Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
MAVERICK
I paced in my office, glancing at that open window. The white rabbit had been here. In my office. The white rabbit was Emory Growley.
Emory. She had a name. I wanted to say it out loud, to see how it might feel on my lips, taste on my tongue. For years, we’d danced around each other. Years that I’d wondered what lay under that hood. Until she’d effectively cut me out of her life. No explanation. No warning. It still hurt. More than I wanted to admit.
Now I couldn’t stop picturing her face. I’d sat across from her, memorizing every single feature of her heart-shaped face with her small pointed nose and high cheekbones while she’d glared at me the entire time.
My lips twitched.
Hopefully I’d given her enough time to escape. She’d need to be more careful. I wondered how the guards had found her in the first place. I never took the white rabbit for someone to make mistakes, to be careless enough to get caught. She pulled a lot of dangerous stunts, but she also covered her tracks .
It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have time to find her again. To play another one of our games.
I was out of time. I had to leave. Now. I glanced at the corner of my office, a small leather satchel packed with a few essential items I’d need to survive the next few months.
I stiffened.
The white rabbit had been alone in my office with that satchel. I rushed to open it, then slumped against the floor in relief when I saw the bolt inside, sizzling and sparking with power. She’d bested me enough times, taken items right under my nose. But this was the one item I couldn’t let her have.
Spirit Sky’s bolt. I still couldn’t believe it was real. That it was in my possession.
The door to my office banged open, and I quickly pulled the string on the satchel, tying it closed and praying to Spirit Fire I’d been fast enough.
I stood, running a hand over my hair. “Professor Gungar.” I nodded.
“Professor Von Lucas,” the older man said, raising his chin and sniffing like I’d somehow already offended him.
I’d come to learn that my very existence offended him, especially ever since the frost queen chose me as the historical advisor on her council over Gungar, a personal blow to the old man who’d been the queen’s advisor for as long as anyone could remember. Then there was the fact that I never accepted any invitations from the professors. Not for their weekly outings to the tavern, not for their parties, not for their monthly dinners. I couldn’t, not when I was so focused on my career. The only reason I went to Lord Growley’s party the other night was because he made large donations to the academy.
“What in the bloody frost happened this morning?” Gungar stepped forward, nose wrinkling as he glared at my clothes while straightening his blue robe, one that all historians and scholars wore to signify our connection to the academy. I wore the robe when I taught but otherwise preferred my own clothing, much to the chagrin of all the elders, so used to their traditions, so stuck in their ways. “I’m told you went against the queen’s orders and brought a criminal to the academy for questioning? What were you thinking, Von Lucas?”
He raised a brow, and I straightened my shoulders, rolling them back. “I was thinking that you’d want me to bring the woman here so I could question her about this chest she carried with significant artifacts inside.”
His eyes widened as he took in the chest sitting on my desk, craggy eyebrows raising and making all the wrinkles on his forehead more pronounced. “What in the world was she doing with that?”
I wouldn’t reveal her identity. I had far too much respect for the white rabbit to do so.
I grabbed my long black coat off the hook behind him and shrugged it over my shoulders. “I don’t know. But now it belongs to the academy, which should make the queen happy. Quite a few new additions for the museum.”
His face turned red, and he snatched my arm. “And you let this woman escape? She’s clearly a threat to the academy. To the queen. She kept these items for herself instead of turning them over. She could be hiding pieces of history from us, finding out information the queen might not want anyone to know.”
I snorted. He was starting to sound like the frost queen, so afraid of information getting out, like that wasn’t our job as historians.
“Well, you could always chase after her yourself instead of making me your errand boy.”
Professor Gungar narrowed his gaze. “Watch it, Von Lucas. I’ve been here for fifty years. You’ve been here for six.”
I tugged on the lapels of my coat. “Yet I believe I’m the one who’s the queen’s historical advisor. Not you. And maybe if you and the others listened to me, you’d realize that times are changing. That our methods need to change as well.”
He scoffed. “Who was this woman? She needs to be brought to justice.”
“Lady Emory Growley.” Her name. Emory. It tasted as sweet as I’d expected.
“The ambassador’s wife?” He raised a hand to his chest. “Spirits below. That does make sense.” He stopped abruptly, gaze slowly raising to meet mine. “Do you know why the queen wanted her for questioning?”
“I assume because of all the valuables she was carrying in that damn chest.” I pointed to it, still sitting on my desk. If the queen had taken Emory in for questioning, she’d have figured out her identity as the white rabbit sooner or later, and then Emory would be in deep, deep trouble. Thank the spirits she’d escaped.
“No,” Gungar said. “That’s not why the queen wanted her.”
I leaned against my desk. “Since you seem to know, please, don’t keep me waiting in such suspense.”
“Emory’s husband, Lord Growley, was found murdered in his home this morning. Believed to have been killed by his wife.”
Husband. I’d been so wrapped up in my discovery of the white rabbit’s identity, in knowing her name, I’d somehow forgotten the rest of it. She was married. That was a punch to the gut that I hadn’t expected. And—had he just said...
“Murder?” I asked, brain still unable to keep up.
“Early this morning.” Gungar’s chin wobbled. “Servants found him dead in the cellar after a clear struggle. His wife nowhere to be found.”
All the breath left my lungs, and suddenly, it made sense: why she was wearing nothing but a nightgown, why she’d been running in the first place. It wasn’t because the guards thought she was a thief. It was because they thought she was a murderer. And I’d been stupid enough to let her escape. All because of my connection to her, because I’d actually thought at one point that there was a world where the white rabbit and I could... Married. She’d been married the entire time she’d been the white rabbit. Our last meeting suddenly made far more sense. I suddenly felt very, very stupid.
I pounded a fist on the desk.
Gungar raked a hand through his thinning white hair and glanced behind me at my packed satchel. “What’s done is done. Emory Growley is now the frost queen’s concern. Not ours. Not yours. Are you ready for this mission?”
The mission. I suspected Gungar was sending me with the hope that I didn’t return. I might’ve been the favorite of the queen—and many students—but Gungar still ran this academy, was still the Arch Historian, and that meant he had the power to send me on assignments.
“We’re getting more and more reports of this white wolf stalking the Glacier Mountains. A wolf like no one has ever seen before. Huge with fangs as big as my fingers, standing near as tall as a fully grown man.”
I waved away his words. “Yes, yes I’ve been briefed. Though I’m not sure why you’re sending a historian to trek after this creature and not a hunter.” I raised a brow.
Gungar shifted on his feet. “Because the queen wants him in her custody.”
Just another obsession of the frost queen’s I didn’t understand. She cared far more about this wolf than she should have.
“We need someone who can analyze the creature,” Gungar was saying, “tell us how it evolved, where it might have come from. Not just some brute who will barge in and kill it. We need some answers about this thing. It’s terrorizing small villages on the outskirts of the mountains. It’s eating livestock. We’re worried the villagers are next.”
I shuddered at that and swept my arms around the room. “Well, as you can see, I was on my way out before you barged in. Hastings is taking over my class until I return.”
“Very good.” He nodded stiffly. “Well, good luck to you then.”
I snorted. We both knew he couldn’t care less if I found this beast or not. Lucky for him, this mission happened to come at the exact right time. Because I had a mission of my own to complete, one that by pure luck would take me through the Glacier Mountains. One that had nothing to do with the white wolf. A trip that would require that bolt hidden in my satchel. If Gungar knew I had it and was withholding it from the academy, if he knew what I planned to do with it, I wouldn’t just lose my job, I’d lose everything. Get thrown in the frost prisons right along with the white rabbit.
But the sacrifice, the risks, would be worth it. This wasn’t just a mission. It wasn’t like anything I’d done before. Because this journey—it was personal.
Gungar swept out of the office.
I could very well die on this secret mission, but if I didn’t do this, well, then I didn’t deserve to live anyway.