It couldn’t be him.
But it was. The same combed-over salt-and-pepper hair. The same beady black eyes that dissected youbeforehe brought out the scalpel.
“I had another year left,” Nix wailed as she fell to her knees. Thierry still gripped her wrists as she kneeled, but he let go as sobs shook her. Breaths caught in her throat, choking her. “I—It was going to be different this time.”
“Flóga?” Persius asked in alarm, calling her by what he had always called her during their years of torment.My flóga. He had told her that she smelled like pure sunshine over a field of tulips.
“This is wrong.” She slammed a fist into the cement, and it cracked under the force. “Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.”
“What the hell is happening?” Thierry exclaimed, confused by her crazed reaction. “Professor Lemmuns?”
Was that his real name? Lemmuns. It was not sick and twisted enough to fit him.
“This is common, actually,” her future captor, Lemmuns, said calmly and in an almostamusedvoice. Gods, his voice made her sick. “Those who are bespelled often become combatant and hysterical at the idea of being cured. But don’t you worry, I should have all I need here to fix her…oh.”
“Oh,what?” Thierry asked, muscles tense and knotted under his tweed suit while listening to his mate’s wails.
“I am missing one ingredient.” Lemmuns turned to the men. “Maybe you boys could fetch some pondweed from the forest for me?”
Thierry glared at being called a “boy.”
Lemmuns continued, smoothing a hand over his white lab coat, “I’m not as spry as I used to be. I will be of more help here, preparing what I can of the potion until you bring me the final ingredient.”
Thierry nodded at Persius. “There should be plenty of pondweed by the small pool of water in the east forest—”
“Oh,” Lemmuns tutted.
Thierry’s head shot back over to Nix’s future torturer. “What?”
“I am missing agrimonia as well. Silly, silly me. It has been a while since I concocted a reversal or protection potion.”
Thierry frowned and glanced at Nix, who sat, now catatonic, in the cage. “Agrimonia would grow on the edge of the forest, in the west. Complete opposite direction.”
“I suggest you both split up, so you can return the ingredients to me as quickly as possible.”
NO.Nix cried, “DO NOT leave me here with him.”
“How silly. She will be safe with me; you needn’t worry.”
Thierry knelt by the cage, reaching through the bars to wipe tears from her face. “We will only be gone a little while. Trust me when I say we will be racing back to you.”
“You don’t understand. He’s going to kill me.” She pulled her legs to her stomach, placing her chin on a knee as she tangled her fingers in her hair.Fetal position. “He’s going to kill me.”
“No,” Thierry told her. “He’s here to help you. He’s just going to kill the enchantment. It will all be better once you take the potion.”
“Was supposed to have more time…with you all,” Nix said, sniffling as she accepted her fate.
Maybe she got a few days of happiness, and that was it. Maybe she was supposed to be grateful for the extra moments of joy she had in this second life.
I want more moments.
“I deserve more time,” she snapped, angry at fate. Angry at her mates for notlisteningto her. “Please, go separately. One of you stay with me. I will be good. Donotleave me alone with him.”
“Nix, we need to get you back to normal as soon as possible. What happens when you have a spike of energy again and explode half the campus?”
Only half? She would aim higher than that.
Staring at her knees, not willing to make eye contact, she said, “If you leave me here, in this cage with him, I will never forgive you.”
