“Then thank you for saving Marcus and Cassian.”
He frowns, mouth a thin line, then looks up, fire in his ice blue eyes. “I would do it again. In a heartbeat. For you.”
It’s not quite a declaration of love, but something of its kind has already passed between us. When magic flowed between us as he unwound the sigils locking my magic away, the barriers between our minds fell away. Never mind that mages can’t read minds. Never mind that it wasn’t even the first time I inadvertently did the impossible—and that I’ve done it a dozen times since.
I will never forget how tenderly he held me in both his arms and in his regard.
He clears his throat awkwardly.
“Can I help with the research?” I ask, trying to fill the void left by all the words that go unsaid between us.
“Do you read Latin?” The words lack the derision I’m so used to hearing in class. Rather, he’s hopeful, but I can only shake my head.
“I’m afraid I don’t. Just French and some Mandarin.”
“A shame. If you’re interested in advanced spell work or reading certain historical texts, I’d recommend it as an elective next year. Unless…” He jumps up from his chair like a live wire and starts digging through stacks of books. “I taught myself from a textbook—a teacher’s edition, so it was full of quizzes and answers. I’m sure you’d be more than up to the task. I know it’s here somewhere…”
Of course, this absolute madman taught himself Latin. Of course, I will rise to his challenge and try to do the very same. Once he finds the textbook, that is. Until he does, I make myself useful and start trying to sort out the least organized of his carefully curated chaos.
I gather up mugs and glasses while he goes from stack to stack, and when I return from dropping them off in the bus bin near Ciel, he has the gall to look annoyed.
“I hope those wereaccidentalscience experiments you were conducting. Saints, the mold in one of those mugs was practically sentient,” I say archly.
“Brat,” he mutters, but he’s smirking and there’s heat in that one word. Delicious heat, full of promise, that makes my heart flutter in my chest. I quickly accept the old textbook from him and start flipping through it. It’s positively covered in blue ink, scrawled notes in every margin. “Ignore the annotations I made. Actually, don’t. They’re insightful.”
Naturally.
“It’s burdensome reading, what I’m working on,” he says quietly, dropping into his chair. He carefully wraps the book in oilcloth. “I shouldn’t share that burden with you but I’m quickly reaching the point of desperation. Professor Cadigan—you’ll have him for Intermediate Casting next year—and I are finding nothing but more questions as we research.”
There’s something more he’s not saying, a hesitant catch in his voice that I’d never expect from the proud alpha.
“What is it?” I press.
“There’s been a new development concerning the Ever Ember hex,” he sighs. “As your professor, I shouldn’t be telling you this. It was told to me in confidence, but the students it concerns have taken an unnatural and marked interest in you.” He scrubs at his jaw and shakes his head. “Doc treated another rash of alphas for the Ever Ember. She doesn’t think it was used as a weapon against them—and I agree.”
I already know, but I ask anyway. “Who?”
“Andrew Radcliff, Jaime Brentwood, Kelvin Montrose, and a few others. Were they any other alphas, alphas who weren’t so interested in you, I would have kept this confidential, but if—”
“They were initiations. They marked themselves. Just like the Legion of Baphomet used to do.” My throat burns and each word stings as I remember the discussion we had before midterms: how warrior alphas took the Mark to become more powerful, more savage and ruthless.
“I’m afraid so. I’ve taken to calling it the Mark of Baphomet for want of anything more precise. My research has been… frustratingly inconclusive thus far. The Ever Ember hex itself hadn’t been seen for hundreds of years until the Soldiers of Saint Aldous started using it as a weapon.” He flexes his forearm and rubs at the spot where the Ever Ember sunk dark magic into his flesh. What the deadly hex left behind in him, Cassian and Marcus. The ember of dark magic still tortures Marcus’ dreams, drives instinct into a dangerous frenzy of alpha instincts.
Saints, there’s so much we don’t know about the Ever Ember. Or is it now the Mark of Baphomet? If I’d had any doubts about Rad being a member of the Soldiers of Saint Aldous, they’d be obliterated by now. But I never doubted—not once I caught his scent in the dining hall, cloying and rotting anise and orange. The same scent of the masked—now marked—alpha who threatened me that day.
I curl into myself, shoulders hunching around my ears. “Radcliffe was there that day. On the quad. He was the alpha who held the scribe to my neck.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “But I haven’t been able to prove it yet. It kills me that he’s allowed to walk freely after what he did to you.”
“And now that he’s marked, he’s even more dangerous.”
“That’s my fear, yes.”
“Do you truly think the answer is in one of these books?” I gesture half-heartedly around his office.
“It has to besomewhere. The Legion was far too arrogant not to have written it down. Now, the records could have been destroyed, but… but I have to believe we’ll find an answer somewhere. I shouldn’t appreciate your help as much as I do, but there are so few we can trust with this information. If it got out, there would be pandemonium.”
“I’ll start my Latin studies tonight,” I promise.
