15. Hale
Hale
Tobin joins me in moving closer to where Leith and Asha are sitting.
“This is a conversation for all of us, I think,” I state, stopping next to Asha and resisting the urge to place my hand on the back of her neck. She will probably try to chew it off, judging by the state of her face.
“Shut up and say that again,” she growls.
“Did you just address both of us in one sentence?” I ask as Tobin pulls up a chair and leans his elbows on the table.
“How much did you hear?” she asks, swivelling her gaze to mine.
“All of it. You aren’t very good at sensing in that body, are you?”
“I’m not very good at anything in this body,” she replies and then smiles slowly. “Well, maybe one thing.”
“Oh, you are exceptional at riding my cock, sweetheart.”
Her face changes in an instant. “Don’t call me that.” She drags her gaze from mine back to Leith. “The wards fall for you?”
Leith sits back and regards her with the expression of a reaper deciding how much to tell her.
I perch on the edge of the table and cross my arms, eagerly awaiting his response.
Not because I don’t know, but because of how Asha is going to take it.
She wants out of here badly enough that she will do anything to achieve it.
Leith’s gaze shifts to me for half a second and then back to her.
Leith taps one finger against the table. “Some of them. Not all.”
Asha goes very still. It’s the dangerous kind. The kind that makes me think of a hound sighting prey through brush and deciding whether to spring or stalk.
“Which ones?” she asks.
“The Academy gates don’t care for me,” he says. “The outer path wards do. The library lets me into places it denies most students. The lower crypt wards ignore me if I’m nice to them. The northern boundary wards which lead into the forest…” He pauses. “They hesitate.”
Asha’s attention sharpens. “Hesitate how?”
“Like they recognise me, but not in the way they were built to. Reaper blood confuses old death wards. They register me as a function before a threat.”
Asha’s fingers curl on the tabletop. “So if I went with you…”
“They might not reject you instantly,” Leith says. “Or they might tear you apart for trying to piggyback through my access.”
Her gaze lifts to mine. “And you knew this?”
“I knew.”
“So when I said I wanted to get out of here, you conveniently forgot to mention it?” she hisses.
“Nope, I just didn’t tell you what I knew because, firstly, it’s not my secret to tell and, secondly, I’m not sure leaving is in your best interest.”
“You have absolutely no right to decide that.”
“I can decide plenty when it concerns your survival,” I say. “You think I’m going to hand you a half-formed escape route and watch you get shredded by wards because you’re angry and stubborn?”
Her chair scrapes back hard over the stone.
“Try controlling me again,” she says softly, and that soft tone makes my cock nearly burst. “See how well that goes for you.”
“Oh, I’ve seen how it goes for me. Usually with you naked and impaled on my cock.”
Tobin pinches the bridge of his nose. “Can you not do this now?”
“Why?” I ask without looking at him. “It’s working for me.”
Asha rounds on me with murder in those blue eyes. “You arrogant, possessive—”
“Hellhound,” I cut in. “Yeah. We’ve covered it.”
Leith speaks before she launches herself at me. “Enough.”
That one word lands cold and clean. It doesn’t stop the bond under my skin from pulling tight, but it does stop the room from tipping into a proper brawl.
Asha shifts her focus to him instead, all that fury narrowing into something sharper, but he speaks before she can say anything.
“But I agree with Hale that it’s not in your best interest.”
Her face goes a delightful shade of puce, which is a remarkable achievement.
“Hear me out,” he says.
“If you don’t end with ‘we are busting out of here’ in five seconds, you are dead. All of you.”
“What did I do?” Tobin asks.
She doesn’t dignify that with an answer.
“I can let you out of here, but consider that Blackridge will know the second you leave and will hunt you down to bring you back. Then he will absolutely lock you up in a warded facility that you will not escape. I will likely be imprisoned or expelled, depending on how helpful my dad decides to be about it, and you will have a less-than-zero chance of making it back to your home realm.”
Asha simmers as I smile at her. She is quiet, contemplating Leith’s words. “I’m willing to take that chance.”
“I’m not,” he says, “because it’s pointless.”
“Pointless for whom? You?”
“You. What you seek is here. At SilverGate Academy. Reason number four you were sent here and not to some wasteland realm where you’d be floating off into deep space with no chance of ever going back home.”
Now that interests me.
A lot.
“Fate, sweetheart,” I say to her.
She sits back down. “Don’t be obnoxious, arsehole. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I think it does, but I’ll try to curb the instinct.”
“You do that,” she grouses. “I need to think. Leave.”
“Is that an order?” I ask, standing anyway.
“Did I speak a language you don’t understand?”
“No, I understood you just fine. I’m just not used to being ordered about by tiny, little blonde creatures with no power.”
“Wait,” she growls. “Just wait until I have my powers back.”
I grin at her because I can’t help it. “Can’t fucking wait.”
She looks seconds from trying to make good on the threat with a library chair, which is honestly one of her more charming qualities.
Leith rises first. Tobin follows, slower, silver eyes still on Asha like he’s noticing every twitch for later use. I pull my attention off the urge to kiss her furious mouth just to see if she’d bite me again.
“We’ll talk tonight,” Tobin says.
“No, we won’t,” Asha snaps.
“That’s cute,” he replies. “We absolutely will.”
I laugh and head for the stairs before she decides to start throwing books. The library doesn’t like that, and I’m not in the mood to get chased out by homicidal shelves.
The second we step into the corridor outside, the bond under my skin tightens. It’s not pain. It’s pressure. A live, hot line still pointing straight back to her. She’s pacing already. I can feel the restless push of her through it, all fury and calculation and caged violence.
Tobin shuts the door behind us. “Well. That went better than expected.”
“Did it?” I ask.
“She didn’t stab anyone.”
“She considered it,” I mutter. “Several times.”
“It went well considering violence is her baseline,” Leith states.
“That’s one of her better qualities,” I say.
Tobin glances at me. “Your standards remain deranged.”
“They’ve improved,” I reply.
We reach the stairwell. Students move around us in little groups, loud and nosy and already full of gossip.
My bond pulls again.
Harder this time.
I stop on the top step.
Leith clocks it first. “What?”
I lift a hand. “Wait.”
The line under my skin goes hot, sharp and wrong. Power. Thin, strangled power pushing against something too tight to contain it.
“Asha is…” I grunt.
“Asha is what?” Tobin asks, gripping my elbow as I double over.
“Angry.”
“What else is new?” Leith mutters.
“No,” I rasp. “This is cold fury. It’s like acid in her veins.”
“Do you really think she was sent here because SilverGate knows the way home for her?” Tobin asks quietly.
“It was a wild guess,” Leith says after a beat. “It all was. It was alarmingly accurate.”
“No need to be smug about it,” I growl as the pain passes and Tobin releases my arm.
“I’m not smug; I’m concerned. She shouldn’t be here.”
“No shit.”
“She didn’t do this to herself to escape or to hide from something.
This was done to her. A god in her realm banished her here.
Or rather, not here on purpose, but banished her out of their realm.
She landed here because of us and because of what SilverGate can do for her.
Her magic—her goddess power—protected her when all else failed. ”
“You think her way home is somewhere on these grounds?” I ask, eyes narrowed.
“I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a big thing to be certain about if you’re wrong.”
“I’m aware. But I’m never wrong.”
“It’s true,” Tobin says. “He isn’t.”
“His rightness has never been about a fucking portal doorway back to a realm that houses gods as rulers,” I point out.
“True,” Tobin admits, staring at Leith. “You’d better not be wrong.”
Trying to push away the residual pain from the bond, I inhale deeply. “She is going to look for this doorway on her own and cut us out of the equations entirely.”
“She won’t be able to,” Leith says.
“Well, we’ll see,” I mutter as a murmur ripples through the hallway, and then Blackridge appears.
He doesn’t stop for anyone, simply brushes past us all, leaving dominion and ice in his wake.
“We’d better get back to lectures,” I mutter, not wanting another trip to his office right now.
We fall into step down the corridor, and I let the crowd swallow some of the noise in my head.
It doesn’t work. The bond doesn’t care about crowds.
It sits in my soul like a hook and tugs.
We reach the lecture corridor, and Leith peels off without a word, like he always does when he’s decided a conversation is over.
No goodbye or nod. Just gone, like death itself got bored and wandered elsewhere.
I watch him go and feel the itch under my skin ease a fraction.
Asha is further away from me now, but I can still feel her, and she is still ready to burn this place down, looking for her way back home.