“I don’t even know what that last one means.” I ducked from beneath his arm and put distance between us.
“Green for my mother’s house, gold for my father’s,” Lucien said. “In the fae courts, it’s a sign of affection. Intention to attract, even.”
“These are my favorite colors,” I said. “They make me feel safe and happy, and they have since I was a little kid. It has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
“No? You flirt with my brother in front of me,” he continued.
“Only until I discovered what a jerk he is. And wait a second. I made up that song in the Cistern. It isn’t my fault if you liked it. I’m not playing a twisted fae game, Lucien. This isn’t the dark court. It’s Spellwood. I’m not a fae assassin. I’m not some secret sun court enemy trying to hurt you.”
He was silent. The wind blew a lock of his hair across his eyes. Moonlight glinted on the tips of his antlers, which were barely visible in his hair.
“Believe me,” I whispered. “I’m just… me.”
We were silent. Lucien’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. His eyes were like dark embers, burning me, but in the best possible way.
I took a step back toward him. Something compelled me to be close to him, to reassure him that we were friends, not enemies. “Any other things that I’ve been doing that you want to bring to my attention?”
Lucien leaned against one of the stone monoliths. His mouth lifted in a half smile. “You stare at me all the time like you want to kiss me.”
“I do not,” I protested, flushing hot.
“You don’t stare? Or you don’t want to kiss me?”
Somehow, we were even closer now. His lashes lowered as he gazed down at me. I could feel the heat of his hands that were inches from mine.
“I don’t want to kiss you about as much as much as you don’t like me,” I breathed, because I did want to kiss him. All at once, my stomach was in knots, and my hands were shaking, and I felt hot and cold at the same time.
“You don’t understand,” Lucien said again, his words pained. His breath brushed my lips, and the air between us tightened like an invisible cord. He searched my face as if looking for the answer to some vital question.
“Then explain it to me.” We were so close.
“The sun court—”
“For the love of god, Lucien, I’m not from the sun court,” I whispered.
“Indulge me a moment,” he whispered. “If you did have sun blood in you, I couldn’t let myself want you. You would be a danger to me. And I to you.”
“I don’t understand—your father was from the sun court,” I said. “And here you are.”
“My mother died giving birth to me,” he said harshly. “Their union poisoned her and eventually killed her. It all started with a kiss.”
“Why would I endanger myself?” I asked. “If I was from the sun court, you’d be a danger to me too. So why would I try to seduce you at risk to myself? Why would I want to be poisoned?”
That seemed to resonate with him. He thought that over for a moment.
“Do you believe me?” I pressed.
“Maybe.” His gaze was guarded but cautiously hopeful now. “When Griffin was pursuing you, I thought he and you were working together to torment me.”
“Does your brother always try to take things he thinks you like?”
“Yes,” Lucien said, and closed his eyes briefly. “My brother often does such things.”
My heart skipped a beat. How cruel.
He brushed his index finger against the side of my hand hesitantly, and I turned my palm over to meet him. He slid his hand over mine, and the place where our skin touched felt like a flame.
“You said…” I paused, flustered and a little light-headed. “You said you couldn’t let yourself want me. Does that mean…” I continued in a small voice. “Does that mean that you do?”
I didn’t know why I suddenly couldn’t breathe as I waited for him to reply.
Lucien tipped his head back against the monolith. “Kyra. Something about you drives me mad. You’re like something I didn’t know I was missing.”
“Lucien,” I said.
His eyes snapped to mine.
“I’m not from the sun court. I’m not working with Griffin to hurt you. I’m not under the influence of charmwine. I can kiss whoever I want by my own free will.”
“So, you do want to kiss me.” His mouth curved in a wicked smile.
“I—”
That smile taunted me. I just wanted to make him stop smirking. I just wanted…
I wanted…
I kissed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LUCIEN’S HANDS CAME up to cup my jaw, and my fingers tangled in his hair as his mouth moved against mine. He tasted like summer nights and moonlight, and I kissed him back hard, hungry for him. He slid one hand down to rest on my hip and kept the other under my chin, lifting my face to his.
It was the best kiss I’d ever had.
As the kiss deepened, a spark of something electric leaped between us, making me dizzy. I put out a hand to brace myself against one of the hedge walls as my legs turned to jelly, and I sighed against his lips before pressing closer.
But Lucien stiffened as if coming to his senses. He pulled away from me, breathing hard, staring at me.
Visions of dark forests and stars in the night spun through my head like the aftertaste of a dream. The words of the wondering well ran through my head. Sometimes, danger is found in delight, and delight in dark of night.
Lucien brushed his thumb across my lower lip as his eyebrows furrowed. “Did you feel that?”
I nodded, still dizzy. “It was, ah, good.”
“You have sun blood,” Lucien said. “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie!”
We stared into each other’s eyes, both of us confused and desperate. I wanted to make him understand. I wished I could let him see into my mind and my heart and know I wasn’t trying to hurt him.
“And yet,” Lucien murmured to himself, “Despite the danger, I still want to kiss you again.”
“Lucien,” I said, my voice thick and husky. “I’m not—I’m not trying to trap you, I swear—”
“Like the fool I am, I don’t even care,” he whispered, and leaned in to kiss me again.
And then I heard it.
A rumbling sound.
The ground beneath our feet quivered. The brambles around us thickened. All the gaps and windows disappeared as the vines smoothed into a wall, trapping us in a thorny cage, windowless. The cathedral effect was gone, replaced by something that looked more like a prison.
“What’s happening?” I said as a quiver of fear lanced through me. “Is this something Summertide-related? Or is it because of you and me?”
“Neither,” Lucien said, scanning the bramble walls. “This is something else—”
Before he could finish his sentence, the stone statue of the dragon twitched, groaned, and turned toward us.
The eyes glowed. With a guttural snarl, the stone dragon broke free from its pedestal.
“Is it supposed to do that?” I cried out, stumbling back.
“Run,” Lucien urged, and he pushed me toward the path as the dragon statue lunged toward us with a roar like rocks grinding together.
I ran.
The bramble walls of the maze pressed closer as we fled down them. Vines snaked across our path, tripping us, coiling around our ankles before we broke away. The stone dragon hurtled after us, each step rumbling like a tiny earthquake as it lunged forward.
We reached a fork in the maze and went left only to run into a wall of brambles. The dragon loomed behind us, lashing its stone tail, eyes luminous as Summertide lanterns.
I looked frantically around me for a stick.
But would I be able to shove a stick through the chest of that solid stone creature?
“This way,” Lucien gasped, grabbing my arm to yank me after him. There was a break in the wall th
at we hadn’t seen in the shadows. We dodged a strike from the dragon and rushed through it.
The gap disappeared behind us in a snapping of vines and branches as the stone dragon plunged after us. The entire wall uprooted, thorns lashing at my heels as the dragon shook the vines loose from its neck.
The maze curved, and the path narrowed as the vines coiled like snakes.
“Someone must be manipulating it!” Lucien shouted to me.
We reached another fork in the maze. Both paths were tightening, the entrances shrinking like a drawstring pulling the mouth of a bag closed.
We burst through the one on the right. One of the vines caught my foot like the tentacle of a live creature, but I kicked free and kept running. Lucien caught me when I stumbled, and then we were hand in hand, fleeing through the dark.
I saw light at the end of the path—the exit—we’d nearly made it—
The stone dragon roared behind us. Something slammed into my leg, tripping me. I clawed my way back up with Lucien’s help and lurched for the exit, my lungs straining to breathe, every cell in my body shouting at me to run.
We reached the entrance, but the stone dragon leaped over our heads and landed in front of us in a crouch, blocking our way.
Lucien pushed me behind him, but the beast knocked him aside with one swipe of its stone tail. He hit the ground, unconscious.
“Lucien!” I shouted.
The dragon turned its attention to me. I tried to run, but I was hemmed in on all sides by the broken remnants of the hedges.
I had to distract the dragon.
I remembered that I still had a single spellogram in my pocket. I yanked it out and ripped the seal open as the stone dragon raised its tail again to strike me down.
Blue sparks erupted from the paper as a spelled blue ghost screamed forward from the spellogram. The dragon reared up, startled, and another thought clicked dimly in my mind.
My pockets!
I had a dagger, the one from my mom.
I yanked the dagger free, tossed away the sheath, and hurled the blade straight at the beast’s chest.
The blade collided with the stone dragon right below its neck. The dagger made a clanging sound as it struck the stone, as if I’d rung a bell.
A shockwave of magic rippled across my skin.
The stone dragon stumbled as cracks shot through its limbs and down its back. It let out a final roar and dissolved into dust and shards of rock.
I stood shaking, staring at where the monster had been before I tossed the rod aside and dropped to examine Lucien, who was still unconscious. A dark bruise colored the left side of his face, and blood dripped from his nose and down his chin. I turned his head carefully and pressed my ear to his mouth to listen for breathing.
“Lucien,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
He was breathing. I exhaled in relief. Still, I was pretty sure he needed to see a doctor or healer or whatever mostly fae folk used for medical assistance.
I looked around and saw that we’d exited the maze on the opposite side of the great lawn from the party, near the old greenhouse where Briar had hosted their society party. The faint sounds of merriment echoed in the distance.
I was too far away to scream for help. I’d have to run to find it.
I staggered to my feet in time to see a figure approaching out of the darkness.
Tearly.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I gasped. “Tearly! I’m so glad to see you. Something attacked us in the maze, and we almost didn’t escape. Lucien’s hurt, we need to…”
My voice trailed off into silence as she stepped closer, and I saw the bow and arrow she held, notched and ready to fire. Her face was pale and resolute as she pointed the tip of the arrow straight at my chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WAS SHE CONFUSED? Could she not see who I was in the dark?
“Tearly?” I tried again. “It’s me. Kyra.”
Tearly’s eyes were dark as they met mine. She pressed her lips together, and my stomach tumbled like a stone as I realized. The words from the wondering well whispered through my head.
The killer is closer than you think.
No.
NO.
It couldn’t be. It was impossible.
“You’re a difficult one to kill,” Tearly said, her voice strangely high, as if she was trying to sound brave and failing.
I stared at her. I didn’t want to understand, but the realizations were clicking into place.
Tearly had designed the maze, the same maze that had just tried to kill me. She’d sent me inside to find Hannah, who had been by the bonfires the whole time, safe and happy.
The whole thing had been a trap, and I’d fallen into it.
“We’re allowed to use spells on holidays without being immediately swooped upon by teachers,” Tearly said as if reading the thoughts that must be apparent on my face. “It was a good plan, I thought. No would notice the use of magic that set the dragon statue in motion to attack you, or the way the maze closed up like a trap when you tried to run. Of course, you had the dark prince there to muck things up, and you always seem to get free somehow. I suspected you might, so I came here to wait in case the maze failed.”
A shudder ran from my scalp to my toes.
“Were you the one who spiked the firefruit with charmwine?” I asked.
“A convenient reason to get you to look for Hannah,” she said. “It’s not the first time I’ve tried to kill you. I wanted to make certain it would work this time. That you’d actually go in the maze and look through the whole thing.”
My mind spiraled with thoughts and revelations.
“The fragmyr,” I breathed. “That was you?”
Tearly’s mouth twitched. Her eyes darkened.
“I thought it would be quick,” she confessed. “I summoned it outside the grounds where the magic wouldn’t be detected and sent it for you. It was supposed to attack you while you walked home alone, but those creatures never do what they’re made to do. It attacked you early, and it was no match for more than one person.”
I swallowed hard. “Lucien said it wasn’t big enough to be lethal anyway.”
“Lucien,” Tearly spat, “has gotten in the way too many times.” She cast a glance at him lying unconscious on the ground as if debating whether to shoot him.
My ears rang with shock. She was my friend. My first friend at Spellwood. The one I trusted with my secrets, my embarrassments, my fears.
How could she do this? I thought I’d known her, but I was wrong. I had no idea who this cold killer standing before me was.
“What about the well?” I whispered. “When you bumped into me…”
“Yes. I forgot about that one. I didn’t have the nerve then,” she said. “I was supposed to push you in, make it look like an accident. But I couldn’t do it.”
“And the road? The bike accident? Was that you?” I rubbed at the place where the mark had been on my arm.
“What road? What bike accident?” Tearly said, genuinely confused. “That wasn’t me.”
She wasn’t the only one trying to kill me? Or was she working for someone else? Was this a concerned effort with more than one killer?
“Are you even a student here?” I managed. “Are you even a half-blood? Or are you some professional fae assassin?”
“I’m a student,” Tearly said. Her hand, I noticed, shook as it held the bow.
She was scared too.
“You don’t have to do this, Tearly,” I said. I thought of my mom’s dagger, lying somewhere in the grass. Could I find it in time to stop her?
Her mouth tightened. “They picked me because of my family. Because I had access to you. They told me to befriend you and gain your trust, and then make it happen.”
I had to do something to distract her. The words rushed out before I had time to think them through, and I hoped they’d be enough.
“You don’t want to kill me,” I whispered, looking at her pale face. “You’ve been
making half-hearted attempts. The too-small fragmyr, the maze that didn’t work quite right. You’re going through the motions, but you don’t want to succeed.”
“I have a debt that must be repaid,” Tearly cried out. “I am bound by the power of my name and by the oath of my blood to keep the debt. No, I don’t want you dead. You’re my friend. But they gave the orders, and I have to follow. I have to do what I’m told.”
I could still hear the sounds of the party in the distance. Tearly heard it too; she took aim at my chest again.
I had to keep her talking.
“Who? Who really wants me dead? Who is making you do this?”
Tearly straightened, inhaling as if bracing herself for something she was dreading. “That doesn’t matter now, Kyra. I couldn’t tell you anyway.”
“I can help you, Tearly,” I tried. “Headmaster Windswallow can help you. Spellwood is safe. You’ll be safe here—”
“You don’t understand! Spellwood can’t help me. And even if they could, my brother—”
She stopped.
“What happened to your brother?”
Tearly shook her head.
Lucien stirred on the ground with a groan. Tearly’s eyes snapped to him and then back to me.
Her finger itched over the arrow as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and slid down her face. “I’m sorry. You were my friend, Kyra, truly you were.”
She was about to kill me.
I never quite understood what happened next, except that something inside me rose up and screamed NO. As the arrow left the bow, light erupted all around us, blinding me and enveloping Tearly. She screamed as if in pain, and the arrow missed me and landed harmlessly in the grass.
Lucien shouted my name, but I could barely hear him, for a buzzing sound filled my ears and rumbled through my blood like electricity. Faintly, I could make out cries of alarm in the distance, and then I heard Lucien call, “Over here!”
Then, the world around me went dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I WOKE IN Headmaster Windswallow’s office, covered with a blanket.
The room was dark except for the flickering light from the Summertide bonfires coming through the windows. I lay across the same chairs where I’d been sentenced to detention with Lucien. The door was closed, and I could hear heated voices engaged in a debate outside it.
Spellwood Academy Page 17
