by Eva Chase
Frustration gripped me. What if I just wasn’t powerful enough? I only had three months of training. No matter how many strengths I had, they couldn’t counterbalance all the time I’d missed when I should have been honing these skills.
Damn it. I was not going to let him die. I just was not.
The anger that came with that thought jolted through the magic coiled behind my collarbone. Without letting myself second-guess the impulse, I hurled it into my next command. “Get out!”
The pulse of energy jumped against my skin with a pinching pressure that faded in an instant. Beneath my fingertip, the mole deflated. As I jerked my hand back, it settled into a patch more like dark freckle. Banefield dragged in a heave of a breath.
My jaw went slack. I’d done it. I’d really managed to pull it off. Would he simply get better now on his own, or—
Banefield lunged upright so suddenly I startled in surprise, falling off the edge of the bed. His eyes popped open, ruddy with blood vessels crisscrossing the whites, and his hands snapped around the spot where I’d been sitting an instant before. A strained growl broke from his lips.
What the hell?
I scrambled backward and onto my feet. My mentor lurched out of the bed at the same time. Another angry, wordless sound escaped him. “Go!” he spat out, and threw himself at me.
I dashed out of the bedroom, my thoughts scattering in my bewilderment. Banefield charged after me with more speed than I’d have thought his wasted body could achieve. His hand shot out and clamped around my wrist. He wrenched me around with a heave so vicious that pain lanced through my shoulder cap.
“No!” he shouted, but I didn’t think he was talking to me. He propelled himself toward the kitchen, dragging me with him. His fingers dug in deeper, and his other arm whipped toward me. I ducked just a second before his fist would have clocked me in the head.
“Stop,” I said, tossing a persuasive casting into my words instinctively. “Let go of me.”
The magic bounced off the solid surface of his mental shields.
“I can’t,” he rasped, and flung himself at the kitchen island. “A failsafe— They wanted to be sure— It’s too deep in me. There’s no way.”
“If there’s something I can do to stop this, tell me,” I said, with a yelp as he twisted my wrist.
He was panting now. His free hand jerked toward me again, and he managed to slam it into the side of the island instead, hard enough that I thought I heard the crack of bone. Even in his agonizing grasp, I winced for him.
All at once, he hauled me past him, sending me hurtling to the end of the kitchen. My ribs smacked into the edge of the counter, but Banefield’s grip snapped. He plunged his hand into the drawer he’d just opened.
“I’m supposed to crush the magic out of you,” he said raggedly. “It won’t let go of me until I do. They wanted you helpless. They want—they wanted to make sure you never trust anyone who’d help you again. Don’t let it work. Don’t let it work. There’ll be people who’ll mean it. There’ll be people on your side.”
“Who did this?” I spun around and ran for the living room, but Banefield was faster. His punch rammed into my gut, knocking the air out of me.
“Fuck,” he sputtered as I doubled over with a gasp. “The older barons, the other reapers with them. The cancer in the fearmancers.” He fumbled across the island and snatched up a butcher’s knife from the block there. As he swung it toward me, I wrenched away from him with a burst of panic.
His arm kept swinging, all the way back to his own body. He plunged the knife straight into his chest.
“Professor!” I cried.
He slumped, blood spilling from around the blade into his undershirt and streaking over his skin. I dropped down beside him. His breath came with a wet rasp.
“I’m sorry,” I said, choking on the words. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Only way to stop them,” he mumbled, his head rolling back to stare at the ceiling. Blood flecked his lips. “Only way. You need it. Stop the cancer. Maybe you can cure that too. If you go—”
The last word cut off with a seize of his body. His hand snatched after mine. He caught it as I yanked myself backward, clutching tight… and then going limp with the rest of his body as the light faded from his eyes.
“Professor Banefield?” My voice came out so hoarse I’m not sure he’d have recognized his name even if he’d been conscious to hear it.
He gazed blankly upward. Blood seeped into a puddle on the floor beneath him. I squeezed his hand as if that could jolt him back to life, and a solid shape pressed against my palm.
My fingers curled around it instinctively. I shoved myself to my feet and sprinted to the door. Maybe there was still a chance—maybe if a doctor got to him quickly enough—
But even as I burst into the hall with a cry of “Help!” bursting from my throat, an ache of loss was already spreading through me from head to toe.
I’d saved him, and then he’d saved me from himself. From the barons… From the “reapers”?
How many enemies did I have in this world—and just how much blood were they willing to spill to get to me?
I couldn’t think through the blaring of grief and horror in my head. All I could do was shout, “Help!” again as I raced down the hall.
Chapter Thirty
Rory
Not long after I’d dropped into the armchair in Ms. Grimsworth’s office, I’d started shaking. When she came back into the room after doing whatever she’d needed to do to handle Professor Banefield’s death, I hadn’t stopped. My hands stayed clenched tight on my lap as I looked up at her.
The tensing of her expression told enough of the story before she even opened her mouth. “I’m afraid there was nothing any of us could do for him.”
I swallowed the lump that had crawled up my throat and hugged myself. Tears seared in the back of my eyes, but somehow they hadn’t spilled out yet. My head was whirling.
Ms. Grimsworth’s gaze dropped to my right arm. To the purpling bruises in the shape of Banefield’s fingers where my mentor’s hand had clamped around my wrist. The twinge at my side when I adjusted my position told me my ribs were probably bruised too, from when he’d thrown me against the counter.
He’d been trying to get me away from him right then, not trying to hurt me. I’d replayed the episode a hundred times in my head, and that was the conclusion I’d come to. There’d been another spell—a “failsafe,” he’d said—that had activated when I’d destroyed the mole that held the one making him sick. Some kind of persuasion magic, I had to guess.
It had forced him to attack me against his will, but he’d fought against the spell as well as he could. I was pretty sure when he’d told me “no” while I was working at curing him, he’d been trying to warn me, knowing what would come. He’d done everything he could not to fulfill its purpose: to crush the magic out of me, however exactly that worked.
Should I have left him alone, not tried to cure him? It was hard to believe that. In another week or two, he’d have wasted away completely. The health center staff hadn’t done anything useful for him. Either way, he’d have been dead.
This way was just more horrifying.
Ms. Grimsworth propped her thin frame against the edge of her desk rather than sitting behind it. “I can only imagine how distressing the experience you just had was, Miss Bloodstone. Can you tell me again, as thoroughly as possible, exactly what happened?”
I sucked in a breath. When I’d banged on her door and found her, mercifully, still inside, I’d babbled a fractured account of Banefield’s death, and she’d ushered me in here before rushing off. Now I had to decide what it was safe to tell her.
She looked shaken by what she’d seen, but how much could I trust that impression? She wasn’t a baron, but she could have been under their sway. She could be associated with whoever or whatever the “reapers” Banefield had mentioned were.
He’d given his life to save me. I had to make sure I di
dn’t stupidly throw my own away before his body had even stopped bleeding.
“I’ve been reading up on healing spells in the library,” I said, which was a version of the truth. “Maybe it sounds silly, but I wanted to see if I could do anything for Professor Banefield. He’s looked out for me since I first got here… I used magic to get into his quarters, and I tried a couple of the spells, and nothing seemed to happen. Then all of a sudden he attacked me.”
I rubbed my wrist. “I have no idea what was going on. He seemed delusional. He almost stabbed me with that knife, but when I dodged, he stabbed himself instead.”
The headmistress’s lips pursed. “I would say that sounds ridiculous, but our analysis confirms that he delivered the blow himself. Did he say anything to you during this attack? Any indication as to what provoked it?”
I shook my head. Better no one knew how much he’d managed to warn me. Better my enemies thought I was still totally ignorant. “He was mumbling and muttering, but I could hardly make out any of the words. I have no idea whether he understood who I was, even. He said something about a daughter… That’s the only part I remember catching. It all happened so fast, and I was so shocked…”
“Of course,” Ms. Grimsworth said, in a tone that I suspected was meant to be reassuring but that only came out as dour. “Of course you were. I hope you can see now why we restrict visitors in cases like this where we’re uncertain of the illness—we can’t predict how the patient will behave.”
I hung my head. She sighed. “I expect that isn’t a rule you’ll ignore again. And your desire to contribute to Professor Banefield’s healing was admirable if highly misguided. Clearly his illness was even more serious than we thought, affecting his mind as well as his body. Do you recall the specific spells you attempted?”
I tossed out a couple of the common ones I’d seen in my research, which seemed to satisfy her enough. “I can’t imagine it was anything specific about you that provoked the attack,” she said. “If you hadn’t come, most likely it would have been the nurse who checked in on him in the morning. Don’t make this any harder on yourself by feeling responsible.”
“I know,” I said quietly. I wasn’t responsible for how the spell had made him act. I was only responsible for making him a target in the first place.
Ms. Grimsworth straightened up, brushing her hands together. “The health center may have more questions for you in the morning, but for now I think you’ve had enough. Let me see your arm.”
She made a quick motion toward my bruised wrist. I held it toward her awkwardly, and she murmured a word under her breath with a swiping motion of her fingers.
Before my eyes, the bruise shimmered away, leaving only unblemished skin. I touched it instinctively and winced at the soreness that remained.
“It’s still bruised,” Ms. Grimsworth said. “The healing arts aren’t my area of expertise. I cast an illusion over it so no one should notice anything’s amiss tonight.”
“Tonight?” I repeated.
“At the banquet. You’d better go on down there now.”
Just the word “banquet” made my stomach lurch in refusal. “What?” I said, wondering if I’d misheard.
The headmistress nodded, gesturing me to my feet. “The food will be served in just a few minutes. Not having their scion there will dull the celebration for the Insight league. You’ll be surrounded by friends and festivities rather than left alone with your thoughts. Let the festivities distract you, take comfort in the company, and if it begins to wear on you, then make your excuses and leave. We can’t let this tragedy ripple even farther through the school.”
All I wanted to do was crawl into bed. My body balked. “I—”
“I can escort you down to the dining room if that would make it easier.”
No, having Ms. Grimsworth march me down there would be even worse. I could manage the walk. I could stay five minutes, anyway, if that was my duty as scion tonight.
Put on a brave face. If my enemies were watching, let them think I hadn’t been that fazed. When I thought of it that way, the idea sat a little more easily.
“That’s all right,” I said, forcing myself to stand. “I can manage.”
My shaking had subsided as we’d talked, but the shock still clung to me like a layer of gauze that hazed my mind. The floor felt far away beneath my feet. Outside Ms. Grimsworth’s office, the silence in the hall blared.
I tightened my jaw and kept walking, one foot at a time, out to the staircase and down and along the shorter hall to the front wing.
I’d just reached that space when a brawny figure moved into view at the far end. The light from the flames in the sconces wavered across Connar’s chiseled face.
My legs locked. I couldn’t deal with him, not now, not on top of everything else this awful evening had thrown at me.
He didn’t come too close, just caught my gaze and held out his hand. A metal figurine gleamed in his grasp—a dragon, almost identical to the one I’d made for him. I stared at it.
“You said I had to make it myself,” Connar said. “I’m going to be that guy.”
He extended his arm a little farther. When I looked at him blankly, he brought his hand back to his side and slid the dragon into his pocket. It occurred to me only then that he’d been offering it to me as a sort of gift. Like I’d offered the one I’d made to him.
“It’s just the beginning,” he added with a pained smile. “I know it’s hardly enough on its own.”
He turned and left me even more shell-shocked than I’d been a minute ago, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible. What had he expected me to say?
Warm lights and music trickled from the doorway beyond the hall. I stepped inside warily, and a girl from the Insight league grabbed my elbow, so abruptly I had to restrain a flinch. She beamed at me. “About time you made it. Come on—you’ve got the best seat in the house.”
The tables throughout the room had been laid out with gleaming gold-embroidered tablecloths. Sconces glowed all around me. The crystal chandeliers overhead swayed and tinkled with the music.
One table at the front of the room was set perpendicular to the others. A few of the senior Insight league members were already sitting there, including the guy who’d led the meeting last month, and… Declan. The empty chair in the middle next to him was obviously meant for me.
I let the girl guide me over and sank into the chair, tucking my hands under the table. Declan gave me a quick glance and a quicker nod in greeting, the distant politeness of two people who’d never really talked, let alone fucked.
Chatter carried from around the tables ahead of us. Not a single person here had any idea that a man had just stabbed himself to death upstairs.
The door at the other end of the room opened, and our servers filed into the room, carrying the platters that held our feast. The other leagues had dressed in black pants and white shirts for the occasion. I might have found it mildly amusing if the circumstances had been different.
Three particularly familiar figures made their way to our head table. Apparently the rule was that scions served scions.
Jude reached us first. He set down a platter of carved pork near my plate with a mocking little bow. “For Your Highness,” he said in his flippant tone. “May the food be tasty enough to wash away all memory of my sins.”
The smell of the meat made my stomach churn. I couldn’t find the wherewithal to come up with an answer to his remark. My gaze slid to Connar, who’d just set down a platter of asparagus and pine nuts near Declan. He was watching me, a flicker of concern crossing his face. Between how I must look now and how I’d responded to him in the hall—or rather, not responded—it couldn’t be hard for him to pick up on the fact that something was wrong.
He hesitated, opening his mouth, and my hand clenched tighter on my lap as I rested the other on the table. I gave a curt shake of my head. There was nothing I wanted to talk about here, and nothing I wanted to talk about with him, whatever sins he int
ended to make up for. Not right now with the moments in Banefield’s room still so fresh in my head.
As the two of them veered away, Malcolm set down the platter he’d been carrying—skewers of garlic grilled shrimp—between Declan and me. He met my eyes with a glower, his posture radiating displeasure. I looked right back at him, refusing to cower despite the implicit threat in his gaze.
We weren’t done? Fine. I might be shaken, but I had so much fight left in me.
He swiveled on his heel and stalked away. Beneath the table, I uncurled my fingers just slightly. Just enough to run my thumb over the warmed metal of the object Banefield had pressed into my hand as he’d died. A little silver key.
He must have grabbed it from the drawer—it must have been why he’d wrenched himself over to the kitchen despite the spell’s compulsion. He’d given every last bit of will he had to placing it in my grasp. I’d thought he might be the key to navigating the treacheries of the fearmancer world, and he’d turned out to have a completely literal one for me.
The spell had taken him over before he could tell me where to use it, but that was all right. I’d mourn tonight, and tomorrow I’d start searching for the lock that matched it. Whatever this key opened up, he’d believed I needed it. To heal the cancer he saw among the fearmancers? Maybe.
Or maybe I’d just burn this whole place to the ground.
* * *
How much more ruthless will Rory’s enemies become—and how many of her fellow scions will stand with her as she fights back? Find out in Sinister Wizardry, the third book in the Royals of Villain Academy series. Get Sinister Wizardry now!
If you’re a fan of reverse harem paranormal romance, why not check out one of Eva’s complete series, The Witch’s Consorts? You can grab the prequel story FREE here!
Next in the Royals of Villain Academy series