18. Asha
Asha
The room feels too small for four creatures and one academy in crisis.
I stare at Tobin while the walls hum under his hand. Hale is at my door like a living threat. Leith stands in the middle of the room with that awful stillness of his, listening to things I can’t hear. My pulse keeps time with the bells outside.
Then my bag moves.
Not much, but just enough to catch the attention of Hale and Leith. Tobin still has his back to it, which is a blessing.
The leather bulges once. A pulse of bruised purple flashes through the seams before vanishing.
“What’s in the bag?” Hale asks.
“Nothing you need to fuss about.”
“Asha,” Leith says, voice clipped. “What did you take from the library?”
I lift my chin. “A book.”
Another pulse hits the bag. Harder this time. The buckle snaps open.
Silver light from the bars outside cuts across the room. Purple answers from inside my bag. The two currents meet in the air between them and spit sparks over my desk.
Tobin has shifted his attention from the window to the bag. “Well. That doesn’t look good.”
I move towards it, but Hale gets there first.
His hand comes down on the bag just as the book inside bucks hard enough to slam the whole thing sideways. Purple light spills between his fingers, bright and hungry.
Hale swears and jerks his hand back. “Fuck. It bit me.”
I stop dead. “Good.”
Leith is at my side a second later. “Move.”
“I am not moving away from the one useful thing in this room.”
The book rises out of the bag on its own, pages riffling in a violent rush. Purple light spills over my desk, over my hands, over the stone floor. The silver bars over the window flare brighter in answer, and the whole room shudders.
“Fuck,” Tobin mutters.
The book opens in mid-air to a page with an intricate map on it. We all move closer by instinct.
Then it vanishes.
Not the map, the book.
“You arse!” I grit out and look around the room in case it has hidden itself somewhere.
“It didn’t vanish,” Tobin says sharply. “It translated.”
“Into where?” I snap.
“As if I know.”
The room jolts again. Hard. My chair tips over. Hale catches me by the waist before I can fall and crack my skull on the floor. On principle, I shove him off the second I’m steady.
Purple light streaks across the ceiling in thin branching lines, all of it pouring from nowhere and everywhere. It gathers over the centre of the room, twisting into the outline of the map I saw in the library. Not paper now. Not ink. Pure power suspended in the air.
Every line on it burns bruised purple.
SilverGate answers with fury.
The bars over the window blaze white. Wards scream through the walls. My skin goes tight with the pressure of them, and then I see it. Buried under the silver lattice of this academy, running beneath tower and hall and crypt, one hidden line pulsing in my colour.
StormGate.
I step forward without thinking.
Tobin catches my wrist. “Don’t.”
I turn to him. “Remove your hand.”
“No.”
Purple light slams down from the map and strikes the stone at my feet, splitting it. A circle of symbols flares open, ancient and vicious, half golden, half purple.
“My magic,” I croak and reach for it, but it drifts through my fingers like sand, and then it’s gone.
All of it.
Gone. The magic, the colours, the book, everything. Gone.
For one stunned beat, I can’t feel anything except the roaring absence where my power just was.
Then rage hits.
“What did you do?” I snarl at the room, at the academy, at the vanished book, at every meddling bastard across every realm who’s ever touched my life and made it worse.
The symbols on the floor pulse once, then start to dim.
“No.” I drop to my knees in the broken circle and slap both palms to the stone. “No, you don’t get to show me that and then fuck off.”
Nothing answers.
Hale crouches beside me and places his hand on the back of my neck. Sparks flare, but I shake him off. “Asha.”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out low and vicious. “Do not say that name in that sympathetic tone unless you want me to rip your throat out with these very inadequate fingers.”
“Sweet,” Tobin murmurs, stepping nearer to the ruined desk, “that’s better. Threats mean you’re functioning.”
I whip my head round. “You are two seconds from becoming decorative.”
Leith moves to the edge of the circle, blue eyes on the fading symbols. “It wasn’t random. The breach and the book reacted to each other.”
“Your magic tried to breach and used the only conduit it could,” Tobin states as tears prick my eyes, hot and angry. His gaze bores into mine, ignoring my pity party for one. “What was the title of the book? Where did you find it?”
I drag in a breath that scrapes my chest raw and force myself upright from the broken stone. “The Sovereign Fractures. Deities section. Third floor.”
Tobin’s eyes sharpen. “Where we were earlier. Who touched it before you?”
“I did.”
I stare at Leith as he answers. “You,” I say bitterly. “You broke it!”
“Or maybe I gave it what it needed to reach you,” he spits back, seriously pissed off that I dared to accuse him of something sinister.
It takes me aback for a second. I didn’t expect them to have real bite after all the fawning and arse-kissing.
Blinking back the tears, my attitude finds itself again. “Oh, good,” I say, ice-cold. “You do have a spine. I was beginning to think SilverGate only admitted insufferable males with protective instincts and no self-control.”
Leith’s eyes narrow. “Your mouth is going to get you in trouble.”
“My mouth has nothing to do with this. You glared into my soul, dragged me into the gods section, touched the cursed thing, and now my one useful lead has decided to perform an academy-wide tantrum.”
“That wasn’t a tantrum,” Tobin says, crouching near the broken stone. “That was a response.”
I wheel on him. “Do shut up before I test how responsive you are to blunt force trauma.”
He looks up at me, silver-eyed and infuriatingly calm.
“You can threaten me later. Right now, we need to work out how your magic breached the SilverGate wards for long enough to show itself to you, using a book and Leith. Not to mention, the more general question of where it came from and how it functions here when you don’t. ”
“So this is a learning experience for you?”
“Everything is a learning experience for me,” Tobin says. “That’s why I’m better than most.”
“I’m going to smash your face into the floor.”
He moves closer and finally calls my bluff. “Go on then, goddess, do your fucking worst.”
His silver eyes flash with danger, and he isn’t joking.
It’s humiliating and humbling, and all those other disgusting words I never thought would come into contact with me.
But underneath all this weakness, I’m still me. I step right into his space until there’s barely any air between us.
“I would,” I say softly, “if I thought it’d improve your face.”
His mouth curves, which is offensive in itself.
Then I do the thing he wasn’t expecting. I fist my hand in his shirt and drag him towards me, planting my lips on his in a bruising kiss.
He doesn’t even miss a beat. His hand closes around my throat, precise and firm, and he kisses me back with control.
With intent. His mouth takes mine apart in measured strokes that feel filthy because of how calm he is while I am very much not.
Magic crackles low in the room, wards shriek beyond the walls, and he still tastes of composure and arrogance.
I bite his lip for the sheer pleasure of disrupting that.
His fingers tighten once. “Violent,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“You keep provoking me.”
“Keep doing this instead.”
I kiss him harder just to punish the smug note in his voice, and the bastard makes a quiet sound that goes straight through me.
He drags me closer, and for one reckless second, I consider climbing him and taking what I want right here in the middle of the broken circle while the academy tears itself apart around us.
I pull back, breathing hard, and look over my shoulder at Hale to see his reaction.
It’s not what I expected. I expected possession and rage, but instead, he is aroused. His attention is fixed on my mouth, then on Tobin’s hand at my throat, then back to my face like he’s deciding whether this counts as a challenge or foreplay.
My pulse kicks.
Dangerous. Useful. Hot.
Leith looks bored, which I’m not sure if I find insulting or hotter than Hale’s interest. I always did love a challenge.
Tobin’s thumb strokes once against the side of my neck before he lets go. “Done proving your point?”
“No,” I say, though my voice comes out rougher than I’d like. “Not even close.”
“Tough,” Leith says, “Because we have an actual problem.”
Tobin glances at my mouth once, then at the cracked floor. “I can multitask.”
Another tremor rolls through the tower. Dust falls from the ceiling. The white bars across the window flare so bright I have to squint.
Leith crouches at the edge of the ruined circle and puts two fingers against one fading symbol. Blue light ghosts over his skin, quiet and cold. “This isn’t dead.”
Hope punches through me so fast it hurts. “Then why is it fading?”
“Because it isn’t meant to stay open in here,” he says. “SilverGate is suppressing it.”
Hale straightens from the door and turns his head slightly, listening to the corridor beyond. “We’ve got company.”
“Students?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Staff. Fast.”
Tobin stands at once. “How long?”
“Seconds.”
“Hide it,” Tobin says. He flicks his fingers at the floor. Silver magic lashes out in clean lines around the broken circle, trying to contain the fading symbols. The purple under it recoils, then burns brighter for one ugly second like it recognises it.
Leith rises in one smooth movement. “Too late.”
A knock hits my door.
Not a polite one. Official. Sharp. Final.
Blackridge.
My spine goes cold. “Wonderful.”
Tobin looks at me. “If he sees that floor, this gets complicated.”
“This was uncomplicated before?”
“No,” he says. “But now it’s interesting in a way I don’t enjoy.”
The symbols pulse again, weaker now, but still alive. Purple light leaks through Tobin’s silver netting and crawls across the cracks in the stone. I drop to my knees and slap both hands over the centre mark as if I can smother it by force.
“Do not die on me now,” I mutter to the floor.
Blackridge knocks once more. “Miss Asha. Open the door before I assume the worst and blow it off its hinges.”