“Hi,” she says.
He grins, eyes dark and hungry as they roam over her body. “Turn for me.”
She spins slowly, tossing coy smiles over her shoulder before centering herself in front of him. “What do you think?”
The tension in his jaw comes undone. He does nothing to fight his warm, proud smile. “You look perfect.”
The weight and heat of his gaze are too much. She looks down, tucking one rogue curl behind her ear. “Thank you. So do you.”
He puts one hand on the curve of her waist. “Good. We’ll make a perfect pair.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small white box tied up with a red ribbon. “I brought a gift.”
Her lips part in genuine surprise. She smiles, unsure of what to say when she takes the gift. Her relationship with Cassius is developing at a startling pace. Weeks ago, she was slapping him across the face in front of their entire class, and now she’s trembling before him, unwrapping a gift from her ultimate rival.
When she lifts the lid, she sees a fat, dead mouse. It smells old.
“Oh,” she says, shuddering.
“For Bishop,” he clarifies. “Alistair said I should bring him an offering.”
“Oh!” She laughs, nodding in understanding. “Oh, that’s so kind of you.” She rushes over to her snake’s luxurious enclosure and drops the dead mouse in the corner. It takes only a second for Bishop to slither out of his hiding spot and dart over to the meal, eagerly fitting it into his jaws. As Claudia lids the enclosure, she looks back at her date. “Someone left this enclosure in my room while I was gone.”
He saunters toward her. “Did they, now?”
Nodding, she says, “At first I thought it had been Alistair, but I was proven wrong. I’ve been racking my brain for who could’ve done it, and then it occurred to me that the High Sage’s apprentice might have access to every key to every lock in this school, including the one for my room.”
“That’s a compelling case you make. How can you be so sure it was him?”
“Well, I’m not sure just yet. He and I have a very complicated relationship.” She looks him up and down. How is he so beautiful? Is he even human? “If you’d asked me a few weeks ago if I ever thought he would do anything for me, I would’ve laughed in your face.”
He’s now towering over her, their toes touching. She almost wants to lick him.
“What changed?” he asks.
She bites her lip, looking deep into his eyes. “I’m hoping he’ll tell me.”
He feigns pondering, then smirks. “If I had to guess, he might’ve been watching you from afar for quite some time, and though he was wary of your strange arrival, he came to respect you as a clever, worthy opponent. And then, I believe you came to his room to best him with the art of luxos. Little did you know how much he’d dreamed of that moment. How many nights he had lain awake, imagining you at his side with your pretty mouth beggingin his ear.” He brushes his hand across her cheek. “And then, when that dream became a reality, something changed within him, and he realized how cruel he had been, and how much of his cruelty was a feeble attempt at denying what he really felt.”
“What did he really feel?”
He grabs her hand and presses a kiss to her fingers. “Desire.”
Her knees nearly give out beneath her. She braces herself against his hard form.
“But as I said, it’s only a guess.” He shrugs with a sardonic smile.
“It’s a very thoughtful guess.”
His expression turns soft and sincere when he says, “Do you like it? The enclosure, I mean. Is it everything you need?”
She nods. “Why did you do it, really?”
He reaches for her hand, gently running his thumb across her knuckles. “Because Marcherie came to the High Sage’s office to report him yesterday, and I didn’t want you to lose him, so I took care of it.”
She stares at their intertwined fingers. “Thank you.”
She can’t put into words how long she has yearned for this—for someone to care about her. For someone to take up the responsibility of her well-being. For someone to protect her.
“What else would you do to protect me?” she asks.
