d had my whole lifetime to prepare—she’d only had a month.
Imagine how she could shift the pentacle if she had just a little more time to find her feet.
During our previous sessions, one of the other aides had been working in the large office space that was about the size of one of the dorm common rooms: desks set up along the walls, a couple of tables and a cluster of armchairs in the middle. The chairs were more comfortable, but I preferred the built-in boundaries the tables provided. Especially when we walked into the still, faintly pine-scented air of the office and found the room otherwise empty.
That was fine. I had my own mental defenses built up, made up of the looming mass of responsibilities and goals and people I intended to protect. However much I was coming to admire and care about Rory, it was better even for her if I maintained this distance.
“Have you been practicing the exercises I gave you?” I asked as I sat down at our usual table.
Rory pulled out the chair across from me. “Of course. Pretty much whenever I have a few spare minutes and I don’t think I’ll be interrupted. They seem to be helping. When I was in class today and we paired off for that one assignment, my partner tried to get a sneaky read on me before we’d officially started, but I had enough of a barrier in place that I noticed it and built it up stronger before she got in.”
“Excellent. I figured you’d pick it up fast.” She was nothing if not a quick study. I rested my arms on the tabletop. “So far we’ve been focusing on defensive tactics. Today I want to do some work around active casting.”
Rory knit her brow. “What does that have to do with shielding?”
“A lot. The moments when your own mind is most vulnerable are when you’re attempting to tackle someone else’s. Any time you’re casting a spell that involves reaching out your consciousness—to peer inside someone’s thoughts, or to influence their behavior with your will—you have to let down your guard. A solid shield wards off magic both ways. Once you get good enough that people know you’re generally protected, anyone who wants to get at you will watch for when you cast a spell and use that as an opportunity to strike.”
Rory’s jaw set. She was always pretty, but I didn’t think she ever got quite as beautiful as when that spark of determination came into her dark blue eyes.
“All right. How do I make sure that doesn’t happen?”
I let myself smile. “You get good at casting as surreptitiously and quickly as possible, so you can have your wall back up before anyone even realizes it was down.”
I gave Rory a few simple spells to practice to hone her subtlety and speed. As she launched into them, my pulse kicked up a notch.
This was the part I hated. I watched her concentrating on the exercise—and murmured a casting word of my own with the intake of my breath, so soft she wouldn’t hear it.
All I took was a little dip inside her mind during the brief vulnerability in the midst of her casting. No aim, no depth, just skimming the surface for the first few random impressions I could catch. Her resolve to develop this skill as quickly as she had the others. A nip of hunger and a longing for the chocolate brownie waiting back in her dorm room. The image of a round, pale face—Professor Banefield, her mentor—with a ripple of worry.
Nothing all that private. Nothing that could be turned against her as a weapon. Just enough so that when the older barons questioned me, I could honestly say I’d continued working around her defenses, in case any of them happened to slip past mine to gauge the truth of that statement.
Still, if she ever noticed what I was doing, that would be the end of, well, everything. I couldn’t imagine there’d be any coming back from it. So I’d better make sure I damn well kept it fast and subtle until I’d built up her defenses every way I could and no one—me, the barons, the other scions—could shatter them.
Just as I was pulling back, she glanced at me, and I caught one last impression. A flicker of a memory—a close dark space, her hand pressed against someone’s chest, a mouth hot against hers. A matching heat shot through me. She was remembering our kiss, and with a waft of desire.
I jerked my awareness all the way back into my head and willed my blood to cool. It didn’t do me any good remembering that myself—or thinking about what it might mean that she was. She was devoted and determined, unshaken in her convictions even after the battering she’d taken last month, and no matter how much desire that woke up in me, there was no fucking universe in which I could really have her.
Those glimpses into Rory’s head weren’t the only gambit I had to play here, simply the one I disliked the most. After I’d given her a few more pointers and she’d practiced some more, I pulled a sheaf of paper out of my bag.
“I thought you should have this,” I said, which was mostly true. Technically presenting Rory with this kind of information had been Malcolm’s idea, but I’d chosen the specifics. Whatever campaign he was attempting to wage against her now, I had to stay impartial. That feud, at least, was a clash between equals. I’d teach Rory every defense she asked me to help her with, but coddling her in that conflict wouldn’t do her any favors.
Besides, I did agree with him on one point. Rory needed to understand her past before she’d be able to completely accept who she was and what she was meant to do. Not all her convictions were based on reality.
Rory cocked her head as she studied the papers. “What is this?”
“The official report from the blacksuits on the altercation in which your parents were killed,” I said. “I had to call in a favor to get it, but I figured you deserved the full story.” She’d been horrified by the way the blacksuits had dispatched the joymancers who’d raised her. Would she understand their actions better if she saw just how the joymancers had ravaged our people before they’d taken her? There were photographs in that print-out that made my stomach turn.
Rory’s gaze ran over the first paragraph. Then she met my eyes. “This will be the blacksuits version. They’ll want to make themselves sound as justified as possible, won’t they?”
I looked back at her steadily. “Our people may be brutal when they need to be, but most of us value accuracy. Our side took lives that day too, and the report doesn’t shy away from that fact. We know what we are. It’s important that you know what we—and the joymancers—are too.”
“The joymancers wouldn’t have—”
Rory cut herself off. From what Malcolm had said, she’d made her preference for joymancer attitudes quite clear to him, but she might not realize how much he’d told the rest of us. She was being careful, which did her credit, even if she hadn’t been able to stop a familiar angry flush from coming into her cheeks.
She’d loved the people she’d called her parents. I wasn’t going to blame her for that. The two of them might not even have been bad people as individuals. They’d still had a part in tearing her from her home and her rightful heritage.
“How many joymancers did you know?” I said quietly.
She bit her lip. “Only my parents,” she admitted.
“You have to realize there are reasons they kept you away from the others. What you’ll read in there will fill in some of those blanks.”
Her hand still hesitated over the report, as if she were torn between taking it and shoving it back at me. My gut twisted tighter, but I played the one c
ard I was sure would work with her.
“You care about knowing the whole truth, don’t you? You’ve never seemed like the type to shy away from the facts even if they’re painful.”
“Of course I want to know the facts,” she said, grabbing the papers and stuffing them into her purse. “I just wonder what the joymancer account says, that’s all. In the interest of covering all the bases.”
“Well, if I can manage to scrounge up that too, I’ll pass it along.”
She guffawed and got up. “Well, thank you again. Are you still good for the same time on Sunday?”
“I’ll meet you here.”
I lingered by the doorway as she headed down the hall, a hard, heavy sensation sinking through my chest. I’d done everything just as I’d planned it. As far as I could tell, I’d handled the balance just right. But watching her go with the image of her gorgeously resolute expression imprinted in my mind, I was filled with the sickening certainty that one way or another, I was failing.
Chapter Ten
Rory
A low, graceful melody carried from my dorm room. I stopped in the hall outside, taking it in as I reached for my keycard. The lilting strains had a mournful quality that seeped right into my chest with the ache of uncertainty that had been lingering there all morning.
The music cut off abruptly when I opened the door. Shelby’s head came up with a swish of her ponytail where she was sitting in one of the common room armchairs with her cello propped in front her. She relaxed a little when she saw it was me, but not completely.
“Sorry,” she said, getting up. “I can go back to the music rooms in the tower.”
I waved her back down. “What are you talking about? I don’t mind. You’re really good. We should be glad to get the free concert.”
She laughed stiffly. “Yeah, most of the other girls don’t feel that way. There’s usually no one here for an hour or so this time on Fridays, so I stick to that. I like getting to hear how the songs sound in different spaces—you notice different elements.”