Chapter 56
Talisa
“Are you feeling all right? You’ve messed up that rune sequence four times now,” Elio observed a few hours later.
I looked down. He was right. “Dammit.”
We were in the library, studying for our Fundamentals of Magecraft exams. I’d been trying to memorize the rune sequence for a charm that Mundise had warned us would be on the test, but somehow I kept adding an extra loop to the last rune.
“I can’t focus,” I admitted, setting down my pen. It was an inexpensive one, part of the school supplies that Mama had bought for me in Herrewick. The cheap nib was spotted with rust and visibly worn after months of note-taking and writing essays.
As I watched, a drop of ink gathered at its tip and dripped onto the margin of my notes.
“Did the letter from your father bring bad news?” Elio’s hand closed over mine, warm and reassuringly solid.
I nodded and felt a fresh spurt of mingled betrayal and outrage. How could Papa remarry so quickly? And to Narcissa, of all people?
“Tell me,” Elio urged.
I hadn’t wanted to burden him with this latest piece of bad news, but my words came out in a rush.
Elio listened the way he always did: without interruptions or platitudes, just his eyes on my face and his thumb tracing slow circles on the back of my hand, and his expression thoughtful.
“It won’t feel like home anymore,” I added when I’d summarized the letter’s contents.
My throat felt tight. “Mama would’ve rather set our house on fire than let that woman cross our threshold.
And now she’s going to be living there when we arrive, and Papa’s already acting like it’s the most reasonable thing in the world.
He’s wrote us that Mira and Juno will have to share their bedroom with Narcissa’s oldest daughter.
I don’t know where they’re going to put the other three girls…
they’ll probably make me move into Jacinthe’s room and give up my bedroom to my new stepsisters.
But our house was never meant to hold ten people…
Papa will have to hire someone to build another bedroom in the attic. ”
I stopped and heaved a sigh.
Our attic had started off as a large, airy workspace, with windows, but over the years, it had become crammed with broken furniture that Papa kept forgetting to mend, racks holding dusty flasks, old mortars, and distilling vats, and bundles of drying herbs hanging from the rafters under our roof.
And from experience, I knew there were always bugs and lizards dropping out of the thatch.
Elio gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze. “If you have to share a room with your older sister, it’ll just be until classes resume after Mother of Harvests Day,” he pointed out. “At least you won’t have to live with this Narcissa and her daughters year-round.”
“But I spent all winter looking forward to going home!” I protested. “And now I can’t believe I’ll be counting down the days until I get to come back here.”
“Maybe it won’t be as bad as you fear,” Elio offered.
Oh, it’s going to be infinitely worse, I thought gloomily.
I foresaw weeks spent tiptoeing around my childhood home, dependent on the goodwill of a new stepmother with a reputation for unethical behavior. Not to mention, I’d have to come to terms with the fact that Papa had moved on from Mama’s memory with a speed that felt like a betrayal.
Something in my face must’ve told Elio I was on the verge of tears. He stood, pulling me up with him, and wrapped his arms around me.
He kissed the top of my head, then bent and kissed me properly, his mouth gentle and sure against mine.
When he drew back, he told me with mock sternness, “Elbows out, Miss Bernswick. You’ve already survived Lord Lukhan FitzMurad at his most vicious.
And you beat Lady Cresta and Lord Bernardo and everyone else who went up against us at the Aurelian Trials.
You’ve survived the Custodes Sanguinis, Julissa’s outrageous fines, and Mage-Instructor Varro’s labs.
You’re an honest-to-Solvian Aurelian Champion, a big fish now, and don’t you forget it!
Mage-Healer Narcissa of Camarcon is going to be a mere minnow by comparison.
No match for you after surviving a year in this place. ”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed at the ridiculous word-picture. “Minnow?”
“Too small to even bother salting.” He grinned down at me, and suddenly I felt better. “You’ll handle her the same way you handle everything else. With stubbornness, courage, and the occasional clever prank involving hair dye or daisies.”
I felt a little better. I still wasn’t happy about the situation, but it felt less intimidating now.
“I have a gift for you,” Elio said. He reached into the inner pocket of his doublet and pulled out a slim case covered in dark leather, the surface stamped with gilt patterns that shone in the light.
The leather was dyed a rich forest green, and velvety to the touch in a way that shouted expensive to me.
He handed it to me, looking suddenly shy. “I was going to give this to you when you left for home, but thinking about it, you need this sooner rather than later. Go ahead, open it.”
Mystified, I undid the brass clasp. The case opened on hinges, revealing an exquisite fountain pen nestled in a bed of green velvet. It was a work of art. The barrel was made from polished mahogany, banded at the cap and the grip with slim rings of what looked like actual gold.
I drew a breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“Try it,” he urged.
I lifted it reverently from the case. It felt substantial without being too heavy; the glossy wood cool and silky against my fingertips. It felt beautifully balanced in my hand, as if it had been custom made for me.
When I uncapped it, its polished steel nib caught the light like a blade. I noticed it was engraved with stylized vines.
Experimentally, I wrote my name in my notebook. The pen practically floated over the paper, leaving behind smooth lines and loops. Writing felt effortless compared to my current pen, which always scratched and sputtered against the paper.
“Elio… I don’t know what to say,” I breathed. The pen had probably cost more than our tickets home would. “This is—you shouldn’t have—”
“Nonsense. You needed a better pen,” he said.
His smooth brown cheeks were stained red, and the flush was climbing toward his hairline.
“The one you’ve been using leaks all over your notes and your fingers, and you’re constantly having to rewrite things because the ink smudges.
Since you have six exams and a research paper coming up at the end of the semester, I thought—” He shrugged, the gesture deliberately offhand.
“It’s practical. Pretty, but practical.”
I looked at him and saw he was trying not to look embarrassed and failing spectacularly. Something in my chest cracked open like an egg hatching in spring.
I went up on tiptoe and kissed him again. Someone in a nearby carrel snickered.
His hands came around my waist, lifting me and pulling me into his lap as he sat down and let the study carrel’s sides give us some privacy.
For a precious handful of moments, the library and Papa’s letter and Narcissa and the looming horror of final examinations all vanished, replaced by the warm, solid reality of Elio Ferraro’s muscular thighs beneath my bottom and the hungry way his lips devoured mine.
When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard, and I felt several degrees warmer.
“Thank you,” I said. I meant it with every cell in my body. “It’s perfect. I’ll use it for every examination and every assignment and every letter I write you over the summer.”
That got me the full Ferraro grin. “And I’ll write you back. Every day. I swear it.”
I capped my new pen, returned it to its case, and set the case carefully beside my open textbook.
The happiness that had flooded me a moment ago cooled into something with an edge of melancholy because Elio had just reminded me he’d be in Baleares for the summer, working at his family’s import business alongside his older sisters.
Final examinations stretched through the end of Sixth Month, less than three months away.
Summer break lay beyond that like the ocean, vast and probably turbulent, and I would have to brave it without him.
∞∞∞
The remaining weeks of the semester raced by.
Even with Cresta and Ormond gone, and Damien now our ally, the bullying didn’t stop. But it changed, the same way a stream’s flow alters if you remove boulders from its bed. The current of cruelty still ran through my classes, but it ran more quietly and with less force behind it.
Lukhan ignored me with a thoroughness that was almost polite, as if he now considered me beneath the effort of active dislike.
Lady Beatrix Fairhaven and her shadow, Lady Helene Morgrave, still whispered when I passed, but they had stopped sabotaging my work in Intermediate Potions and the Arcane Channeling II labs. Even Mage-Instructor Varro no longer invented reasons to mark me down. He was now simply harsh, but fair.
It might not be a complete victory over the aristocratic students. But it was breathing room, and after months of living with my shoulders permanently braced against the next blow, this felt like a miracle.
Damien Corvellan had returned to classes a week after our visit to the infirmary.
He still looked awful. The shaved stubble on his skull had grown into a short, uneven golden fuzz that did nothing to hide the angry red scars marring his scalp.
He moved gingerly, as if he still hurt, and his complexion still had the waxy, translucent quality of someone who had lost too much blood.
He sat, conspicuously isolated, in the front row of Mundise’s lectures. As I’d feared, he was now an outcast. Lukhan and the aristocratic students all gave him a wide berth, as if he were contagious.
In our shared classes and labs, he would greet me, his manner grave and formal, but his manner had returned to being unapproachable, and we had no further conversations.