by Sadie Moss
I know this whole thing was orchestrated by the same man who controlled the demon bird, who was behind all of the other attacks. I just know it. But he’s keeping himself protected and safe. He wasn’t even on campus—a smart move, sure, but also a cowardly one if you ask me, sending others to fight in his stead.
Pisses me right off, let me tell you that. And apparently, now he’s got an eye on me. Oh, joy.
With the threat gone, everyone comes back, and we somehow hobble our way through the last bit of classes. After getting released from the infirmary, I still have to take a couple days of rest to recover, along with a few other students who got the crap kicked out of them. Kendal, Erin, and Tandy stop by to check on me, and the guys are by my side pretty much nonstop.
Well… three of the guys.
Not Roman.
Roman’s been in a funk, I guess you could say. It’s hard to describe, but it feels a little like he’s channeling Dmitri on his worst day—withdrawn, sullen, and cranky. And that’s not the Roman I know. He’s usually stern and serious, sure, but I’ve never seen him gloomy or depressed.
Until now.
As we get back to classes the week after the fight, everyone notices it. I can hear other students talking about it in the dining hall or walking in between classes. Roman’s a favorite teacher on campus, so everyone wants to know what’s going on, why after such a solid victory, he’s being so withdrawn and upset.
I don’t know what to do, and I’ve never felt that way about Roman before. Ever. Not since the first damn day we met. I want to talk to him, but I don’t know how to handle this withdrawn, broody side of him. And he’s also pretty clearly avoiding me. I think he visited me sometimes in the infirmary while I was asleep, but he was always gone when I woke up. And we haven’t spoken more than a few words since I was released.
After one of my combat classes, Tamlin asks me to hang back.
I expect her to ask me about how I’m doing—I’m still stiff after the battle, and I’m slower in my movements—but instead, she just has me sit on a pile of stacked mats and then perches next to me.
“How are you and Roman doing?” she asks softly.
She sounds like she genuinely cares, not like she’s hoping I’ll say it’s going terribly and that she’ll be able to swoop in and get Roman back or some bullshit like that.
I shrug, my chest tightening. I hate this feeling. “I’m… I’m not sure, honestly. I thought we were doing well. He let me and my sister stay at his house over winter break, and we all had a really great time. We told Hardwick about our relationship so we don’t have to keep it a secret anymore, and I sleep over in his room a lot. Things felt like they were moving forward between us, getting really serious, but now… it’s like he doesn’t want me around. Ever since the fight, he’s been pulling away.”
The ache in my chest expands as I talk, and I rub my sternum absently as if trying to banish the tightness there. I don’t mention to Tamlin exactly what happened up in the tower. No one but me, Roman, and the mage who was attacking me were up there. No one else saw what Roman did. I’m not sure who knows about that power of his, but I’m not about to spill his secrets, no matter how weird things are between us right now.
Tamlin sighs, and her gaze grows a little unfocused as she stares at the windows on the opposite side of the large room. “I wondered if that was the case. Everyone on this campus can see that something’s going on with him, that he’s more closed off than usual. He’s obviously struggling with something.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do about it?” I ask, turning toward her. I can hear the desperation in my voice, and I’m not sure Roman’s ex is the right person to ask about this. But she’s the one who pulled me aside after class, and I could use any insight I can get right now.
She tilts her head to one side. “Normally, in a situation like this, I’d suggest talking to the person, but I understand that Roman is not the easiest of people to talk to.”
I laugh a little. “No, he isn’t.”
Not as difficult to talk to as Dmitri, but still. For as open as he can be in some ways—I’ve never once doubted what he feels for me or that he wanted to be with me—Roman can be very closed off and private too. There are just subjects that I know not to ask him about.
Tamlin gives a small sigh. “I’ll be honest with you, Elliot, he shut down when I tried to reach out to him about these kinds of things. It was very frustrating, and I think it’s part of why we ended up breaking up. He shut me out, and I let him, and we repeated that cycle over and over. Eventually, that became our ‘normal’.”
She drags her focus away from the window and shifts to face me more fully. There’s sadness in her eyes, but it’s an old sadness, a remembered hurt—nothing near as acute as the pain in my chest right now.
“When he broke up with me, it hurt, but I honestly think he was trying to do right by me. It was the best way he could think of to break the cycle we’d fallen into. He had shut down with me and wouldn’t let me in—and I’m grateful, in a way, that he recognized that and decided to end things rather than keep me in his life at arm’s length.” She lets out a breath and then reaches over to rest a hand on mine. “There are pieces of his heart I don’t think Roman has ever opened up to another person. But I think you should try reaching out to him. I think it’s worth trying. From the way I see him behave with you… I know he cares about you. Talk to him. Give him a chance to open up to you.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” I blurt, the words spilling from my mouth before I can stop myself.
I feel a little like I’m fifteen and not twenty-three as I stare into Tamlin’s serious, dark eyes. Mom died when I was eighteen, long before I had the chance to get into a serious relationship with anyone. I’ve never had a woman to give me advice on this kind of thing. I have my own common sense and all that, but sometimes I just wish I had an older woman that I could go to for advice.
Then again, it sort of looks like I do have one. I was just too scared to ask her.
Tamlin doesn’t even hesitate to answer my question. “Then you break up with him and you move on.”
I blink at her, surprised, as my stomach dips.
She smiles warmly, her teeth perfectly white against her mocha skin. “Elliot. I might’ve been Roman’s girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean I can’t want what’s best for you as well. If you have a partner who can’t open up to you, can’t trust you and communicate with you, then how can you do the same to them? It creates an imbalance of power in the relationship. They have so much more power over you, when it should be an equal give and take.”
Without even meaning to, I find myself nodding. What Tamlin’s saying makes sense.
“I’m not saying that you should give him an ultimatum,” she adds, holding up a hand. “Not at all. But if he continues to withdraw from you and to not share who he is—there’s only so close you two will be able to get. Is that what you want from your relationship with him? Or with any of your guys? But as I said… I think maybe he’ll be able to open up with you in a way he couldn’t with me. You just have to try.”
The crushing tension in my chest eases a little, and I find myself smiling genuinely at Tamlin, grateful to have her in my life for so many reasons beyond the combat skills she’s taught me.
She smiles back, and it gives me hope.
Chapter 26
When I leave the Combat classroom, I don’t give myself a chance to second-guess or chicken out. Instead, I go looking for Roman right away. The darkly handsome professor is, predictably, hiding away in his office. Probably because he thinks I won’t go looking for him there.
Surprise.
Roman looks up as I enter, and his cobalt eyes shutter. Usually when he sees me, he relaxes, but not this time. This time, he stays stiff and distant.
Fucking hell.
Already, I feel awkward and uncomfortable, and the cowardly part of my brain that’s no good at this kind of stuff is trying to convince me that we don’t ha
ve to do this right now—that it could wait until tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after that.
But it can’t. Because every day I let Roman push me away and just accept it, we get one step closer to that becoming our new normal. And this conversation won’t be any easier tomorrow or the next day than it will right now.
Time to bite the bullet.
“Hey,” I say, swallowing my confrontational tone and keeping my voice neutral and calm. “Do you have a second?”
Roman nods, setting aside the paperwork he was doing. “Certainly.”
He gestures at the chair in front of his desk. Normally, he never keeps so much distance between us. He’s not exactly a hearts and flowers kind of guy, but Roman touches me all the time, showing his affection physically. This is the first time he’s been this way with me, and I realize… we’re at a crossroads.
I reacted to his power with fear.
It was an instinctual reaction to something that was honestly pretty terrifying.
But I have to make Roman understand that I’m not scared of him.
I have to show him that I’m going to accept him no matter what, his powers and all, but that I won’t accept this distance, this pulling away. I could just let the distance slide and become like Tamlin—become someone he eventually grows away from—but like fuck am I doing that. Even if it’s uncomfortable, even if he doesn’t want this right away, even if I’m scared about it blowing up in my face… I have to do this.
“Roman.” I ignore the chair and walk around to sit on the edge of his desk, right next to him. He tenses like he’s about to get up out of his chair and walk away, but I put my hand over his, squeezing gently. “We need to talk about what happened in the tower. Are you okay?”
He manages to slide his hand out from under mine and gets up, walking around the desk to pace the room. Fuck.
I turn to face him, craning my neck. “Roman. Please. We have to talk about this. What aren’t you telling me? If that—that death magic is your power, then I accept it. My powers can be dangerous too, just as dangerous as what you can do. You don’t have to worry about my being afraid of you. I’m not. I feel safe with you; I always have.”
The words come easier the more I speak. He needs to know how I feel. I could offer to give him space, but I don’t think space is what’s needed here. I think it’ll only give us both excuses to make this less… real, for lack of a better term.
And I want it to be real. As scary as it is to admit, I want it to be forever.
“Should you, though?” Roman challenges, stopping and turning to face me. His cobalt eyes burn with something like anger, but I can see that it’s all directed inward. “Maybe you shouldn’t feel safe, Reckless. Would you really have trusted me all this time if you knew that one slip up, one—”
“You won’t slip up,” I argue, shaking my head adamantly. “And you know me, Roman. I’ll take a painful truth over ignorant bliss any day. You are who you are, that hasn’t changed, and I want to be with you. Nothing is going to change that.”
He gazes at me for a long moment, his eyes still closed off, his jaw clenching, and then something seems to crumble within him. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Look, I… you know that I have Unpredictable powers.”
I nod. I know he has more than one, given that he warned me earlier about the whole “manifesting a new power” thing.
He opens his eyes, and even though he doesn’t step toward me and there’s still way too much space between us, I feel connected to him in a way I haven’t since before the tower fight. Like maybe he’s reaching out.
“I have three powers, just like you,” he continues. “Necromancy is the first one. That’s how I can talk to the dead. The second is demon summoning.”
“Like you did against Raul.”
“Yes.” Roman hesitates for a beat, then looks me dead in the eye. “The third power is the death touch. I can touch someone—and they just die. I drain their life force.”
I nod. “But you can control it.”
“Now I can. When I was a child… I couldn’t.”
Roman walks back around his desk, brushing his hand over mine as he passes by me, and that little touch is everything in this moment. He’s still here with me. I haven’t lost him yet.
He sits down heavily in his chair before meeting my gaze. “Most Unpredictables manifest their powers much later in life than the rest of the magical world. But some of us manifest them much, much earlier. As young children. I was one of those kids.”
He lets out a burst of mirthless laughter. “Of all the Unpredictables to have their magic spark early, it had to be the kid with the devastating death powers, right? The necromancy and the demon summoning, those were bad enough, but then—then I got my third power.”
I scoot closer to him, still perched on the desk. “The death touch.”
He nods. “The death touch. It’s not just a power, not like any other kind of magic I know of. It’s like a black hole. It’s a starving, hungry power. When I use it, it takes over, becomes almost a physical force that demands more life, that wants to consume everything.” He runs a hand through his gleaming dark hair. “I had no idea how to control it. I was just a kid. I wasn’t prepared for it. And I—my family—my parents and my sister—”
My stomach turns to heavy ice as I realize what he’s saying. “Oh, fuck, Roman. I’m so sorry.”
He swallows, looking younger than I’ve ever seen him. Not that he looks my age or anything, but he actually looks twenty-eight for once, instead of almost ageless.
“The magical community had no idea what to do with me. They talked about me like I was a bomb waiting to go off. Nobody seemed to care that I was just—I was a conduit for this power. I was too weak to control it or stop it, I was a kid who had no clue what was happening. I was scared and alone, and I’d lost my family.”
I bite my lip, unable to hide the look of raw pity that I know must be contorting my features. But my heart is fucking breaking for him.
“A lot of people wanted me to be tried once I became a legal adult, as if that made any sense.” Roman shakes his head. “But a practicing necromancer named Liam Novak offered to take me in and train me. Unpredictables with death-related powers often face an added layer of mistrust and prejudice from the magical community. Liam is a bit of a loner, but if it weren’t for him… I honestly don’t know what would’ve happened to me.”
I don’t know this Liam guy, but I suddenly want to hug him. I scoot a little closer to him on the desk, and Roman’s hard-edged voice softens a bit as he goes on.
“I’ll be grateful to him until the day I die. He was far more patient with me than I deserved. I barely talked the first couple of years. The guilt ate me alive. But as Liam worked with me, I got better. And he really pushed me, threw me into training. It was good, it distracted me. He gave me a sense of purpose and taught me that I can control my powers—all of them.”
He shakes his head, gesturing with one hand to encompass the school around us.
“I still had to come here for my final training since it’s the only accredited program in the country for Unpredictables. But I needed barely any training while here. I had a guaranteed job as a teacher here as soon as I graduated, and then I convinced them to hire Josephine. That’s how we met, actually. As students here.”
I nod, trying to find my voice. “I’m… I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.”
Roman finally meets my gaze. “I haven’t used the death touch since I killed my family. I’ve ignored it. I spent years working to control it, to master it, so I could shove it down and never use it again. But seeing you in danger like that… something inside me just snapped, and I didn’t know what else would work quickly enough or be powerful enough. I knew my magic would work, and I had to stop him.”
The conviction in his voice tells me he doesn’t regret doing it, even if he’s spinning out a little in the aftermath. It terrifies me to hear that, but it also thrills me—to know that he
thought I was important enough to break his promise to himself, to use a power that he’s feared and controlled all his life.
I dare to take his hand again—Roman tries to pull back once more, but I squeeze hard, keeping him from slipping away.
“Hey. I love you.”
The words just slide out of me. For all my fears and doubts, all my emotional awkwardness and barriers, those are the easiest three words I’ve ever said.
Because they’re true.
Utterly true.
And it feels so natural to say them I almost don’t know what to do with myself.
“I trust you,” I add, because that’s true too. “You’ve controlled your power all this time, and I’m sorry you had to use it to help me, but I’m grateful you did. And I’m not afraid of you. I never will be.”
Roman stares at me, transfixed, like he’s not sure I’m real.
Well, I’ll just have to remind him, then.
I slide onto his lap and kiss him softly. He’s stiff at first, unmoving, but I persist, again and again, just soft kisses that let him know I’m here, still affectionate, still trusting. Still his, for as long as he wants me.
And just when I’m starting to lose hope and wonder if I’m fighting a losing battle—he kisses me back.
His arms band around my waist, and his lips move against mine, and his body relaxes, letting me curve against him so we’re touching everywhere.
It’s the most meaningful kiss we’ve ever shared. I can feel it in my bones, in my blood, in someplace deep inside of me that I can’t even quantify. It feels like the earth is shattering and reforming all at once.
“Reckless.” Roman pulls away, just enough that our lips still brush as he speaks, his voice low and smooth. “I love you too. So very much.”
I couldn’t stop my smile if I tried.
Chapter 27
The guys graduate a week later in a small ceremony. There’s usually a lot more pomp and circumstance, but everyone’s fucking exhausted, and the school’s still a mess. Maddy gets in late the night before, and she’s seated next to me in the auditorium as we cheer like mad for them.
