“Oh yeah?” I raised an eyebrow as I slid onto the arm of his wingback chair. My leg brushed his, and a shiver ran through my body as I remembered the first time we’d been in the library alone together, when we’d ended up shagging on top of the Briarwood grimoire.
“Look at this.” Corbin turned the book around. “This was a drawing from one of the coven members, who was a relatively well-known London artist.”
I glanced at the sketch, which looked pretty similar to the orgy pictures in our own grimoire, except...woah.Some of the men in the picture weren’t really men. “Those are?—”
“Werewolves and vulpines – fox shapeshifters,” Corbin grinned. “It seems humans and witches aren’t the only races with peculiar tastes.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if shapeshifters existed, but I decided it wasn’t something I wanted to know at this point. “Are you worried about the villagers?” I asked.
“Not as much as I’m worried about Daigh. You know he’s up to something with this meeting tonight, don’t you?”
“Of course. But what’s the alternative? Even if we did stop the Slaugh and send the fae back to their realm, we’d take casualties. I think we can all agree enough people have died.”
“More than enough,” he agreed, his voice grim.
“All we do, if we win, is banish the fae back to their realm, where they’ll fester their resentment for years and come to attack us again. Only next time they might not have Daigh’s desire for his family to temper their rage. And for all the evil Daigh and Liah have done, they have a point. Humans treat the earth like crap. We burn fossil fuels, poison the oceans, and bulldoze the forests to make way for more cities when we can’teven feed all the people we have now. We were the ones who invaded the fae lands first, and we haven’t exactly been the best caretakers.”
“Are you agreeing with the fae?” Corbin asked with a smirk.
“If we can make this alliance work, it’s the best for everyone. I’m just trying to see the good in both sides, the way a good leader should,” I flicked a strand of hair from his eye. “Like someone taught me.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday,” Corbin ran a hand through his dark hair. “About going to university.”
I waited. It was something I noticed Corbin did – instead of asking questions or giving his opinion, he waited out the silence until people opened up and said the things that were burning in their minds. It was time someone turned that trick back on him.
Corbin stared at the wall of books – the one Rowan always counted before he sat down. He stared for a long time, not saying anything. I was just about to give up and ask him if he was serious when he said, “I think…I would like to go to university. Maybe to Oxford, if I can even get in. It’s not a guarantee, even though my Dad teaches there. You have to be good at writing essays and shit, and I haven’t done that stuff since high school, which was a long time ago.”
“You’ll get in.” I reached my hands around his waist, kissing his smooth lips. “You’re amazing. You can do anything if you set your mind to it.”
“I don’t think so,” he scoffed.
“You brought all of us together, didn’t you?” I thumped my hand on the stack of books on the desk.Bad idea.A column of dust kicked up and tickled my nose. “You put all the pieces together from all these old books and followed the clues all the way across the country – across the world, in my case. You’re like that famous detective whose picture was in all the Oxford pubs. Detective Semaphore?—”
“Inspector Morse?” Corbin’s lips curled back.
I waved my hand. “Whatever. You should write about him in your application essay.”
Corbin laughed. Then his face turned serious. “It would mean I would have to live in Oxford, at least for the first year. It’s only ninety minutes on the train, but I don’t like the idea of leaving Briarwood, and you?—”
“Maybe you don’t have to. I’ve been thinking about Oxford ever since we visited, too. We’ll go together.”
Saying that out loud was worth it 100 times over just for the shocked expression on Corbin’s face.
“You…but…” His eyes widened. “What about MIT?”
“Oxford is just as fancy and prestigious as MIT.” I pulled the folded papers from under my shirt and tossed them down on the desk, revealing the Department of Physics prospectus I’d taken from the Ashmolean. “I’ve been doing some research into their astrophysics program, and I think I’d learn just as much here as I could in America. And, as you say, it’s only ninety minutes by train from Crookshollow. Think about it, Corbin. We could get a room in one of the colleges together, and come back to Briarwood on the weekends. The guys could visit us whenever they wanted.”
“Rowan could send us care packages of biscuits and scones,” he grinned.
“So you like the idea?”
“Are you kidding?” He wrapped his huge arms around me, his lips meeting mine for a searing kiss. “I love it. But you’d better not make me sign up for any more theoretical physics papers. That one you did at community college nearly did my head in.”
“You of all people should know a good education is a well-rounded one,” I grinned back.
“Fine. If I’m doing theoretical physics, you’re studying Farsi.”
“What in Athena’s name is Farsi?” I was enjoying swearing by my new patron goddess, even though I didn’t believe in her.
