Cassian crosses to my side in two long steps. “Junes, shit. Are you okay?”
I swallow hard. In truth, I hardly felt the spark. It’s nothing to the painful rending in my chest, the ache in my heart. “I got distracted.”
“Your shields really are improving. And your reflexes are faster than I thought they’d be. You’ll never have an alpha’s reflexes, but you’re swift on your feet and cast quickly.”
“Another round?” I challenge, trying to mirror his superior smirk.
He laughs, his face open and warm with an affection so familiar it makes my heart squeeze. “Yeah, okay.”
We go three more rounds until his phone chimes with a text. I grab my water bottle and drink half of it down while he furiously taps away on his phone screen.
When he looks up, his face is shuttered, all the boyish openness from before utterly gone. “I have business to attend to.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Keep practicing, Juniper. Those shields will never stand up torealhexes.”
The glass door slams hard behind him, the whole pane rattling, and I watch him go, feeling like I’ve just been hit by a million hexes, singed by shower after shower of sparks.
CHAPTER5
The morning’s mist still hangs heavy over campus as we leave Saint Aldric’s, but the silence is just as heavy. I try to ask Marcus about his mother, about the call he took while I was working through my shields with Cassian, but his answers are brief and stony. Like the first time we met and made the long drive from the Connecticut coast north to Deer Island, he resists every attempt I make to pull him into conversation.
But I’m keeping things from him too.
And when I see the figure on the rise of the cliffs that crash down into the ocean, an all-too-familiar mask on its face? When the figure’s gaze seems to follow me as I make my way back to the main quad with my honor guard? When the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end, chilled by fearful beads of sweat, and I can’t shake the feeling of being watched?
I keep that to myself.
* * *
The lockdownon omegas doesn’t lift the following Monday and Marcus stays as close—and as stony—as ever, only leaving my side for my evening lesson with Ian. My Casting professor’s office is in the basement of Saint Guinnette’s library, just a few doors down from the seating area for Café Ciel.
It’s no wonder he was able to get to me so quickly when I tried to unlock my magic. The real wonder is that he was able to perform the spellwork that saved my life. The magic and emotion that flowed between us.
My darling.
I work my lower lip between my teeth. We haven’t spoken about that day, about how tenderly he held me as he gave me the greatest gift I could have asked for: my magic. Still, he looks at me differently now. Still stern, but more protective. Worried.
After half of a semester of exchanging heated looks and cutting words, things have changed between me and my imperious professor, and I can’t seem to find my footing around him anymore.
I steel myself, pick up two coffees from Ellie, who’s working the bar at Ciel, and stride toward his office as Marcus posts up at one of the tall café tables with a book and a black coffee, within earshot should I need him.
Walking into Ian’s office is like walking into an explosion frozen in time. There are stacks of paper and bookseverywhere, some even spelled to remain suspended in midair, as if he’d been walking around reading and simply left the book floating when he moved onto something else. Mugs from Ciel cover every surface that books don’t—more than I count, and I wonder what his usual order is at the café just down the hall.
I’m so used to seeing him in front of our Casting class, in command and put together. I hang on every word of his lectures along with the rest of my classmates. He’s decidedly more rumpled by this time of day, shirt untucked and wrinkled, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dark hair in disarray from him raking his hand through it as he reads. Like Simon, it seems my Casting professor gets so engrossed in his reading that the world around him falls away.
He doesn’t even notice when I knock or step into the room. I set my bag down quietly and slip into the chair across from his desk, and when he turns the page and doesn’t acknowledge me, I take out my Spellcrafting textbook to get ahead in my reading.
When he finally does look up half an hour later, he blinks at me in shock, bright blue eyes owlish behind his glasses. “Saints, how long have you been here?”
“I got here promptly at seven, like you instructed.” I can’t help the little cheeky quirk of my lips.
He checks his watch and scowls at me in a way I’m coming to appreciate a bit too much. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Honestly, I thought you knew I was here and were just finishing the passage you were reading. And then, when you didn’t look up, I figured whatever you were reading was important.” I shrug. “Is it?”
He marks his page and carefully closes the peeling leather cover of the thick tome. He turns it around for me to examine. It’s old, the gilding long since worn off, but the inverted septagram on the cover is unmistakable. “Old Baphomet lore. I’m still finding a counter hex to deal with the Ever Ember—without much luck.” He drags a hand through his hair and then looks down at his forearm where the ember pulses just beneath his skin, a dark, malevolent tattoo.
“I never thanked you for saving my life,” I say quietly.
He’s oddly abashed by my soft gratitude and stares down at the book between us. “No thanks needed.”
