After I’d spoken to Graham in Theurgy, and before I got shut down by Bones in Ancient Rituals the next day, I grilled Mir, Draken, Luc, Darragh, Jolie, Nyx, and pretty much anyone else who would talk to me about what I’d missed in the dining hall that morning.
They all told essentially the same story.
Alaric’s father strode into the dining hall at roughly seven in the morning, a goblin and two mages trailing behind. His father ordered Alaric to his feet. Then the two mages with Greythorne Senior each grabbed one of Alaric’s arms and began dragging him out of the room. His father said nothing to anyone else.
Well, except one.
Lord Borogh Greythorne talked tooneother person, apart from his son.
I was told by Percival Greeley in my Offensive and Defensive Magic practical that Bones had asked Greythorne, “like a pompous little prick,” Greely muttered, glancing at the door of the experimental magic shed as he relayed the story, “when he might expect to get his friend back, seeing as how he needed him to pass his Numerology and Symbology midterm.”
According to Percival, Lord Greythorne hadn’t been amused.
He told Bones to shut his gods-damned mouth, or he’d have a word with his father, and “both of us know how well you’d like that, you little cocksucker,” which apparently shocked enough students that it caused a ripple of gossip all on its own.
I admit, it shocked me, too. Enough that I questioned whether Percival had been lying, or exaggerating in some way. Miranda, who’d heard it, too, assured me he hadn’t been. She also told me that Bones didn’t say a word in reply, or even change expression.
“He looked at old Greythorne like his threat neither surprised him nor bothered him,” she said, a frown on her mouth. “It was bizarre, frankly.”
After his crack at Bones, Greythorne took his son out of there like he was a prisoner.
From every account, Alaric hadn’t said a word.
He’d gone pale when they first appeared, “looked sick,” according to Darragh, but he never argued, and he did everything his father told him to do.
Luc, who was, as usual, the most precise about details, mentioned that the two mages who’d arrived with Lord Greythorne didn’t wear uniforms, or look like anything other than employees, and likely not house employees, as they weren’t dressed well enough. He highly doubted Alaric had been taken due to any kind of official action.
I honestly didn’t understand how none of this amounted to kidnapping.
Luc seemed surprised by my outrage.
He told me that, in Magique, families had a lot of power over their less senior members, particularly children, regardless of their age. Borogh Greythorne was head of the Greythorne family. That made him king over that world. For that to change, Alaric would have to legally sever ties with his entire blood family,something few could accomplish even in anormalfamily, much less one with the money and clout of the Greythornes.
It involved petitioning to be heard by the courts, then convincing a group of magistrates, most of whom likely knew Greythorne personally, that the situation in Alaric’s family life was intolerable due to a variety of factors that Alaric would then have to prove unequivocally, and prove he’d already tried to negotiate peacefully.
It sounded insane to me, honestly.
It sounded like prison.
“Shall we?” Graham asked, offering me his arm.
I hesitated, then shook my head, once. “I can’t right now,” I said, my mind working to find an excuse. “I have to talk to someone,” I said after the barest breath.
“Who?” Graham asked, his brows drawing together.
“Forsooth,” I blurted, the first name that came to mind. “I have something I need to ask him, and I’d like to find him before––”
“How very fortuitous,” a voice said cheerfully from my left. “I had wished to speak with you as well, Ms. Shadow.”
I turned, flushing, and found myself looking right into Forsooth’s dark brown eyes.
“…Isn’t that lucky our minds were thinking so, right at the same time?”
13
Invitation
Forsooth’s dark eyes stared into mine, twinkling with those strange, star-like flecks. His hair, untamed and bushy around his head as always, framed his angular face. He wore a small smile, so faint, I questioned whether I saw it at all.
