It’s only been a day, but I’d somehow forgotten how terrifying this boy is. Even without Nick’s height and stature, Sel’s presence fills the doorway. He floods my mind with a crackling, swirling cloud of fear—fear so palpable and alive that it holds me in place like a heavy hand. Then, I remember that a man just like him—a Merlin—lied to me about my mother’s death, and a rising rage burns that fear to ash.
“Stay away from me!” I spit.
“Hm.” Sel’s head tilts to the side. “Two nights in a row, you’ve been in the way.”
Nick pushes around Sel to look between the two of us. “You know her?” He’s quick; anything else and Sel would know I talked to Nick about the Quarry.
I slide along the wall until my back is against the window. The glass creaks against my spine, and I briefly consider whether I’m strong enough to break it. What I’d do even if I could.
“We’ve met.” Something like suspicion skates across Sel’s face, gone before it really lands. “But she doesn’t remember that.”
Sel enters the room, but Nick steps in his path and places a broad hand on the other boy’s chest, stopping him. Sel’s eyes drop to the fingers splayed against his dark gray shirt. A feral grin curves along his elegant mouth. “There may come a day when you can stop me, but you and I both know it’s not today.”
Nick’s nostrils flare, and for a brief moment I’m certain that he’s about to throw a punch. That the warrior I’d seen fighting a hellhound could easily throw Sel over his shoulder or knock him into a wall so hard it’ll leave a crack. But Sel’s fingers begin to twitch at his sides, silver rings flashing against the black of his pants, and Nick does not strike. His eyes screw shut, and he lowers his hand.
Sel looks almost disappointed, but he steps smoothly around Nick, tossing “You don’t have to watch” over his shoulder as he walks. A shadow of some emotion runs beneath the granite of his voice.
Nick meets my eyes behind Sel’s back, his earlier plea plain on his face: Don’t let him know.
Sel moves into my field of vision and peers down with a speculative gleam in his eyes. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Perhaps I should be concerned to meet you two days in a row, but no Shadowborn would have made herself as vulnerable as you have tonight, which means you must simply be… unlucky.” That word again, Shadowborn. When Sel says it, his face twists into a sneer.
“You are Unanedig. Onceborn.” The Kingsmage’s eyes—scientific, assessing—track every tremble of my frame. “So your body isn’t accustomed to aether. That’s why you’re dizzy.”
“Screw you.”
“Sit.” Sel’s voice rolls over me like a wave. When I don’t comply, he steps forward and that deep-down, primordial fear of him presses against me. I sit.
Nick takes half a step forward. “Minimal intervention directive,” he urges. “Just the last couple hours.”
Sel rolls his eyes. “Orders, Nicholas? As if I am not bound by the same laws you so carelessly neglect?”
My eyes fly to Nick’s. He nods as if to confirm what’s about to happen. He’s going to erase my memory again. Sel kneels in front of me, and the same heady, spiced smoke scent swirls around me, filling my nose. “Your name?” he purrs in that same rolling voice.
“Her name is Briana.” Nick gives Sel my legal name, not my preferred one.
My mind races. Last time Sel’s mesmer worked, but only for a little while. How did I break it? There was the light, then the pain in my palm—
Sel watches the fight on my face with interest. “I must admit, Briana, I’m curious. What twist of the universe has set you in my path again?” he asks, his voice quiet, wistful. “Alas, some mysteries must remain forever unsolved.”
I flinch when he reaches long fingers toward my face. It gives me just enough time to bite down on the inside of my bottom lip. Hard.
The last thing I remember is the hot skin of his palm pressed against my forehead.
8
A BEEPING SOUND drills into my skull. I lurch upright to play whack-a-mole on the nightstand until I slap the clock alarm. “Ughhhhh. Too bright.” I drop back and fold the pillow over my face. My brain is a fragmented, floating thing. Fruit in a Jell-O mold.
“You’re unbelievable,” Alice says from her side of the room.
“My eyes hurt,” I whine. “My optical everything hurts. The rods and the cones, Alice.”
“Well, it’s time to get up.” Alice’s voice drips with acid. “Unless you want to add skipping classes to your streak of delinquency.”
I frown, dropping one side of the pillow. “What’s your problem?”
Alice stands up from her bed, fully dressed in a skirt and blouse. She’d been waiting to berate me until my alarm went off. An ambush by an evil librarian. “My problem? You almost got us kicked out of school our first night here, and on the second night you don’t come home until one o’clock in the morning!”
I squint at her. “No, I didn’t. I mean, yes, I did. To the first thing. But no to the second thing.”
Alice bares her teeth. A fierce evil librarian. “I can’t believe you got blackout drunk.”
I sit up, shaking my head. “I didn’t.”
“You’re delusional!” Her screech makes me gulp. I hate it when she gets upset. I hate it when we fight. “Some blond guy brought you back here, stumbling and slurring. He said you’d partied too hard in Little Frat Court. A frat house, Bree? Seriously?”
That makes me jump out of bed. “Alice,” I say slowly, walking toward her with my hands outstretched for peace. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t black out.”
She stamps her foot, and if I wasn’t so rattled, I’d laugh. “Isn’t that exactly what a blackout drunk would say the next day?”
“Well,” I say, considering. “Yeah, but—”
“I know it’s our first real freedom. You always hear about people going to college and drinking too much, not knowing their limits. I just didn’t think you were that…”
Suddenly, I don’t want to laugh anymore. “You didn’t think I was that what, Alice?”
She crosses her arms and sighs. “Pedestrian.”
I blink. “Did you just Jane Austen me again?”
Alice breathes slowly through her nose. “This is what everyone says happens. You go to college with a friend, you each find some new… group or whatever, you drift apart. I just didn’t think it’d happen to us.” Alice snatches the handle of her bag and stomps to the door. It’s the resignation in her voice that does me in, and the blow she delivers right before she walks out. “You need help.”
Tears fill my eyes almost before the door shuts behind her; then comes a rush of burning anger. My hands ball into fists, nails digging red half-moons into my palms.
* * *
Five minutes later, while brushing my teeth in the hall bathroom, I let out a scream so loud the girl next to me jumps.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry,” I mumble through a mouthful of toothpaste. The gash in my lower lip is so deep that when I spit, crimson blood and foamy Crest swirl in the sink in equally disgusting harmony. In the mirror, I draw my lip down to check the damage. “I bit myse—”