“You were the one who got my name added to the list for the sealing ceremony.”
His gaze snapped to my face, his eyes instantly alert.
“I thought you were from a minor mage family,” I continued, “so it never occurred to me you would have the influence to do it. But you’re not a minor mage. You’re a Callinos.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, I’m a Callinos. But I never meant?—”
“Don’t try to claim you didn’t know I’d mistaken your identity,” I snapped, the enormity of it all once more at the front of my mind. “All those times you talked about your family. You must have chosen your words and stories with care so as not to give yourself away. If I’d known more about mage society, I would have worked it out anyway. But I was such a fool.”
I ran a hand down my face. “You had a housekeeper and a nanny and a whole team of servants besides. How could I have thought you were from a poorer family?”
“I didn’t want to put more barriers between us.” He stepped forward and tried to take my hand, but I stepped quickly back out of his reach.
“I never lied,” he said quickly. “Everything I told you was true. But it’s also true that I didn’t clarify my family’s standing or correct your assumptions about it. I didn’t want to.”
“But how could you, Zak?” Tears sprang to my eyes.
“I was going to tell you once we started here,” he said, his earlier fire extinguished. “I didn’t expect you to hear it from someone else the moment you stepped through the gate.” He watched me, his gaze worried. “But does it matter so much? It doesn’t make a difference to me.”
“How can you say that?” I cried. “Of course it makes a difference. Don’t you know how easy you are to love, Zak?”
He sucked in a breath at the word love, his face lighting up again.
“You love me? I hoped after that last day near the market, but then you cut off all contact and wouldn’t talk about it. I was afraid?—”
“Of course I’m in love with you,” I said bitterly. “And I’m going to end up with my heart ripped into shreds because there’s no possible future for us.”
He stepped toward me again, this time firmly taking my hand.
“Says who?” His voice was low and fierce. “I may be a Callinos, but I’m not royalty. There are no laws about who I have to marry.”
I gave a sour laugh. “But you’re not going to marry a commonborn.”
“Why not?” he demanded. “When you leaped into the alley with a war cry, you leaped straight into my heart as well. I’ve spent the last four years at the Academy with every other mageborn my age in the entire kingdom, and there’s not a one of them I prefer to you.”
His free hand came up to cup my face, and my treacherous body froze, unable to pull away from his gentle touch and the look in his eyes.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he murmured. “Or how incredible your mind is? I grew up around intelligent people, but you’re nothing like my parents. Your mind isn’t a barrier between you and others, like it is for them—as if they’re operating on a different plane from the rest of us. I was a deficient student as much to spite them as anything else, but you made study come alive for me. You opened up your mind and let me into the world of wonder that you see when you learn something new. It was intoxicating.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, and he swayed toward me. “You’re intoxicating, Aria.”
I forced myself to pull from his grip and step back.
“I’m not denying that you feel something toward me.” My voice shook slightly.
Zak shook his head stubbornly. “I love you, Aria. That’s what I feel.”
I shook my head as well. “We’ve been living in a bubble this summer, Zak. But now we’re stepping out into the broader world. And I’ve already had a taste of how odd other people think it is for us to even be friends, let alone something more.”
“I don’t care about other people.”
“That’s easy to say now,” I snapped, trying to rein in the storm of emotions making me dizzy. “But how long will your love last if your peers ostracize and snub you? Will any discipline head even accept you into their discipline with me weighing you down? They’ll see me as proof that you have poor judgment and a weak mind, however strong your power.”
He laughed. “Three of the discipline heads are cousins, and one is my aunt. They won’t find me so easy to overlook.”
I groaned. “Do you even hear yourself? That makes it worse! What do you think my life will be like at your side?”
“Then we’ll go to my family’s country estate when we finish at the University,” he said, immediately changing tack. “My parents never go there because it’s too far from any of their precious libraries. We can make our own life far from the court and the center of power. I don’t care about any of that compared to being with you. We can remain betrothed for a year, or two—or our whole studies if that’s how long it takes for me to win over our families. I’d marry you tomorrow if I could, but I’ll wait as long as it takes just as long as I know I’ll get to marry you at the end of it and keep you at my side forever.”
