Chapter 14 #2
"Nobody is advocating for ownership," Leopold says.
Still smiling. Still warm. His white hair catches the light and for a second he looks like a painting of a saint—beautiful, benevolent, absolutely lethal.
"But there's a difference between optimism and negligence.
Some practitioners—" His eyes flick to me.
Just for a second. A half-second. But I catch it and he knows I caught it.
"—represent a level of risk that idealism can't address.
Pretending otherwise isn't kindness. It's arrogance. "
"And deciding someone is too dangerous to deserve a chance isn't caution.
" Emric's dark eyes are locked on Leopold.
His hands have come off the desk—they're at his sides now, fingers curled, and the flush has climbed from his neck to his ears but his voice is granite.
Gone is the boy who couldn't ask me to beignets without turning red.
This Emric has teeth. "It's convenience. "
"Enough." Malloy's chalk hits the board. "Both of you. Save it for the essay. Cite your sources. And Mr. Vassard—" She holds his gaze over her glasses. "If you're going to argue for containment, I suggest you do it without subtext. This is an academic institution, not a courtroom."
Leopold dips his chin. The picture of compliance. But his finger taps three more times against the desk and his eyes find mine one last time and the smile he gives me is warm all the way to the surface and absolutely arctic underneath.
The class moves on. I sit in my chair and stare at my notebook and feel every eye in the room on my skin like a sunburn.
Nellie leans in. "Did they just... were they fighting about you? In the middle of class?"
"Yep."
"Like, using academic discourse as a weapon?"
"Yep."
"That's the most Devenir thing I've ever witnessed. Are you okay?"
I am not okay. My magic is pressing against my ribs and my pen is about to snap and the whole class just watched two vampires debate whether Calypso Dellaby is a person or a problem and the answer is apparently still up for discussion.
Our fucking midterm assignment to be exact.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
The voice.
It slides in between my thoughts like a hand finding mine in the dark. Warm. Familiar. I haven't heard it in so long and suddenly it's back, settling into my skull like it never left.
You don't belong in a cage, Calypso.
My fingers tighten on the pen. I don't respond.
I don't have the bandwidth for a psychic conversation right now on top of everything else.
My magic is pressing, my chest is tight, and if I stay in this chair for one more minute listening to Leopold Vassard breathe the same air as me, I'm going to spark and then I'm going to prove his entire argument correct.
I stand up.
Nellie looks up. "Cal—"
"I need a minute."
"Do you want me to—"
"No. Just—I'll be right back."
I grab my bag and walk out. The hallway is cool. Quiet. I lean against the wall and breathe. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. Aamon's technique. I can almost imagine him saying it again.
I check my fingers. Flickering. Little arcs of light at my knuckles, dancing across the skin. But manageable. Fading. I'm catching it earlier now—recognizing the curve before it crests. Progress. The ugliest kind—invisible, incremental, but I have to find strength in it.
If not, I’ll go back into that room and beat the fuck out of Leopold without even dipping inside myself for my magic. Just fists. Like God intended.
I push off the wall. Round the corner toward the water fountain—
And stop.
Corvin is at the end of the corridor. Leaning against the wall near the stairwell, phone pressed to his ear. His back is half-turned. He doesn't see me.
I'm about to walk up to him when I hear my name.
"—Dellaby, yes. The schedule is consistent. Training sessions with Aamon are back on, every other day, seven a.m. She went off-campus this weekend—Thibodaux, the Marchand woman's shop. The Marchand daughter drove. Aamon accompanied as escort."
I freeze. Press myself against the wall. My heart rate, which was just starting to settle, kicks right back up.
"The cottage situation is unchanged. She's still in the duplex. Zeva and I rotate shifts. She's—" He pauses. Listens. "—cooperative. Mostly. She's unpredictable but she's not suspicious. She trusts the routine."
She trusts the routine.
My stomach turns.
"The timeline is—yes, I understand. When she's ready." Another pause. Longer. "I'm aware of the parameters. I'll continue the reports until instructed otherwise."
He ends the call. Pockets the phone. Rolls his shoulders and straightens his spine—snapping back into the wrinkled-but-blank-faced enforcer I've been walking past for weeks without a second thought.
I have maybe three seconds before he realizes I’m here and thinks I was listening.
Shit.
I step around the corner. Casual. Easy. Acting like I just wandered into the hallway to clear my head.
"Hey, Corvin." My voice is steady. I'm impressed with myself. "Do we have any scheduled evaluations this week? Balcour mentioned something in his last note and I can't remember the date."
He looks at me. A beat too long. His expression is the same professional nothing it always is, but I've spent weeks cataloguing faces and the phone went into his pocket too fast and his weight shifted to his back foot when he saw me—defensive. A micro-retreat.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"I'd check with the administrative office," he says. "I'm not privy to evaluation scheduling."
"Right. Yeah, thanks."
I turn. Walk straight back toward the classroom.
My stride is measured. My shoulders are relaxed.
My face is doing whatever face a person makes when everything is fine and nothing is wrong and the man who's been living right next to her is delivering reports about her to someone. I mean, I know I’m being monitored, but the sinking feeling in my stomach is telling me he wasn’t talking to Balcour.
Ready for what?
I slip back into my seat. Nellie glances at me—you okay?—and I nod and open my notebook and write absolutely nothing because my brain is too busy screaming.
Corvin. Corvin. The older vamp with the thermos who watched me practice with my stone at dawn and grumbled about the early hour.
The man I bragged to about my channeling.
The man who walked me home from Leyonna's office without asking a single question and I thought that was respect and it was surveillance. Every night he’s been in the cottage next to mine.
Every morning he's trailed me to class. Every detail, every movement, every conversation within earshot—fed to someone.
Like a damn wire tap with legs.
She trusts the routine.
Yeah. She did. She was an idiot apparently.
The voice stirs. Quieter this time. Careful.
Something's wrong. I can feel it.
I grip my pen. Stare at the chalk notes on the board. And for the first time since this voice showed up in my head, I don't push it away.
Yeah, I think back. I think something is very wrong.
A pause. The voice leaning in.
Tell me.
I close my eyes. Let the classroom noise fade to static. The voice is warm in my skull and for once I'm grateful for it—less an invasion and more like the only locked room I have left.
I think one of my enforcers is feeding intel about me to someone. My schedule, my training, where I go, who I'm with. And whoever's getting those reports is waiting for something. Waiting for me to be "ready." I swallow. Whatever the hell that means.
Silence. Long enough that I wonder if it heard me.
Who?
I don't know yet. But I'm starting to think the people guarding me aren't just guarding me for the council.
Then, quieter than I've ever heard it:
Be careful, Calypso. Trust is expensive. Spend it wisely.
The warmth lingers. Holds. And then—
Emric turns his head.
Three rows down. Mid-lecture. No reason to turn around, no stimulus, no one calling his name.
He just turns—slow, deliberate—and his dark eyes find mine.
Those warm, kind, eyes land on me with an accuracy that has nothing to do with coincidence and everything to do with the fact that the voice in my head just went quiet at the exact moment he looked at me.
One second. Two. He holds my gaze. Then he turns back to face Malloy, smooth as water, and picks up his pen and resumes writing.
My pulse is in my ears. My pen is shaking in my grip.
The voice spoke. The voice went quiet. Emric turned around. At the exact same moment.
That's not a coincidence. That's not proximity or timing or any of the other explanations I've been using to talk myself out of it.
I was having a conversation inside my own skull—a full, two-way, telepathic conversation—and Emric Vane turned to look at me the second it ended.
Like he hung up the phone and then checked on me through the rearview.
It's him.
I look down at my notebook. My hands are steady but my heart is hammering and the dark-curled, olive-skinned, red-eared boy three rows down—the one who defends me in classrooms and blushes when he asks me to coffee—might be the stranger who's been living inside my head since the day I arrived.
I write one word in the margin of my notebook. Small. Careful. Where no one can see it. Then say it into my head.
Emric?
I wait.
He doesn't turn around.
But I swear—I swear—his pen pauses on the page for a half-second before it resumes.
The bell rings. Class is over.