19. The Rose
Chapter 19
The Rose
I t was too much: my arrival, the challenge, the demons, my secret, Grayson, all of it—too much.
I ducked into the first empty hallway I saw and pressed the heels of my hand against my eyes, grateful the lighting from the lanterns was dim.
One day, a handful of hours, and the decade of care I’d taken to never be discovered was put at risk. They hadn’t been looking for me—for anyone before this. Why search for signs of a threat that didn’t—couldn’t exist? The mere whisper of demons would call the absence of elementals into question. Observations would become suspicions, suspicions would grow into questions, and questions could only lead to discovery.
Kenna already questioned the words I’d exchanged with the demons. She’d been watching me since the moment we stepped foot back on campus as if waiting for me to make a mistake or reveal some buried truth about what happened. If she discovered me, if she found out what I was, there wasn’t a sliver of doubt in my mind she’d report me or take matters into her own hands. Everyone would know—the pack, Ivy, Lucas, Grayson–they would all know.
And they’d hate me for it.
I pushed away the thought and pressed into the cool stone of the wall behind me, sending a prayer to the sun and moon that it would suppress the embers beneath my skin.
If Fenrir were here he’d give me five minutes. Five minutes to panic. Five minutes to pull myself together and do what needed to be done for both the pack’s survival and my own.
Five.
I could do this. I could keep my head down and get through this. Calm. I just needed to stay calm.
Four.
Tears streamed down my face without my consent. How was I supposed to stay calm through this? Even if I did manage to keep my secret, the demons had returned. What death and destruction would they bring with them?
Three.
I couldn’t just keep my head down. I had to lead. I had to prove that I could lead, especially through trials and tribulations.
Two.
The pack depended on me whether they knew it yet or not. A meek leader in the face of danger would only lead to failure.
One.
Failure meant the death of the pack, and death was not an option. I would defend them. I vowed to defend them from harm, and I would not break that vow out of self-centered fear.
Zero.
My time was up. I pulled the leather cord from the bottom of my braid and shook out my hair to better obscure the remnants of tears that were sure to be present on my face. With one more fortifying breath, I opened my eyes to leave.
I wasn’t alone.
Standing in the hall, leaning against the wall across from me was the death god. The low lighting did nothing to diminish the chill of his stare. He made no move to speak, showing no sign of concern or disgust at my rumpled state. He showed no sign of emotion at all.
Well if he wasn’t going to speak, I certainly wasn’t going to either. He was the one watching me. I hadn’t sought him out or asked him to linger, and what purpose did his presence serve, anyway? Had he hoped to exploit a weakness? Catalog my vulnerability for his future advantage? Or was it the ring binding him to me?
With every new heartbeat that he watched me, electricity danced along my spine and across my skin, spreading until I felt nearly consumed by the sensation. Was this his magic? I knew foxes had their own affinities, but I’d learned very little about what they were or how they came to be.
How long would we stay this way? I didn’t bother to wipe my eyes or hide my face, he’d already seen it and more. I didn’t know how long he’d stood there, but I cursed us both. Him, for being eerily silent and sneaking past my senses, and myself for letting him.
If he wasn’t going to say or do something, this was a monumental waste of my time. There was no reason to act as though he held me captive. My eyes rolled at the thought before I could think better of it, and when they landed back on him, I swore the corner of his mouth had curved the most infinitesimal amount into a smirk. I straightened my shoulders and took a step to leave. He pushed off from his spot on the wall, but what he planned to do next would remain a mystery for he froze when voices from around the corner reached us.
My heart sank to my stomach. At least one of those voices was from a pack member. I’d stopped crying but the likelihood my face was splotch-free—I was not an attractive crier—was nearly impossible. I looked to either end of the hall for an exit, but in one direction came the approaching students, and the other led back to the infirmary where any of the others could be lingering.
But then I was moving backward.
My back would have crashed into the stone behind me if not for the arm now banded around my waist. The position was so similar to how he and his court had found Grayson and me on my first day, yet it felt entirely different, closer. Warmer.
Every part of my body was pressed into his. From toe to chest, he arched over me, his face hovering a few inches above mine. His forearm rested against the wall just above my head, caging me to him. Heat radiated from his skin to mine, and I wondered how someone so cold could give off so much warmth.
Asher’s eyes roamed over my face, and mine did the same to him. I could see a thin ring of aqua lining his pupils from this distance, and tiny speckles of silver dotted his charcoal hair like stardust. No one could ever doubt he was a moon fox. He was the very personification of night. How many had the chance to see him from this close a distance and live to tell the tale?
“Shhh—stop!” The scuff of shoes grinding to a halt followed the man’s whisper shout.
“Oh, goddess,” another voice said, “Is that Asher? With a girl?”
“As if.” This came from a female. “His Highness would never stoop so low as to be with an Academy girl.” Well someone sounds rather bitter about that.
“That’s definitely him, but who’s he with?” My eyes turned to saucers, and I regained my good sense enough to push against his chest. I’d rather go back to the infirmary and risk Grayson and Kenna’s too-observant eyes over this. He didn’t budge. Instead, he smiled, and damn him for how stunning it was.
“I don’t know, his arm’s blocking her. Just walk past them and see if we can tell,” The first voice suggested, “No way anyone believes this.” I pushed harder against his chest as the shuffling of feet grew closer, but he only held me tighter.
Asher’s smile transformed into a glower as he turned his head to look at the onlookers. He growled. They scattered. And only when they were fully out of earshot did he drop his arm and step away from me.
He’d kept me hidden, I realized much too slowly. Before I could form rational words or ask why he’d done that for me, the man quirked a single, perfectly arched eyebrow and walked out of the hallway without a word or backward glance. His only goodbye was a flick of his wrist that somehow sent a small gust of wind over my face. Was I supposed to know what that meant?
Grayson slipped past him as he left and shot a confused look between the two of us. I cleared the lingering tightness from my throat and quickly moved to wipe the tears from my face. My fingers found only dry skin. Had Asher hidden that too? Maybe the trinket on my finger had its perks afterall.
“Were you just talking to the Crown Prince of Elestia?”
I pushed off of the wall but let him come to me instead of walking to meet him. “I wouldn’t call it talking.”
His head reared back. I took pleasure in the tightening of his jaw when he asked,“Then what would you call it?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” I said and moved to walk away, “I don’t want to do this right now, Grayson.”
“Briar, wait.” I didn’t. I was tired of being obstructed by others today, and the command in his voice held no power over me. “Please.”
That one word, on the other hand, gave me pause. Outside of requests to his mother and father, I didn’t think Grayson had uttered the word please to anyone in the ten years I’d known him. Pack Princes gave orders, but they didn’t make requests.
I didn’t stop, not completely, but I slowed my pace. I really wanted to get to Isaac’s room, wash up, and try to recover from the day’s events for a few minutes before we went to see the Headmaster, but it seemed like I’d run out of time anyway.
I turned to Grayson and gave him a nod to walk with me over my shoulder. He took one stride for every two of mine; he was at my side a moment later.
“Speak.” I’d had my fill of silent conversations.
“Goddess, Bri.” He chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. I decided I wouldn’t say I liked his smile. “I’m only trying to check on you. Is that such a hardship to endure?”
I looked at him sideways and said nothing as I returned to my normal pace.
The fear, the panic, that had afflicted me since the demon first smiled at me was still lingering beneath my skin. I pushed it down. Fear would not save me. I may be discovered and imprisoned—or worse—by the week’s end, but until then I’d be damned if I allowed my actions to be dictated by others.
“Nothing to say in response?” he continued the one-sided conversation, instilling a fleck of teasing into his voice, “That’s a bit out of character don’t you think? What if we went and grabbed those slices of cake? We can catch up, just like my father hoped we would. What do you say?”
He dropped a heavy arm over my shoulder to draw me near to him, but I ducked and spun away from it until there was a safe distance between us. I couldn’t think when he was touching me, loathe as I was to admit it.
“I say no,” I said definitively, turning to face him fully and crossing my arms over my chest. “Please explain to me which of our interactions since I arrived led you to believe I have any interest in sitting around eating cake and catching up with you?”
If I didn’t know better I’d say there was a slight tinge of red atop his cheeks forming as I spoke.
“Was it when I arrived on campus and you chose not to meet me?” I continued. “Or when I came to you in the quad and the first words you spoke to me in nearly three years were undermining my ability?” The redness grew darker as his eyes grew wider.
“Oh, I know,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, “It must have been just now in the hallway when you, again, assumed that I couldn’t possibly be anything other than the victim in distress, the cause of this entire altercation, right?”
If I captured his expression and asked a stranger to describe it they’d say it was a man in shock. He peered at me the way I imagined I stared after biting into a peach and finding it was a carrot in disguise. Mouth agape, eyebrows lifted, head drawn back, pupils dilated from the low lighting.
“Well?” I asked. “When was it? Because as far as I could tell there was nothing remotely akin to friendship between us anymore, and that was your choice, Grayson–not mine, yours. So when did you decide I was suddenly worthy of a civil conversation?”
I knew berating him wasn’t going to help anything, but goddess help me, it had been a long day and my self-restraint had disappeared along with my energy reserves.
“I was just doing what I thought was right for the pack,” Grayson said each word slowly, like if he spoke too forcefully he spook me like a wild animal caught in a cage. “I’m the Alpha, it’s my duty to put the pack?—”
“And, what? Until I killed a demon I wasn’t part of it?” Silence. “I meant nothing? We meant nothing?” My eyes jumped between each of his, searching for a shred of evidence he regretted his choices, and not just because he needed to present a united front around our adversaries and allies.
When the silence between us dragged on I said, “I guess not. You know, Gray, I didn’t think we’d run into each other’s arms and be the very best of friends when I got here. I’m not quite as obtuse as you seem to think, but I did expect you to at least show me the same decency you’d show to anyone else in this pack.”
“You are the furthest thing from everyone else in this pack,” he practically growled at me, face transforming from bewildered one second to a disbelieving glower in the next. “Don’t you think if I were capable of pretending you were one of them, I would?”
And there it was. “I may not be able to transform into a wolf, a lion, or even a snake,” I said emotionlessly.
“That’s not what I?—”
“But I found other ways to make myself a predator. I think I more than proved that today, don’t you?”
“Of course you did. Briar, when Pax found me and told me you’d been in a battle in the woods, I thought that was going to be the end—your end.” He put his hands atop both of my shoulders and bent so we were at eye level. “And it didn’t matter he assured me you were fine. Despite every scrap of logic I told myself, all I could focus on was getting to you, holding you to prove to myself you weren’t harmed. I was sure I’d find you injured or bleeding out right in front of me, but you weren’t. You fought demons. You fought them and you won. If you think that didn’t change how I’m looking at you, then you’re not paying close enough attention.”
He was good, I’d give him that. I’d be a puddle at his feet if I hadn’t known the truth. He looked at me like he wanted me—needed me, but he didn’t, and dammit if that didn’t hurt.
“Congratulations.” I stepped back, his arms falling to his sides as he straightened. “Your opinion of me changed. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my opinion of you.”
“Just give me a chance, Bri.” he repeated the plea from earlier.
“Earn one. Because whatever this hot and cold game is you’ve been playing, I want nothing more to do with it.”
Let him do the work to impress me this time around, however devious his motives may be. Let him keep his focus on gaining my trust instead of further questioning how I managed to kill the demons in the first place.
I walked away from him, and this time he made no move to stop me.