“You tore Ella away from your brother, didn’t you? Spirits forbid her common blood soil your family line—”
“That’s not—”
“And then there was your insult in the library.”
His eyes flashed. “Oh, yes the library, where you flaunted your engagement? Where you let me know just how taken you were after flirting with me—”
“Iflirted withyou?”
“—formonths, making me fall unbearably in love with someone who could never be mine.”
Silence rang between us, his chest heaving as if our kiss had never ended.
My eyes flicked down to his lips, and his to mine.
“I’m sorry to have caused you so much strife,” he muttered. His fingers reached for my hand, and my heart fluttered once more at the contact. But instead of grasping it in mine, his fingers latched onto my engagement ribbon, tugging on it so it rose between us.
He gave me a meaningful look. “This is why I can’t.”
Loathing smoldered within me. “I don’t understand you.”
He leaned forward and then hesitated, as if to kiss my head before thinking better of it.
“I want you to. I desperately want you to.” His head tilted left.
There, water rose once more, levitating in the air, twirling and swirling in magical movement.
I barely spared it a glance. “You’re doing that thing where you think you know better than me,” I said.
He shook his head. “There are some things you can only know for yourself, Lyra.” He stepped away. “I’ll be gone tomorrow. But I’ll write to you regularly. Let me know how your studies go. Find a proper master—someone better than I. I wish you all the luck in the world.”
I refused to meet his eyes.
“Did you ever get that parchment to rip?”
At my silence, his footsteps crunched on fallen leaves whichfaded in the distance. I watched my water pillar rotating in the air, at least twenty feet high.
Almost at the heavens.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I shoved the pile of books from my desk. They crashed to the floor in a heap of broken spines, creased pages, and pathetic dreams. Across the room, Anna whimpered softly in her sleep.
My chest burned.
Thomas would regret this.
He’d forever remember the day he crushed my heart. He’d regret rejecting the greatest pupil a master could ask for.
Out the window, the pond glimmered amidst a sea of darkness.
I rolled my eyes, fire burning in my veins, and turned my face away.
I would make him wish he’d never tutored me as I flew high above his unreasonable expectations.
I bit my cheek, breathing deeply as I forced myself to sink onto my bed, even as my knee bounced with fury. I closed my eyes, imagining myself seated next to him on the Mage Council, vetoing his decisions, my peers clapping for me as he fumed.
I imagined running against him, stepping into the role of Grand Mage—
