“I don’t know.” Rafe frowned, clearly perplexed. “It’s got to be something specific to you. The magic that you were imbued with came from the Mage Trials. The agency is involved with running the Mage Trials…”
“Well, so is the advisory panel. For that matter, so are you,” I said, dismissing his reasoning. “I mean, without Twyst Academy, there is no entry into the Mage Trials to begin with. At least not from the very beginning, right?”
He nodded, his hand still gripping my shoulder. Then very slowly, deliberately, he drew it down my arm until it reached my hand. We linked fingers together. That set off an entirely new rush of sensation through my body, this one decidedly less collegial and way more intimate. A dizzying surge of power swept over me and dissipated almost immediately, but was replaced by a warm, swirling pressure in my abdomen, shivery and fluttery, like a bird about to take flight.
“Is this better or worse?” Rafe asked.
I totally was not going to answer that question. “It’s fine,” I managed, looking around. “So what is it we most need to see? We could be in here for the next ten years with all the stuff.”
He nodded. “Maybe…” He reached out with his other hand and interlaced his fingers with mine, so now had both our hands linked, like tweens at their first school dance. Sure enough, the imagery around us shimmered more fully into focus, particularly a box on one of the tables, about the size of a cigar box. It started glowing so bright, it practically levitated.
“I think we need to go over there,” Rafe stage-whispered, jerking his head in the direction of the glowing case.
“Ya think?” I looked at him with my lips pursed, trying not to giggle. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Polka our way across the room?”
He snorted, and once again, it was a uniquely joyful sound, not at all like his usual chuckle of derision. “I guess?”
Our shoulders shaking with laughter, we shuffled over without breaking our hand contact until we sidled up to the box. It glowed with a spectral fire, mist pouring off it, possibly one of the most beautiful and arcane things I had ever seen.
“Do you suppose…” Rafe broke his hand away from mine and reached out for it, but even as he did so, the box’s energy dimmed. He dropped his hand to rest on the box’s lid and glanced at me. Biting my lip, I placed my hand over his, but the box didn’t open and it didn’t get any brighter. Far to the front of the building, a door slammed.
Rafe stared at me. I stared back.
“What do we—” he began, but without waiting for him to finish, I did the first thing I could think of. With one set of hands still on the box, our other hands linked, I leaned forward and kissed him, hard, gasping with the sudden shot of power that jolted me the moment our lips touched.
That did the trick. As the sound of running steps clattered down the hallway at the front of the building, the box sprang open beneath our hands, revealing its contents as a tightly bound scroll. Rafe grabbed it. As soon as he did, the box snapped shut, and the panel in the wall behind us glowed bright. Without time to even come up with a coordinated plan, we leapt for the makeshift door in the wall, still clutching each other’s hands. At the last second, I gasped, “the key!”
It didn’t seem to matter. Key or no key, the bricks evaporated as we hit the wall. We sprawled out onto the street beyond and spun around as the wall of the archive building reassembled itself, its quiet bricks once more shadowed in the gloom of the Boston night.
Rafe stared down at the scroll in his hand, then up at me, and burst out laughing. He yanked me to him again and kissed me long and hard before breaking away. This time, I didn’t even blink at the shock of pain that flared when his mouth touched mine—I didn’t mind it at all.
“We did it!” he crowed, grinning, and my heart turned over at the pure, transcendent expression on his face, the rare and naked joy.
“We did it,” I agreed, breathless.
And just like that, I was done for.
3
Rafe shoved the tightly wrapped scroll into his messenger bag, then turned and took off down the dark street. We moved quickly, darting through the shadows and back onto campus, while Rafe kept up a low and constant patter, clearly thinking out loud.
“There’s a pressure that wasn’t there before,” he said. “Something buzzing in my blood.”
“Same,” I agreed, glad it wasn’t just me feeling it. It was like the contents of my blood vessels had been shot full of fizz. We were slowing now, closing in on the restaurant and bar area of campus. Students were congregating, laughing and happy, none of them seeming to have a care in the world. Most students were a month or so into their fall term, while Twyst’s juniors—those still competing in the Mage Trials, anyway—were wrapping up their third year. It would make for a short senior year for those students who won the Trials, but nobody seemed to mind that so much. Around us, bright conversation rose and fell, punctuated by shouts of welcome and camaraderie. Just another beautiful Boston night on Twyst’s preppy-perfect campus, never mind that Rafe and I were walking cocktail shakers. “What do you think it is?”
“I’m not sure, but there are two intriguing possibilities. The first is that the artifact we just liberated from the archive is influencing our experience. As long as we have a hold of that parchment page, or are near it, it’s like we’re tapping into a new current of power, one we’re not yet adapted to. The second possibility is… Well, a little more complicated.”
I didn’t need him to draw me a map. “You think we’ve jacked up our abilities because we actually kissed,” I said, striving to make my words blunt but ending up only sounding breathless. “Like, we’ve bonded already. Without…um, anything else required.” With the other guys, while kissing them and whatnot had reinforced our connection, our magical ability hadn’t actually been significantly affected until, well, we’d had sex. Apparently, that wasn’t required for my connection with Rafe.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that. I mean, I was glad, certainly. Really glad that we didn’t need to hook up or anything to get the job done. Super happy, in fact.
Totally.
I shook off my conflicting emotions as Rafe continued.
“It’s the more likely solution. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was already pretty jacked up before you came along, but I’ve never felt this way. It will bear study and further testing.”
Something about the way he said testing sent a shiver through me. I shot him a quick glance beneath the streetlights. How did I really feel about Rafe?
I honestly didn’t know. He was gorgeous, sure. With his dark eyes and chiseled cheekbones, his body that was neither lithe like Marcus’s or heavily built like Luke’s, he looked like a ranger from some medieval adventure game, Aragorn with attitude. And something more too, because of his facility with magic. He excited me, but that wasn’t why I resisted him so much. He scared me a little, I decided. In a way none of the other guys did. It wasn’t so much that I thought he would hurt me, it was that…
Rafe shifted forward, breaking my thoughts. “We gotta pick up the pace. We don’t have much time.” Something in his tone made me suspect he knew what I’d been thinking, but he’d told me he couldn’t read minds, and I believed him. I needed to work on my game face.