Chapter 38 The End Of Spring
The End Of Spring
“Ithink this is our cue to leave, too,” Esmerelda said cheerily. She shoved lightly at the arm of her friend, the auburn-headed Fenric. “C’mon, Fen. I want to get out to The Temples before they start picking teams.”
I couldn’t help noticing Esmerelda paused to squeeze Jolie’s hand and smile at her, leaning over to murmur something in her ear before she stood up from her seat.
She turned towards me and Bones next.
She smiled at us in a friendly way. “A bunch of us are organizing a dragon polo match before the carnival tonight. You’re both welcome to come, if you want, we’ll likely be up there all afternoon. If enough people show up who want to play, we could do four teams instead of two.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Thanks. Maybe. If we have time.”
“Probably won’t,” Bones said, but not in an unfriendly way. “Thanks, though.”
Esmerelda seemed undaunted. “Well, the invite stands. Come if you can. If you can’t, I’ll look for you at the carnival.
” She winked at me. “I’m thinking you shouldn’t be hard to find.
I’ll just follow the retching sounds and the racist rants from royals whose delicate sensibilities you’ve offended. ”
Bones let out a low grunt, but again, not an unfriendly one.
“Right,” he said.
I glanced up at Bones, lifting an eyebrow. Carnival?
He gave me a sideways glance.
Magicals love a good party, he murmured back.
Yule tends to be more of a private, family affair, but New Years is our big holiday for community-wide events, apart from maybe Lá Bealtaine.
There’s a New Year’s Day carnival in Bonescastle every year.
It always follows the New Year’s Eve Festival and fireworks.
He studied my eyes, and I couldn’t help noticing he was looking at me with open affection. Didn’t you go last year, kitten?
I shook my head, flushing a little. “No.” I switched to his mind. I suppose it’s a little surprising they’d be going ahead with it after last night.
He shrugged, as if that was of little importance.
They’ll have Praecuri all over town, he thought back. G.O.R.E. too, I imagine. He paused, his thoughts still casual. I’m sure your Golden Sun pals will make an appearance.
I stared up at him.
A pricking, tense, uneasy feeling started at the back of my neck.
The longer I stared at him, the worse it got.
They are not using you as bait, I thought at him coldly. Bones. If they asked you, I hope you told them to go to hell. There’s no possible way––
They didn’t ask me for that, he broke in.
He glanced at me, then around at everyone who stood or sat near us, at least within hearing range, before returning his eyes to mine. After gauging my expression, he squeezed me tightly against his side with the arm still wrapped around my waist.
I doubt they need me there in person to dangle bait in front of that lot, he thought, quieter.
Sirena’s pretty single-minded, and her husband’s even more fucked in the head than she is.
It wouldn’t take much to bring them back here…
assuming they need to lure them at all. Forsooth seems to think they’re already in Bonescastle.
What? I stared at him.
He thinks it extremely likely the Cathedral’s had a strong presence around the school since Malefic got arrested.
I clenched my jaw, forcing myself to remain silent.
For some reason, I found myself honing in on something else he’d said.
Single-minded. I stared at his eyes, trying to see past the mask I could feel there again. You called that witch who attacked us single-minded. Single-minded in what way? Do you mean revenge? Against us? Or against you?
Yes, that. Both of those things. In fact, I’m sure that’s a lot of it. Most of it. He hesitated, and I could feel him hedging, trying to decide how much to tell me. Sirena’s also always had a kind of, I don’t know… I guess you could call it a fixation. With me.
He gave me a cautious look, like he felt my reaction to his choice of words already.
Does she know what you are? I asked.
He shook his head, his expression suddenly hard. No. There’s no way my father would have told her about that. Or any of them. But she’s a powerful witch, he conceded reluctantly. I suspect she feels something in my magic. Something she reacts to.
His words, or maybe what I felt behind them, sent a curl of nausea through my gut.
What kind of fixation? I asked him. What does that mean, Bones?
It doesn’t matter.
My nausea worsened. I don’t believe you.
We can talk about it later, okay? He hugged me tighter to his side.
He surprised me then, bending down to kiss my mouth, then to nuzzle my cheek with his. He seemed to have relaxed into the fact that we could be affectionate with one another publicly, certainly a lot more quickly than I had.
Have I mentioned I like it when you worry about me? he teased softy.
I folded my arms, and struggled with the urge to ask him about Sirena again.
Another voice interrupted before I could make up my mind.
“They’re doing it again,” Nyx said loudly.
Despite her exasperated tone, I could hear the strong hint of humor in it.
“Can you make them stop, Lucifer? It’s making me so intensely curious.
They’re so greedy and secretive with their constant whispering back and forth.
I’ve tried to listen but that infernal Bones has shields on top of his shields. ”
I looked over to find Nyx smiling at the two of us.
Darragh, Luc, and Jolie were watching us, too.
It hit me only then that we’d just been standing there, talking in one another’s minds while everyone watched us do it. No one had said anything until now, either, which also struck me as slightly odd.
Esmerelda and Fenric were long gone.
While I was staring at all of them, probably with a blank look on my face, Jolie slid further down the bench to be closer to Darragh. She patted the stretch of stone bench left from Esmerelda and Fenric, which she’d now put on one side of her.
“You can sit here,” Jolie said, smiling at me with a faint caution in her eyes. “If you want to eat, you should probably order, Leda. I suspect the kitchen’s about to close.”
I nodded but still hesitated for some reason.
The next gaze I met ended up being Luc’s.
For the first time, he was looking at me and Bones with something like sympathy in his eyes.
He motioned with his head for us to join them, a little more brusquely than Jolie had done, but I sensed a kind of resigned acceptance in it, too.
Whatever he thought of Bones, or the fact that I’d completely ignored his warning not to get too close to his childhood boarding school mate, he’d clearly decided to make an effort.
“You’d better sit,” he said, gruff. “Now that everyone knows, we should probably talk about what happened last night.” He glanced at Jolie apologetically. “What really happened. Including the parts we omitted before.”
“Ah,” was all Jolie said.
Again, she didn’t look or sound surprised.
I looked at Bones, who seemed to be gauging Luc’s expression also, or perhaps reading his magical aura.
Whatever he’d been looking at, I saw him nod, almost to himself, right before he turned his head.
He looked back across the garden, this time in the direction from which he’d originally come.
Releasing me for the first time since he’d walked up, he stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled, loudly.
The next thing I knew, Alaric was strolling towards us over the lawn, walking as if he hadn’t a care in the world, a sideways smile on his face as he crossed the flower-dotted grass. His centaur even kicked up its heels briefly, despite the characteristically stern expression it wore.
When Alaric got close enough, he smirked at me, then winked at Bones.
He smiled around at everyone else next, exchanged a more meaningful look with Nyx, then aimed an even wider smile at Bones.
“Elysia decided to forego this little meeting of the minds,” he informed Bones, his voice holding an open humor.
“She also said to tell you, ‘Cal can fuck off if he thinks I’ll come to his gods-damned whistle like a dog.’ She followed that with something rather rude about your new relationship I don’t wish to repeat. ”
He gave me a bow with mock-solemnity, then added brightly to Bones, “Oh, and if you summon her like that again, she’s threatened to do something very dog-like to your tower apartment that I very much doubt you’ll appreciate.”
I grimaced, but didn’t ask Alaric what he meant.
I genuinely, absolutely didn’t want to know.
And yet, what was wrong with me that both comments made me like Elysia the tiniest bit more? Maybe Bones’s magic and mind really were starting to rub off on me.
“Can we go back to your room?” I asked him quietly, as the others were starting to get up from around the table.
Bones immediately stiffened, his gold eyes locking on mine.
We’d just spent the past forty-something minutes telling Jolie and Darragh about the night before, and about at least a chunk of what we’d been doing over the break.
Really, Luc, Bones, and Nyx did most of the talking.
Between Bones’s magic and Luc’s research project, landmines lived all over those discussions for me, so rather than risk stepping in one, I mostly just listened.
I noticed Alaric didn’t say a whole lot either.
I watched him listen shrewdly the whole time I ate, even as he occasionally disarmed the others with an off-color joke or comment.
He really was a master at convincing people he wasn’t anywhere near as intelligent as he was.
I suspected that probably came from his lovely childhood with his father, as well.
I needed to talk to Alaric, too. And Luc. And Nyx. It struck me that the five of us had bonded in some indefinable way over those four weeks of break, and I still didn’t know exactly what had happened the night before, other than what Forsooth and Valor told me.
Right now, however, I needed to talk to Bones alone.
I’d decided it was time for us to have that other talk we kept putting off, the one where he told me all those things about himself that he’d been putting off telling me.
He’d said at the Black Tower, before we had sex in that study, that there were things about him I needed to know “before I could make a decision.” I wanted to know what those things were.
I also wanted to know exactly what “decision” he was referencing.
Unfortunately, my words about wanting to be alone with him brought up intense, very specific reactions in Bones himself, reactions I felt through his magic before he opened his mouth to speak.
For a few seconds, he just stared at me, his jaw slowly hardening.
His eyes danced with gold and green flames.
He checked a gold pocket watch he pulled out of his vest pocket.
It was something that would have amused me a year ago, as it wasn’t something you generally saw men his age do back on Earth, not outside of historical cosplay. Now, after being here nearly two years, it struck me as more or less normal.
He stared down at it briefly, then shoved it back into his vest.
“Yes,” he said, sliding his hand into mine.
“I really need to talk to you,” I warned him softly.
“Of course,” he said brusquely. His magic flared out in my direction and my breath caught. He lowered his voice, speaking into my ear. “I might be distracted through most of it if we don’t fuck first. I want to eat you out until you purr.”
Despite how quietly he’d said it, I saw Luc flinch as he stood up from the table. The way his eyes darted towards the two of us, his cheeks turning slightly pink, I couldn’t help thinking he’d almost definitely overheard.
“Bones.” I fought with my reaction to his words. “It’s important.”
“Can you tell me on our way there?” he asked. “The important parts?”
I fought back and forth on that. “Yes,” I said after a breath. “Sure. But it might change your mind on the other thing.”
“Literally not possible,” he said.
I snorted a low laugh, in spite of myself.
We’d both stood up from the bench by then.
Everyone seemed to be leaving the garden area at once, now that brunch appeared to be officially over. Bones didn’t look over as other students passed our table, and I noticed everyone, the royals in particular, stepped well around us as they made their way back to the Promenade and the Mansion.
Clearly, Bones’s threat held some weight with them, whatever they thought of either of us. I wondered how long it would be before someone challenged him on it.
I was just about to open my mouth, to remind Bones what he’d said to me that night in the study at the Black Tower, when the chimaera abruptly collapsed around us.
The difference was startling.
The bright sunny day, with its flowers, blue skies, sparkling fountain, and green lawns, got washed away.
The golden, early summer sun moved positions as it transformed into its colder, winter version, sliding closer to the horizon.
The sky itself lost its shocking hue of blue.
The sparkling expanse of Vulcan Lake and the vine-covered stateliness of the Mansion, all vanished within the same instant.
The ground felt harder under my feet as the green melted away, leaving frozen black mud dotted with patches of snow.
The sound of falling water died as the Fountain of the Furies reverted back to bleak, bone-colored, and frozen to my left. Bonescastle Forest still stood in the distance, but now it formed a strangely unmoving mass leeched entirely of color, made up of wet, black trunks and snow-covered branches.
I think the darkness shocked me the most, even more than my clothes, which had gone back to the heavier things I’d been wearing when I left my dorm.
My face tilted upwards, my eyes taking in a blanket of ominous, black clouds.
The world had grown so dark, it felt too early suddenly, as if the sun had just risen.
Or maybe closer to sunset.
I was still staring up when the first snowflakes began to drift down, stinging as they met my still-warm cheeks, making me gasp.
I turned to Bones, about to say something, I don’t even know what––
When a hard flash of purple-red magic slammed into him, knocking him out of my arms.