Clare goes to push her glasses up her nose, but they’re missing. She snaps her hand away, her cheeks blushing.
“I think Professor Tudor is correct.” The Professor snorts, clearly insulted that his idea was being brought into question. “You found that tunnel into the academy. You were able to open that safe room in the library. I think there’s more to this academy than we realize, and I think it will keep us safe.” A smug expression glides across the Professor’s face – one quickly deflated when Clare adds: “But I don’t think it would hurt to double-check. So shall we head to the library now, Professor?”
He nods.
“And then you’ll come to the tower?” Briony says to him, linking her fingers with his for a moment.
“I…” the Professor starts, and it’s clear from his expression that he has no intention of joining the rest of us in our tower.
“Fox,” Briony says. “This is how things will be from now on. All of us together.” She holds his gaze. “All five of us.”
“Then I’ll be there,” Tudor says before walking away with Clare and Clare’s boyfriend.
Briony hugs Fly, and then we’re walking – finally – back toward our tower.
And for now, at least, we’re safe.
Chapter Seventeen
Briony
“You’re meant to be helping me, Nini,” Thorne says, not taking his eyes off the vegetables he’s chopping rapidly with a seriously sharp blade.
“I am!” I insist.
“You’ve stopped stirring,” he says, looking up at me and pointing to the saucepan and the wooden spoon that’s stalled inside.
“You’re distracting,” I point out with a pout.
“I am?” he says.
“Very! Especially when you do things like that with your knife.”
He laughs, a sound that makes my stomach flutter, and pauses his chopping to lean down to kiss me. A kiss that’s interrupted when Fox comes marching through the front door and into the kitchen. There’s a smug, excitable expression on his face I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen before. Something boyish and, if I’m honest, a little nerdy.
“We found it,” he says. “We found something in the secret part of the library, in the books back there. We think we know how to do it.”
“Do what?” I ask, resuming stirring the sauce we’ve been preparing for the last hour.
“A way of activating the academy’s ancient magic.”
“That’s great,” I say. “So have you done it?”
“No,” he says, striding forward and snatching my hand. “We need you for that.”
“But I’m helping Thorne with the cooking!”
Fox stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and he does have a point. We need this ancient magic to protect us. Something cooking is not going to achieve.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “I’m coming.”
I untie the apron from around my waist, wipe my hands on it, and place it on the countertop.
“Can you manage without me?” I ask, standing on my tiptoes to kiss Thorne’s mouth again – a simple action I’m still not taking for granted. Just to touch him is thrilling every single time.
“Of course I can,” Thorne says. “But do you needmyhelp?”
“We’ll be fine,” Fox says, already pulling me out of the kitchen, through the hallway, and out the front door.
