Kael found Henrich by the academy doors, alive and smiling faintly through the dust. He exhaled, yet the air still tasted of thunder.
The next day, he joined in the restorations. The academy rose again within weeks, its walls mended and its gardens in bloom once more. And even after the work was done, Kael couldn't quite get the woman who smelled of roses out of his thoughts.
It was quieter nowin the city of Befest. But silence did not mean peace. The Battle of the Trivale had ended in bloodshed, yet it had ended. Dereck Thorne retreated to his mansion in Perlgate and released the Duchess of Bretannia. There would be a trial. He would be judged.
All the nobles pressed for execution, but the king refused. As Henrich had said so well,nothing good ever rose from the ashes of false martyrs.
Many called it mercy. Kael knew it was strategy.
He returned to the academy to visit Henrich. The office was empty, so he went to the one other place his mentor might be—the council chamber. It lay at the heart of the academy, a circular hall with walls painted deep blue and scattered with silver stars. A roundtable of dark oak stood at its center, a crystal sphere upon it for scrying with other academies.
Kael paused at the threshold. He had clearly interrupted something.
Henrich, Isolde, Elwin, and Selena stood beside the table, not seated. None wore shawls over their faces. Another mage was with them, clad in dark green robes. His skin was warm brown, his hair a mass of dark curls streaked with a single white lock, and his smile revealed a line of broken teeth. Kael did not know him. Perhaps he was an old friend of Henrich’s.
“What is this?” Kael asked, the words coming sharper than intended. He felt as though he had stepped into a secret meeting.
Henrich was not the kind to keep secrets.
“I was going to have someone fetch you now that Bashir is here,” Henrich said. Or lied. “Let’s sit down.”
They all took a seat.
Kael hesitated. Grief hung in the air, veiled and heavy, yet something else moved beneath it, something colder. Doubt crawled under his skin, whispering that nothing good would come of this.
But Henrich was his mentor, his old friend. Whatever took place behind these doors would be under his hand. It would not be vile.
Definitely not vile.
Kael took the last empty chair. The wood felt colder than it should, as if the room itself braced for what would follow. No one spoke at first. Eyes shifted toward him, then toward the scrying sphere, its surface trembling with a faint, unsteady light. Bashir folded his hands, the broken teeth in his smile gone entirely. Selena would not meet his gaze. Isolde’s fingers tightened around the arm of her chair.
Henrich drew a breath meant to steady the room.
“Kael,” he said quietly. “There is something you must hear.”
And Elwin covered the scrying sphere with a thick black shawl.
Chapter 12
Evie
Iwoke each morning still Magister Corvo, still employed by the Council of Farming. I had half expected to be escorted from the castle the day after the magisters’ dinner, yet no summons came. Relief did, faint but real. Still, every day I looked over my shoulder. Would I see him today? And if I did, would the hatred in his impossibly beautiful eyes still burn the same? That memory still hurt.
The bruise at the corner of my jaw had faded. His mark was gone. Lo had noticed it, not me. Each time I’d caught sight of it, I’d remembered his hand—broad, calloused, and cruelly strong. The way his jaw had locked as he’d gripped me. And when my fingers brushed that faded spot, I could almost feel him again, his touch searing through me as though I were made of paper.
I hated how it made me feel. Despite all the signs, I longed for Kael Forloren. Shamefully, helplessly. In some twisted corner of my heart, I wanted him to do it again, to see just how far I would go before I broke.
I lay in bed, eyes open, locked in a silent staring contest with the ceiling for the past hour or so. Dawn bled softly through my bluecurtains, coaxing the room awake. Every night was the same. The moment I was alone, I thought of him. Of the stairs. Of what had happened and what hadn’t. Perhaps I wasn’t right in the head, because I could never decide whether I wanted to weep or to imagine what might have come next if I’d fought him harder.
Would he have shoved me over the railing? Or… done something else?
Something the clerics would call sinful.
And every time my thoughts dared to wander there, the throb between my thighs betrayed me.
There had been only one man in my life, and I’d once believed I would spend the rest of my life with him. Gio, with his black-as-night, messy hair and his fine curved nose. He’d come from Sud like I had, drawn to the prestigious Magi Academy of Hauvia. We’d been together six years, had taught at the academy side by side, survived plague and riots and hunger.
I had loved him, I think. My heart had splintered when he’d announced his return to Sud. He couldn’t live so far from his family any longer, he’d said. I had told him I couldn’t leave. Somewhere, he must have believed we’d return home together once the plague had passed.
