by Eva Chase
“They almost—The guy right beside me—” Shelby sucked in a ragged breath. “If you hadn’t called me and told me to keep an eye out, I’d probably be dead now. I got a bad feeling as soon as one of them came in. I ran the second they attacked. How did you know?”
“It was a guess,” I said. “There were some signs… It’s complicated. I’m sorry. I wish I could explain it all properly. They are just assholes, like Jude said, and right now they want to hurt me and everyone who’s been associated with me or my friends. When they find out we saved you, they might come after you again. For now, you should come with us back to the university. It’ll be safer there.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she murmured, rubbing her forehead. “They’re all… They’re all dead.” Then she lapsed into a haunted silence.
My chest clenched up at the thought of all the people we hadn’t saved. All the people who’d just been collateral damage in my mother’s campaign of vengeance. Did she even recognize that she’d torn lives apart, or was it impossible for her to see a Nary’s existence as even that valid?
Partway through the drive back, Shelby started to cough. It began as a periodic sputtering and grew into a continuous, raw hacking in between apologies. I didn’t want to think about how much smoke she must have inhaled.
As soon as we reached the campus, I helped her out of the car, and all three of us tramped across the grounds to the infirmary. The staff took one look at us with Shelby and exchanged a glance.
“She’s already been forced to see more magic than she should have had to,” I said before they could protest about using magical healing on a Nary who was no longer even a student. “It won’t help anyone being coy about it now. Do whatever you can to make her better.”
“And, ah, the Bloodstone scion here is forgetting to mention that she could use some patching up too,” Jude put in.
He looked as if he regretted drawing attention to that fact when a doctor escorted me off to a separate room. Where the spell had raked across my leg, the fabric of my jeans appeared to have melted into my skin in ragged slices from my ankle to halfway up my thigh. The doctor murmured a spell that left my mind floating off onto some distant plane while he worked on my wounds.
When he finished his work, that leg of my jeans was left in tatters, but my actual limb only stung slightly when I stood up. The daze of the anesthetic spell was wearing off.
I emerged into the reception area to find Jude waiting. One of the staff led Shelby out a few moments later.
My friend wasn’t coughing anymore, but she had the same spacey look that’d come over her in the car. Scorch mark and flecks of blood dappled her clothes. The sight of her made my throat constrict all over again.
“I’ve put her under a mild calming spell to help her rest,” the woman who’d brought her out murmured to me. “If she seems to need more help coping emotionally once that’s worn off, you can encourage her to come back here. We’ll do what we can.” From the horrified strain in her voice, I suspected Shelby had relayed at least some of what she’d been through.
“Where are we going?” Shelby asked in a distant, wavering voice as we left the Stormhurst Building. I kept a gentle hand on her elbow.
“You can stay in the dorm for now, until we figure everything out,” I said, summoning the most soothing tone I had in me. “There are a few unoccupied rooms right now. I’ll find you some extra clothes and things.”
“My apartment, back in— Do you think those people went there too?” A shudder passed through her.
“We’ll check on it as soon as it’s safe,” I said. The fact that the blacksuits had gone all-out in their destruction of the concert hall suggested they’d known Shelby would be there and had focused their energies there, but I couldn’t promise her they hadn’t done even worse.
Jude followed us all the way up to the dorm, sticking close by my side. To my relief, the common room was empty. I wasn’t sure I was up to trying to explain what had happened to anyone else just yet.
I checked the abandoned rooms and led Shelby into the one that held the fewest remnants of its previous inhabitant. She stood uncertainly by the desk while I made the bed with fresh sheets from my own room.
“Do you want to lie down and get some rest?” I asked. It was late in the afternoon, not quite evening yet let alone night, but she looked like she was barely holding herself up. I didn’t know how much of that was the trauma and how much the calming spell.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. If I could just lie down for a little bit…”
She sat down on the bed, and her fingers curled around the sheet, clutching it hard.
“If you need anything and you’re not sure where I am, you know how to call me,” I said. “I’ll come right away.”
“Right. Thank you.” She hesitated and then lay down. As she tucked herself under the covers, I left her to her rest.
Jude was standing in the common room, his stance awkward, his face still more wan than usual. “Do you think she’ll be okay?” he asked
A broken laugh sputtered out of me. “She just lost her dream job by having all her colleagues slaughtered and her workplace burned down. I don’t know if that’s something you get over.” The anguish that had formed in the pit of my stomach before swelled to fill my chest. I swallowed hard. “I don’t even know what happened to her cello.” The loss of that beloved instrument suddenly seemed like the tipping point between tragedy and total catastrophe.
Jude wrapped his arms around me, and I hugged him back, clinging to him tightly. His body trembled against mine. I wasn’t sure who needed the support more—him or me.
Voices sounded in the hall outside. I didn’t know if they were even heading to this dorm, but I tugged Jude toward my bedroom rather than take the chance of facing a conversation I wasn’t ready to have.
As soon as I’d closed the door behind us, the weight of the day’s events collapsed over me. I sank onto the edge of the bed, and Jude dropped down beside me. He tucked me into another embrace, his arm around my waist, my head against his shoulder.
Images flashed through my mind: flames, blood, burnt flesh. I winced and buried my face deeper into the crook of his neck.
Jude squeezed me to him and dragged in a ragged breath. “They would have killed you if they’d had a good enough chance. They came too fucking close. I almost lost you.”
I tipped my head to look at him. His expression was so utterly distraught that I brought my hand to his cheek, an ache twisting around my heart. “You didn’t. I’m okay. You helped make sure of that. I don’t know if I’d have made it without you.”
“I never want it to be that close a call again,” he said with a sudden fierceness, and lowered his mouth to mine.
Unlike his voice, his kiss was nothing but tender, his touch teasingly light as he skimmed his fingers down my side. I held on to him, giving myself over to the kindling desire, a temporary reprieve from the terrible memories lurking in my head.
Jude kissed me again and again, each time claiming a little more of me, until the tingling of my lips and the warmth of his body against mine overwhelmed every other sensation. He tugged up my blouse and eased it off me before guiding me back on the bed.
His mouth charted a scorchingly thorough path along my neck, across my shoulders and my collarbone, down to the curve of my breasts. He marked every part of me with the heat of his lips and tongue and the gentle scrape of his teeth, as if confirming to both himself and me that I was still entirely here, that no part of me had been left behind or burned away.
When he slipped off my bra and brought his mouth to the peak of my breast, his fingertips skimming over the other, the rush of pleasure shocked a gasp from my throat. I managed to mumble a quick casting to stop any sounds we made from seeping into the common room. My fingers tangled in his soft hair as he worked me over with exquisite, torturous care.
My body quivered with anticipation as he undid my ruined jeans. He kissed my stomach and the dip at the base
of my belly, hooking the waist of the pants and my panties together and drawing them down. Then he was pressing his mouth to my core with a swipe of his tongue that left me moaning.
Bliss sang through me in waves, but he felt too far away now, barely close enough for me to touch. I rocked into the pulse of his mouth for as long as I could stand it, wanting to receive everything he was so intent on giving. When the need to hold him overrode the pleasure, I pulled him back up over me.
Before he’d even captured my mouth again, I was fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. He helped me strip it off and yanked off his pants in turn. A growing urgency gripped me as it appeared to have caught him too.
He lay down next to me, tucking his conducting piece on its chain behind his back, and turned me onto my side to face him. His hand slid from my hip to my sex, testing the slick arousal he’d already inspired. At the flick of his thumb over my clit, I let out a needy growl and hooked my leg over his thigh. He made an equally hungry sound as he positioned me against his cock and slid straight into me.
The position, face to face on equal ground, felt somehow more intimate than any moment we’d shared before. I leaned into him with a moan as he thrust even deeper. One of his hands lingered on my hip to steady our rhythm, while the other stroked over my breasts to provoke even more sparks of pleasure. I ran my fingers down his lean chest and up his back, wanting to offer up just as much bliss in return.
Jude tilted his mouth away from mine for just a moment to murmur a casting word. A quiver of magical energy coursed down my spine and formed a soft but solid pressure at my other opening. I clutched him harder as it eased inside, perfectly smooth and warm, setting off a heady jolt through my nerves.
He’d filled every part of me like a statement of his devotion. With that perfect friction radiating through me from every direction, I couldn’t do much more than hold on and rock with him. His cock hit the most sensitive spot inside me, and the force of his magic plunged in and out of me from behind with teasingly blissful friction.
My orgasm raced up on me so swiftly my head jerked back with the force of it, my legs shaking. A cry reverberated up my throat.
“Love you,” Jude whispered against my cheek, as if that were a casting too. As if the strength of his affection could shield me even when no other spell would. “Love you, love you, love you.”
A second wave of release surged through me, leaving me too breathless to answer right away. Jude groaned as he followed me.
He swayed to a stop, his head still bowed next to mine, his own breath rough. His lips grazed my forehead in one more kiss.
I reached up and tugged his mouth to mine. We kissed long and hard.
“I love you too,” I said afterward. “I’m not going anywhere, not if I can help it.”
His hand balled against my back. “Neither am I.”
I heard the promise in his words, all the more meaningful for the times he had pulled back or struck out on his own, thinking he wasn’t worthy of anything else. I snuggled against him to soak up the last bits of joy and comfort before I had to face reality again.
The larger world came calling sooner than expected with the sound of an alert from both our phones. Jude grumbled and shoved himself up to fish his out of his slacks. At the sight of the text, his mouth went crooked with a sheepish sort of annoyance. “Your fellow scions want to know what the hell happened. Maybe we should fill them in before they send an emergency search party.”
I wanted to get into that topic in writing even less than I wanted to talk about it. But I definitely owed the other guys some sort of account. I sat up reluctantly and reached for my clothes. “Tell them we’re okay and that we’ll meet them in the lounge?”
As I lifted my blouse, I realized the smell of smoke had saturated everything I’d been wearing. It was on my skin too; my nose had just adapted to it. I had the urge to run to the showers, but we’d already kept the others waiting long enough. I settled for grabbing a totally clean outfit while Jude typed out our response.
I stopped by the door to Shelby’s current bedroom before we left, but I didn’t hear any sound that would indicate she hadn’t simply fallen asleep. Hopefully the rest would take the edge off her distress, as much as anything could. We headed downstairs.
By the time we reached the lounge, the other three scions had already arrived. Malcolm’s expression hardened the second he saw us.
“We should have come with you. You knew something was wrong.”
My smile came out pained. “I had no idea it’d be that wrong. It could have screwed over everyone on campus if we’d all been gone.” I sat down on one of the armchairs. “Anyway, I don’t think having more people to help would have made much difference. Most of them were already dead when we reached the concert hall.”
I recounted the scene we’d found there with halting resolve. Jude stayed behind me, resting a reassuring hand on my shoulder and interjecting a comment as needed. Before I’d even made it halfway through the telling, Connar had sat down at the edge of the sofa next to me and grasped my hand. Malcolm and Declan hovered over us.
“My mother must have ordered them to do it,” I finished, my voice gone raw in my throat. Guilt swept through me, even heavier than before. “She was so angry the last time we talked… Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to push things with her. She never would have gone after any of those people if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Hey.” Connar squeezed my hand, his jaw flexing. “How many times have you told me that I shouldn’t blame myself for things my parents did—even things I did under their compulsion? This isn’t your fault. No one’s responsible but her.”
“And the fucking blacksuits that followed her orders,” Jude muttered.
Malcolm’s eyes blazed. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s goddamned enough. Fuck proper protocol and respect for the baronies and all the rest. They can’t come back from this. Whatever happens, we’re taking the pentacle away from them. Both of them, my dad and your mom—they’re too far gone. We can’t have people who’d pull shit like that calling any of the shots.”
I’d never wanted to feel like I was fighting not just to stop my mother’s plans but to outright replace her, but I couldn’t argue with the vehemence in his voice. If she’d been willing to order the attack I’d seen this afternoon, how could I ever trust her to look out for anyone whose interests didn’t perfectly align with her own? Or, forget about looking out for them—to not savagely destroy innocent lives in punishment?
Leaving her in power wasn’t safe for anyone. Maybe not even herself.
“How do we take it?” I found myself saying.
“We’ve screwed up their plans. They’re going to lose even more supporters. Between us and the other heirs, there’s ten of us now to their two. When we get the right moment, we’ll march in on them and arrest the both of them for all the laws they’ve already broken.”
“Things have been pretty quiet today so far,” Declan said. “And we had a few more families turn up looking to join us—or at least seek refuge.” He pulled out his phone. “If the momentum the barons’ people were gaining among the Naries keeps dwindling, then in a day or two we could probably—”
His voice fell away, his fingers clenching around the phone. An icy prickling shot through my gut. “What?”
“Apparently we didn’t throw as much of a wrench in their plans as we thought.” He lifted his gaze, his expression so stricken that anxiety clutched me twice as hard. “The barons must have gotten to the president himself somehow. He’s just declared martial law and announced that he’s passing all recently proposed policies immediately. We’d better get everyone together to figure out if there’s some way we can step in before we’re out of time.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rory
By the time everyone willing had gathered in the gymnasium, the situation in the wider world had escalated from critical to fatal. Protests had risen up after the president’s announcement. On his orders, milit
ary troops had stormed the major cities and started shooting anyone who wouldn’t immediately disperse from the rallies. The protests turned into riots, more bodies fell—and all at once, as the last bunch of our allies hurried in, a series of startled noises filled the room where people had been following the news.
“The broadcast just cut out,” Declan said, knitting his brow. He tapped at his phone’s screen, and his expression turned even more serious. “It looks like the whole website is down.”
Malcolm frowned. “The one I was following is too. What the hell?”
“Holy shit.” Noah looked up from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor, a laptop balanced on his legs. “I hopped over to social media. People who worked for the major news organizations are reporting that soldiers marched in and ordered them to shut down operations.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that anything this extreme could really be happening. It felt like a movie. “They have to know that just shutting down some official channels isn’t going to stop people from hearing what’s happening. There’s no way to control the entire internet.”
“They don’t want to control the entire internet,” Declan said grimly. “The barons don’t really want the president to take over.”
Jude let out a hollow chuckle. “Of course not. What do you figure the plan is? Make the current leadership look so horrible that everyone will cheer when a bunch of fearmancers step in?”
“That would be perfect, wouldn’t it?” Connar said quietly. “Set up a horrible situation so they can swoop in and ‘rescue’ the Naries from it.”
Hector Killbrook, who’d been silent in thought as he followed our discussion and others around the room, nodded at that. “This has got to be the crux of their plan. They don’t have the power to stage a forced takeover against the entire government. But if the majority of people would welcome someone coming in and cutting down a tyrant, they might have a chance.”
