Epilogue Grayson
The lunch bell rings through the Guild, and the building swells with the familiar chaos of several hundred hungry students turning hallways into rapidly flowing rivers of noise.
Grayson pauses halfway up the staircase, one hand on the polished banister, and checks the time on the ancient lobby clock out of habit, even though he already knows it.
Skye will be pulling up outside any minute, which leaves Grayson enough time to drop his bag and tidy his desk.
The thought is enough to put a smile on his face before he can stop it.
It has been years now, long enough that Grayson should be used to this life.
The classrooms, boisterous students, and the way the art room smells faintly of clay dust, oil paint, and patchouli, no matter the season.
He should be used to the fact that he teaches here now, that nervous students call him Professor Pearce in the halls, that magic and art and young people with too much power and not enough confidence are simply his daily life.
He should be used to his son texting him to ask if he has time for lunch.
But he isn’t.
“Professor Pearce!” The voice rises over the crowd, and Grayson turns just in time to catch sight of Emery Fontaine weaving through the foyer with all the grace of a baby giraffe.
His bright blond hair is being blown about by his own access to The Plain, pale strands lifting and twisting around his flushed face in visible little gusts of Air.
“No yelling in the halls, Emery,” Grayson says, even as fondness softens the words. “You’re supposed to be setting an example.”
Emery skids to a stop at the top of the stairs, cheeks bright pink. “Yeah, sorry. Sorry.” Two first-years giggle nearby and nearly trip over each other trying not to stare.
“Come on.” Grayson jerks his head toward the art room at the end of the hall. “Let’s get out of the way before you take somebody out.”
He unlocks the art room door and steps inside, letting the quieter hush of the room settle around them.
Sunlight slants through the tall windows, catching on shelves of student work in various stages of completion and the collection of odd, beloved objects that have gathered over the years.
Augusta Shaw’s pottery still sits on the back shelf where he put it after her retirement, earthy and warm in its simplicity.
Beside it rests the piece Professor Bixby sent him the year Grayson was hired: an hourglass rimed with ice that never fully settles, fine snow whispering down in endless soft drifts.
Emery does not wait for him to put down his bag before shoving a tablet into his hands. Tentative pride places a pink blush high on his cheeks.
“Check it out.” The Sorbonne’s acceptance letter opens across the screen in a wash of elegant French formatting and Dr. Amelie Beaufort’s signature in a flourish across the bottom.
He looks up at once, but Emery is already watching him with the kind of desperate, hopeful excitement that stems from being eighteen and full of big dreams.
“Congratulations. You did this all on your own, Em.” Grayson takes the tablet properly and reads the letter through, even though he knows exactly what it will say. “Your work is outstanding. Paris is lucky to have you.”
Emery makes a strangled noise that is almost a laugh. “It was your recommendation. I know it was.”
“It helped,” Grayson says. “But your portfolio did the rest.”
Emery drops onto the nearest stool, and the grin slips around the edges. “My mom said it was cool.”
Grayson winces inwardly. “And your dad?”
Emery makes a face. “He just wanted to know who’s paying for it.”
Of course he did. Grayson leans a hip against the desk and folds his arms, tablet still in hand.
He has had enough meetings with Mr. Fontaine over the years to know exactly what that question sounds like in that man’s mouth.
The man had the emotional bandwidth of a turnip, but Grayson keeps that to himself.
“He didn’t even want me to apply,” Emery mutters.
“You know that. He’s still on the accounting thing.
Or government work. Or literally anything that doesn’t involve painting.
” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m trying not to get too excited till the scholarship stuff comes through, but he’s already acting like I’m asking him to fund a seven-year European grand tour. ”
Grayson bites back a sigh. He knows, with the strange, quiet certainty that The Plain sometimes still gifts him, that Emery will not have to worry about tuition.
The scholarship committee will come through.
If by some bizarre fluke they do not, the Rhodes Foundation will.
But this is not the moment to play benefactor.
“It should come soon,” he says instead. “And for what it’s worth, I think your father may be panicking for reasons that have nothing to do with your work.”
Emery blinks. “Really?”
“I think,” Grayson says dryly, “that you are about to move across the world alone, and you’re his son.”
That stops his fidgeting for a moment. “Oh. He asked for Dr. Beaufort’s number last night.”
“That is a terrible idea.”
“Right?” Emery sits up straighter, scandalized all over again. “I was like, no way, dude. I’m not giving you my future mentor’s number so you can interrogate her about god-knows-what.”
Grayson laughs. “Wise choice.”
Emery grins at him then, all his nerves stripped away for a moment. “You make this place fun, you know that? Like…” He shrugs, embarrassed by his own sincerity. “I don’t know. Bigger. Less like they’re trying to shove us all into the same weird little box.”
Something warm shifts in Grayson’s chest. He remembers too clearly what it felt like to be a new magic-user here, every eye on him and not knowing what his power would mean for him and his pack.
“That means a lot,” he says quietly.
Emery’s ears turn pink again. “Yeah, well.” He glances toward the door, hears the noise outside before Grayson does, and groans. “Your lunch is here. Sorry. I just wanted to tell you in person.”
Before Grayson can answer, Emery steps in and gives him a quick, awkward hug. It is rare enough for the senior that Grayson only gets one arm up in time to return it.
“Congratulations, Em.”
“Thanks, Professor.” Emery pulls back, all grin again. “Try not to miss me too much when I’m famous.”
“Out.”
Emery laughs and slips through the doorway just as another figure appears around the frame.
“Hei-Hei?”
His first son stands in the doorway, one hand still curled around the frame, caramel waves combed neatly back from his face, a plaid overshirt hanging open over a dark T-shirt.
He has Gideon’s height and some of Gideon’s mannerisms, too.
But where Gideon wears confidence like a second skin, Skye holds himself with the same quiet, deliberate stillness he had as a child, as if he learned early that silence could be both shield and language.
“Sorry,” Skye says. “Was I interrupting?”
“Not at all.” Grayson clears a space on his less-than-tidy desk. “You’re early.”
A small shrug. “I wanted to see your mural.”
Grayson follows his gaze to the half-finished project at the back of the room, where he has laid down layers of paint in a long, flowing ribbon of pigment and light on a fourteen-foot mural of The Plain.
Skye’s words might have been an excuse once, a reason to spend time in Grayson’s classroom when other students weren’t always kind to the new Were student.
But now, he is here because he wants to be with Grayson.
And maybe, after all the years it took to get here, that still feels enough like a miracle to steal Grayson’s breath.
Skye places the basket on the desk, and the scent of something made with love at Ruckus makes Grayson’s stomach rumble.
“Yeah?” There’s probably more, but if there’s one thing Grayson knows about Skye, it’s that he will get to it when he’s ready.
Skye moves around the room touching random pieces of artwork with a single finger, every high point, until he reaches a carving of a large tree with branches and roots made from a single piece of ironwood. “Who made this?” he asks.
“A student in my third-year class. Why?”
“I like it.”
Grayson isn’t surprised, given it has a similar shape to the tree in the nest room sanctuary he’d considered his own until he was twelve, before he finally moved to the children’s wing of the compound.
Skye finishes his circuit of the room, finally arriving back at the desk, where he gently removes Grayson’s hands from the basket. “Pops says not to let you eat dessert first.”
“Dessert? What are we talking about here? Tiramisu? Pie?”
“Green stuff first. Salad, soup, and some bread.”
“Did you help him make it?”
“Not this time.” He shakes his head but doesn’t elaborate.
They find seats on the two ancient upholstered chairs he’d taken from Professor Shaw’s office, with plates on their laps and cups of minestrone on the small, crowded coffee table.
They eat in silence for a few minutes, as Grayson watches Skye out of the corner of his eye.
It’s not that Skye doesn’t seek him out, at home in the Art House or for a run on Saturday mornings.
It’s that Skye is obviously mulling something over, and given that it’s not Luca or Leo he’s bringing lunch to, Grayson is understandably curious.
“Hei-Hei?” The sweet scent of neroli has gone bitter, reeking of something Skye rarely shares these days—uncertainty.
Finally. “Hmm?” He chooses a tomato from the salad and is careful not to give Skye his full attention.
“I want to teach. Kids like me.”
Oh.
“Magical kids?”
“No.” Skye tears a piece of bread in half with long, elegant fingers. “Little ones. Maybe early primary. Maybe kindergarten.” He thinks about it for a second and corrects himself. “Actually, not maybe. Definitely.”
Grayson sets his fork down. “That’s specific.”
“It should be.” Skye shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” He says it in that calm, maddeningly understated way of his.
“What brought this on?”