by Eva Chase
“Not all of us need to be focused on planning,” Declan said. He paused and then tugged Connar toward the door. “You’ve offered plenty of other things that maybe meant more than you realized. Come with me?” His gaze shifted to include me too.
Connar didn’t resist. Declan led us up out of Ashgrave Hall into the bright sunlight of a temperate fall day. I tipped my face back for a moment to soak in the thin warmth before following him across the green and on toward the lake.
When he set off down the path that led through the east woods alongside the shore, I got an inkling of where he was taking us, if not exactly what he hoped to prove with it. He veered off the path in the right spot to head up to the clearing at the edge of the cliff, where I’d first gotten to know Connar all those months ago.
Even though the Stormhurst scion was obviously still in turmoil, Connar’s posture relaxed as we stepped out onto the rocky ground with its sparse grass and the sparkling stretch of the lake ahead of us. I eased closer to him and took his hand. His love for this spot and his need to separate himself from the brutality of campus politics had been what had first drawn me to him.
Declan turned to face us. “You don’t always say a lot,” he said to Connar, “and maybe sometimes people—including myself—have underestimated you because of that. But you see a lot. You pay attention, you recognize things in people, and you have the courage to act on what you see even if it goes against the status quo—even if you’re not perfect at it. You recognized what Rory was really going through before any of the rest of us did, didn’t you?”
Connar squeezed my hand. “As much as I screwed that up afterward.”
“It still meant something, having that time when you were on my side,” I said. “And you made up for what happened after.”
“It’s not just that,” Declan said. “It was up here… You realized how much I wanted Rory, how much she meant to me, before I was totally willing to admit it to myself. And even though you could have ignored that so all her attention would be on you, you encouraged me to act on it. You kept the secret, even though it could have ruined me. I’m not sure I’ve ever properly thanked you for that.”
“I never would have wanted to do anything else,” Connar said, sounding puzzled.
“Exactly. And that’s what you bring to the table of the pentacle. That’s something we need among the barons.”
Connar didn’t look completely convinced, but he didn’t argue either. I touched his cheek, bringing his gaze to me. “I can’t imagine ruling without you there. We can go to your brother and make it clear we want him included among the scions too, but not to replace you. We’re stronger when you’re standing with us too.”
His throat worked. Then he traced his fingers along my jaw and leaned in to kiss me, the gentle press of his lips answer enough.
Declan came over to join us, kissing the side of my neck. Enveloped by the two of them, sheltered from the cool breeze drifting off the lake, I felt just how much we were together, in every way. I kissed Connar harder, reaching back to caress my fingers into Declan’s hair at the same time. A familiar pulse of desire woke up low in my belly.
Connar could certainly pick up on that. I ran my hand down his chest, tracing the sculpted muscle there, and he drew back with a faint groan. With a quick casting word, he conjured a bubble of warmer air around us.
Even with the added warmth, it was a little chilly for shedding all our clothes. I settled for letting my hands roam over his body through his shirt, and he slipped his hands under my sweater. Declan continued to mark my neck with his mouth. He stroked his fingers up my back, provoking a quiver of hunger.
I reached down to discover the evidence of Connar’s arousal straining against his fly. A shaky breath escaped him. “We were supposed to be organizing our big coup.”
“And we’ll do that,” I said. “We can keep this short and sweet.”
He made a rough sound of agreement and brought his mouth back to mine. As I fumbled with the zipper of his slacks, Declan helpfully tugged up my skirt. Connar’s hand delved lower, easing aside my panties to dip past my slit. I gasped, gripping his erection at the jolt of pleasure.
Connar lifted me against him like he had weeks before, but this time it wasn’t just us. He didn’t need to hold me up by only his power. As he eased me down onto him, his hard length filling me with that delicious burn I couldn’t imagine ever having my fill of, Declan steadied me from behind.
The Ashgrave scion kissed a lingering path along my shoulder while his hands cupped my breasts. Each stroke of his fingers made me tremble with delight.
Connar grasped my hips and rocked me against him, and I gave myself over to their combined attentions and the bliss that was flooding through me. In a moment like this, I had to believe that the strength and passion we generated together could overcome every enemy and challenge ahead of us. Because I didn’t want to live in a world where it couldn’t.
Chapter Fourteen
Rory
The shiny office building in front of us didn’t look as if it’d be the site of what might become a huge historic moment for the fearmancer community. Nothing about it stood out amid the other buildings on the downtown street, a business district array of similar mirrored fronts mixed with marble plating and older concrete. I tuned out the rumble of traffic passing behind me as I peered up at it.
Maggie had informed me by text late last night that the barons planned to convene for a meeting that would include a couple of their allies in the offices here around noon. It was currently a quarter past twelve. And we had arrived in cars parked wherever we could find spots on the surrounding streets and were now gathering here: the four of us scions, Declan and Connar’s brothers, and some fifty classmates and outside supporters who’d agreed to join us for this confrontation. Even a few of the blacksuits who’d defected to the university had come along, uniforms and all.
Hector Killbrook had met up with the four of us as soon as we’d reached the building. He peered up at it too, his narrow face brooding but determined. Then he glanced at me. We hadn’t had a chance to talk in person since the latest revelations.
“You know,” he said, “if Jude had told me the full story when you two came to meet me, it wouldn’t have affected whether I trusted him or you. I wouldn’t hold him responsible for my brother’s decisions.” His gaze returned to the building as his mouth twisted. “I’m very familiar with just how far Edmund can take his preoccupation with power—and his paranoias about those who might want to usurp it.”
“I’m sorry we had to ask you to prove him right,” I couldn’t help saying.
He shrugged. “That’s his own doing too, even if he won’t see it that way. You all deserve better than this. Before I even came into my magic, my brother made me wish I wasn’t second in line with all the horror he held for my position. I’ve stayed as far away as I can from that part of the Killbrook legacy. Maybe I stayed too far and let things go on that I might have been able to sway if I’d intervened sooner.”
“You’re here now,” Declan said. “We wouldn’t ask for more than that. I know as well as anyone what a burden being within arm’s reach of a barony but not owning it can be.” He tipped his head toward the doors as the last few members of our massive delegation joined us. “We’d better head in there before they have any more chance to notice something’s developing.”
I squared my shoulders and strode ahead with my colleagues and Hector. We were the ones asking the mages of less standing to take this risk; we should lead the way.
The offices owned by Baron Nightwood filled the fourth floor of the building. We ignored the elevator, which would have required several trips to fit all of us, in favor of the stairs. The sensation of marching up those flights felt like an echo of my many climbs of Ashgrave Hall, waiting to find out what I might have to deal with in my dorm next.
Thankfully I’d never had to encounter four hostile barons there.
The moment we stepped into the office, it was
obvious the barons were waiting for us—with plenty of advance preparation. They were standing in a tense row at the far end of the main room near the doors to the inner workspaces, the desks between us and them empty of employees, several other regular mages and close to twenty blacksuits positioned around them. My heart plummeted even as I stepped forward with the others to make room for our entire contingent to enter.
Someone must have tipped them off about our plans. Someone we’d thought was on our side, or else they wouldn’t have known about those plans.
I spotted Maggie at the back of the stand-off, her mouth tight and her arms folded over her chest. She was clearly distressed, even if she was making a good effort at hiding it.
Could she have been responsible for this turnaround? I didn’t want to think so—I couldn’t see what she’d gain from betraying us after the hopes she’d shared with me, and those under the forced honesty of a persuasion spell. It would have been hard for her to warn me if she hadn’t known until the blacksuits had arrived.
There really was no way of knowing who’d thrown us under the bus. It could have been anyone we or our Guard had reached out to who’d decided they were better off currying extra favor with the current barons than supporting their future leaders. Did it even make that much of a difference? Would we have backed down and called the whole thing off if we’d known?
No. We still had to say our piece. The other tactics we’d been prepared to implement would just be a hell of a lot harder to pull off now.
“This is quite the militia you’ve gathered,” Baron Nightwood said in a sneering tone.
Beside him, my mother stood stiffly, her dark eyes smoldering with offence as she looked at me. Despite everything she’d argued for and done since she’d returned, guilt pinched my gut.
“It isn’t a militia,” Declan said. “These are the people you’re meant to serve—dozens of them. It’s important enough to them to prevent the conflict with the Naries that you’ve been preparing for that they’re all willing to stand here and tell you so to your faces. We’re hoping that you care enough about all your people not to dismiss this many of them because other families only care about what they get for themselves.”
“If you see us as powerful enough that you needed to summon half the blacksuits in the state to protect you from us, maybe we’re worth listening to?” Malcolm said, cuttingly dry.
“We don’t want any dominion over the Naries,” someone piped up from behind us. “We don’t want to see them killing each other, and we don’t want to have to fight them to keep them in line.”
“And we support Hector Killbrook’s bid for the barony,” said a voice I recognized as Victory’s father’s. Mr. and Mrs. Blighthaven had shown up at the last minute when we’d been getting ready to set off. “Why should we tolerate a criminal in the pentacle?”
“Baron Killbrook hasn’t been convicted of any wrongdoing,” Nightwood said, although at the same time I thought my mother suppressed a grimace. “And we stand as your leaders because you trust our families to make the decisions that are best for all of you. This has never been a democracy. If problems arise from our activities, we’ll deal with those as we move forward, just as we dealt with the joymancers’ recent assault.”
By slaughtering them all, I thought but didn’t say. Plenty of our supporters might be just fine with that turn of events. Better to focus on how their interests were at risk.
“Once we reveal ourselves to the Naries on a larger scale, we won’t be able to go back on that decision if it turns out to be more trouble than it’s worth,” I said. “We can’t wipe the memories of the entire country.”
“You have no idea what plans we have in place to make it a smooth transition,” Baron Killbrook snapped. “We’re not going to be bullied by scared children.”
Nightwood definitely bit back a wince at that tone-deaf comment, insulting every adult on our side of the room.
Killbrook’s brother drew himself up even straighter. “I’m far from a child, and there are plenty of people here with more life experience than either of us. And for a transition this big, where every fearmancer’s life will be irrevocably changed, all of us should have a say.”
Someone else on our side spoke up. “You can hardly keep claiming it’s about giving us more freedom when you’re forcing the decision on us!”
“Why don’t we all sit down and have an actual discussion about this instead of your continual dismissals?” Hector went on. “If your plan is solid enough, then you should be able to address our concerns, and then this conflict can be over. If there are weak areas you haven’t thought of, surely you’d want to know that before going forward? What would be the harm in talking it out?”
“Yeah!” Cressida dared to say from where she’d ended up near me. Murmurs of agreement rose up all across our side of the room.
“Our plans require a series of intricate operations,” my mother said. “We’ve already faced more challenges than we should have because we couldn’t count on all of our colleagues handling that information in a responsible way. Why should we trust that none of you will turn full traitor too? We were brought up for this role, we were born to lead you, and we will not have our authority questioned.”
Nightwood gestured to the blacksuits around them. “And that’s all we need to say on the matter. Please see these people out of the building so we can continue with our business.”
No. We couldn’t let them turn us away that easily. My pulse skipped a beat, but I raised my voice. “Stand firm! We deserve to be heard.”
Hushed casting words filled the air all around me, and energy thrummed through the room. The blacksuits halted a couple feet away from us where we’d conjured a magical barrier together. They exchanged a glance and threw out their own casting words in unison.
Their spells sent shudders into our crowd that raised the hairs on my skin. Baron Nightwood scowled and took a step forward. He and the other barons added their own barrage of spells, and I felt our defenses cracking.
“More!” Declan called out, with another casting of his own. The voices on both sides blended into a garbled mess of potent syllables. The floor quivered beneath our feet with the force of our opponents’ onslaught.
For all our numbers, the barons and their allies were some of the strongest mages around. And they’d had the benefit of advance preparation, thanks to whoever had tipped them off. As the barrier protecting us frayed even further, lashes of magic slipping through it to scrape at my limbs, another spell triggered over us. A thunderclap boomed, and a wallop of energy smacked us to the ground.
As I fell to my hands and knees, my ears rang so hard I couldn’t make out any other sound. Then the blacksuits were on us, shouting spells I could only decipher from the movements of their lips, hauling people to their feet and toward the door, directing others with what looked like magical compulsion to march out on their own.
So much for forcing the barons to listen. We could barely keep ourselves in the room. But even as I scrambled for the right words to maintain our attempted siege, our allies were fighting back. Some of them with magic, three here and four there shoving back or freezing a blacksuit with combined spells—some of them physically tackling the officers to the ground.
The barons launched into renewed castings of their own. A fresh wave of magic rammed into us, sending those who’d started to recover toppling again. But Baron Killbrook didn’t appear to be satisfied with that. Taking advantage of the chaos, he strode straight toward his brother, his hands jerking up as his mouth formed a casting that I suspected he intended to use to end any question of who would be baron once and for all.
Hector saw him in time and spat out a casting of his own that propelled the spell to the side. A gouge sliced into the floor just a foot from where he was heaving himself to his feet. The baron’s lips curled into a snarl, and he flung himself at his brother.
Sparks flared and whirled around them. A blacksuit charged at me, and I yanked my attention away to
hurl a spell at her that knocked her onto her ass. As Connar spoke a casting word to pin her in place, Baron Nightwood whipped the dagger he’d brandished at our last meeting from his suit jacket and pitched it toward his son with magically driven aim and speed.
“Malcolm!” I yelled. It was too late for my warning to do much good, but thankfully he’d spotted it the second I had. He jerked himself out of the way with a split-second casting that only managed to send the dagger slightly off course. It still sliced straight through his sleeve where he hadn’t moved quite fast enough, deep enough that a gush of red blood bloomed on the fabric.
It would have killed him if he’d been any slower.
An ache clutched my stomach. I whirled around to see Declan’s aunt barking casting words, her vicious eyes turned his way. The Killbrooks had fallen to the ground with spasms of their bodies as they tried to fend off each other’s attacks and make their own. Our attempt at a delegation had turned into a war zone in no time at all.
Hector Killbrook flinched with a crackling sound and a whiff of burning flesh. Baron Killbrook lurched toward him, his teeth bared as his lips moved to form another casting—and his brother spoke sharp and harsh to stop him at the last second.
The baron slammed back against the floor. A spurt of blood colored the tiles with the collapse of his skull. Hector stumbled backward, looking as sick as the sight made me feel. He’d won his part of the battle, but I didn’t think he was happy about how.
For all our efforts, the blacksuits were still pushing us back. Their persuasion spells had sent several of our allies out of the room, and now the officers were simply blasting everyone at the front of the line. Bodies slumped unconscious all around us.
We weren’t going to win the entire war, that much was clear. Declan caught my gaze with the same sense of desperation ringing through me and nodded.
“Fall back!” he said. “We’ve seen just how little we can trust our current barons.”
