Chapter 55
Talisa
Shaken to the core after my unexpected encounter with Lukhan, I entered the infirmary ward.
He’d been as arrogant and nasty as always, but for one suspended heartbeat, I thought I saw something raw in his expression that wasn’t contempt or rage but grief, naked and unguarded.
And I’d felt sorry for him.
Then his expression closed like a door slamming shut, and he stepped aside, waving us past with a mocking bow and a sweeping gesture.
Damien looked like someone had taken a hammer to a statue and then tried, imperfectly, to glue the pieces back together.
But he was alive.
And he was smiling as we approached his bed.
“Miss Bernswick,” he said. His voice was rougher than I remembered. “Mr. Ferraro. Misses Bernswick.” He nodded to each of us, his formality undercut by the warmth in his expression. “Please. Sit.”
Other than him, the ward had no patients. We fetched chairs and arranged them around his bed.
“We came to thank you,” I said. The words felt inadequate even before they left my mouth. “What you did—”
“Was the only honorable thing to do,” Damien interrupted. “I owed you a life-debt, Miss Bernswick, for saving my life during the Aurelian Trials.”
“You didn’t owe us anything,” I said. “You shouldn’t have put yourself in danger like that.”
He shook his shaved head gingerly. “I couldn’t do that and live with myself afterward.”
Elio was watching him with a wary, assessing expression.
“We would have died if you hadn’t been there,” Juno said. “Lady Cresta’s spell…”
“She’s very good,” Damien said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Combat-grade Air magic requires a great deal of magical control. If I hadn’t been there, it would have hit both of you, and—” He stopped.
Looked at their faces. And visibly edited his next words.
“But I was there. So let’s not dwell on what didn’t happen. ”
Mira reached out. Her fingers hovered over his bandaged hand for a moment, uncertain, then touched him with a gentleness that made my throat ache.
She was too young to learn what gratitude tasted like when it was mixed with the memory of blood on flagstones.
“Until now,” she said, her voice soft but steady, “I thought heroes only existed in stories.”
Something happened to Damien’s face. The stoic mask he usually wore and his aristocratic reserve fell away, replaced by something that made him look younger, warmer, almost shy.
A flush climbed his throat and settled on his cheeks, staining his yellowing bruises. His eyes crinkled at the corners as his smile deepened, and he glanced away.
He looked like a boy who’d been caught doing something kind and wasn’t prepared for anyone to notice.
And he was gorgeous.
The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water.
I’d recognized that Damien Corvellan was, objectively, a handsome youth. But repelled by his behavior and his friends, I’d felt nothing but disgust and caution around him.
Now, I was struck with the sudden, inconvenient awareness that his smile did something complicated to my insides. His scarred scalp made me want to stroke it and feel the golden stubble under my palm. The breadth of his shoulders under his thin linen bed-shirt was strangely appealing.
That I was noticing this at all, with Elio sitting three feet away, was wrong—
My face felt hot.
I shut down my shameful train of thought and fixed my gaze on the blanket covering Damien’s legs, concentrating on the patterned weave.
Elio’s hand found mine. His thumb traced a slow circle on the inside of my wrist. He’d noticed my sudden blush. Elio noticed everything.
I squeezed his fingers and didn’t look at him.
“Thank you,” I said to Damien. My voice came out steadier than I expected. “What you did for my sisters—I will be grateful for the rest of my life. If there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all, you have only to ask.”
Damien studied me for a long moment. His shy, utterly disarming smile vanished, replaced by a more familiar solemnity.
“Your sisters were the means, not the end. The Custodes want to crush you. And make you leave this place.”
His words landed like stones.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” His gray eyes held mine. “Because I don’t think you really understand. Ormond and his accomplices might be gone now, but the Custodes Sanguinis will continue to see you as a genuine threat.”
The ward felt suddenly cold.
“I won’t leave,” I told him. “I won’t stop trying to get the education and training I’m entitled to. His Imperial Majesty’s father promised that all prospective mages would be welcome here.”
Something flickered in Damien’s expression—approval, maybe. Or was it respect? “I already noticed you’re stubborn,” he said, sounding rueful.
“You’re welcome to join us at our tea circle,” I said on impulse. “We meet twice a week after supper in the Western Tower common room. We’d be honored to have you.”
I expected disbelieving laughter. A polite refusal, at best, delivered with an aristocratic smile that conveyed how charming, and also no.
Damien looked at me with grave, direct courtesy. “Thank you for the invitation, Miss Bernswick. I would like that very much.”
Elio made a small, choked sound that might have been surprise.
We said our goodbyes after that. Mira and Juno both hugged him, as carefully as if he were a blown-glass statue, and he endured it with good-natured grace.
On the way back to the Western Tower, Mira and Juno walked ahead of us, close enough that I could see them, far enough that I could talk to Elio in private.
Elio’s hand was warm in mine.
“So,” he said. His voice sounded as if he’d been rehearsing his words in his head for the past few minutes. “I may have been wrong about Corvellan.”
I glanced at him. The sunlight gilded his profile, painting the strong line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, and his lush, curling chestnut hair. “Wrong how?”
Elio shrugged. “All this time, I’ve had him pegged as Lukhan’s loyal lieutenant. The muscle with a pretty face and not much going on behind it.” He paused. “Turns out there’s quite a lot going on behind it. Including a functioning conscience. Which, for an aristocrat, is basically a birth defect.”
I snorted.
“He’s decent,” Elio said. The word came out grudgingly, as if it had cost him something to admit it. “If you define ‘decent’ as ‘willing to take a combat spell to the chest for two commoner girls he barely knows.’ Which, granted, sets the bar fairly high.”
I laughed, then stopped as I remembered the implications. I’d already overheard aristocratic students talking about the incident… and what they thought of Damien’s actions that night.
“They’ll make him pay for what he did,” Elio said, echoing my thoughts.
“Testifying against Ormond, implicating Montplaisir—that’s breaking ranks.
Damien’s father might be a famous general, but Cresta’s father sits on the Imperial Council.
Bernardo’s uncle commands the navy. And Ormond’s mother is not only the Duchess of Monteleno and the Domina-Regent’s cousin, but she’s chief imperial counselor, too.
Damien may have just burned every bridge he had. ”
“I think he knows that,” I said finally. “I think he knew it when he protected Mira and Juno.”
“Which makes him decent instead of merely… dramatic,” Elio commented dryly.
We walked in silence for a few paces. Students hurried by on their way to classes or the library.
“The tea circle thing, though,” Elio said suddenly, in a much lighter tone.
“Let’s be realistic. Damien Corvellan, son and heir of the famous General Lucius Corvellan, is never going to lower himself to sit on our sagging sofa, drinking tea from a chipped cup and listening to Alara complain about Mage-Instructor Varro’s grading system. ”
I giggled. I couldn’t help it. The image was too perfect—Damien’s broad shoulders wedged onto one of the common room’s battered sofas, his aristocratic mouth pursed around the rim of a teacup purchased from a second-hand shop in the city.
“You never know. Stranger things have happened,” I said.
“Name one.”
“You fell in love with me.”
Elio considered this. “Fair point. And my life got better. And significantly more interesting.” His fingers laced through mine. “Speaking of interesting… You’re attracted to him,” he stated.
Shocked, I stopped and gaped at him. “Elio—”
“It’s fine.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m not blind, Talisa. I have eyes. He’s rich, handsome, and an actual honest-to-Solvian hero. And his shoulders are probably twice as wide as mine.”
We stood in the middle of the path, as I searched his face for the hurt I knew should be there. I didn’t find it.
“You’re not angry?” I asked.
“Why would I be angry?” He looked genuinely puzzled.
“You looked at another man and found him attractive. This is news? I look at Varro’s teaching assistant, Emina, every time I’m in Potions lab and admire her, uh, lips.
And other features. But it doesn’t mean anything.
Other than I have a pulse and functioning aesthetic judgment.
I’m with you, and I don’t want to be with anyone else.
” His mouth quirked. “Also, if I got jealous every time someone noticed you, I’d have no energy left for anything else.
You’re rather noticeable, Miss Bernswick.
It’s one of your more inconvenient qualities. ”
The relief that washed through me was embarrassing in its intensity. I went up on tiptoes and kissed him, because words couldn’t communicate what I felt, which was that I loved him, fiercely and without reservation.
When I pulled back, he was smiling, and his eyes shone as if lit by a mage-light from within.
“Besides,” he said, “if Damien Corvellan ever shows up for tea, I intend to watch him fit his aristocratic posterior onto our sofa. I’ll place bets on whether it finally collapses. I’ve been wondering about its structural integrity ever since I arrived here.”