Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Kyrith
Those warm fuzzy feelings are completely absent the next evening as the heirs and Eddy gather in the Solarium at the end of their tutoring. Dakari and Jasper are both gaping at me. Perhaps I should’ve broken the news more gently.
“Sanctuary?” Jasper’s gaze drops down to the rainbows of light bathing the floor. “But my family just got me back.”
“You remember everything,” Pierce dismisses. “You can’t seriously believe that Clan McKinley can keep you safe now that you know what he’s capable of? You and North need Sanctuary more than anyone else right now.”
“North?” Eddy asks, looking up from her phone with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“Your brother is the only thing standing between Mathias and full control. As long as an heir exists, there’s an avenue for his rule to be challenged.
” I swallow back the lump in my throat and continue.
“Which is why it was very sensible for the two of you to come here and claim Sanctuary in the first place.”
“Because I’m so weak,” Eddy grumbles. “And North doesn’t know shit. Yeah. We get it.”
“I can’t stay here all the time,” Lambert interjects. “I have practice, and we have class—”
“I think we can assume you’re safe in public settings,” I say. “Mathias hasn’t spent all of these years in secrecy for no reason.”
Dread drags an icy claw down my spine as I imagine a world where the magister isn’t required to hide anymore.
“But you want us to live here?” Leo checks, expression completely unreadable. “You’re sure?”
“Ugh, by all means, turn down protection in the safest building in existence because you’re not ready to move in with your girlfriend.” Pierce shakes his head, rolling his eyes.
“I’m not complaining, Carlton. I’m just worried that looking at your ugly mug every day is going to rot my eyeballs.”
This isn’t going to be a huge adjustment for Leo. He’s slept in the Astrology room more than once since term resumed. The Library and I agree that the man doesn’t sleep enough, so when he happens to nod off in his chair before closing, we simply…don’t evict him.
I have, however, caught him trying to feign sleep at closing time and promptly turfed him out for his temerity.
I may be going soft in old age, but I’m not stupid.
“What about Talcott?” Leo asks. “Where’s he staying?”
“He’s busy.” I turn away from them. “He’s searching for my grimoire. When he returns, he’ll have a room in the clock tower, just like the rest of you.” I settle a little bit of steel into my tone.
“That’s not—”
“The building is big enough that you don’t even need to cross paths if you don’t want to,” I cut him off. “The covenant protects both of you.”
It’s not enough, and the dark glare he levels at me tells me he knows it. There are a million ways that Dakari could interfere with Leo’s curse without causing physical harm, not that he would ever bother to do so.
Dakari’s mistrust doesn’t seem to come from hatred of Leo’s family. I’ve never once believed he’d try to sabotage Leo’s attempts to break the ensorcellment. If anything, he seems more wary of the lengths Galileo will go to in his pursuit of freedom.
Honestly, sometimes I share his concern.
Part of me wishes they would just sit down and talk it over, but the two of them are only ever in the same room during one of Lambert’s games. Even then, they religiously ignore one another.
Jasper’s cheeks puff out on a harsh exhale. “The clan won’t be happy, but I’ll tell them.”
“Let me walk you out,” I suggest, gesturing to the doors.
It’s a relief to escape Leo’s wary gaze, and I need to speak with the sweet Scot anyway before I carry out the second of Benny’s requests. I’m so caught up in working out how to broach that subject that I barely notice him courteously holding the door open for me or it swinging shut behind us.
“Hey, you all right?” he asks, taking my hand and pulling me to a stop amongst the plants.
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then…do you maybe want to talk about this?”
He untucks a neatly folded copy of a familiar document from his jacket, and my cheeks heat.
Oh, magic. No. No, I do not wish to discuss it. “I regret ever making that thing.”
“Really? I thought it was a good idea.” At my questioning glance, he shrugs. “I wouldnae have had the guts to ask for half of the things on the list if they werenae there, and I definitely wouldnae have added more.”
Curiosity burns as I glance again at the paper. Damn. It’s folded, hiding any clues as to what he might’ve written.
“Does this mean you’re saying yes to that date?”
Wildfire fills my face as I nod. For goodness’ sake, I am five hundred years old, not fifteen, but these butterflies in my stomach are out of control, and I selfishly relish every one of them.
“Yes, but I’m still not sure how you plan to pull it off,” I answer.
No doubt, the building will help him. The shelves in the hall beyond are already straightening with anticipation.
“Leave that to me, lass.” He goes to hand the paper to me, then hesitates. “You promise, nae judgement?”
The tremulous thread of nerves in his voice gives me the courage to look up and hold his warm stare with my own.
“Jasper, in the last five-hundred years, I have read literally everything from the bodice-ripper romances of the seventies to the tentacle manga Eddy loaned me a few weeks ago. There is literally nothing you could’ve written that I have the right to judge you for.”
With a sigh, he relinquishes the paper.
I tuck it into the sleeve of my woollen jumper, resolving to read it when I’m alone. “There’s something else I need to ask you…something that might change your mind.”
He lets out a small chuckle. “I doubt it, lass, but go ahead.”
“It would help if you were willing to provide a written testimony that you were held captive by a lich. It would need to be done with a truth-spelled pen, of course, and witnessed by someone reputable.”
He scrubs a hand through his beard, paling. “You want to start a war with the Carltons?”
I shake my head. “No. I want to avoid blaming them altogether. But the parriarchs who aren’t yet aligned with them need to know what we’re up against. For that, we need evidence they can’t dispute. If you write your experience down, I hope I can keep them from demanding an interview with you.”
Myriad emotions flicker over his face as he thinks. “You have a plan?”
I wish. “I have allies.”
“Pierce?”
“And his grandfather.”
His jaw clenches. “Are you sure about them?”
“No, but I did drug them,” I admit, and he barks out a laugh, shaking his head.
“So at least I know they weren’t lying. They’re still keeping secrets, and Benny has no loyalty to anyone outside of his house, but Mathias is probably the greatest danger arcandom has faced since I was born, and I—” I break off, taking a deep breath.
“I’m frightened. It scares me that no one who murdered me was ever even suspected of being a necromancer.
In the end, they fell to infighting and old age, not justice.
Maybe that was my fault… Maybe all of this was my fault… ”
If I had just told my story, maybe what happened to Jasper could’ve been avoided. At the time, I called my silence dignified, and if I’m honest, I still do. Blaring one’s pain to the world is so…gauche. Who would’ve believed me, anyway? A liminal nobody ghost throwing accusations at parriarchs?
How can I expect Jasper to do what I was too proud to?
“How could it be?” he refutes. “You were as much a victim as I was. Mathias is the only one responsible for any of this.”
Clearing my throat, I regather my composure.
“Be that as it may, it’s unfair to ask you to recount such an experience when you’ve only just started to heal from it. I’ll support whatever you decide.”
He hasn’t released my hand, and I can’t decide if that’s a good sign or a symptom of shock. Suffocating silence has swelled to fill the cracks between us. I open my mouth to rescind the request, only to think better of it and censor myself.
“I’ll do it,” he says at last. “But I want to tell my aunt and my parents first, as I should’ve in the beginning.”
“Fair enough,” I accede a little too quickly, then pause. “What will you tell them?”
He bites his lip, and I resist the urge to lean up and release it before he answers. “Everything.”
“And if they go to war?”
Jasper’s jaw sets in a determined line. “Maybe someone should. Maybe the right thing to do is to take the fight to them.”
War always seems righteous to those who haven’t lived long enough to recognise the endless cycle of it.
“Maybe.” My disagreement bleeds into my tone.
“Dinnae tell me you want to just carry on as things are?” he says. “The lich murdered you and almost killed me. Some nights I cannae even sleep because, despite the clan’s protection, nothing feels safe anymore.”
My heart seizes, remembering all too-keenly the fear that plagued me from the night I died to the moment Mathias allegedly took his last breath.
“I understand.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“I…” I trail my fingers through the fronds of the fern beside me. “I’ve existed for a long time. Perhaps that makes me wise; maybe it just makes me jaded. I don’t know. But what I do know is that nothing good ever comes from mass fear.”
In fact, unmanaged fear is almost always the mechanism through which powerful and influential tyrants rise to power. Dress it up as anger, as the need to protect good, adept families from necromancers and liches, and the well-meaning will sleepwalk into Mathias’s new world order with pride.
Jasper frowns. “In all that time, have you ever seen better come from people being kept in the dark by their leaders?”
Turning away, I concede his point with a shrug. “I can’t say I have.”
Yet, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen such a thing as a truly transparent system of governance either. Is he too optimistic, or am I too much the opposite?
Likely, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, as usual.
“How—” He clears his throat. “How long do I have?”
“I’ll summon the parriarchs tomorrow. The Arcanaeum will be closed for the morning to minimise the risk of the meeting being overheard, but I doubt it will keep any of you out. It’s quite fond of you.”
It’s not the only one.
For all that he was just urging action, he bites his lip a second time at the news. “Fine. After that, I’m stealing you for our date.”
Forcing the corners of my lips up into a smile, I nod my acceptance. “See you tomorrow.”
He knocks on the nearest door, glancing over his shoulder as he crosses the threshold into a cosy kitchen. I offer him a quiet nod, watching until he’s gone before releasing a long sigh. Unfortunately, there’s one more difficult thing to be dealt with before I can call this a night.