Chapter 8 #3
Valerius turns finally, his face unreadable again. Whatever stood between me and the professor is gone, buried beneath the cold arrogance he wears so well but I saw it. I felt it.
We leave the ward chamber together. The corridor outside is bright with afternoon sun, too ordinary after what just happened. Students pass at the far end, laughing, throwing bits of charm-light at one another.
I walk quickly. Valerius catches up without effort. "Slow down."
I don't. "Stop giving orders."
"You almost lit up in there." He states.
I stop so abruptly he nearly walks into me. I turn facing him. "I almost what?"
His eyes scan my face, then my sleeve, then the empty corridor beyond us. "You heard me."
"No, I heard something ridiculous." I shake my head.
"You felt it when I touched you." He says.
My face burns. "That isn't—"
He cuts me off. "I'm talking about magic."
"So am I." The lie is immediate.
His eyes darken like he knows it. The silence stretches. Heat blooms in my cheeks, furious and humiliating, because we are both talking about magic and not only magic. We both know it. We both feel the thing between us now, bright and impossible and unwanted.
Tension.
A thread pulled tighter every time we argue, every time his magic reaches, every time my body answers something my mind rejects.
Valerius steps closer. "You need to tell me if something appears again," he says.
I cross my arms. "Why?"
"Because if you walk around glowing, people will notice." He says.
"I am not glowing." I argue.
"You were." He argues back.
"I was reacting to your magic." I remind him.
"My magic was reacting to you." The words land heavy. Both true and impossible.
I look away. Through the window beside us, the courtyard spreads below. Students cross in clusters. Branch colors flash bright against black stone. Above them all, the academy towers rise, watching. Always watching.
"I don't want this," I say. The words leave me quietly.
Valerius says nothing. "I don't want to be strange," I continue.
"I spent my whole life being powerless. Everyone already decided what that made me. Weak. Embarrassing. Pitiful. At least I understood the shape of that."
My throat tightens. I hate that I'm saying this to him but the words come anyway.
"Now everyone is staring like I've become something else, and I don't even know what that something is."
Valerius is silent for so long I think he will do what he always does—cut me open with the easiest cruel truth. Instead, his voice comes low. "Good."
I look at him sharply. "Good?"
"Let them wonder." He says with an expression I've never seen on his face before. I stare at him. His expression is hard, but his eyes are not as cold as they should be. "You hated being nothing to them," he says. "Now you hate that they're looking closer."
"I don't want to be looked at like a threat." I admit.
"Better than being looked at like prey." He says. The words crawl over my skin.
I think of Mira, of Magistra Voss, of my father's face.
"Is that how you see people?" I ask. "As threat or prey?"
His gaze holds mine. "Yes."
The honesty should disgust me. It does, a little, but it also makes a terrible kind of sense.
Valerius Draven isn't cruel because he's careless.
He's cruel because somewhere along the way, someone taught him the world is divided into things that attack and things that are devoured and he decided never to be devoured.
I wonder who taught him that. I wonder why the thought makes my chest ache.
"Then what am I?" I ask before I can stop myself.
His face stills. The question hangs between us, dangerous and intimate in a way I didn't intend. Threat or prey. Valerius looks at me for a long moment. Long enough for the bond to warm. Long enough for my breath to thin. Long enough for something in his eyes to move like flame behind glass.
Then he says, "I haven't decided."
I should hate that answer. Maybe I do but the way he says it—low, careful, almost unwilling—makes the air catch fire between us. Footsteps sound from the staircase. The moment snaps. Valerius steps back.
A group of second-year Veil students turns into the corridor, sees us, and immediately slows. Their eyes flick from him to me and back again. Whispers begin before they even pass. I pull my sleeve lower and turn away.
Valerius's voice follows, quiet enough only I can hear. "Valentina."
I stop, hating the way my name sounds different when he says it now. Not softer... never soft but heavier.
"What?" I look back at him.
"Don't show anyone your wrist." The warning slides cold beneath my skin. For once, there is no arrogance on his face, only certainty.
"Why?" I ask.
His eyes flick toward the corridor where the students disappeared. Then back to me. "Because not everyone who stares is only curious."
A chill moves through me. Before I can ask what he means, he walks away. I stand there until he disappears around the corner.
Then I pull up my sleeve. The gold mark glows faintly. Around it, barely visible, is the thinnest trace of shadow. I touch it with shaking fingers. Heat answers. Somewhere far down the corridor, out of sight, a door slams. The shadow fades.
His voice slices through my head as the warning remains. Not everyone who stares is only curious. For the first time since the Eternal Flame chose us, I wonder if Valerius Draven isn't the most dangerous thing tied to me. Maybe he's only the first danger I can see.