“Someone I trust. Is it… is it true?”
He sets a book down and then sits heavily against the edge of his desk. “I wasn’t a teacher then, so I wasn’t privy to all the details. All I know is that it was gruesome. As Fairhaven’s chief healer at the time, Daniel Huong was invited to examine the body and he wouldn’t let Mai anywhere near it. He has a strong constitution—saints, the strongest of anyone I know—and it shook him to the core.”
I’m suddenly grateful for Simon slamming the laptop shut now. “Her death wasn’t a suicide.”
He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t think so then and I’m sure of it now.”
“And he got away with it. Like he gets away with everything else. Saints, he hexed Marcus and locked him out of the study room I have my Peer Advising in, just so he could get me alone.”
“I’m sorry, hefucking what?” He rises to his feet, body rigid with anger. Alpha power radiates through his form and my first thought shouldn’t be howgoodhe looks when his alpha instincts ride him like this, but it is. Because every last instinct he’s feeling right now is telling him to protectme. And every last instinct of mine can’t get enough of it.
“He’s crazy. He thinks we’re going to be mated.”
“Did he touch you?” Ian grinds out, breathing hard, alpha ferocity and a spark of grim calculation in his bright eyes.
I hesitate and then nod, turning so he can see the fingerprint bruises showing through my faded makeup. I don’t dare tell him what Rad said about putting a bite on my neck. Instead, I brush the tips of my fingers against the back of his hand, acting on pure instinct, an omega soothing a violent alpha, bringing him back down to earth.
He grasps my hand and holds it in his, draws my wrist up to his nose and breathes in my scent, and it takes every last ounce of my strength to stay standing as my knees go weak. His gaze clears, the hard lines of ferocity fall away, and he slumps back against his desk.
“I’m recovered,” he says raggedly, gently releasing my hand. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be so ruled by my instincts around you. It’s wholly inappropriate but…”
“They’re just instincts,” I say quickly. “Can’t be helped. Alpha and omega biology.” Just like I once told Luca when he claimed me with a single word in Quill & Clover, when he uttered out a possessiveMinewhen he set eyes on me across the bookstore.
“Not just instincts,” he swears in a low growl, not as recovered as he claimed. Bergamot, as bright as sunshine, and spicy cedar spike between us, mingling with the hint of my perfume as my body answers the call with sweet, honeyed vanilla and jasmine. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I—”
“I’m not. Sorry, that is.” Saints, if we cross this line…
“Stunning spells,” he says tightly, taking a big step away from me, taking his intoxicating scent with him.
I gasp in a desperate breath, unsure if I’m trying to banish his scent from my nose or drag more of it into my lungs.
He doesn’t look at me as he digs around in his desk drawer, finally withdrawing a fresh box of chalk. He crosses to a blackboard on one wall and carelessly scrubs it clean with the cuff of his sleeve before drawing out two sigils. “Do you know these?”
“Sisteire and tardeire?”
He nods. “Of course, you knew them already. One stops and one slows. Both can be powerful defensive spells.” His shoulders heave with a heavy sigh and he looks at me over one shoulder, all the power and dominance drained from his face, leaving it slack. Tired. “And I wish you didn’t need to know either. Like most sigils, their strength, duration, size of target, and target can be augmented by the other sigils you pair with them. Augeire will do what?”
“Increase the strength.”
He nods. “Corporeus and mentalis?”
I frown. All of the sigils we’ve covered thus far have been based in actions, but I know enough of languages—and have made enough Latin vocabulary flashcards by this point—to have a rough idea of what the sigils will do. “One affects the body, the other the mind?”
“Very good.”
“So, Rad’s confounding hex would have contained the mentalis sigil?”
His lips curl in a snarl, but he nods tightly as he sketches out two more sigils: one that looks like a capital T and one that appears to be its inverse. “For early mages, corporeus, or body, was rooted in the earth, here.” He circles the bottom of the T. “And mentalis, or the mind, in the heavens or divine, hence it points upward.”
“So I can stop or slow the body or mind in my stunning spell? How do I know which sigils to use and in which combination?”
Ian leans against the board, no doubt smudging chalk onto the back of his shirt. “If your opponent was cunning, what would you do?”
“Slow their body.”
He frowns. “Your reasoning?”
“Even with slower mental faculties, they’d still be powerful if they’re that cunning. A slowed body would stumble. It would distract them enough to break their focus. At least, that’s how it would work for me.”
