27. Chapter 26
“You’re sure this is where we’re supposed to meet her?
” Ezra asked. They stood beneath the dean’s office window close to midnight.
Rhea was right to pick a Sunday, because the window faced out toward the yard behind Arcania Hall.
If it were Friday or Saturday, or any earlier in the night, the only way they could pull this off would be a powerful cloaking spell or for Silas to use his shadow magic to conceal them.
Considering Ivy wasn’t exactly aware of his presence, that last one wasn’t an option.
And the first wasn’t much of one either, considering he wasn’t strong in illusion-based magic.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Ivy said, her teeth chattering.
Her arms wrapped around herself tightly to keep warm.
It was frigid out for early October. Even he had to wear his jacket.
Since Arcania was nestled between mountains, temperatures dropped substantially at night, especially if it wasn’t as hot during the day.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out a gray knit beanie he’d brought in case either of them needed it. “Here, take this.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re freezing.” Before she could refuse again, he put the hat on her head. He grinned as her hair moved messily in front of her face, and he brushed it back so she could see. “There.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled, her hand moving to the hat to adjust it further. Before he turned away, he caught pink flooding her cheeks.
He couldn’t stop thinking about yesterday and how their magic had combined.
Their spells being stronger was something he expected from their time in the garden and on the bridge.
But he wasn’t expecting the feeling behind it.
He overlooked it the first time, since he was a little busy protecting them from dozens of tiny, flying fireballs or falling into raging waters.
The way her magic bloomed and swept around him made his knees weak.
Something deeper bloomed within them now.
Something unspoken he’d been stupid enough to let flourish.
He was lighter when he was with her, as if the burden of his past wasn’t so heavy.
It was almost like hope. But fuck if that didn’t make being hit with reality that much harder.
Between his time with her, he erased another one of his family’s targets, only to prolong the inevitability of his father’s iron fist constricting the very life from his body.
“We should practice our magic again.” Ivy shook him from his thoughts. “Maybe not too close to the forest.”
“You don’t want to try the books?” he asked, cocking a brow.
She inched closer to him and smirked. “Some things are better with hands-on practice.”
God, was she flirting with him? Maybe. Probably not. Before he could say anything, the window above them slid open, and he immediately pressed her against the building. His arm lay flat across her body as he leaned against the wall too.
“Hey, it’s Rhea,” she whispered from above. “Coast is all clear.”
Ivy moved his arm away from her and shook her head before stepping back into Rhea’s view. “How do you expect us to get up there? We can’t fly, you know.”
“Don’t you think I thought about that?” Rhea whispered back.
As Ezra moved to stand next to Ivy, a rope ladder unfurled out of the window. Upon closer inspection, the rope had a faint iridescent glow in the fibers.
“And this is going to hold?” he asked, tugging at the illusion rope.
“Not if you wait around all night,” Rhea said.
He sighed and gestured to Ivy. “You go first.”
“Scared?”
He grinned, biting his bottom lip to hold back his laugh. “No. But if you fall, I’ll catch you. If I were to fall, I’d squish all five feet of you.”
“I’m five foot four, thank you very much,” she huffed before turning to the ladder.
A few moments later, she started her climb, and he couldn’t help but notice the ample curves of her backside.
It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d peeked.
She was beautiful to behold and, as he was figuring out, even more beautiful to know.
Though her ass being in line with his eyesight was almost too much for him to bear.
He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and squeezed them into fists, trying to distract himself.
It didn’t work. All he could envision was his hands pressing into her lush hips, gripping her tightly to him as he buried his face between her thick thighs.
“Coming?” Ivy asked.
“Huh?” He tore his gaze from her body to her face. He barely noticed that she was already more than halfway up the ladder. Rhea snorted from above them, and he glared at her. “Yeah, yeah, I’m right behind you.”
A few minutes later, the three of them stood in the office, and Rhea released her illusion spell before closing the window.
Wren’s office seemed the stereotypical educational office—a line of bookcases on the wall to his right, a large mahogany desk only someone who thought themselves important would have, a row of filing cabinets behind it, and a few chairs.
Several framed paintings of the school hung on the walls with a backdrop of dark blue wallpaper with silver stars in an overlapping hexagon pattern.
Thick velvet curtains hung on the sides of the two windows, and the open blinds allowed moonlight to filter through.
“Why did we have to climb through the window, exactly?” Ezra asked.
“Wren has a spell on the door that only allows certain people, a.k.a. immediate staff, into her office after hours. Which includes me and not you two.”
“So we’ll have to leave through the window, too.” Ivy sighed, cracking her neck.
“Yeah,” Rhea said. “You should be quick. No one should be around for the rest of the night, but we shouldn’t linger. Try to find the blueprints in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” Ivy asked, her brows rising in shock.
“It shouldn’t be that hard,” Rhea said flatly, her arms crossing. “They’re probably in the filing cabinets or her desk. I’ll go look out for us and come back in ten.” She turned and left the room quietly.
“Let’s split up,” Ivy whispered. “You take the desk?”
“Sure,” he said, moving to the orderly surface. “Before opening anything, we should try to sense for any other spells.”
Ivy nodded as she went to the first filing cabinet and they started their search. Ezra went to the right side of the desk. Each drawer had a simple locking spell, which he bypassed. Most of what he found was boring paperwork which, after a quick scan through, proved to hold nothing relevant.
After he had rifled through the desk enough, he moved to the other end of the filing cabinets. Each drawer was locked, just like the dean’s desk. By the time he reached the end of the filing folders in the fourth one, he noticed something sticking out of a false backing.
He peered over at Ivy, who was bent over one of the drawers.
Hopefully, pulling it out wouldn’t be loud.
He reached toward the back of the drawer, his fingers slowly pushing the fake backing out of its crevice.
Once it was loose enough, he dipped his head to see they were the blueprints of the exam hall.
He pulled them out gently, keeping an eye on Ivy’s movements in his periphery, and stacked them on top of the folders.
Ezra squinted, investigating each page as subtly as he could.
Along the edges of each exam room appeared to be a thin hallway and a set of stairs.
Even the first floor had stairs leading down.
He dug around the drawer, but there were no other blueprints.
Whatever lay beneath the building was either not mapped or kept somewhere else.
A heaviness settled over him. If he were to hide these from Ivy, he would need to act now.
She would stand any minute and move to the next cabinet, thus noticing him standing still.
His jaw clenched as he pressed his palm flat against the blueprints.
He’d need to pull the ink all at once to be safe, unsure she would feel his spell or not.
He called his magic, and a second later, the thin wisps of ink swirled onto his skin, crawling up his arm to add to his tattoos of secrets.
“Hey, did you find something?” Ivy asked, her voice cutting through the silence.
He immediately dropped his magic and glanced over at her. “I, uh, yeah, I think I found them. It’s a little hard to tell in the dark, though.”
She rushed over to him, her shadow blocking what little light he did have from the moon. He hoped he had removed enough of the ink to cover whatever the passageway led to. She wrapped her arm around his elbow and pulled him over toward the moonlight shining on the desk.
“Holy shit,” she whispered excitedly. “Where were they?”
“There was a false back in that cabinet.” The truth tumbled out before he could figure out a lie. God forbid, he said it was in a folder or something like that.
“So she is hiding something. Why would they be there otherwise?” She searched around the room and sighed. “Damn, she doesn’t have a copier in here. We can’t just take them with us. Wren might notice they’re missing. And we’re running out of time.”
“I can make copies if there’s blank sheets of paper somewhere,” he said. That way, if he missed anything in the original, he could erase it later.
Ivy rushed and rummaged through Wren’s desk, eventually finding a yellow legal pad. “Will this do?”
He nodded, reaching for the inkwell on her desk.
He called to his magic again, and Ivy gasped as the ink floated out of the jar and around his hand.
Once he had enough for the first page, he hovered his hand above the page and pushed the ink down to copy the lines of the blueprint.
After the ink was gone, he tore off the page.
“Interesting,” Ivy murmured, taking the paper from him and running a finger over it. Her finger came back clean. “You can manipulate ink, too?”