by May Dawson
Radner leans back in her chair, and her eyebrows arch over amused eyes. “I guess we’ll see about that.”
“May we go?” Cax grinds out.
“Let me know what your plan is,” Radner says. “I’m sure the veterans can come up with something—after all, you’ve certainly all been sneaking around.”
“Everyone needs a hobby,” I say.
Radner hands me a file, no doubt with what they know about the local True—not that we aren’t already well-informed—and I lift it to my forehead in a mock salute before I reach behind me for the door knob and open the door.
I’ve got to get the three people I care about most in this world out of this room before someone says something I can’t fix.
2
Tera
“Don’t you think she’s desperately in need of a new wardrobe?” Stelly appeals to the three men who sprawl around our dorm room.
Airren’s on her bed. Stelly ceded the territory to him, so she sits cross-legged on the floor with Cax and me. Mycroft is taking an actual nap on my bed. So much for the helpful upperclassmen who are supposed to be tutoring us before our Casting test.
“No,” Airren says. “I think she looks beautiful as-is.”
“I like him,” I say, to no one in particular.
Airren winks. “I know.”
Stelly rolls her eyes. “You would also look beautiful in a new dress instead of those ancient jeans, but Airren hates shopping with a passion.”
“If the two of you stop doing that stupid thing with your pinkie fingers that freshman like to do when they cast, I’ll take you shopping,” Cax promises. I look down at my stupid pinkie, just in time for him to tuck it firmly against my other fingers. Cax’s long, warm fingers linger for a second on my hand, and our eyes meet.
Stelly groans. “The way you two just looked at each other while talking about pinkie fingers makes me want to throw up.”
“How are things going with the oh-so-cute boy from Calc?” Airren asks, looking at the ceiling. He does a horrifyingly accurate mimicry of Stelly’s voice when he says oh-so-cute.
“Not well,” Cax answers before Stelly can. “Or she wouldn’t be so grouchy.”
Stelly pops her eyes at me, cocking her head to one side, as if to say, can you believe this nonsense we put up with?
I used to wish I was like the boys’ little sister, like she is, because I desperately wanted to fit into their group. But I’d rather be the one they kiss.
“I don’t think the boy from Calc was ever the boy for me,” Stelly says. “But we’ll see who I meet on Friday.”
“On Friday?” Airren repeats.
“The fall masquerade,” she says. “Everyone will be there.”
“Not everyone.” Mycroft’s voice is low and deep, and it makes me jump.
I reach over my blanket to smack his leg. “I thought you were asleep.”
His eyes are still closed, and he makes a soft snoring sound.
“He never sleeps. He only bides his time,” Cax says. “Or at least that’s what he’d like you to think.”
“Everyone,” Stelly says firmly. “You cannot keep Tera boxed up forever. Especially when you aren’t any fun.”
Airren sits up on his elbow, quirking an eyebrow as he looks down at us from the bed. “I’m lots of fun.”
Stelly meets my eyes again with her large, dark-lashed eyes, then shakes her head so subtly the boys aren’t meant to see it.
Cax smacks her knee, although his touch is all playful. “You don’t get to disrespect Airren when you’re still sticking out your pinkie like you weren’t even paying attention in class.”
“I can disrespect Airren with many other fingers.” She raises her middle above her head.
“Apparently that gesture translates across realms,” I say.
Stelly jumps to her feet. “Come on, I’m bored. Let’s go out.”
“Mycroft doesn’t shop,” Cax says.
“I don’t need to. I’m a goddamn wizard.”
I twist to look at him, but his chest is rising and falling so slowly under his tight black t-shirt that I would be convinced he was still asleep if I didn’t know that was his deep, rich voice.
“Does he just make quips in his sleep?” I ask Cax.
Mycroft sits up abruptly, resting his elbow on his knee. “Tera and I are not going to any masquerade. I’m not letting anyone get close to her in a goddamn mask. Do you remember someone tried to murder her two weeks ago?”
My heartrate speeds, and not just because of the heat in Mycroft’s voice. I don’t like my name and murder in the same sentence.
“It wasn’t really personal,” I say. “Erik wanted to murder me to get back at the True who were going to murder him.”
The look Mycroft gives me suggests I am not helping my case.
“No one is going to murder Tera at the masquerade,” Stelly says impatiently. “This wouldn’t happen to be a problem because you hate parties, would it, Mycroft?”
“How many times can we use the word murder in a five minute span?” I wonder aloud. “Because the word is starting to sound really weird to me. Mur-der. Mur-DER. Murder. It starts sounding less scary and more like the sound of your foot slipping in the muck the more you say it. Murder.”
Cax rests his hand on my knee. “We’re not going to let anyone hurt you, Tera. There’s always one of us right around the corner.”
Maybe my repetition of the word murder didn’t make it sound like I feel entirely calm.
“Always,” Stelly says. “Right around the corner. If not in your bed.”
There’s a playful little smirk on her lips. I can’t tell if she’s accusing them of being unhealthily obsessed with me or if she’s accusing all of us of being perverted.
“Tera’s got a tough life,” Cax agrees, glancing over at me with the same smirk. They’re clearly brother-and-sister.
“I think we should all go to the masquerade,” Airren says.
Mycroft’s eyes pop. I look up at Airren quickly too, shocked he wants to go to a party.
Cax’s lips widen into a real smile, one that makes his cheeks dimple.
I push his shoulder. “You’re incorrigible. You live for drama.”
“Freshmen are not invited to the masquerade,” Mycroft says.
“Unless they’re invited by an upperclassman.” Airren’s tone says that, as the rule-follower of our group, he would know.
Mycroft meets Airren’s eyes. I glance between the two of them as Mycroft’s gold-flecked, dark-brown eyes bore into Airren’s ocean-blue ones.
“Why?” Mycroft demands.
“Stelly’s right. We can’t keep Tera locked up.” Airren says.
As Stelly’s lips part in a grin, she reaches across my book to pluck up the nearest wand, which happens to be Mycroft’s. “Hold on. Let’s rewind fifteen seconds—I need to hear that again.”
Cax snatches the wand out of her hand. “I am not ending up in an infinite time loop for the sake of your ego, Stelletta Roman.”
Mycroft holds Airren’s gaze. The look he gives him says they’re going to talk more about this later.
“Why don’t you two stop trying to communicate through eye-squints and talk to all of us?” I ask. “We’re on the same team. I’m pretty sure Airren is not looking out for my social life.”
“You don’t need a social life. You have us.” Airren says.
I exhale a long, slow breath at the thought of these three impossible men constituting my entire social life.
“You want to use Tera as bait,” Stelly accuses. “See who takes an interest in her.”
A rueful smile twists my lips. “Because the people most likely to give me the time of day are True.”
My fingers fall to stroke my shifter’s egg, which is nestled in a fleece-lined wooden crate to my right. The pulsing blood-red egg seems to warm under my fingertips.
Comfort washes through me when I pet the egg, as if it’s some kind of strange cat instead of an unborn shifter. I always wanted a cat w
hile I was growing up, but I was dispatched to boarding school shortly after I turned seven, and I only came home when my father began preparing his reign of terror.
“That’s not true,” Cax says. “You’re a beautiful girl, and you’ve drawn a lot of attention lately, what with the exploding building and the dragon’s egg. People’s reactions might range from morbidly curious about you to lustful intent.”
“Lustful intent.” I mouth back at him, because he’s a giant dork. The way his lips turn up at the corners when he teases me leaves me light and happy. I’m pretty sure he’s describing his own lustful intent.
“And Mycroft will want to kick all their asses.” Stelly glances at Airren. “And probably Airren too, no matter how cool he’s trying to play it.”
“We have a mission,” Airren says.
“There it is,” I say to no one in particular.
“And Tera is not our girlfriend,” Airren adds. “She’s our partner, and we’ve been asked to root out the True. It’s far more important than any feelings that…” He shrugs.
“Listen to that,” Stelly says. “He can’t even use the word feelings without his brain freezing up. Can. Not. Process. Human. Emotion.” She moves her arms like a robot.
“Any feelings that we may or may not have are irrelevant now,” Airren says, his tone far more certain than he looks like he feels. He looks to Croft, pointedly. “We need to be professionals, like we used to be.”
I nod as my cheeks warm. The kisses we’ve shared flash through my mind. It didn’t feel professional when Mycroft kissed me, his lips bruising in his passion, leaving my lips swollen red, or when Airren wrapped his hands around my hips and pulled me against his hard cock and lower abs, pressing his lips to my shoulders in a good night kiss.
I’m the stupid, lonely girl who would give almost anything for someone to wrap their arms around her and say she’s loved. I don’t know if they see me that way or not, but that’s who I am. I have to guard my walls carefully or else I could be a fool for these men.
Cax’s long, agile fingers rub across my knee. “Tera. He doesn’t mean to sound like an ass. It’s just who he is.”
I nod some more, smiling brightly, but Cax’s eyes are fixed on me as if he sees right through the pretense.
He purses his lips as if he’s about to reveal what he thinks is in my heart. That’s not a conversation I want to have with the room. I miss the playful banter we all had a few minutes ago. Now this blush heating my cheeks gives away too much of how I feel.
I scramble to my feet. “Come on. If you’re going to use a girl for her connections to the forces of evil, you really should buy her a pretty dress first. And some shoes.”
“We’re going to buy you so much more than one dress.” Stelly jumps to her feet, too, full of excitement.
“When are you going to finish your casting homework?” Cax leans back, his head resting on the side of the bed.
“You never do your homework!” Stelly cries in exasperation.
“I never have to,” Cax says, in a pointed way that makes Stelly pop her hands onto her hips and level him with a look.
“Look.” I grab Mycroft’s wand and quickly run through the casts we’re supposed to be doing, slashing to cancel the spell after each one--even though they won’t work anyway. “Obedient pinkie. Not that it matters.”
I lost my ability to invoke magic when I was dirt-side.
That’s a pretty serious character flaw in this world when everyone carries a wand. This is also a world where suspicion runs hot regarding how close Avalon should knit itself to Earth and its poisonous technology. My father fought that war in the worst way, but the battle still rages under the surface, even as the population of Avalon tries to recover from his sins.
“She has a point.” Airren leans back on the bed, on his elbows. His button-down shirt is fitted across his broad shoulders and the narrow taper of his waist. He’s built like a god, and the late afternoon sun slanting in through the open windows shines across his black hair. “The least we can do is buy her some shoes.”
“I’m not going,” Mycroft says.
Cax rakes a hand though his blond hair, telegraphing exasperation, and Airren shoots him a warning look. Mycroft and Cax are close—the best of friends—but Airren and Mycroft have a different friendship. After serving together through the Divide war and mourning friends and family, they’re like brothers.
“That’s fine,” Airren says. “When I drop my tux off to be pressed, you want me to take yours too?”
Mycroft tucks his hands under his head, still staring at the ceiling. “Sure.”
Stelly hooks her arm through mine and leans in close to me, to roll her eyes at the charged messages passing between the guys. But nothing can dull her enthusiasm about a good shopping trip.
“Let’s go spend my family money like it’s our patriotic duty,” she says, with a wink. “So many pairs of shoes…in service to the Crown.”
“Stelly.” There’s a part of me that wants pretty things. But I want to be able to buy them myself, someday. I don’t want to owe her too much.
“In service to the Crown,” she says firmly. “No one’s going to take you for the next coming of the dark lord in those ratty sneakers, Tera Donovan.”
I roll my eyes, but I tuck my arm into hers and let her drag me toward the door.
“In service to the Crown,” I repeat.
3
“We need to go all the way to Wolrick,” Stelly says, leading our small band through the twisting paths of campus toward town and the train station.
Airren sighs under his breath.
“Problems?” she says. “I do believe that in this context, I’m the proper mission leader.”
Airren throws her a lazy two-fingered salute. “Yes ma’am.”
His slow, aristocratic drawl makes me melt a little. I turn around, biting down on my lip. Stelly’s arm is still hooked through mine like we’re best friends, a casual familiarity I haven’t had with another girl since I left boarding school. When she turns her head to look over her shoulder at Airren, her hair carries her perfume, a bright floral with sugary notes that perfectly captures her bubbly personality. The air is heavy with true floral scents from the last blooms of the white-and-red flowered trees that hang low over the stone paved trails.
The train station is a long gray-stone building with high ceilings. When I arrived, I’d been anxious about finding my way and surrounded by quick-walking students who seemed far more certain than I was. This time, I get to take it in.
We wind our way through the courtyard outside the train station, which is filled with vendors selling fruits and vegetables, cheeses and glass bottles of milk, fresh-cut flowers, candles in glass jars and piles of colorful, fragrant handmade soaps. Cax falls behind for a second, and by the time I turn, he’s catching up to me with a few quick strides. He carries a single orange tiger lily, which he offers to me with a wink. I breathe in its sweet scent, and then he takes it from me, his fingers overlapping mine briefly, to tuck it behind my ear.
When we walk through the enormous doors, we step onto floors of beautifully inlaid wood in shades both dark and blond. The room is filled with light from the glass bubble that forms most of the ceiling. Several rows of wooden tables and chairs fill the room, and behind them are glass windows for ticket sales and a small shop selling magazines and sandwiches. Two train tracks run through the center of the building, which stands open on one end to the weather today; enormous wooden pocket doors close in the wintertime to hold in the heat.
This is so different from the metro earthside, with the dim lighting illuminating gum-spotted cement. Someone jostled me once, by accident, knocking me backwards. I stumbled over the yellow line that marked the dangerous zone just as the roar of the oncoming car rushed toward me. As my arms wind-milled desperately before I caught myself, people watched me without moving.
When no one’s willing to stretch out a hand to save you, the world’s a terrifying place.
> “I’ll get our tickets.” Cax heads off to the glass windows.
“First class!” Stelly calls after him.
“Spoiled.” Airren shakes his head, although you can tell he means it affectionately when it comes to Stelly.
Cax turns on his heel but keeps walking backward as he shrugs his shoulders. “What other class is there?”
Airren shakes his head.
“How long until the train comes?” I ask, following after Cax to look at the times, which are written in gold script across a long wooden wall and flicker as the train-times update.
Airren’s shoulder bumps mine as he falls quickly into step alongside me. “Ten minutes or so. Let’s go back to the market and get some snacks for the journey.”
“It’s a half-hour ride, Airren. You can’t go that long without eating?” Stelly teases.
His blue eyes flicker toward her meaningfully. Stelly’s lips part, her eyes widening, before she flashes her smile back to me.
Airren’s trying to steer me out of here for a reason. My heart pounds in my chest. I don’t want to get in his way if he needs to pull his wand, but when I take a step back, he closes the distance between us. His smile is bright when he reaches for my hand. This time, that smile doesn’t warm my heart. I’m busy flirting with panic instead of Airren now.
“Let’s get some lemonade,” he says.
I lean close to him, and he bends so my lips can brush his ear. “Please don’t. What kind of danger are we in?”
He turns his face intimately close to mine. “We’re not in any kind of danger, Tera. What makes you think that?”
“The way you’re managing me,” I whisper back.
He bits down on his lower lip. His perfect white teeth make small indentations on his narrow lip, and it would be sexy, except it’s his tell when he isn’t being honest. He’s debating what to tell me.
“Just tell me the truth. Otherwise, I’m going to assume we’re about to be murdered.” Yep, that word has recovered from its previous overuse. It once again sounds terrifying.
“No,” he says. “Nothing like that.”
