“The first time I did magic, I was nine, I think…” he said without looking at her. “My father is a cruel man. His standards aren’t simply exacting; they’re impossible. Cairo and I are his living legacies, so he’s harder on us than anyone else. And when my mother stood up for us, they would have fights. Vicious, brutal fights that lasted for days. Weeks. One week, I just…lost it.”
Ellory could see the picture his words painted, of a little boy in a little suit—for she couldn’t imagine Hudson Graves in anything else—pressed against the wall behind his mother as his parents tore into each other with a violence at odds with their opulent surroundings. The swirling guilt and rage and fear consolidating into a desire for the fighting to stop. Cataclysmic magic that reverberated through his body, shattering the windows and drawing his wary brother from the bedroom down the hall. Standing there with glass shards at his feet and his heart beating out his chest and blood leaving narrow rivulets between his nose and lips.
And then darkness.
Her vision felt familiar, feltright. Like a kinship she had always felt between them had revealed its thick roots, and now something powerful could grow.
“When I woke up, they said I had imagined it. I could barely remember anything, so it was easy to believe all these years. Coincidences could be explained away. This strange awareness Ihave, this pull toward the inexplicable, that was just my personality. But when you came to me, when I started helping you, I didn’t just want answers for you. I wanted answers for myself. I just had to go home to get them.”
Ellory glanced down at him. “You went home?”
“Well, if I had magic, then I must have always had it, right? If I couldn’t trust my memories, I wanted to go through the family records. So I confronted my parents and—and it’s true. My father, my brother, and I can all do magic. And they’ve known since I wasnine.” Another bleak laugh shattered his composure. “The worst part of it is that I suspected that something changed that year. There was a shift in the way my father looked at us, treated us. Everything got worse.” Hudson’s hand tore through his platinum curls. “Sometimes, I wish he hated us. It would have been easier than squeezing droplets of affection from a riverbed gone dry.”
The remnants of his story faded into the night, leaving the air thick with vulnerability. Familiarity shivered through Ellory’s body again, as if she’d heard this before. She had never met Hudson’s father, and yet she could almost picture a stern white man with his son’s dark eyes, demanding and detached. The ensuing silence threatened to choke all the life from this moment, silence in which Hudson could put himself back together and regret everything he’d shared.
Ellory’s shoulders curled in on each other as she opened a wound of her own. “I get that. I—to be cruel, my parents would have to be present. Since they sent me here, I’ve spoken to them a handful of times, and every time they say they love me. Iknowthey love me. I just wish—”
“That it mattered.”
“That it mattered,” she confirmed in a whisper. “But I don’t even feel it.”
“I get that.” The echo of her words from his lips made another shiver run through her. His head tipped back,thunking against the balustrade. “I shouldn’t have told you any of that. I must be drunker than I thought.”
“You shouldn’t have hidden the magic thing from me in the first place. I would have understood. I would have believed you. As for the rest…I won’t tell anyone about your family. We all have things we don’t say out loud.” Carefully, Ellory sank down beside him. Their thighs brushed. “Is everything all right? No offense, but you don’t strike me as the kind of guy to drink to excess. Too uptight.”
Hudson snorted. “I’m not uptight.”
“You’re wearing a button-down to a frat party.”
“I like this button-down.”
“Graves.”
“I’mtired, Morgan,” he gritted out, gaze on the remote sky. “Of all of it. The pageantry and the exams and the fuckingrotof this place. Magic is real, and yet, every day, we march a little closer to death, wasting hours and hours performing for people who will never give a shit about us. Who will lie to and use and discard us. I’m tired of it.” She couldn’t be sure in the dark, but his eyes seemed brighter than usual. “If my family had magic at their fingertips all this time, thenanyonecould, and we wouldn’t evenremember. But with Cairo gone, I’m the one thing keeping my family together. I’m our only chance. Even with my faith in them shattered, I can’t live down the disappointment in my father’s eyes. I won’t. Fuck this, but fuck him most of all.”
Hudson’s breath caught. Ellory had closed her hand around his, and even with the full force of his attention on that, she couldn’t bring herself to let go. He’d gone as still as a startled rabbit, like he’d forgotten they were real people with real limbs. His eyes foundhers, so wide that their whites were like moons in a penumbral eclipse. She looked back steadily, searchingly.
“Would it be so bad,” she murmured, “if weactuallytried being on the same side for a while?”
“No,” he whispered back, “I guess it wouldn’t.”
His fingers slid between hers. Their palms kissed. Ellory studied the shadows gathered at the other end of the balcony, because if she thought too much about what she was doing, what they were doing, she would have to put a stop to it.
“I’m tired, too,” she said. “Going here feels like everyone was born with boats, while I’m only just learning to swim. The great lie of higher education is that getting a degree—hell, getting as many degrees as you can—is the only way to be successful. My aunt’s bought into it. My parents have bought into it. And here I am, killing myself for a piece of paper in the hopes of getting a job I don’t even want.” It burned to admit it, but he was burning with her. Their truths would keep them warm. “I don’t even want to be rich. I want to be happy. That’s what success means to me. But I just don’t know any other way to get there.”
“I imagine it’s a lot easier without some arrogant rich guy mocking you in your classes,” said Hudson, thumb tracing her skin in a comforting glide.
Ellory was surprised into laughing. “God, you were such adick. Are you going to finally tell me why you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you, Morgan. I just had no reason to like you.”
“And now?”
“You’re fine.” A smile tugged at his lips. “I’m only slightly indifferent.”
“Careful. I might swoon.”
It felt good, to share a laugh with him, like they were inchingtoward something that had been inevitable from the start. His gaze fell to her mouth, tracked the path of her tongue as it wet her lower lip. Her lashes dipped to half-mast, the rest of her senses roaring to awareness. His scent, shea butter and bergamot. His touch, smooth, warm skin wrapped protectively around her hand. His eyes, an endless sacred darkness focused wholly on her. She could hear his every shaky breath, feel how much he wanted her in the quiet between each one, and the night around them tightened in anticipation.
