Standing slowly, she bites out, “I said I want you to say it again.”
He flashes a devious grin. “I’ll make you a deal. Beat me in the debate, and I’ll call you that all night long.”
Frustrated, unfinished, embarrassed, Claudia picks up her robes from the floor and dresses quickly. “So, that’s it?” Her eye twitches.
“Not at all.” He saunters toward her. He reaches up to touch her face, but she slaps his hand away.
He tsks. “That’s not good, now, is it?”
“Don’t tease me.”
Too fast for her to stop him, he takes hold of both her wrists and lifts them above her head, bringing her to a delicate balance on the tips of her toes. Lips pressed to her ear, he says, “You love being teased, Claudia.”
She trembles as his words buzz in her ear. “Do we have to stop?” she whimpers. “We barely started.”
His nose scrapes her cheek. His lips hover over the corner of her mouth and he says, “Like I said, you’ll have to earn more.” Shefights once more to get her mouth on his, but he’s too fast. He lets her go and steps back. Without his strength holding her up, she stumbles, barely catching herself in the doorway.
Cassius hands her the books and the paper from his desk. “Good luck. Truly. I mean it.”
Claudia is a hot, wet mess when she returns to her room. It’s taking everything in her not to charge back to Cassius’s room, spread herself on his bed, and beg for more. She’d beg all night if he told her to.
To cool off, she opens up the doors to her balcony and steps outside, taking a swallow of midnight air.
What thefuckwas that?
They didn’t make love, didn’t even kiss, and yet it was the most lustful she’s ever felt in her life.
But Cassius doesn’t truly want her, does he? Cassius likes to be begged—even Odette had written that about him—and he likes to tease. He may even want to fuck her, but he won’t ever make a life with her. He hardly wants to be her friend.
At best, Cassius is a distraction. At worst, he’s a killer, and he’s merely playing with his prey.
Is that what they were doing? A dance just before death?
She can’t wrap her head around it. It wasn’t sex—it was better. It wasn’t intimacy—it was more honest, more raw. Passionate. Dangerous. Is there a better word for it? Whatever it was, she wants it again.
She’s so lost in replaying the interaction in her mind that she almost forgets about what she went there for in the first place—secrets and fears.
At least she got one of them.
Turning away from the sky, Claudia spreads Cassius’s papers across her bed and reads.
THETALE OFDRACOEMAGYL: OURCURSE OFSILENCE
Five is an odd number, no? Why only five gods? Six, it should have been. And six there were, in the beginning.
Gray, our ancestor, would have been Dracoemagyl, God of Dreams and Tragedies, Patron of Dramaturgy at Cygnus University. But he is only the god who never was. He was far more talented than the others—it was his idea to attempt the ritual that would become what we now know as ascension. But perhaps he was not as smart. I mean that as no insult. One only has the capacity for so much greatness. Ask yourself: If you were already quite talented and quite smart, but could acquire more greatness in only one area, what would you pick? I know my answer. The world favors talent over everything, and nothing is rarer than true, sparkling talent. People, though, on an individual level, despise seeing talent in someone they know. Talent is awe-inspiring from afar but impossible to stomach up close. It brings out the worst in the less talented—jealousy, dishonesty, even sabotage. That is what happened to Gray.
The night that the aspiring gods performed their ascension ritual, Dracoemagyl was the first to rise. Sidarphion struck him down, leaving him like a fallen tree. When he called for help, the god of stars and nightmares clasped his hand over Dracoemagyl’s mouth so the others would not come. He then used his claw to etch a spell into Dracoemagyl’s skin—Andromeda, Cygnus, Auriga—so that the other gods could never hear his screams. Sidarphion left him there to rest, and to rot.
The others clawed their bodies with runes, and each slaughtered a witch. They then drank the witches’ blood and swallowed their souls, and thus, gods they became.
If Gray had not been betrayed, he would have been the most powerful of them all. I’m sure they feared that he would’ve been strong enough to keep the heavens to himself. No doubt he would have been able to, but Gray was a gracious man and would have been a gracious god. Instead, the forest nearly claimed his life. He survived by dragging himself through the dirt for miles, broken bones and all.
I have torn my way to his story, to the truth that everyone else wants to stay buried. Even I, to some extent, want to keep it hidden. It’s not a good feeling to be tied to a legacy of falling and failing. But as a MacLeod, that is who I am. That is what we are. One day, someone in our line will redeem us. It may be me, but I doubt it. I do not know enough. Perhaps if I had this collection in my possession already, rather than being tasked with creating it, it could be me. I have had the Dreams. The visions. I see how it will be done, but I never see it through my eyes. I see it from above, as if I’m looking down from the afterlife, watching it happen long after I’m gone. Someone in our line will be the Dreamer, and they will save us. Until then, our line is cursed with silence. No god will answer us.
But when we have the gods’ ears, we need to seek justice. The god of stars and nightmares must be punished. We need to end Sidarphion like he tried to end us.
Everything she learns about Sidarphion makes her hate the god even more.
