by May Dawson
I didn’t want to lie to him—I hadn’t yet—but I didn’t want to tell him that, either.
The pause hung between us. I expected him to wait me out, since that seemed to be his usual methodology, but he stood abruptly to his feet and paced to the window.
“You are dangerously close to being expelled,” he said. “I’d highly recommend you become more forthcoming.”
“Expelled? For what?” It took everything I had not to jump to my feet as well.
“Are you forgetting the disobeying a direct order issue that began this conversation? Maybe you’re just chronically absent-minded and that’s how you forgot my simple instructions, which are intended to keep all of you safe. Despite your best efforts otherwise.”
“No one is expelled for disobeying an order one time,” I said.
“Watch your tone,” he warned. “I’ve been chronically unimpressed by your temper, Mr. Alexander. You need to learn to keep it in check.”
I pressed my lips together tightly, schooling my face. When I was sure I could say the words without sounding sarcastic, I said, “My apologies.”
“I’m sure you’d accept that behavior from a cadet of yours,” he muttered. Then, as if a thought had just occurred to him, he added, “Well, I suppose you might, given your contempt for my expectations when it comes to discipline.”
His obvious disdain for my weakness when it came to applying the tawse to my team prickled. It was all the worse because I hated my own weakness more than anyone else could.
“It’s not contempt.”
“No? Then what is it?”
I wasn’t going to tell Clearborn why I couldn’t bring myself to use the strap. The silence hung between us.
“Fascinating,” he said dryly.
I didn’t answer. I had to weigh the possibility of getting Maddie into worse trouble at the academy with the possibility that she was in far more serious trouble outside the walls of the academy.
We’d almost gotten Chase killed the last time we avoided sharing information with Clearborn, though. I wouldn’t let that happen again, even if it brought hell down on my head. Even if it brought hell down on Maddie.
What mattered to me most was that she was safe, even if she hated me.
“I met with Dani because I think someone put a spell on me and the other members of the team,” I said.
“You are going to need to back that statement up three steps and give me a crumb of context, please,” Clearborn said.
“Maddie acted very strangely right before she left the academy,” I said.
“I think calling reckless, spoiled behavior strange for her is a generous impulse,” he said. “But go on.”
“Then the way the rest of the team and I felt about her changed,” I said.
“That seems like a natural reaction,” he said. “When someone sees the uglier side of a person, sometimes there are consequences. She said some ugly things to you.”
The thought that Clearborn had heard her still grated my nerves. I frowned, forging on. “No. The whole thing just felt too… unnatural. It still does. I remember what it was like to love her, but I don’t… I don’t feel that anymore.”
“Oh good god.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “I am already quite irritated with you, and if I have to listen to the werewolf version of a Dawson’s Creek episode, one of us is not going to survive this afternoon.”
“It was just a bizarre change, so I thought maybe there was some kind of magic at work. So I contacted Dani. I only met with her in person so that she could check and see if there was any magical residue, if someone had used a spell on me.”
“And what did the helpful witch tell you?” Clearborn’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.
“Someone did use magic to change how I felt about Maddie,” I said. “I think it might have been Maddie herself, because she knew that otherwise, we would follow her when she left campus. I think she’s in danger.”
“Listen to me, Lex. Maddie Northsea is back home with her family, safe and sound and where she has always belonged.”
I shook my head before I even realized I was doing it. Clearborn’s gaze sharpened, as he realized I was rejecting everything he’d just said.
“You’re off in a fantasy world,” Clearborn told me, his voice irritated. “I will not have my students sneaking off to meet with witches. You could have been killed.”
“I’m worried Maddie is in danger,” I said.
“You can call Piper Northsea and she will confirm her sister is there, with her pack,” he said tightly. “If you don’t trust my word.”
“I didn’t say that.” My first impulse was to react to his affronted tone, and then the deeper meaning of his words registered. Piper would confirm that her sister was back with the Northsea pack.
If Maddie was really there, why didn’t Clearborn assume I’d speak to her?
“You didn’t have to,” Clearborn said. “Now let me make this very clear. I’m already displeased with your performance as a leader.”
I knew that, but a pit still opened in my stomach when he said the words.
“The Council’s Own selection is coming up soon, and I have been thinking about my recommendations.”
He intended to hold the Council’s Own over my head, just as Dean McCauley had.
I knotted my hands in my lap as I leaned forward, struggling to keep my voice flat and polite. “Maybe I don’t care, sir.”
“I think you do,” he bit back. “Otherwise, your choices when you graduate the academy are to either return to your own pack or to find packless territory and live as a lone wolf. Neither strike me as options you’d care for.”
I fell silent. I couldn’t argue with that.
“Now,” Clearborn continued, his voice calmer, now that he was sure he had me cowed. The thought made my jaw tense, my fists so tight that they ached, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t see Dani Hedron again. Or—just to make sure there’s no room for a misunderstanding—any other witch, or tarot-reader, or clairvoyant.”
I stood, felt the chair fall back behind me and regretted standing up quite so fast.
Clearborn quirked an eyebrow at me. “Do you have a tarot-reader on standby, Lex?”
“You’re right, sir, I do care about the Council’s Own,” I said. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
He nodded. “I know. I’ve met your pack.”
His tone was kind, and that almost made me stumble, but I wasn’t going to let anyone control me with my fear of what the future might look like.
I struggled enough sometimes with what I’d left behind me. I wasn’t going to let my past make me into a coward anymore.
“I do care,” I said. “But I don’t care more than I care about Maddie.”
“Oh? Did you and your witch-friend find a way to reverse the spell before half-a-dozen unruly shifters tried to beat some sense into you?”
“No,” I said. “I still… I don’t feel like I love her anymore, right now. But the bond between Maddie and I had always been bigger than our feelings. She’s left me feeling angry and hurt and betrayed before. It doesn’t matter. She’s still Maddie. If she needs me—”
“She doesn’t,” Clearborn interrupted. “And furthermore, she didn’t want you, or she wouldn’t have put some ill-advised curse on you.”
He scrubbed his hand across his face, as if he were genuinely agitated.
“Maybe,” I said. “But if she needs me, I’ll go. I’ll find her. I always will.”
He nodded. “That is… touching. They could set that in a cute country village and make that into a whole fucked-up Hallmark movie, I’m sure.”
“Sir?”
He waved his hand. “My wife has an unhealthy fixation on Hallmark movies that I suffered through during the Christmas break.”
He went on, his tone changing. “Nevermind. I want to be clear, you are not going to leave campus. Not to see Dani Hedron, not to track down Maddie Northsea. She is fine. She is safe. She does not need you
running to her rescue. Do you understand me?”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“Do you have your phone on you at the moment?”
“I do,” I said.
“Give it to me. I don’t want you talking to the witch.”
My jaw tensed. I couldn’t call Piper then after all, and confirm that Maddie arrived there safely. But Clearborn held his hand out impatiently, and I couldn’t disobey that order too. I pulled my cell out of my pocket and dropped it in his palm.
“You’re on restriction from now until I tell you otherwise,” Clearborn said. “I’ll make sure the guards all understand that you are not to leave the campus, but your cadets don’t have to know. As long as you don’t force the issue, as far as they know, you’re just a homebody for the foreseeable future.”
There was nothing left to say but: “Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want to embarrass you,” he said. “And I don’t want to take away your position as cadre entirely. You’re a good leader, Lex. You have potential.”
Well, there was a threat. He’d take away my position in the cadre and my chance at the Council’s Own if I went after Maddie.
“Yes, sir.” The words came flatly, no matter what I felt inside.
There was something Clearborn wasn’t telling me. He didn’t trust me with the information, and I was frustrated—with myself as much as with him, for not having earned his respect.
“If you contact Dani again or if you leave campus,” he said, “I’ll have no choice but to punish you further. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
He was throwing the threat of the tawse in for good measure. Fantastic.
One last time, and maybe I could get out of this goddamned room: “Yes, sir.”
Clearborn gave me a long, skeptical look. “There are matters in this war, and between the packs themselves, that you are not privy to as a student, Lex. It’s not your job today to save the world. It’s your job to follow orders.”
Before I could respond, he added, “You’re dismissed.”
His tone suggested that I might want to move along in a hurry.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Maddie
“How are your magic lessons?” Winter asked.
He had pulled me away from the house for a walk. The two of us had wandered through the woods in companionable silence for the past few minutes.
“Good,” I said. Honestly, spells came more easily these past few days. I felt more powerful, as if most of my magic had been funneled into my wolf’s bright-eyed existence.
But I couldn’t even think that without feeling guilt wash over me, and then grief pulled me the rest of the way under the waves until it felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t stop seeing her face.
“I wanted to teach you something myself,” he said. “I wanted to teach you one of my secrets… something every witch in the coven of the Day would like to learn.”
“Why are you teaching it to me?” I asked.
“Because you’re my daughter.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “And because I want to trade one secret for another.”
There it was.
“But it’s up to you,” he said, “if you’ll share your secrets with me. I’ll go first.”
He showed me the spell he used to open a rip through time and space, and his fingers tracing through the air cut a jagged hole through the air.
“I can open a rip anywhere,” he explained to me. “It lets me move through space. We can go anywhere we please.”
He sounded so proud, and then he added, “Come with me?”
He grinned at me, something boyish in his usually stern face, and even though dread tightened my stomach, I couldn’t help smiling back. He seemed so genuinely excited to share this with me.
The two of us stepped through the rip together. Cold washed over me, my head spinning dizzily, and then I was in a bright, green world. The land of the Fae, once again.
“I learned to control the rips from a friend of mine, Jonathan Truby,” he said, “before his daughter killed him.”
I stopped and turned to him, my eyes widening. Maybe he was going to leave me here.
“I’ve kept this magic to myself,” he said. “I worry that a witch who doesn’t have the power to close the rips again would fail to close the Door. There are always dangerous things that could come through the rips, and I’d hate to see my coven eaten for my trouble. But that’s not the sole reason that this has been my secret.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“My ability to control the rips is part of how I lead the coven,” he admitted. “It makes me indispensable.”
“They seem to love you anyway.” I disagreed. “When they aren’t all terrified of you.”
“Do you think you could come to love me, too?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“You’re not terrified of me, either.” His eyes were bright. “You have so much power. Just as I’d expect from my daughter. You’re more than I dreamed you would be.”
“Given what happened to your friend, it seems like the good daughter bar is set pretty low.”
He laughed at that. “I know you might kill me, Maddie. That’s no surprise to me.”
A pit opened in my gut, and I turned to him, my lips parting to deny it.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’m not angry. I’m not scared of what you might do.”
“What’s the secret you wanted to trade me?”
“Why did you come here?”
“I’ve already answered that question many times,” I said.
“Sometimes under duress. I’m truly sorry for that, Maddie.”
“I survived.” Just as Echo had promised I would.
“I know you came here to betray me,” he said gently. “I know you came here to steal the Cure for your people. But I don’t care, Maddie. I believe you can be redeemed. I believe you’ll come to my side, in the end.”
Before I could respond, he added, “Don’t lie to me anymore. Just don’t say anything.”
Holy hell. I stumbled, trying to figure out what to say.
He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re here at all. Now, you try. Show me what you can do.”
Magic lessons from the evil wizard himself, here we go.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The next day, I managed to slip away from Echo early in the morning when Bennett called him away for something. I headed into the woods, my heart in my throat, my feet hurrying across the sodden leaves and grass. A few bright-colored petals, the last survivors of the winter garden, tumbled across the damp ground; the wind had ripped all the flowers from the trees.
In the woods, I checked one last time that no one had followed me, then hastily murmured the words of my spell.
Clearborn didn’t answer.
“Oh come on,” I muttered, afraid that it wouldn’t work. I tucked my hair behind my ears impatiently.
“Go ahead.” Clearborn’s voice sounded like it was right there in the clearing with me, just like when I’d reached out to my father.
“Winter is using the rips to move in and out of different spaces. He can create rips at will, and I’m not sure the academy’s wards would stop him.”
“All right,” Clearborn said, with his usual cool equilibrium even though Winter might be able to march his witches right past our walls. “We’ll look into it. How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.”
Even through the miles that separated us, I could hear Clearborn scoff.
“Your wolf?” he demanded.
We only had a few minutes before the magic faded; I hadn’t expected Clearborn to give a damn about me when we had the mission to discuss. “She’s dead.”
My voice came out hard, brittle. Then I went on, forcing myself to focus on what mattered now. “My magic seems…stronger now.”
“Interesting,” he said.
“The witch who developed the Cure, Alice. I think she’s coming to trust me.”<
br />
“Maybe we’ll have you bring her back with you,” he mused. “I don’t like leaving you out there so long.”
Alice would be terrified to be back in the wolves’ clutches. She was happy here. The thought of betraying her made my gut ache.
Pushing my emotions away, I filled Clearborn in on everything I thought might be relevant, talking as fast as I could because I didn’t have long.
“Have you ever heard of something called the Dark Collar?” I asked. “It’s Fae magic tech. It keeps shifters from transforming.”
“No. Go on.” His pen scratched busily in the background.
“That’s what they want to use against us. The Cure isn’t enough for them—Alice has been trying to find a way to dispense the Cure to many wolves at once, but they don’t have an ideal transmission method. But the Dark Collar allows them to control a whole geographic area.”
“How does it work?”
“I don’t know. But I do know they need enough pieces to create the right geographic lines, because it creates a web. They don’t have all the pieces yet.”
“You need to find them and bring them back to the academy,” Clearborn said.
“I’m working on it. I don’t know where they are yet. And no one’s invited me along on a mission yet to steal any Fae loot.”
“I wouldn’t expect they would. They’re not stupid—they aren’t going to trust you.”
“Winter knows I’m here for a reason,” I admitted. “He thinks I can be swayed to their side.”
“I see.” Clearborn’s voice offered no hint regarding what he thought about that. Did he trust me to keep going with the mission, or did he think I was naïve enough to let my father convince me to his side?
“I—” I broke off as I heard a distant rustling in the woods. I whirled to find someone picking their way between the trees in the distance. I whispered, “Got to go.”
Bennett stepped into the clearing with me. “What are you doing out here, Maddie?”
“Trying to clear my head.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “It’s been a lot, lately.”
“Second thoughts?” he asked.
