11. Tobin
Tobin
Asha looks down at her wrist one last time, then lifts her gaze to mine with that same infuriating, regal contempt she somehow manages in a body that should not be able to carry it.
I should leave it alone.
I don’t.
“You said you were minding your own business,” I say.
“I was.”
I study her face. Her pulse has settled. Her posture hasn’t. She’s still primed for violence, and under that is humiliation she would rather choke on than admit to. I know the feeling. SilverGate is excellent at producing it.
“Eska didn’t grab you at random,” I say. “He came looking for you.”
“And now he’s in a cell. I’d call that a productive afternoon.”
“You’re deflecting again,” Leith says.
She gives him a cool look. “Apparently that’s contagious around here.”
I almost smile. Instead, I glance at the courtyard around us.
Students have returned to their business, but half of them are still watching.
Upper years pretend subtlety badly. The other half are already spreading whatever version of that scene makes them feel worthy.
It makes no difference. Hale won that fight fair and square before the bell stopped him from ending it.
Leith shifts his attention to the tower doors. “We should move this inside before the audience decides Blackridge is too occupied to notice another fight brewing.”
That gets the smallest pause out of her.
“Your survival instinct is patchy,” I inform her.
Leith steps in before she can launch herself at me again. “Enough. If Blackridge dragged Hale to his office, this courtyard will be crawling with gossip for the next hour. Unless you’d like another scene, walk.”
Asha scans the watching students with a look that promises massacre at a later date. Then she turns on her heel and starts for the tower without asking whether we’re coming.
I fall into step beside her. Leith takes the other side, quiet and watchful. The crowd parts because Asha walks through them like she’s done with this bullshit.
“What exactly were you doing outside?” I ask her.
“What? Am I a prisoner?”
“No, but you were there when Eska threatened you. Most creatures have more care.”
“I’m beyond care,” she mutters, looking thoroughly pissed off.
She catches me looking at her and smiles tightly.
“Are you?” I ask, grasping her upper arm lightly as the staircase she was about to step on decided to swing to the right.
“Bastard,” she says, but I think she’s talking to the stairs.
“You are more than an anomaly. What are you?” I ask her outright.
She doesn’t look shocked or annoyed. She smirks arrogantly and shrugs out of my grip. “A low-level witch.”
“Wrong,” Leith says and ushers her onto the steps that swing our way with a hand at her lower back. She glares at it but doesn’t remove his hand.
Progress.
“Not wrong,” she says lightly.
“Very wrong,” I add, falling into step beside her. “You are all wrong, head to toe.”
She remains silent, simmering as we walk onto the second-floor hallway. She opens her door and pauses. “A woman doesn’t like being told she is wrong constantly. Perhaps you should consider that I’m right and all of you are wrong.”
With that, she stalks into her room and slams the door behind her.
“She kind of has a point,” Leith states. “Maybe it is us.”
I snort. “Maybe. But this is our realm, so chances are she is the wrong one.”
“I need to get to class,” he says and vanishes.
“And then there was one,” I murmur and rap on the door.
“Didn’t think you’d go,” Asha says, opening the door. “You are a stubborn witch.”
“My entire coven could be called the same. It’s our motto.”
“A coat of arms with a bull on it, maybe? Pertinax. Pertinacior. Pertinacissimus.”
Stubborn. Stubboner. Stubbornest. That gets a genuine laugh out of me. “Okay, touché. Your Latin is good.”
“Better than. But I’m not here to out-Latin you, arsehole.”
“Then why are you?”
“Ask that to the sky.”
“Do you know, or is this more of that selective amnesia?”
She shrugs.
I take the opportunity to brush past her into her room. She stumbles back with a curse and glares at me. “Close the door,” I say to her. “We are going to have a little chat.”
“Are we?” she states, crossing her arms and leaving the door wide open.
“If you really want to do this with the door open, be my guest, but you might not want everyone to hear what I’m about to say.”
More simmering silence.
“Fine. I think you are not wrong. Your body is, though. It’s not yours, and somehow you have ended up in a body that is either too weak to hold your true power, or your magic is incom—”
The door slams shut. She rounds on me. “Watch your words, witch.”
It comes out as a hiss. True, pure rage from a creature that definitely does not belong here. I hold up both hands, palms open, because I’m many things, but I’m not stupid enough to miss what that tone means.
“Easy,” I say. “I’m not trying to insult you.”
Her eyes sharpen to something ancient and wicked. It sends a thrill through me that I’m not proud of. “Then try harder.”
I take a slow breath and keep my voice level. “Your magic doesn’t match your vessel. That isn’t a judgement. It’s an observation.”
She goes very still.
That stillness is worse than the temper.
I’ve seen wild power before. I’ve seen unstable students blow their own nerves out trying to cast above their level. I’ve seen possessed bodies, fractured souls, bound familiars gone rabid, blood magic eating its way up an idiot’s arm because they thought old rules didn’t apply to them.
This doesn’t feel like any of that.
Asha stands in the middle of the room with her chin high and murder in her face, and I know with absolute certainty that if she had access to whatever sits behind those blue flickers of magic, I wouldn’t be standing here telling her anything.
I’d be on my knees if I was lucky.
“Who told you that?” she asks.
“No one.” I keep my eyes on hers. “They call me a prodigy for a reason. I’m not like the rest of my coven or any other coven practising in this realm.”
“Then what are you?”
“I asked you first.”
She clenches her teeth and inhales slowly. “Are you always this much of a dick?”
“Pretty much.”
Her eyes flash. Violet-blue and full of murder. “You are in my room uninvited, making assumptions you are not equipped to make.”
“I’m actually very well equipped.”
Her gaze drops to my cock, which I’ll admit is more than a little interested in getting wet.
“You males are all the same,” she says with disdain, dragging her gaze up to my face. “Thinking with your cocks and not your heads.”
“I always think with my head. My cock has opinions, sometimes I listen to them.”
“Oh? What’s it saying to you now?”
“It is begging me to pin you to the mattress and fuck you until you can’t remember the fake name you gave to Ryla.”
“Who says it’s fake?”
“Everything about you is… except what lies under the skin of that pretty, fragile, little body.”
Her breathing grows a bit heavier. “How powerful are you, Tobin?”
The way she says my name does nothing to quell the raging hard-on.
“How powerful do you need me?”
The question takes her completely off guard. She drops the attitude, and I see the workings underneath.
The calculation moves behind her eyes, and I realise I’ve finally reached something real.
The performance drops. The fury she throws around like a blade goes quiet. What’s left is need.
“Need you,” she says quietly. “I don’t need you.”
I let that hit, and then I move closer. Close enough to reach out and brush a strand of hair away from her face.
She flinches but doesn’t move otherwise.
“See, I think you do. You talk a good game, throwing threats around that you cannot follow through on and that will last maybe another day if you’re lucky. Then everyone will see the bullshit.”
She licks her lips. I’m getting to the truth, and she is listening to me, even if she doesn’t want to.
Her eyes fix on mine, and I swallow because the urge to kiss her, to claim her the way Hale has, is clawing at my insides.
She isn’t some random witch. She is the creature that I was meant to be with.
The woman who can match my power like no other witch can.
She is the beginning, the middle and the end.
I can feel it in the hum under her skin.
It sends a skitter across my skin, and I want more.
I put my hand on the side of her neck and feel the snap of restraint in her body.
She lets me touch her for half a second too long.
That is how I know I’m right.
Some details are still dark to me. Her true nature sits just beyond what I can name. What I have is the edge she’s balanced on, and the look in her eyes that tells me she knows exactly how close she is to falling.
“You need help,” I say.
Her lashes lower, and when she looks back at me, the hard mask is back in place. “You are getting very fucking bold.”
“I’m getting accurate.”
“Same thing to arrogant males.”
I let my thumb move once against her skin. Her pulse jumps. Mine answers. “Tell me what you need.”
“An exit.”
“Beyond that.”
Her eyes go darker. “Control.”
One word. The truth, and nothing dressed up around it. She doesn’t mean control of her magic. Oh no. She means control of everything.
I drop my hand and step back before I do something reckless. “Good,” I say quietly. “That, I can help with.”
She watches me as if she expects a trap. Fair enough. I’d expect one from me too. “Why?”
“I do things because they’re useful, and you being contained is a waste I’m not interested in watching happen slowly, over a term, while Blackridge collects the data.”
Asha’s arms drop, uncrossed at her sides, which is its own small victory. “So this is an experiment.”
“This is an investment.”
“Investments expect returns.”
“Yes.” I don’t bother pretending otherwise. “I want to know what you are. I want to be the one who taught you to survive here. And I want, more than anything, to see what happens when whatever’s under your skin stops being strangled.”
She studies me for a long moment, that calculation ticking behind her eyes again. “What do you want?”
“Blood. Truth. Maybe some other things.”
With that said, I snap my fingers and vanish from her room before she can respond. She will come to find me after she’s thought about it for five seconds. She needs a powerful ally if she wants to keep running her mouth off. But more than that, she knows I can do the things I said I could.
That matters more.