Chapter 19. Grayson
Grayson
Naomi has been purposefully ignoring me for most of breakfast. We’ve never dated. Not even close. But most of the time she acts like we’re betrothed, with my uncle being Chancellor and her mom being the most influential member of the Council.
“Is there any update on the raid at the Academy? Did they find anything?” I ask Ivy, hoping she’ll share whatever she and Naomi heard from their families.
Because despite the fact that my uncle is Chancellor, he doesn’t tell me jack.
It’s one of the main reasons I cultivated these relationships years ago.
“They didn’t find anyone or anything,” Ivy says, leaning across the table and lowering her voice. “They don’t even know how the Lawless got in.”
“What they know is that there is no way the Lawless could have done it by themselves. Mom said it’s magically impossible,” Naomi adds.
“I don’t know,” I say dismissively. “Who’s realistically going to help them?”
Naomi flashes me a petty smile. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
My jaw tics. “If you’re referring to Eloise—” But she cuts me off.
“I never said Eloise, did I?” Naomi says, and now I need to know. “I never even said it was a Laborer. I mean, obviously they would help, given the chance. But that’s not what I said.”
My heart rate momentarily kicks up before I squash it.
Bas leans in and I scent his worry. “Wait, you know something we don’t?”
“Don’t hold out on us,” Ivy adds. “Spill the tea.”
But the bossy schedule spell interrupts, telling us all to report to the training room.
“Ah, look at the time,” Naomi says smugly, pushing back her chair.
As we leave the dining hall, Bas and I share a knowing look. I hang back behind the girls to walk with him.
“What do you reckon? Are you in regular trouble with Miss Priss or is she going to mount your nuts on the wall like a trophy?” Bas says with a chuckle. Maybe it’s his half-Aussie, half–Puerto Rican surfer DNA, but whatever the reason, “laid back” is a prominent trademark of his personality.
“I honestly don’t care, except as always, she has information we need,” I say, frowning at the girls ahead of us.
Bas claps me on the shoulder. “Then I hope you know a good place to buy an apology present, mate.”
I cringe and he laughs.
“I don’t know about you,” he says, jutting his chin toward the bathroom, “but I’m using the dunny before Akari has us in headlocks throwing daggers or whatever.”
I follow him as he shoulders open the bathroom door and closes it behind us.
We both know the drill.
He immediately checks the stalls. “All clear,” he says, and I throw up a noise-canceling spell that shimmers around us like a bubble.
The moment the spell pops into existence, Bas starts talking. “What the shit, dude? I told the girls I couldn’t find your room last night, but really what I found was a guarding spell on your door that nearly blasted me into a wall. You need to change it to admit me.”
“No can do,” I reply. “Eloise is suspicious of me as it is. And that girl will stab you with a dagger if she finds you roaming her living room in the middle of the night. I’ll change it once I have a better read on her.”
He pushes back his long surfer hair. “Fine. Also, Sage contacted me before they shipped me here. She came looking for me when you didn’t show.”
Bingo. This is what I was after.
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“Everything, mate. What happened during the exam. About Belrose calling the Archive Key. Of course, I didn’t tell her you didn’t get marked Gifted, because I didn’t know that at the time, but I’m sure she realizes that things may not play out the way we planned,” he says, and I let out a breath.
Bas’s cousin, who was like an older brother to him, failed his Uni exam a few years back and chose to leave the wards instead of becoming a Laborer. Sage connected Bas and me after that, and we’ve been scheming together ever since.
“How did Sage respond?” I ask.
“She was super interested in Belrose. Said the Key would be a game changer. Told me to tell you to get it at all costs.”
“Working on it,” I say, even though I feel a twinge of discomfort about deceiving Eloise, one I don’t have time to analyze.