Chapter 50 #2
“Miss Bernswick has earned the right to be treated as an honorable enemy,” Damien continued.
“No more pranks. No more stealing. And don’t you dare terrorize her sisters with glamors that would make a battle-mage blanch.
Miss Bernswick might be a commoner, but she beat you.
Fairly. In front of the Domina-Regent and everyone else at the amphitheater that day.
If you can’t handle that, the problem isn’t her—it’s you. ”
Ormond stirred. He was as tall as Damien, elegant in his perfectly tailored academic gown, his dark blue eyes cool with disdain.
“This vulgar display of emotion is beneath you, Corvellan. That girl is just a peasant from the back of beyond with an accent thick as cheese. She doesn’t belong here, and everyone with eyes can see it. ”
“Then let her fail on her own merits.” Damien didn’t budge. “Not because you broke the rules to ensure she couldn’t succeed.”
The silence that followed had weight.
Damien turned to leave. His gaze swept past me—through me—without a flicker of recognition. Then he walked away down the colonnade with his shoulders set and his long strides eating the marble pavement beneath his boots.
As the sound of his footsteps faded, Cresta recovered first. She smoothed a hand over her usual elaborate hairstyle. Her smile reappeared, bright and poisonous.
“Well, that was interesting.” She turned to me, and the delight in her eyes looked genuine, which made it worse. “Your lapdog has developed teeth, Lord Lukhan.”
“Temporary insanity,” Bernardo said, but he looked shaken. His hand kept flexing at his side, opening and closing as if he wanted to wrap it around something and squeeze. “He’ll come around, Clarence. He always does.”
“Will he?” Ormond adjusted the fall of his sleeve with fastidious care. “I’m not convinced. He spoke of Miss Fishwife with actual respect. I may have even sensed admiration. Dangerous territory for a man in your position, FitzMurad.”
A warning stab of pain blossomed behind my left eye. I smiled. It was the smile I’d practiced in my mirror until it looked effortless—slightly amused, slightly bored, the expression of a man who found other people’s emotional theatrics entertaining.
“Just ignore him. Damien has a sentimental streak. It passes.” I tucked my hands into the pockets of my gown and leaned against the pillar. “Tell me about the glamor. I assume it achieved the desired effect?”
Cresta’s laugh was bright and musical. “Oh, it was perfect. I heard Julissa dismissed the entire thing. She even suggested Miss Fishwife was hallucinating from stress. Can you imagine? I wish I’d been there to see that trollop’s face when the assistant chatelaine told her to get some sleep.
” She pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes dancing. “It must have been priceless.”
“Lord Ormond arranged it,” Bernardo said, smirking. “He had one of the sixth-years cast it. She specializes in combat glamors. The blood alone was an absolute masterpiece. I’m the one who cast the invisibility charm to get her into the Western Tower.”
“Fascinating,” I said.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Ormond said, watching me like a man assessing a racehorse he wanted to bet on, “before she and her sisters can’t take the pressure and transfer out.
I’ve seen it before. The provincial academies are perfectly adequate for commoners of her caliber.
She’ll do the sensible thing sooner rather than later, mark my words. ”
That’s what I’d thought, too, five months ago. But Talisa of Bernswick had proved astonishingly stubborn. And resourceful.
Then again, the Custodes Sanguinis was now involved. And they worked the way Father had always said true power should work: invisibly, through channels no one could trace, leaving no fingerprints.
Soon, hopefully very soon, Talisa of Bernswick would cease to be a problem. She would pack her ugly, rustic clothing and her clunky, hideous shoes, and her stubborn refusal to acknowledge her place, and she would depart.
And then the academy would settle back into the orderly, safe place it was meant to be.
I belong here. These people see my value. They chose me, I told myself as my persistent unease rose to chew at the edges of my certainty.
But if the Custodes ever find out…
If my beauty glamors ever failed again and they noticed the roots of my dyed hair…
or if they ever wondered why my eyes sometimes caught the light wrong, or why my reflexes were faster than they should be, or, worst of all, if anyone on the Imperial Council ever gossiped about the true reason Father had been forced to resign his position…
I knew that officers from the Genealogical Inquest Office would appear at the academy in a matter of hours. I’d be arrested and tested for the taint of Fae lineage, and then the truth would be out.
Father would be arrested, too, for violating the Supernatural Relations Act by taking a Fae noblewoman as his illicit concubine while serving as ambassador to the Fae Federation, then knowingly deceiving the authorities about his half-Fae child, failing to report my existence, and allowing me to attend a human institution under false pretenses.
Without the protection of his former status as an imperial councilor, he’d be sentenced to prison and lose what little remained of his standing.
And he and everyone else in my family would blame me for it.
As to what might happen to me afterwards—
I didn’t let myself finish the thought. I never did. It was a void I couldn’t look into without feeling the ground vanish beneath my feet.
Most of all, I feared that Damien’s distance wasn’t temporary.
Ormond had been right. Damien had spoken of Miss Fishwife with respect. With admiration.
A surge of possessive fury settled into my bones like a fever and burned there.
I won’t let Miss Fishwife take Damien from me.
She’d already stolen so much—my peace of mind, my victory, the fragile sense of safety I had built here piece by careful piece. She can’t have him too.
I pushed off from the pillar and straightened my sleeves. Pain pulsed once, sharply, behind my eye, and subsided.
“Keep the pressure on, Lord Ormond,” I said. “She’s stubborn. Believe me, it will take more than one glamor to break her.”
He nodded.
Cresta’s smile widened. “Oh, we’re just getting started.”