Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Byron
“This good, sir?” the driver of the ride I booked asks, looking doubtfully at the forest looming on either side of the gravel lane.
I keep my tone steady and professional, as if I’m heading off to a business meeting in the trees. “Perfect. Thank you.”
I get out and wait on the shoulder as the car’s wheels rattle back to the country road we turned off. Every thud of my pulse feels as if it’s being squeezed through a funnel.
My fingers flex and tap against my thigh. My gaze darts from tree to tree, counting so fast I’m barely aware of the numbers spinning through my head.
Fifteen branches jutting from the trunk of that beech. Twelve from that oak. Twenty-three from the pine.
Seven squirrel nests within my view. Nine ghostly towers of birches, their pale white bark standing out amid the brown and green.
The cool early-evening air fills my lungs, thick with a loamy, evergreen smell. Neither it nor my rituals are easing the pressure clamped around my chest.
That’s why I came out here. When no other strategy works, there’s one thing that always does.
I need to decide what to do about Elodie Devine, and I can’t decide anything when I can’t even think.
The drone of the car’s engine has totally faded away. I stride into the forest, picking my way between the jutting roots along a rough path most people wouldn’t even notice.
The rustle of the leaves overhead and the trill of an occasional bird are my only company.
These acres of land not far from the edges of the city belong to the Worth family, but as an investment rather than anything we’ve bothered to make use of.
Dad showed me the place several years ago when my parents sold off a small portion of it to developers for a nice payday.
I’m not sure what I’d do if they gave up the whole thing. I’d rather drown in my problems than tell my family what I’ve been using the property for.
After ten minutes of walking, the forest peters out at the top of a hill. A grassy expanse stretches across the slope and over a clearing the size of a football field. A few sprigs of flowers and spindly shrubs poke up amid erratic tufts of grass.
I haven’t been out here since before the winter snows. It’s turned into a mess.
Time to start over from scratch.
The breath I drag in brings a swell of relief with my anticipation of the act to come. My pulse races frantically onward, urging me to get on with it.
I raise my arms as if I’m welcoming the scene in front of me into an embrace. The faint tickle of ephemera—all the energies of every living thing that’s grown and passed through this place, all the ways those things have brushed up against each other—responds to my summons.
In a matter of seconds, the tickle has expanded into a torrent. I call on more and more energy, gathering it in my chest and gut and in the air around me. It licks over my skin and whispers through my hair.
I keep drawing in more until every particle of my body is resonating with the vibrations, until the thrum of it overwhelms every other sensation. Then, with a grin I can’t hold back, I heave the mass of magic across the field.
I don’t shape it. I don’t direct it other than casting it out in front of me with the vague command to nourish and flourish.
The wild energy gushes across the field, and vegetation surges into being in its wake.
Flowers burst into full bloom, flooding the breeze with their perfume.
Bushes puff up in leafy clusters. A few saplings sprout to my own height, brilliantly green leaves already unfurling from the buds on their branches.
A breathless laugh tumbles from my mouth. In that first moment, there’s nothing left inside me but a vast exhilaration.
This is real magic. This is how I like it best. Not molding and twisting our surroundings to our own ends, but seeing what will emerge when we let the world choose.
My family wouldn’t agree. They’d see what I just did as a ridiculous waste of time and energy at best and destructive carelessness at worst, useless excess they’ll need to spend more time culling.
But they aren’t here right now. For a few fleeting minutes, I don’t have to care what they think.
The sense of lightness sweeps through me. My smile lingers on my lips.
Then the image of Elodie’s face, gazing up at me defiantly while I glared through her illusion, wipes it all away.
I might have unloaded the pressure in my chest, but my impressions on that one subject don’t come together any clearer than they did before. A shaky heat spreads through my ribs with the memory.
The reassuring comments she made while she was hidden behind her disguise… Drawing out admissions I’d never have wanted to make to a classmate, to a competitor… Searching for a vulnerability she could exploit against me…
But even as those furious thoughts pass through my head, I find myself thinking back to the first time I spoke with Elodie in her attendant guise.
It must have been her on Saturday too, mustn’t it? I’ve never noticed that attendant before… I’ve never asked one of the staff to join me for a game before.
Something about “him” snagged my interest in a way I couldn’t explain and tugged at me to find out more.
Haven’t I been feeling the same draw to Elodie in class in the past week? I just haven’t given in. I tuned it out.
Because I was prepared to be on guard.
I can’t honestly say that she was in the club to pry into my life, though.
I remember all too clearly the hesitation on her illusionary face when I invited her to play cards, her cautious steps following me into the room.
Her initially poor choice of trump, as if she wanted to get my win over with and get out of there.
At the time, I thought it was simply a matter of a club employee worried about the consequences if I didn’t like the outcome of the game.
If Elodie wanted me to warm up to her and start spilling secrets, why would she have presented a reluctant attitude? Wouldn’t she have acted as if she appreciated the attention, encouraged me into conversation?
She barely spoke through the whole game.
Burn it all, she hardly said anything even today. I blurted out my insecurities with barely any prompting at all.
I rub my hand over my face as if that’ll set my thoughts in better order.
Is she manipulating me through some subtle magic I’ve never experienced before? Could she have drawn me all the way upstairs to run into her both times without me noticing the artificial compulsion?
It’s hard to wrap my head around Elodie Devine playing servant at all. How could her pride allow it? Where would she have ever learned to bow her head and scamper around to other people’s orders?
I groan through my gritted teeth. I’m not getting anywhere.
The new flowers bobbing in the field below beckon me. I shake off my frustration as well as I can and tread down the hill to inspect what I’ve grown.
Clusters of white yarrow sway with my passing. Blue asters beam in broad clumps so dense I have to veer around them. Sprigs of goldenrod shine in the fading sunlight like soft flames, and delicate purple phlox pokes up amid the long grass.
Over close to the trees that flank the field, several raspberry bushes have billowed into a mix of blossoms, pale nubs… and in a few cases, deep red fruit.
My breath catches in my throat. I reach out and give one berry a gentle tug. It pops off into my hand as if that’s where it belongs.
They wouldn’t normally be ripe until July. Just how much power did I manage to command today?
More than I’ve ever summoned here before.
A renewed grin tugs at my lips. I glance around, buoyed by my triumph.
Of course, there’s no one here to share it with. There won’t be anywhere else either.
My parents would have more concerns than compliments about my odd pastime. I can’t trust Hannah not to blurt it out in front of them. I can’t think of any classmates who’d congratulate me rather than joking that Byron Worth has gone batty.
Except maybe…
Why in the blazes am I picturing Elodie standing next to me, her eyes widening with appreciation when I offer her a perfect berry?
I smack my forehead hard, but I can’t shake the thought of her completely. That comment she made about how she had reasons for being at the club—what could she possibly have meant?
Why did she look so fragile in that first moment when I saw through her illusion?
No. Elodie doesn’t need my help. She doesn’t need me worrying about her. She sure as hell has never done anything to deserve it.
Maybe I should just turn her in. There’s probably evidence I could point to—whatever attendant she was disguising herself as would be able to testify that he never came in. She’ll have left traces of ephemera in the club unless she’s a much better magic-worker than even our professors.
Another flush of heat washes over me, setting my teeth on edge. Even picturing the head of The Eclipse confronting Elodie brings out the urge to leap between them, to shelter her from his cutting words. To pull her close against my body—
For fuck’s sake. I’m definitely not following that line of thinking to see where it ends up.
It was bad enough the way I couldn’t seem to let go of her in the hall, the way my heartbeat spiked at the impression of her smooth skin through her clothes—
No.
Shaking my head, I stalk back toward the lane. My breath has gone rough in my throat. My slacks feel too tight.
It’s better if I don’t think about her at all. Better to avoid her entirely rather than have to deal with this unwelcome effect she’s having on me.
I hike down the lane to the country road before summoning a ride, knowing from experience that the driver is more likely to find me if I’m a little closer to civilization.
The whole way home, whenever my mind veers toward Elodie—toward her pine-green eyes with the inner ring of gold I never noticed before, toward the elegant slope of her nose and line of her jaw and other curves farther below—I dig my fingertips into my leg to the point of pain.
I’ve got plenty of other problems to focus on, after all. When I walk into the house, Mom emerges from the living room to greet me, and the first words out of her mouth are, “So, how did the transmutation presentation go?”
My throat closes around my answer. A heat that’s all shame creeps up my neck at having to recall my stupid stumble in the middle of my demonstration.
As I pull together the words to answer, Elodie’s voice floats up from the back of my head.
“No one’s perfect. No one should criticize you because you’re not.”
Don’t I wish she was right about that one thing.