Chapter 42. Eloise
Eloise
Grayson parks in front of his stupidly beautiful mansion and turns to me. “There are a couple of things I want to clear with you before we go in there,” he says, and now I’m suddenly nervous.
Which, of course, he can smell and it makes him frown.
I stare back at him, daring him to comment.
But he only says, “I’d rather not work in the library because my uncle can spy on us there. However, my bedroom is spellworked to prevent it.”
Not only his house—his bedroom? Kill me now.
“If you’re uncomfortable—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“Nope. Fine. I’m fine,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “Because how would you also feel about staying the night?”
“Um,” I say, and that’s as far as I get.
“It’ll let us work late and avoid distraction,” he says, which makes perfect sense. So then why is my heart throwing a fit? “But fair warning, if I ask my uncle for an overnight pass, he’s going to assume this is part of the seduction plan.”
And now I’m ten kinds of itchy and scowling at him.
Just the same, I nod my agreement, because for once he’s being straight with me. He’s including me in the decision instead of shutting me out.
But when he leaves me in the foyer to go send a message to his uncle and grab some snacks, I get fidgety. So much so that I decide to pop into the library.
Only as I open the door, I deeply regret my decision. Because the library isn’t empty. The Chancellor and Akari are in it and they seem to be having an intense discussion, one that I interrupt.
They both turn to me with matching expressions of annoyance.
“Sorry—” I start, attempting to reclose the door.
But the Chancellor flicks his wrist and the door opens wider, jerking me forward because of my grip on the handle.
Seriously?
“No need to shut the door,” he says casually with no apology. “We were just finishing up here.”
“Sorry for interrupting, I was just waiting for Grayson and thought—”
“Thought you’d go snooping around my house?” he asks with a pretty smile.
My eyes widen. “Definitely not,” I say.
The Chancellor sizes me up with his cold stare. “I hear you went shopping today?” he says, and I freeze.
Does he know why we were at the cobbler’s? Could he know? “Uh, yeah, I…”
Which is thankfully also the moment that Grayson waltzes into the room.
“I got us some—” He stops, holding a tray covered in snacks. “I didn’t expect you here, Sir,” he says good-naturedly, and I don’t know how he does it—this game of pretend.
“Didn’t expect me in my own house? Funny, because I expected you. But Eloise tells me you were in so little of a rush that you made a stop at the cobbler’s?” he says, now specifically naming where we went.
Akari goes still and my worry deepens. Is she the one who followed us? Did she somehow hear our conversation and report it back to the Chancellor?
Grayson shrugs and I have to resist the urge to clap at his performance.
The Chancellor raises his eyebrows as he turns to Akari. “When was the last time you saw your dear uncle; are you due for a visit?” he asks, and the horror of his question hits me.
Even Grayson doesn’t manage to completely hide his shock.
Akari’s uncle is the cobbler?
“I visited last month,” Akari says flatly with no emotion. Meanwhile, my heart tries to beat out of my chest.
The Chancellor looks at me with a satisfied smile, and now I’m furious with myself for bursting with emotions he can read, and for not being able to stop.
“It’s so nice to have you in our home, Akari,” Grayson says quickly. “We were just about to head up to my room, but I can ask Chef to make you something if you’re hungry?”
“Speaking of your room,” the Chancellor says. “The answer is yes—you can have that overnight pass.”
And now it’s a hard call between wanting to disappear and punch the man in the face. Even Grayson’s calm falters and his jaw tics.
“Also, Akari isn’t staying,” the Chancellor continues. “She’s just doing a security sweep on my request, given the recent raid at the American Academy.”
“No one can get into our house with all the security spells,” Grayson says.
“They did when your brother was murdered,” Akari says, and Grayson’s grip on the tray tightens.
The Chancellor smiles. “You kids run along now. I wouldn’t want to keep you from parties and … shopping.”
I hate this man. I really do.
I follow Grayson up to his bedroom, which is bigger than the entire first floor of my house with a giant bed, a fireplace, and a huge TV. “Now I get why people call you prince.”
He smiles, placing the snacks and coffees on the table in front of the couch. “No one calls me that but Maggie.”
But the mention of Maggie brings back all my heightened emotions.
“I screwed up with your uncle,” I admit. “I couldn’t get ahold of my emotions. And I’m worried I just betrayed the cobbler.”
“Yes, your emotions were all over the place. But they always are when you’re near my uncle. And honestly, so are most people’s. It’s not as bad as you think. Besides, didn’t you hear the part where the cobbler is Akari’s uncle?”
“Which makes everything worse,” I say. “Akari would slice me from neck to navel if I endangered one of her relatives. I’m fairly certain that woman chews on knives and sleeps on nails.”
Grayson’s lips quirk ever so slightly.
“Literally nothing about this is amusing,” I scold him.
“I wouldn’t think so … but somehow you manage it,” he says.
I rub my hands down my face. “Grayson, you know your uncle. What’s he going to do?”
He considers it. “I wish I could tell you. He might do absolutely nothing. He might suspect the cobbler threw us out on our butts. He might interrogate him. I have no idea.”
My heart clenches. “I seriously hate that man,” I say.
Grayson freezes and I immediately regret my words, because I just admitted that I hate the Chancellor to his nephew.
“I don’t—what I mean is,” I begin, but he smiles.
“Hate him all you want,” he says, and then more quietly he adds, “I certainly do.”
Suddenly my heart beats double time. I was surprised when Grayson called him a prick, but hate is a whole other category. Did Grayson Stone just tell me one of his secrets?
“Anyway,” he says before I can get my bearings, “you probably want to transcribe that poem before you forget any of it.”
I sit down on his couch, taking the notebook and pen he gives me. Meanwhile Grayson spreads out ten tons of food, enough to feed my whole family including my Tasmanian devil of a little sister.
Once I have the poem on paper, he sits next to me and we read it together.
“The first line is obvious,” I say. “We know the Key is sentient. But the second line names a hidden arch.”
“Probably the Archive Room,” he says. “But just about every door in the University is arched. It could literally be anywhere.”
“It only appears when it so desires,” I read.
“Again, not a surprise,” he says. “However, through connection and the heart’s true fires, is … interesting.”
I scratch my eyebrow, because of all the lines of the poem, that’s the one that makes me squirm. “The connection part is literal since we have to be touching. But it’s an old poem. And a heart’s fire could mean any number of things.”
“Passion?” he suggests, and it takes all my willpower to not think about that word too hard.
“Passion about magic or passion about—” And that’s where my brain drops off a cliff. I cannot think of a single other thing to be passionate about besides that which shall not be named.
Grayson stifles a smile and I glare at him.
“The next part is clearly about you—Heart of Courage,” he says, and I’m oddly taken aback.
“Maybe,” I say, staring at the paper.
“Well, it’s not about me, that’s for damn sure,” he says easily. “Noble spirit? Heart being their center of power? Truth? That’s you to a T.”
“I assaulted you just this morning, Grayson,” I say, trying not to think about the way he just described me. “I’m not as noble as you think.”
He leans back on the couch pillows, his thigh way too close to mine. “Really? Now this I’m interested in. What bad things has Eloise Belrose done in her life?”
I huff at him. “That’s so not the point.”
“I beg to differ,” he says.
“Fine, you know what? I stole once,” I say.
He has the nerve to laugh. “You stole once? What did you steal?”
“Arthritis salve,” I say.
The smile drops right off his face. “When?”
“Five years ago,” I say, chewing on my lip.
“It was before I went to the Academy, and Mom got called into work while we were out. She didn’t have time to drop me at home, so she took me with her.
I used the bathroom in the house she was cleaning, and it was right there.
Just sitting on a shelf, piled under makeup like it was forgotten.
My gran, she struggles with arthritis. Some days she has such a hard time doing the stairs that she sleeps on the couch instead of in her bed.
But we can only afford the salve sparingly. ”
“You did nothing wrong,” Grayson says, and I’m surprised by the glimmer of anger in his voice. “What’s wrong is that your family works thankless jobs and they can’t even afford necessary medication.”
“Yeah, well, Gran didn’t agree. She laid into me. Said we don’t steal. That we’re not—”
“Mages?” he guesses, and I nod.
I don’t usually repeat Gran’s opinions to anyone other than Maggie. “She said that only Mages and Lawless take what’s not theirs. That the only thing we have in this world is our integrity,” I say.
“During winter break,” he says, “if we live that long, you and I will get your gran her medicine. Whatever she needs so she doesn’t have to go without.”
“Grayson, you—” I say, but he’s not having it.
“I do have to,” he interrupts. “There are so many times where I can’t do anything, where I feel bound or tied by my title and my uncle’s watchful eye. But not this time. I can get your gran her salve. And I very much plan on doing it.”
I can’t help it, tears spring to my eyes and I look away.
I don’t say thank you, because the words don’t match my feelings, they’re not big enough.
“You’re not who you pretend to be, you know.
You’re not just the popular guy everyone follows around and fawns over.
You’re much better than that. You’re kind. ”
He stares at me for a long time, like now it’s him who’s overcome and doesn’t know how to respond.