My mouth opened, closed, then I frowned. I still wasn’t willing to tell him that I felt his best friend every time I got near the Priest. My refusal to say that didn’t leave a lot of room to explain anything else. Instead of pursuing that, I diverted.
“Are you really feeling like this is a waste of time?” I asked.
He looked at me, his hazel eyes briefly piercing.
Then he seemed to deflate. “No,” he admitted. “No, I think I’m just feeling guilty. You’re risking yourself too much, Leda.”
“It’s my neck on the line, too,” I reminded him. “You have no reason to feel guilty. If Dark Cathedral gets theircoup d’etat,and overthrows the Magique and human worlds, my life is over. I’d have to go on the run, probably in Overworld, like my motherdid. I’d probably end up dead like my mother, too, since I’m not even a trained praecurus. I have no idea if I could evenfindmy brother, much less bring him with me.”
Alaric fell silent.
After a few seconds, he nodded, drinking another few swallows off his flask. Watching him stare into the fire, I bit my lip, trying to decide if I should try again. From the sinking in my gut, I knew I hadn’t made either of us feel better. I might have made both of us feel worse, which made me wonder just how much of that dark, depressed, dungeon-like feeling I’d dragged back with me from the Priest’s castle.
“Are we going to Ravenous tonight?” I asked.
Alaric glanced at me, cocking on eyebrow.
I knew him pretty well by now. We’d spent so much time together, I suppose I should have known him a bit. I could read the silent question there, even when he didn’t bother to speak it aloud. He knew there was something I wasn’t telling him.
Honestly, he was more right than he knew.
My suspicion that the Priest might be Bones, and the existence of my odd sun primal weren’t the only things I’d kept to myself over the summer. I hadn’t told Alaric anything about the night of theEleusínia Myst?riadance yet, either, or my aunt’s death.
But then, I hadn’t told anyone what happened that night.
Alaric definitely wasn’t the only person in my life I’d been lying to.
All my closest friends heard the same story. I told Miranda, Draken, Luc, Jolie, Alaric, Darragh, Nyx, and my date that night, Graham Strangemore, that I’d gotten too drunk, and hadn’t been able to get back to Grathrock College on my own. I said I’d found an out-of-the-way couch in Frumpy’s, the enormous student lounge in Malcroix Mansion, and, sensing my need, the magical field around Frumpy’s covered that couch with pillowsand blankets. Then, according to my story, I promptly made myself invisible, and fell dead asleep for six hours.
Everyone pretended to be amused.
Well, except Jolie, who wasn’t very good at hiding her emotions, and Alaric, who never had any desire to, at least not with me. He’d glared at me for two full days after he heard the story, and lectured me off and on well into the following year.
He was looking at me in a similar way now.
I was relieved when Wraith jumped up on the table and directly into Alaric’s lap, batting at his hands with her paws and head-butting his chest, demanding cuddles. After a few seconds of cooing and pets, Wraith sprawled out over his thighs, purring with half-lidded green eyes, her furry tummy exposed. She kneaded her razor-sharp claws in the air where they hung over one of his legs.
I warmed my teacup from the pot and offered him some, but he waved me off.
He’d gotten a wineglass out of my suite’s kitchen when he made tea, and now, likely because he’d emptied his flask, he poured himself a glass of the dark-crimson Craven Label Bloodwine he’d brought over for us to share the night before. That particular bottle, a disgustingly expensive vintage only available from the royal family of Romania, had been stolen from his father’s wine cellar.
Alaric insisted his father wouldn’t miss it.
Honestly? I didn’t believe him.
But I didn’t press the point, mostly because Alaric’s relationship with his father was difficult for me to understand for a lot of reasons. Alaric seemed to compulsively provoke the Greythorne patriarch––oddly, seeminglymoreso now, when he was genuinely worried his father might force him to join a dark magical cult. Stealing his father’s expensive wine was likely another way of poking the bear.
Alaric told me a lot over our spring and summer terms at Malcroix about his father’s temper, his bizarre punishments when Alaric was a child, and his quasi-religious beliefs around racial purity, and something he called “The Project of Worlds.” Apparently, verbal diarrhea following excessive alcohol consumption was a Greythorne family trait, since he seemed to torture Alaric with these dogmatic and utterly weird speeches whenever he got drunk.
Alaric was certain that his father wanted him to join Dark Cathedral, and to carry on the family tradition of hating humans and low-born Magicals. For the same reason, he flat-out refused to listen to the Priest’s broadcasts with his father in the same room, afraid of what that reality distortion field would do to him in the presence of a true believer.
I didn’t blame him.
Honestly, I didn’t want him doing that, either.
I watched him place the dusty bottle carefully on the silver tray next to the tea service. He managed to do it and settle back on the couch without disturbing Wraith, and I adjusted my own seat with teacup in hand, tucking my feet under my bum and leaning my back into the soft, midnight-blue cushions as I fought to clear my head.
“I’m supposed to cut you off after this glass if wearegoing out,” I reminded him. “You might recall our last club outing? If I allow you to leave the Keep ‘thoroughly messy, one more time,’ you’ll hold me personally responsible for whatever happens next. Your words.” I sipped my tea, watching his eyes. “You insisted I cut you off here, since you absolutely cannot… again,yourwords… be expected to go out and not spend ludicrous amounts of gold on signature cocktails, particularly if there are fit bartenders involved.”
