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She threw a punch but he caught her by her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back, turned her around, and in one swift move, pulled her flush against him. Even his hand was cold, and she despised knowing what his skin felt like.
“A rather unsophisticated approach to Dark Magic,” he whispered by her ear, which made her want to rip out his throat.
“Let me go,” she hissed, and he did so immediately.
He grinned. “That pent-up anger will come in handy for your sin signifier. Unfortunately for you, control comes first.”
She rubbed her wrist, not because it hurt but simply because she wanted to erase his touch. “Yeah? What’s your sin?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Darling, all of them.”
She didn’t know which was worse—his pretentiousness or the fact that he had called her “darling.”
“I would have guessed pride,” she countered.
He caught his lower lip suggestively between his teeth. “You’re forgetting lust.”
Was he trying to make her uncomfortable? Unfortunately, he was succeeding. When his eyes traveled down her body, heat rose from her neck to her face and she hoped she wasn’t turning red.
“You want to know what I think?”
“Always,” he drawled.
“I think you don’t want to teach me how to get my first signifier because you don’t want me here.”
“Blaming your incompetence on me—how very original.”
She stared into his cold eyes. “I think my being here upsets you because a Caster might disgrace your precious faculty.”
“Perhaps you’re assuming a little much about me?”
“I would like to go back to not thinking about you at all.”
His eyebrows rose with interest. “Ah, so you’re thinking about me?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, because just like vermin, you seem to be difficult to get rid of.”
He contemplated that for a moment as if he never had to deal with vermin before. Perhaps the castle he lived in didn’t have cockroaches and mice.
“If I recall, you approached me. But I have to admit I’m fascinated by this abnormality in the system you proved to be.”
She winced. Apparently, there was something worse than “darling” he could call her.
“I don’t give a damn whether you get your signifier or not,” he continued, and stepped closer. It took everything in her not to retreat. “I see the way you fight your magic. You despise it, and I cannot fathom why. It frustrates me how someone can be so utterly stupid as to reject their powers, but I am not in your way of achieving it.”
His words felt like cuts, slicing through her. Exposing her. He knew too much.
“Stop talking about what you read in my file.”
He scoffed. “Oh, but that’s not in your file. It’s written all over your face—the way you war with your powers. The way you reject them. I fear the only one trying to keep you from your signifier is you.”
Angry tears welled in her eyes, but she’d be damned if she let them fall. He didn’t deserve any of them.
“That concludes today’s practice,” Highmage Obryn said in the distance.
She shoved Dawson out of her way and he let her. Mira headed back to her room as fast as she could without looking like she was blatantly fleeing. She hated this place. She hated Dawson. But most of all she hated that he was right.
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