by Valerie Mars
“Thank you, Ezekiel. You two may return.”
The next pair isn’t anyone I know, but when they rise from their positions on the floor, I spot Twyla and Kael sitting together. A faint blush marks his pale face, made more obvious by the darkness of his midnight blue hair. Oh, he is smitten. I can’t expect being attracted to the daughter of the councilman sending him to war would make him happy, though. Does he know? The Everharts are famous, but Separatists can be aloof.
The show-and-tell begins to drag and I imagine it’s grown especially tiresome for basically everyone but me. My legs are falling asleep, but I’m witnessing things humans would call miracles today. Knowing magic exists is going to alter the way I approach the unusual and occult back home. Nothing’s going to feel as implausible as it once did. That’s excluding aliens, of course.
The room gasps when Speaker Celeste announces the last pair: Larkin Voss and Sebastian Ankerstrand. While not necessarily a dream team, there’s undeniable energy behind each of their names. It’s also their second time together.
Several people around me whisper about Larkin, none of them having ever seen or heard of his gift. Larkin’s eyes are wider than Ferra’s when he gracefully steps onto the stage. He stops before Celeste, his chest rising and falling at a pace that conveys his discomfort.
Ever the athlete and showman, Bash springs onto the stage with both feet. “Come on, everyone knows Hothead Ankerstrand!” someone heckles from the crowd. Bash’s lips press together, but he flexes his arms dramatically in response.
“It’s for us; not you,” Celeste cracks. “Sebastian first, then?”
Bash cups both hands together and begins summoning a ball of flame like he’s done before. The size grows from golf ball to volleyball, then to a beach ball. From there, he separates his hands, splitting the orb into two. He continues growing fire in each hand until Celeste clears her throat, after which he releases the energy into a quick burst of flame over the crowd.
Celeste’s pale eyes glance up from her notes. “Thank you, Sebastian.” Everyone’s so casual about fire here. “Mister Voss?”
The face of this perfect sculpture of a man shines with sweat. His fair skin’s turned ashen since our encounter earlier. He steps to the front of the stage, scanning the sea of faces which gaze back at him with equal diligence. Not even a ghost could get away with farting in this room without everyone hearing right now. It’s that quiet.
His gaze lands on mine, and for a moment all I see is soft green. The next instant, I’m encased in amber. Gone is Larkin, and in his place stands a girl with my eyes and freckles, swimming in his sagging trousers and baggy tunic. Next, he adopts the long red hair of Jasper, then the waxed mustache of someone a few quads over. He adopts features from the crowd in quick succession, looking like the randomize option on a character creation screen. There’s a final flicker of auburn hair tied with a blue ribbon, and then it’s Larkin Voss again. The crowd claps, and I grip my legs, waiting to see if he’ll make eye contact. He doesn’t, but Bash does.
Celeste raises her cup to the audience. “And I can guarantea that’s his natural appearance, folks!”
31
Bash
I am not a jealous man, but I can’t ignore the way Larkin mimics Mallory’s likeness at the beginning and end of his display. I mean to ask about it once we’re dismissed, but he’s quickly absorbed into his gaggle of admirers. I excuse myself from the male known as Griffith, hoping never to make his acquaintance again—lest it be on the sands. The way he looked at the female in our quad makes my skin crawl. Larkin didn’t seem to favor him, either.
Where’s my Mally-girl? I find her in the midst of an animated conversation with Ferra, probably about her beast-babbling. Zeke and I exchange nods in passing. His and Larkin’s faces will probably continue to pop up. As Celeste said, patterns are beginning to emerge.
I hang back several meters away, enjoying the way Mal’s face brightens at something Ferra said. The two of them turn to leave, and she brightens again upon recognizing my figure. Ferra’s features mark her surprise.
“Ankerstrand. Impressive show back there. Think you’ll be paired with Larkin a third time?”
“It’s looking that way.” I withhold a sigh. While his powerful glamours and easygoing personality make a promising match, I’d prefer a team member who comes with a smaller reputation. If I wanted to stand in someone’s shadow, I’d fetch August. I’d rather not spend every hour of our training camp fending off his many suitors, either. Although we could make that work if they had to defeat me in combat to gain access to him.
“Don’t look so glum, Bash. He really does look a lot like the window Spring, though, doesn’t he?”
I’m not sure how to feel about her being so perceptive to my moods already, but I appreciate her attempt at lightening the mood. “Can’t argue there,” I reply. “Would you still go for Spring?”
Her lips quirk to one side in mock deliberation. “I’m in the mood for Summer,” she teases.
Ferra’s eyes narrow onto Mallory’s. “When?”
She bites her bottom lip with a guilty grimace. “After the gala.”
“Before we talked, then?”
She nods. “I should have told you. I needed time to—”
“To what, paint a picture?”
“To process,” she says, looking forlorn. She better not have spent the rest of the day feeling guilty about Kai and me.
Ferra assesses her friend’s expression—perhaps too astutely—and takes a deep breath. “Fill me in tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, for sure. And there will be fresh details,” she adds with a nervous laugh. Not so nervous, I hope.
Then it’s my face Ferra’s marine eyes lock onto, promising violence as she steps into my personal space. She angles her jaw upward, doing her best to match my size. She’s hopelessly far from that goal, but her intent is clear: She’ll have an army of woodland creatures shitting on my pillow every hour if I give Mallory cause to hurt.
It isn’t dissimilar to the warning I received from Kai.
“I’m sure tomorrow’s conversation will be lovely, although I do hope Mallory doesn’t disclose too much,” I say with a wink. “I’ll take care of her, Miss Whitfield.”
She lowers her jaw, and it crosses my mind that there are worse things she could ask woodland creatures to do. Certain torturous, medieval things. “Gross. Just call me Ferra,” she says before addressing Mallory. “Have fun, girl. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I offer Mallory my arm as her friend exits the hall. “Did I pass her test?”
She snorts and wraps her arm around mine. “You were never going to. But luckily for you, I’m the one grading it.”
“Does that make you the teacher? Because I can so be a good boy for you, Miss Mally.”
Extra weight hits my arm as she slumps forward and groans. “I’m all for a good role-play, but that’s what my students call me. What else have you got?”
Honestly, the Mallory and Sebastian thing we have going on outstrips any fantasy. “How about the one where a fiery fae saves a maiden from certain chill on a cold Autumn night?”
“That was our first night.” Shit, it was.
“What about a dashing fae smithy who aims to forge a new bond?” I wave my brows for impact.
Her reply is instant. “Will it involve any hammering?”
I choke on my saliva. I wasn’t expecting her to be so forthright. And word play isn’t a strength of mine. In that light, it’s easy to understand her interest in Kai. I scramble to respond. “Only if we’ve sufficiently warmed the material, of course.”
“It’s pretty warm already,” she murmurs. That sends my pulse into a sprint as we turn for the Spring quarters. Mallory’s cheeks betray the confident mask of her brazen banter and I decide not to push it. I’m also woefully unequipped for a battle of wits.
“Anything interesting from your quad today? I saw the look Daddy Everhart shot you.”
She shakes her hea
d. “There might have been something, but I missed it when I began daydreaming about fae babies.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not. What’d you and Larkin discuss?”
I’m more interested to know what she and he discussed. “Larkin isn’t a verbose guy. Most of our interactions are dominated by the other half of the quad, usually eager to fawn over him. We made some progress today, though.”
“Oh?”
“He told me he has eleven siblings. That’s nuts for even a Spring family.”
“If they’re all as beautiful as him, I wouldn’t blame his parents,” she says, chuckling.
They aren’t. Sage makes up for it in his combat skills, though. But more important than that, I’m impatient to know how the two of them are acquainted. I stop before the stairwell.
“Hey, so I was wondering…”
“What’s up?”
“Do you know Larkin, yourself? I don’t know if you noticed, but he picked parts of you to glamour twice during his exhibition.”
Her brows launch to the sky. “Right? I’m beginning to feel singled out. He said hi to me during the game, but before that the only interaction we had was him smiling in passing during the opening ceremony. Maybe he’s really friendly? It beats the other experiences I’ve had as a Separatist.”
Maybe that’s it, but I can’t help feeling protective of her. Sooner or later, people are going to notice she’s different. And the danger of being different is only growing these days.
Her hand finds my chest and I try not to purr. “Should I be worried?”
“Not with me and Kai around.” I’ll keep an eye on him, in any case. I turn for the staircase. “Ready to see what you’ve been missing out on?”
“Are you talking about your room or yourself?”
Atta girl. I’ll make a flirt out of you yet. “That’s up to you,” I reply.
Her stomach growls in response. “Sorry, I haven’t eaten sin—”
“Me neither. But I have something prepared in my suite. Are you alright having meat tonight?”
“At the risk of sounding suggestive again, yes. I could go for some meat.”
I chortle a touch loudly, and we continue to the end of the hall. She stops a few times to admire a painting or bouquet, and I fill her in where I can. Which is mostly nowhere.
“Your door is larger than the rest,” she says as I’m turning the key.
“It used to be both Gus and I living here.”
I swing open the door, but she lingers beside me. “Is it lonely without him?”
It’s hard to tell when I stopped missing him and the habitual loneliness began. I’ve kept myself so busy the past decade that it’s rare I find a moment to reflect. “It has its moments, but you’ll find I’ve filled most of the extra space.”
I enter the suite and begin lighting lamps. In an act of pure laziness, I spray a tiny burst of flame toward a lamp just out of reach so I won’t have to take an extra step.
“Show-off,” Mallory calls from the door.
“Guilty as charged, love. And we aren’t finished yet.” I turn back and take her hand. “Come to the veranda with me.”
“I don’t know, weird things happen to me around verandas lately.” She stops at where August’s room used to be. “Do you have an armory in your apartment?”
Feels like it sometimes. “I was selling at the market here when the council summoned me to retrieve Kai. That’s everything I’ve yet to sell.” It’s actually fewer weapons than usual.
Her jaw slackens. “Bash, you made all of that?” I hum, and she meets me with widened eyes. “Can I take a look?”
“Sure, but let me get some light in there before you go stumbling onto swords in the dark.” She snorts. “I didn’t intend for that one to sound dirty, I swear.”
“Uh-huh.” She steps into the room and takes in the piles of mixed wares.
“When I heard about the matching, I kind of grabbed everything I had been working on and took it with me.”
“Makes sense.”
“Usually, I’ll sell tools like spades or sickles to the farming towns. Maybe some nails or an extra candle holder if they need one. Somewhere like the citadel is where I take ornate daggers or my tries at jewelry, but I’ve still a long way to go with those.”
She rubs the patterns in the blade of a ridiculous carving knife I pattern welded with four different shades of gold. “Which of your creations has made you most proud?”
That’s an easy one. “The anchor for my father’s ship. I was barely starting out, my naivety on full display in my ambition. If my brother wasn’t there to help, I wouldn’t have managed.” I almost crack up remembering the late nights covered in sweat, Gus cursing my name over a pit of molten copper alloy. “It’s an ugly motherfucker, but he uses it to this day. Named it ‘Gemini.’”
She wears a soft smile, the corners of her eyes slightly wrinkled. “It makes a cute story. Is August a smithy, too?”
I shake my head while blowing out a lantern. “He works with leather.” We each extinguish another before I press a hand to her back. “Let’s head over to the food and I’ll tell you about him.”
We set up dinner outside over yet another brazier. The modern human girl must tire of campfire meals by now, I would think. But if she’s weary, it does little to diminish her enthusiasm for the slices of steak and speared vegetables I grill while telling her about Gus’s apprenticeship in the North.
She wipes her mouth between bites of steak. “Is that where he met his wife?”
I flip the vegetable skewers. “Aye. Unfortunately for him, he fell in love with the daughter of a previous Winter Prince.”
“No shit, huh? Why is that unfortunate?”
“He’s older than dirt, so he clings onto customs that belong in antiquity. That herbal tea the council’s been drinking? He’s old enough that his own marriage was arranged that way. Without an easy method to discern who’s good enough for his daughter, he devised a series of obscene demands for August to perform in order to prove his worth. Some were simple enough, like defeating a mountain bear with only his fists”—Mallory snorts—“but the bastard put him through iron poisoning, too. Gus carries the scar to this day.”
Her brows cause a v to form over her nose as she frowns. “And his wife was cool with all this?”
A dry chuckle escapes me. “Hell no. Wren pleaded with Gus countless times to give up the nonsense quests, but he was determined to win her father’s favor. The best part is that when he finally did, he refused anything the old grouch offered him. A family estate on the Cold Sea? No thanks. He built a chateau across from it. They have a formal relationship of begrudging respect.”
“And I thought my parents had high expectations,” she states before biting into a cherry tomato. It proves more unwieldy than anticipated and the juices dribble down her chin mid-bite. Her eyes flare in surprise. Or embarrassment? I catch most of the mess with my thumb and lick it clean. I think little of it in the moment, but when the hue of her cheeks begins to match that of the tomato’s, I realize my impulsive action came off more suggestive than I intended. Although intention would require thought, which I clearly didn’t possess seconds ago.
I bite my bottom lip. “Finish eating, Mally-girl. I didn’t mean to spook you.”
She swallows. “I think I’m done.” Her chest rises and collapses abruptly. “Yeah, I’m definitely done.”
I can almost hear her pulse. “Do you want to head back inside?” She nods with vigor, sending me into quiet chuckles. “I’ll be there in a second if you want to grab a glass of water while I kill the fire.”
She curtly bows before reentering my suite, sending me into laughter that I mostly quiet as I pour sand onto the embers. After following up with a bucket of water, I search for my girl.
I catch her at the faucet, guzzling down water until her mouth drifts and it spills down the front of her sweater. I can’t squash the laughter this time, and she releases her exaspera
tion in a sigh. “I’ll find you a tunic,” I holler en route to my bedroom.
“You make me nervous,” she yells back. Yes, I know.
I dig around for the smallest garment I own in the twilight that trickles in from the window across my bed. “It’s the change in setting and all that sultry banter from before.” After locating what I’m looking for, I turn around to find her hovering in the doorway. “I’m just happy to be spending time together without having to worry about Shadows or spy work,” I say, offering her the shirt.
She eyes the drapes framing my window. “Are you sure there’s no one else?”
Thanks, Zeke. “It’s against council law to enter private dwellings, but I can check.”
Another furious head shake. “No, that’s fine. Thank you.” She holds up my tunic. “I’ll head to the bathroom real quick.”
“I’ll put on some tea.” Calming lavender and bergamot infused tea for my nervous girl with the quick tongue. I never fancied this blend in particular, but it’s gaining appeal with the advent of Mallory’s glamour. Using a spoon to channel my heat, I bring the water to just below a boil. I’m on the couch with two mugs by the time she emerges from the bathroom. Her feet pad down the hallway, and when she rounds the corner I misplace my breath.
No surprise here, but the tunic utterly swamps her. She wears pants underneath, but they’re tight enough that I can imagine what she’d look like without them. Reading my poorly hidden appreciation, she raises an eyebrow before lowering onto the couch. This vision alone would keep me company for nights to come, but when she scoots close and tucks her legs underneath the shirt, the faint whiff I catch of my scent layered with hers changes everything.
It’s maddening, far different from picking out my scent among the several she wore during our travels. I seize my tea and suck most of it down in a useless attempt to appear my usual unflappable self. She serenely sips hers, but the corners of her eyes tell me she’s amused by my scramble to regain composure.
