Lusce refuses to look away as we stare each other down, not even when the table rattles with Finn’s uncomfortable fidgeting. After several long moments, Lusce leans across the table on one elbow, getting in nice and close. The smirk on his face is like a warning siren for destruction.
“Kinda sounds like you wanna get in his pants, too, Willy.”
My glare is so narrow I can barely see him.
“You wanna go there?” I grit out. “Why don’t we chat about what happened with you and Jax at the club? And where he’s been and why your magic’s been so off since we went out?”
Lusce pulls back like I’ve slapped him, gasping and clasping his chest. The air between us crackles with magic, pouring completely uncontrolled from Lusce. That’s the thing with him, when he’s emotional, he gets erratic and uncontrolled, just like his magic. Which is why when he tried to brew up a simple hair elixir the other day, not only did he spill the fucking thing, but the classroom floor looked like we’d just laid down a lovely chestnut shag rug.
“Why don’t we talk about none of those things, and we talk about literally anything else.” Finn interjects, waving his hand between our stare off and immediately regretting it when hisfingers get fried by the magic. “Ouch!” He hisses and waves his hands to shake off the sting. “I’m getting fucking sick of talking about Nikki and his bullshit lately anyway.”
Before I can ask what he means, he smiles broadly at Lusce. “Lusce! What about Oggy? How’s the toilet training going?”
Oggy is the chermode pup recently adopted by Jax, and therefore by Lusce, too, because they live together. The thing is the ugliest, most adorable abomination to plague the earth, and their home.
“Fine.” Lusce grunts, then softens, adding reluctantly, “he’s learning to use the little dog door that Jax put in.”
“That’s good!” Finn’s feigned, over the top enthusiasm carries the conversation for the next hour or so, meaning they leave without us getting into another argument. But the whole thing still bothers me—especially the comment about Nikolo’s bullshit.
It kills me how much I want to know. And how much I care after he was such a raging dickhead at Hearts Gate.
Fucking Nikolo, I stew later when my friends have left. It’s all his fault. I just wanted to… reconnect. But no, he had to make it a big awkward deal. I channel my anger into washing up our dishes with more force than necessary, almost breaking my favourite tea cup. It has the perfect sized handle for my fingers.
“I don’t say it often. But Lusce is right, you know.” Egbert shocks the shit out of me, appearing out of seemingly nowhere, even though I was probably too distracted scrubbing the bench within an inch of its life to notice. I jump when he appears, knocking the cups off the bench where they were drying. They smash on the floor, scattering into a thousand pieces.
Rather than bend down and pick them up, I stare at my uncle in openmouthed shock.
“What? You too? The fuckingbetrayal.”
Egbert tsks and squats down, calling the broken shards into the palms of his hands.
“Bit rich claiming betrayal when we’re talking about Nikki, ain’t it Willan?” Egbert groans as he stands, using his magic to recraft the remains of the cups into their former shape as a cover to not look at me.
I throw the damp towel onto the bench and lean against it, crossing my arms over my chest.
“It’s not likeIwas the one that betrayed him. I didn’t even know what happened until, like, two years after he left! No one told me anything. I thought he just abandoned m–us.Us.” I catch myself at the last second, but Egbert heard my slip up.
He looks up from the half-formed tea cup, smiling sadly and sympathetically. The flower pattern on the side is slightly out of place. Reformation isn’t always perfect, sometimes the jigsaw doesn’t always go back together perfectly. And isn’tthata metaphor for something?
“He doesn’t know that now, does he?” Egbert says gently, eyes back on the cup slowly re-piecing itself in his hands.
“Well, how can he when he won’t talk to me?”
“Do you blame him? Now you know what happened? Do you blame him?”
“Well. No. Not really. I just?—”
“If you wanna make it right. If you want to rebuild that bridge, Willan, it’s got to be for the right reasons. You have to accept that the old bridge is gone, and that the shores on either side have changed in the years since it disappeared.”
Fucking mages and their roundabout way of speaking. Even I get sick of it sometimes.
“Well, it’s all a moot point now isn’t it? He made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“So, you going to respect that?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Egbert looks at me, the cups all but forgotten in his hands. Reforming them in his hands was a big mistake, because they are about to topple right back off again.
