What’s coming… I hesitated.
“I will not be around forever, you know,” my uncle said then, his voice soft, almost a whisper. “I can’t always be mending bridges you’re content to burn.”
I uncrossed my arms, letting them slump at my sides. I didn’t want to have this conversation, not now, but I had avoided it enough times already. My uncle had been trying to speak with me about this for months now. I didn’t want to know why. I didn’t want to think too closely about what he might know, about what might be precipitating this dialogue.
“You should make amends with Wyn Kendrick,” he told me. “You don’t want to live the rest of your considerably long life regretting how much you could have achieved if only you’d accepted a little more help.”
I frowned, taking in the white hair, the wrinkled face, the squinting, nearly blind eyes. I could remember my uncle in his youth as though it were yesterday. It had taken little for me to love Professor Xavier Belling. The man had the best stories and the most exciting way of telling them. His passion for his work was a living, breathing thing and he passed it on to me in those years that it was just the two of us living in his moderately appointed faculty apartment, staring up at the stars and calling them by name, musing about what might be out there and never voicing the fact that we might be the only two people in the world who actually knew.
But because of what I was, because I was only half related to Professor Xavier Belling, I had to watch as his honey blonde hair turned white, as his vision left him so greatly that I had to read him his own lecture notes, as his skin sagged and wrinkled. Meanwhile, I remained physically young. I wasn’t. I was nearing sixty now. But I still looked like a woman in her early twenties, or perhaps late teens. A byproduct of being half immortal. No one knew how long I would live. It wouldn’t be forever. I was already aging quicker than a full immortal. But the length of lifespan for a hybrid seemed to vary based on the power of their immortal parent. And since I had never met my mother…
“Whenever Wyn Kendrick deigns to visit again, I promise you, most favorite uncle, that I won’t be completely vicious.”
Xavier frowned and shook his head. He sighed, exasperated, as I turned for the door. I would feel guilty about so severely disappointing my elders at a later date. Right now, I needed to prepare for my classes.
Chapter three
An Unwelcome Visit
TherewasnothingthatDean Keegan Clarke despised more than American business interrupting his afternoon tea. And there was nothing I loved more than disrupting his colonial heritage.
“Ah, Miss Belling,” Dean Clarke spoke in greeting as I stormed into his office uninvited, his poor secretary Margery running after me in a huff, her ludicrous perm bouncing atop her head.
“I—I couldn’t stop her, sir,” Margery panted, bending over to catch her breath as I came to a stop a few feet from where the Dean was inspecting his afternoon pastries, a bored expression on his face, thin lips pursed, shrewd eyes focused.
“You never can.”
Margery blinked, straightening up and looking from the Dean to me as if she were going to disagree. But I raised a brow in challenge and she backed down. She stomped her foot like a petulant child and stormed back to her desk, slamming the door behind her harder than was strictly necessary.
“I’ll remind you,” the Dean began then, still not looking at me though his tone had taken on that measured wariness of his. The vaguely threatening, confusingly mild taunt he reserved just for me. “Your status here is in a very precarious position at the moment. What with that outburst at the DAA a few months ago and now this business with a minotaur.”
“The minotaur which I single handedly saved a regiment of DAA special ops from, you mean?” I asked, raising a brow as I crossed my arms, baiting him.
“The very one.”
He finally selected a pastry and, placing it daintily on a small platter, allowed his eyes to flick up briefly to me before he turned and made his way back to his desk.
“Xavier says you were unable to close it.”
I froze, biting my tongue so severely I thought it might bleed. You failed. I could almost hear his voice sneering at me though he had never, would never, say it in such a way. Still, I felt it there, hanging between us, the words unsaid, the words he meant. You failed and, not only have you disappointed this academic institution which raised you but you’ve put the mortal plane in peril.
“Did he tell you about the minotaur as well?” I asked, treading lightly, trying to discern just how much my uncle had disclosed to the Dean.
“No,” he replied with a shrug and I relaxed for only a moment until he continued. “Wyn Kendrick did.”
My blood boiled in an instant, jaw tensing as I remembered the coward that ran when confronted with something he didn’t understand and the last conversation we’d had on that mountain.
“DAA bastard,” I swore.
“Bastard he may be but he’s lived another day, moved on to another rift, another assignment. You, however, might have died.”
“I didn’t.”
“Sheer luck.”
“Cunning is the word you’re looking for, I believe.”
He narrowed his gaze.
