Chapter 3: Fastmate
“He’ll be here momentarily,” Tobias’s father states, his voice hard, as if this is an unassailable fact that had best not be questioned. Tobias’s empty chair and untouched dinner are like a slap, his pristine bowl of soup sending steam up into the outdoor restaurant’s evening air.
I draw myself tightly in, unable to eat the rich leek soup, my cheeks and neck burning with a miserable knowing. And an even more miserable wondering if Mage Vasillis knows why his son is not here with us for dinner—and whether that accounts for his hard tone.
Tobias’s mother keeps her head carefully lowered, taking measured sips of her soup as Father falls into conversation with Mage Vasillis about the “heathen problem” in Verpacia and how Gwynn and I were accosted by an Elf. Normally, Mother Eliss would take a keen interest in this topic, but tonight she’s distracted, her brow drawn tight, her eyes darting around the outdoor dining area, up and down the increasingly lamplit street—searching, no doubt, for Tobias.
She doesn’t have to search long.
Tobias suddenly descends like a storm, stalking around tables, his dark cloak streaming behind him. He’s beautiful and severe and full of furious glory, and he doesn’t even so much as glance at me.
My insides constrict at the way he ignores me. He’s Draven’s. All hers, my erratic heartbeat drums out. He doesn’t want you.
“Ah, Tobias. You’ve finally graced us with your presence.” Tobias’s father observes this mildly, neatly wiping his lips with his black cloth napkin, but there’s steel just under his casual tone.
Tobias pulls back the chair next to me with as much force as he can muster, and I flinch at the harsh scraping sound. He falls heavily into the seat and throws a contemptuous glance at me.
My ears are burning, my head filled with a sick desperation. The despair spikes to an overwhelming distress when my eyes meet Mother Eliss’s harsh stare, her gaze boring into mine. Her eyes flit pointedly toward Tobias and back to me. Her meaning is clear—Remedy this, and quickly. Or it will be your disgrace and ours.
I can barely hear all the niceties being spoken as Mage Vasillis and Father pointedly ignore the undercurrent of gut-churning tension while Tobias seethes beside me. His mother continues to mechanically sip her soup across the table.
I have to win him over, I breathlessly realize. I just have to. And I will. I’ll win him over, and everything will fall into place as it should. He’ll be the devoted fastmate I’ve always wanted.
Tobias throws me a withering sidelong glance, and the harsh reality of the situation slashes away my brief attempt at hopefulness.
The Ancient One will right this terrible thing. He has to.
My gut clenches tighter as our fathers idly talk about the University. Mother Eliss gives me a look of extreme censure, as if I somehow caused this.
Did I? Should I be seeking him out aggressively like beautiful Draven? But, that’s not what they taught me to do. Tobias is supposed to like me shy and demure. But I’m quickly learning that nothing in this world is as it’s supposed to be.
I can practically feel the ire coming off Tobias. He’s like a panther I’m scared to spook, wound up as tightly as he is.
Run your hand up his thigh...if you want to make him forget Draven ever existed.
Gwynn’s shocking advice pulses in my mind.
I look at Tobias, desperate, but he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge me.
I wait until our parents are engaged in heated conversation, Mother Eliss forgetting about her displeasure with me for a few moments to rail against “Snake Elves and deviant Alfsigr Elves allowed to run free, accosting our daughters.” I glance sidelong at Tobias, heart thudding, knowing it’s now or never.
Trembling, I place a hand on his knee.
Tobias’s head gives a subtle, surprised jerk, his whole body stiffening.
My heart beats wildly, but I keep my hand lightly in place, scared to be so brazen. His knee is warm under my hand, and I can feel his muscles clench. It’s exciting and frightening and embarrassing all at once, to do this forbidden thing.
My hand quivering, I slide my hand slightly up his thigh, and Tobias inhales sharply.
Where do I stop? I have to stop. Where would Draven stop?
His thigh tenses again, rock hard, a ruddy flush now filling his cheeks as he stares straight forward, his breathing deepened. He turns his eyes fully on me, and I realize with a start...it worked.
All the anger is gone from his gaze. Only a blurred, surprise remains, as if he’s truly noticing me for the first time.
A fragile hope rises in my chest. I lean in, my throat dry, my heart fluttering as I whisper to him unsteadily, overcome with jagged nerves. “Would you...would you like to take a walk with me after dinner? And...perhaps we could talk a bit?”
He swallows, his whole attention fixed on me. Only me. His fastmate.
I did that. With just my hand on his thigh.
He nods, mesmerized.
I pull my hand off him carefully, desperate not to break this spell, and give him a trembling smile. “I haven’t seen the University yet,” I tell him.
His mouth tilts into a grin, an enticing glint now in his beautiful eyes. “Well, I’ll just have to give you a tour, won’t I?”
I break into a wider smile, encouraged. “I’d like that. Very much.”
We’ll talk and get to know each other, I comfort myself. And he’ll forget all about Draven.
I glance at Mother Eliss and can tell by her approving look that she’s noticed our friendly exchange.
Tobias and I eat in silence as our parents somberly discuss Mage Council affairs, but there’s a new, palpable tension present between us, our focus on each other now vibrating heatedly on the air.
Dessert finally comes, and I’m savoring a spoonful of spiced whipped cream when Tobias’s hand slides over my thigh.
I freeze, my spoon suspended in the air. His hand is quite high up on my leg and sparks an exciting warmth deep inside me, mingled with a sharp spike of unease. His hand tightens—too tight. Hard enough that it pinches. But still, I look at him and force a shy smile, wanting to stay in his good graces. Wanting to stay in everyone’s good graces.
He glances at me sidelong and sends me a flirtatious smile in return, his hand loosening and sliding off my thigh.
“Father,” Tobias announces, and all the adults turn, wide-eyed and blinking at his sudden participation in the conversation. Tobias shoots his father a brilliant smile. “I’d like to show Sagellyn around the University.”
His mother looks up, but remains as silent as she has throughout the meal. Tobias’s father studies him, brows raised, then turns to glance at my father, who indulgently nods permission. Mother Eliss shoots me a look of hard caution, her eyes flicking to Tobias. Her meaning is clear. Preserve this new civility between you.
“Very well,” Tobias’s father says, giving Tobias a quick, dismissive look before turning his attention back to his food. “Stay on the main thoroughfare. And be back before the twenty-first hour.”
Tobias rises and gives me a dazzling smile that tangles my thoughts and sends me reeling over my sudden, blessed change of fortune. He holds his warm hand out to help me up, then dashingly offers me his arm.
I’m in a heated, disoriented daze as I take his arm and he leads me silently away.
As soon as we’re away from our parents and the restaurant, Tobias’s aggressively polite bearing changes. He now seems like he’s in a distracted haze, silent and radiating an intense energy that sets me alight with nerves.
My mind whirs with a pained uncertainty. Should I say something? Touch him in some way? What would Draven do?
I work to keep up with his long, powerful stride through the University’s iron gates and down its cobbled Spine-stone walkways. The sky is darkening and lanterns are being lit by Uri
sk workers, the alabaster Spine-stone buildings washed deep blue in the dying light.
Tobias guides me into the stately Gardnerian Atheneum, the Ironwood building darkened to black in the twilight, the structure’s rich wood a sharp contrast to the pale Spine-stone buildings that surround it.
“Oh, it’s so lovely!” I enthuse as we step inside. I’m instantly lit up by the beautiful, sanded trees set into the walls and acting as supporting columns, dark branches tangling over the roof of the Atheneum. It’s like a mysterious forest of knowledge, with bookshelves everywhere. Crimson glass lanterns are hung on the walls and set on broad Ironwood tables, and in the center of the vast space, a wrought-iron spiraling staircase rises up several stories, drawing ever closer to the stained-glass image of a white bird on the domed, glass apex of the grand building.
I look to Tobias, excited to be in such a wonderful new place. He flashes me an enigmatic smile as we walk, and the heat in his beautiful green eyes sets an enticing warmth kindling through my affinity lines.
Will he kiss me here? In between the shelves? My heart takes flight with nervous anticipation. I can feel the warmth of his arm through the fabric of his tunic as I cling to him and follow his lead.
“I’ve never seen so many books in one place before,” I tell him brightly. “And...it’s so beautiful here.”
Tobias doesn’t reply as we cut through the maze of shelves, but his eyes flit to me, intense with heat, a cryptic smile on his lips, as if he’s both intensely interested in me but not even registering my words. Trepidation creeps into the edges of my mind, but I push it firmly away. He’s my fastmate. I can trust him completely. Or the Ancient One wouldn’t have picked him for me.
“Where are we going?” I ask hopefully.
He smirks and looks fully at me, a flash of disdain in his eyes. “As far away from all of them as possible.”
It’s clear from the hard rebellion in his tone whom he’s referring to: Our parents.
I’m drawn in by his boldness, suddenly wanting to be bold, too. “It’ll be good to get away,” I tell him.
I’m rewarded with a captivating smile, and elation leaps in my chest over our sudden camaraderie. Tobias guides me through a side door and down a wooden staircase to a long, bookshelf-lined tunnel cut into the underground Spine-stone. The air is much cooler down here, almost chilly, and I tamp down a flicker of unease over how flagrantly we’re disobeying his father’s command to stay on the main street.
Does it really matter that we’re off alone? We’ll be sealed at week’s end. And maybe we’ll finally have a chance to talk to each other.
“Where does this lead?” I ask, my voice echoing slightly off the stone walls.
“All around,” he answers evasively as we descend another staircase into an empty, circular room lit by a single golden lumenstone lantern. Tobias guides me toward the far wall and I glance around, searching for a door or hallway leading to somewhere else. But...there’s nothing.
I turn and smile nervously at him. “What’s this?”
Without warning, his mouth comes down hard on mine, and I fall back against the cold stone wall, bumping my head with a painful thud, his harsh kiss muffling my cry of surprise.
I’m so stunned that for a moment, I don’t feel anything but shock as his mouth grinds against mine, his teeth pressing so relentlessly into my lip that it stings.
Outraged confusion roars through me. What’s happening? Why is he doing this? This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!
I jerk my head roughly to the side. His wet mouth slides away from my lips and he pulls back a fraction, his breathing hard, his face flushed.
“Tobias...wait...”
His mouth slams down on mine again, and I cry out against his lips. He grabs hold of my breast, his fingers digging into my flesh with small spikes of pain.
Shock flashes through me, with shame tight on its heels. This can’t be happening. There’s been some mistake. Even as it’s happening, I can’t believe it’s happening.
I push hard against him, force my mouth away from his and try desperately to pull his hand away from my breast. “Stop...wait!” I plead with him, distraught. “I don’t like this.”
He laughs as I push against him, his mouth curled into a sneer, his eyes hard and bright. He grabs my wrist and forces my arm against the wall, his other hand tightening on my breast as he forces himself relentlessly against me, my other arm pinned under his elbow.
Everything in me spirals into bewildered, outraged chaos. I wrench my hand away from his grip and shove him away from me as hard as I possibly can.
Tobias falls back and almost stumbles. He catches his balance and looks me over with angry surprise, eyes narrowed, breathing heavily. His expression darkens, and his lips curl back in an enraged snarl.
His arm rears back and he smacks my face so hard, I almost lose my balance.
My hand flies up to my stinging cheek, horror coursing over me. Tobias lunges forward and grasps my arms in a viselike grip as he forces me back against the wall, my whole world crashing down around me.
“You’re mine now,” he snarls. “You don’t get to say ‘stop.’” He utters the word in a high-pitched mockery of my voice. “I can do whatever I like with you. We’re fasted.” He looks me over lasciviously. “I could strip you right here if I liked.”
He moves to put his hands on my body again, and something inside of me snaps.
“No!” I cry, spittle flying out at him. I devolve into fists and nails and flailing limbs, scratching and hitting and fighting him with everything in me as he struggles to hold onto me, my nails slashing a bloody line down the side of his face. “Help!” I cry out, but I know that no one can hear me, down here in the bowels of the University.
I wrench myself free of him, his fingers bruising my arm as I pull it loose, and make a run for the stairs, almost stumbling as I flee. I grab hold of the bannister just as black, roping Mage-lines cinch painfully tight all over my body, driving the air from my lungs and pulling my arms hard against my sides. I skid backward toward Tobias, his magic biting into my skin. The white wand buzzes frantically against my calf.
I cry out in horrified rage, straining against the magical vines. I can’t escape him. He’s a Level Four Mage, and I don’t know how to use a wand.
When I reach him, his hand clamps around my arm and the black vines dissolve. Seeing an opportunity, I spin around and smack the wand out of his hand so hard that it flies across the room.
And then I run.
Chapter 4: Abyss
“I can’t be fasted to him anymore.” My voice is muffled by tears as the eyes of my parents and Tobias’s parents bear down on me with heated force.
I feel small, terribly alone and crushingly humiliated as I sit in the Ironflower Inn’s small, private library, my hands tightly clasped as I wring them together, my head hung low. Tears plop down onto my hands and my lap in wet, dark splotches.
“Fasting is forever,” Mother Eliss reminds me, seeming stunned by this turn of events.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t be fasted to him.”
“You claim my son attacked you.” Mage Vasillis’s coldly commanding voice is low and threatening.
I nod, sniffling, humiliation roiling inside me. This can’t be real. It’s not supposed to be like this.
“Yet your fastlines have not changed,” comes his icy reply.
I open my mouth to protest and raise my eyes, withering under his cold stare. I can’t speak. How can I possibly tell them exactly what Tobias did? How he grabbed at my chest and forced his lips against mine? How can I speak of these forbidden things?
But don’t they see the bruise on my cheek? I can feel it, red and raw.
Tobias’s father lets out a disgusted sigh. “So, your fastlines are unchanged. No lines of consummation spread down your wrists. Yet you claim yo
ur fastmate, who you will be sealed to in a matter of days...attacked you?”
My throat is dry as chaff as I sit, frozen.
Mage Vasillis’s mouth curls into a contemptuous sneer. “My son informed me that you were acting inappropriately during dinner. That you—” he shoots my parents an accusatory glance before pinning his eyes back on me “—had your hands on him under the table.”
Mother Eliss lets out a startled gasp, then drops her head and shakes it from side to side in disavowal of me. Father’s face has paled and he’s looking at me like he doesn’t know who I am.
Shame rocks through me with hollowing force. I grip at the edge of my chair to steady myself.
“And then,” Tobias’s father continues tightly, “even after I told you both to stay on the main route, you enticed him to go off with you, away from everyone. Prior to being sealed. Without any chaperone.”
I open my mouth to protest, my lips trembling, but I can’t form the words. Mage Vasillis turns to my parents, his gaze blistering. “Is this how you taught your daughter to behave?”
“No. No,” Father insists, shaking his head, his brow tight with humiliation. He can’t even look at me.
I want to die right there. To be swallowed up by Erthia whole.
“Is this how your other daughters are likely to behave?” Mage Vasillis challenges Mother Eliss.
“I can assure you, my children would never behave in such a disgraceful manner.” Mother Eliss spits out the words, her face twisted into an unforgiving grimace.
The full meaning of her words slices through me—I’m nothing but a stepchild. Easily discarded, our bond thin as parchment.
“So,” Mage Vasillis continues, pinning his flinty eyes on me, his tone full of barely concealed loathing, “my son follows you out after you...handle him. Like a heathen whore. And now his face is bloodied with your claw marks. He actually had to defend himself from his own fastmate. And yet you have the gall to claim he attacked you?” His eyes narrow with fury. “How dare you bring such shame down upon my family’s name.”
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