Chapter 13 #2
“No.” Stavros cuts in with a tone so dark and harsh it makes my pulse jump. “We’re not adding more horrors to the mix. If Ivy’s looked after herself so well for all these years without her magic, she can continue to do so.”
“But—”
“We are not unleashing riven sorcery within a stone’s throw of the capital palace,” Stavros snaps.
I hold up my hand, catching Alek’s gaze. “It’s all right. I agree with him. I don’t want to be throwing my power around either—I don’t know what the consequences could be.”
We stand in silence for a few tense moments before the scholar lowers his head in acceptance. I can’t quite believe he’d approve of me bringing out my magic to begin with.
Just how worried is he about what will happen tonight?
“I know you can handle yourself,” Casimir says with a brief touch of my arm. He vanishes through his ring of enchanted cord.
Stavros shifts as if he expects the rest of the meeting to break up, but Alek is still hesitating by the table. If there’s something more he knows, he doesn’t want to reveal it in front of the former general.
I motion to the dessert plate. “Why don’t you have one, Alek? Take a moment to savor a little treat and remember how far we’ve already gotten.”
He studies me for a few seconds and then reaches to pick up a tart.
I take another delicate nibble of my puff and raise an eyebrow at Stavros, who’s standing stubbornly there waiting for me to trot back to his quarters at his heels.
“I could use a moment too, without you glaring daggers at me. You’re about to let me wander off into the woods on my lonesome tonight—how much trouble do you think I can get up to in a locked room? ”
Stavros attempts to glower me into submission, but he hasn’t drawn his sword, so I feel reasonably secure it’s a bluff.
After a moment, he sighs. “If you insist. I’m going to finally get my dinner and negotiate field time with the other military division professors. I should be back at my quarters by tenth bell—I expect to see you then too.”
I bob into a mock curtsy that’s probably less respectful than doing nothing at all. He shakes his head and strides over to his cord.
When he’s gone, Alek sinks into one of the chairs. “You didn’t need to stay with me.”
“I figured dessert is more enjoyable with company,” I say. “And I really do need a break from that oaf.”
The corner of the scholar’s mouth twitches, but the impression of gloom around him doesn’t shift. All the same, I can’t help tracking the movements of his full lips as they close around the edge of the tart.
All of these men are too ridiculously handsome for their own good. Or for my own good, is more like it.
Yanking my eyes away, I pop the rest of the puff into my mouth while I consider my words.
Propping myself against the table near his chair, I motion toward him. “What are you really worried about? You seem more concerned than everyone else combined. Did you find out something you didn’t want to tell the whole group?”
Alek looks startled enough that I believe his denial. “What? No. It’s only…”
He frowns and glances away. When he fixes his attention on me again, it’s with an air of determination. “You’re going in there with Julita. How much is she supporting what you think is the best plan, and how much is she pushing you to do what she thinks is?”
My hackles come up automatically, even as Julita makes a chagrinned noise. “I’m perfectly capable of coming up with good plans on my own.”
Alek holds up his hands. “I’m aware of that.
That’s not what I was implying. I—I remember what you told us about how she persuaded the four of us to start investigating, and you said she’d used a similar strategy with you.
Now you’re diving into this mission that could very well be fatal.
I know how much it mattered to her to stop the scourge sorcerers. ”
Oh, Julita murmurs. Well. I suppose that’s fair.
It isn’t, though.
I shake my head. “I also told you afterward that I blew the situation out of proportion. She’s been a good friend to me, on the whole—as good as she can be, the way things are.
It’s a messy situation. But I didn’t survive for eight years on the streets by letting other people badger me into doing things I thought were a bad idea.
And this idea I came up with myself, whether you think it’s bad or not. ”
Alek winces. “It’s not so much that I think it’s bad. It’s just so risky, putting yourself in the scourge sorcerers’ hands. And we’d lose both of you just like that.”
Is that really the crux of it? He doesn’t trust Julita whole-heartedly anymore, but he’s also afraid that what little life she’s clung to will be snuffed out? And maybe he’s conflicted about wanting her and yet feeling he shouldn’t both at once.
He always did seem to be the most devoted to her out of the four men.
An unexpected melancholy descends over me. I can gaze at his handsome face and admire his incisive mind, and he once told me he wouldn’t think I was an idiot for making a pass at him, but the scholar is just as out of reach to me as the courtesan is.
I can’t give him what he really wants, because what he really wants is a woman who’s only a ghost. Who maybe didn’t even totally exist the way he saw her when she was alive.
But he still cared enough to make sure I wasn’t being shoved into dangers I wasn’t totally okay with. He trusts me despite the reams of research I’m sure he’s done on the riven.
I want to give him something that means as much as that back, so badly my chest burns with the urge.
If he could just hear from Julita in her own words…
My stance goes abruptly still. Ah. But he can.
The mere thought sets my pulse thumping anxiously fast. I wet my lips and shoot him a hasty smile. “Can you just… wait here for a minute? I think I might be able to show you something that’ll settle your mind at least a little.”
Alek eyes me with obvious curiosity but nods in answer. I push off the table and slip between the shelves to the adjoining supply room.
What are you thinking, Ivy? Julita asks. Did you stash something in here that I didn’t notice?
“No,” I whisper, low enough that Alek shouldn’t be able to hear. “I was just thinking—”
I halt with a jolt of apprehension that shoots from my gut to my throat. Am I really going to put this proposition out there, even tentatively?
I said she’d been a good friend, didn’t I? I’ve told her I trust her, and I do.
This would be as much a thank you to her for all the ways she’s helped me navigate this world as it is to Alek.
It’s some kind of miracle that I can offer her anything at all after the awfulness she’s been through, including her own brutal murder.
I take a couple of steadying breaths to solidify my resolve.
It still takes concentrated effort to form the words.
“I thought we could make a deal. If I… relaxed and let you come forward, the way you’ve tried to before—the way you did when you made me let Alek and Benedikt into Stavros’s quarters…
you could talk to Alek. Reassure him about how you really feel.
Explain things. Show him you’re all right, or as well as can be expected.
Just for a few minutes, and then you’d pull back. I wouldn’t—”
Ivy, Julita breaks in, her voice a little shaky with shock. Are you sure? I’d never have asked—
“I know. That’s the only reason I feel okay offering.” I swallow down the nausea that’s pooled in my stomach and square my shoulders. “You—you deserve to have at least one more glimpse of actual life while you’re still here.”
Julita lets out a raw laugh. I wish I could hug you right now. You have no idea how honored I am that you’d give me this chance. You just let me know when you’re ready. And if you change your mind, I won’t be upset.
I inhale and exhale one more time and lean against the wall. “Let’s get it over with. Ready when you are.”
I will my mind to wander as if in a daydream. My heart thuds on, but it feels more distant in my detached state.
Then the tingle of Julita’s presence at the back of my skull ripples through my awareness.
My nerves jump with the instinct to block her way. I manage to rein myself in, floating on those ripples rather than fighting them.
My sense of my body turns fuzzy, as if I’m slightly numb from head to toe. My limbs move—my arms nudging me off the wall, my feet stepping across the floor—without any direction from me at all.
It is like floating. Drifting along inside a body I no longer control, all sensations clouded.
Is this how Julita feels all the rest of the time, when she’s the one towed along by my decisions?
She saunters into the main meeting room but jerks to a stop when Alek glances around at her.
At us.
Her mouth stretches with a smile. “Gods above. Alek—it’s so good to properly see you again. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Her voice sounds strange to my ears even though it’s technically my own. I’m not sure if it’s only because of my warped perspective or because she actually has a different cadence until Alek stiffens in his chair.
He can clearly tell something’s changed.
“What’s going on?” he says. “Ivy—”
Julita lets out a giggle that’s definitely not a sound I’d normally emit. “She gave me a chance to speak to you properly. She really is a much more spectacular human being than any of you give her credit for.”
Alek’s posture stays rigid, but his jaw slackens. “Julita?” he croaks.
“In the flesh! Well, Ivy’s generously lent flesh.” She walks toward him, sliding her hand along the edge of the table as if reveling in the sensation. “I’m so sorry everything’s become such a mess. I—”
Alek springs to his feet when she’s still a couple of paces away from him.
“No,” he interrupts, his voice taut. “Stop. Bring Ivy back.”
Julita freezes, and I go still inside her.
Why’s he so upset? I thought he’d be happy to get this chance.
“She suggested this, Alek,” Julita says quietly. “She offered. I promise you I’d never have—”
A tremor runs through Alek’s tensed frame. “It doesn’t matter. This is wrong. You’ve already— Bring her back, now.”
Julita seems to flinch, and then her presence is slamming straight through my mind like a sprung arrow. I jolt back into full awareness with a stumble and a gasped breath.
The impression of my ghostly passenger whips into her usual place at the back of my head and dwindles away. She’s not just retreated but pulled right in on herself the way she has a few times in the past—into the distant, darkened state where she’s told me she can’t sense anything at all.
“Julita?” I venture, but as I expect, there’s no response. Not even a quiver of acknowledgment.
Alek is staring at me. He wavers on his feet as if he’s not sure whether to step closer or not.
His voice comes out rough. “Ivy?”
I yank my attention back to him. “Yes. Why— I was trying to help. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He still looks upset. His mouth forms a series of only partly familiar sounds that I recognize with my rudimentary Woudish. “Do you know the hour?”
“A little past eight,” I answer automatically in the same tongue, and understand why when Alek all but lunges forward to grasp my arm.
Julita didn’t know a word of Woudish. Hardly anyone at the college does.
He was making sure it really was me, not Julita just pretending to have left.
I’m vaguely offended on her behalf, but Alek speaks before I can defend her, the slide of his fingers sending a distracting tingle up my forearm. “Don’t ever do that again. She had her life. This is yours.”
I frown at him. “Well, she’s completely withdrawn now—tucked away so deep she won’t even be hearing this conversation. You were worried about her. It was the only way I could give you a chance to talk to her directly.”
He steps closer, his bright eyes piercing mine. “I don’t need to talk to her. Not like that. You’re worth more than that. I was mostly worried about you. You’ve already given up a piece of your mind and a heap of freedom and everything you were doing before you were dragged into this place.”
“It was my own choice to come. I decided—”
“You decided what your conscience could bear, not what you’d find easiest.” Alek lifts his other hand to touch my cheek.
“She’s right, you know. You’re the most spectacular person I’ve ever known, and I don’t want to watch you whittle even a little of that away to make yourself less for someone else. ”
Warmth blooms in my skin at his tentative caress, making it harder to think. But I’m nothing if not stubborn. “It was only temporary. I wasn’t giving anything up.”
“You weren’t you,” Alek says. “It matters. It matters to me. I—”
He cuts himself off with a choked sound, and then he’s dipping his head to press his lips to mine.
My mind blanks in shock and a blaze of heat. I barely manage to do more than stutter a breath before Alek is yanking himself away.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, pressing the heel of his hand to his temple. “I’m sorry. Of course you don’t— I’ll go.”
He spins toward the loops of cord. Through my reeling thoughts, it hits me that he thinks I couldn’t possibly want him.
Gods smite us all, how did we end up so muddled?
I throw myself after him before he can reach his ring and catch his hand. “Alek—”
I don’t know what else to say. I ache with all the things I want and the possibility that this stunning, brilliant man might never realize it.
Maybe this surge of emotion matches what he felt just moments ago.
So when he turns back toward me at my tug, I let the flood carry me. I slip my hand around his neck, bob up on my toes, and meld my mouth to his.