Chapter Forty-One
FORTY-ONE
Sebastian follows silently behind me. I can feel the tension radiating off him in waves. He’s angry. I’m angry. He’s hurt. I’m hurt. Fucking hell, we’re a disaster.
I can feel his eyes on the back of my head for the entire walk back to the Grand Hall.
His footfalls are almost silent, as if he’s been trained how to walk within a forest without making a noise.
My feet crunch on leaves and bark, kicking rocks out of the way, and I even slip once or twice, when I’m not focusing on my path because I’m preoccupied by my thoughts.
I feel like a uncoordinated monster lurching through the trees, wreaking havoc, while he’s my shadow: silent, quiet, but in the right lighting, he’s everywhere, stretching larger than I am.
Safe. My mind tries to tell me. Watchful, it says. Protective.
By the time the domed ceiling of the Grand Hall and the four towers that spear through the sky like swords come into view, I pick up my pace, attempting to put more distance between us.
I need to get up to my room and attend to my scratches. They’re stinging, but it’s only surface level. I have enough healing balms in the box beneath my sink to deal with it, so the infirmary isn’t necessary. Plus, I’m sick of being in that place. I feel like I’m in there every week.
I’m walking across the grassy clearing between the Training Centre and the Grand Hall when I feel him at my back.
‘I can walk the rest of the way on my own,’ I say over my shoulder.
But he doesn’t reply. He just keeps walking slightly behind me, and when I check after a minute to see how close he is, the intense look in his eyes has my head whipping back around.
I get a sudden flashback of his face between my legs, where I looked down and saw that same intensity in his gaze as now.
Stars, is that what he’s thinking about right now? I’ve been trying to block it from my mind but it all comes rushing at me with full force. His lips, his tongue, the throaty groans that spilled out of him … his fingers.
No! God, Aria, get a handle on yourself.
I reach the Grand Hall and I’m about to turn for Malachite’s gate when I spot Tilly walking out of Opal.
Her hazel eyes lock onto mine as if she could sense me coming.
She takes all but three seconds to scan me from head to toe, eyes homing in on my torn shirt, before she’s marching over.
Her short legs move rapidly, her arms waving back and forth and suddenly she’s pushing past me to shove at Sebastian’s chest. He barely moves, but his brows rise so far they may as well be part of his hairline.
‘What did you do to her this time?’ she hisses at him as if she were a six-foot -five mammoth of a man, and not a five-foot curly haired healer.
Sebastian’s hands raise beside his head in surrender. And I swear I see the corner of his lips kick up. ‘I didn’t do a thing she didn’t ask me for.’
My head whips in his direction. The glare I send him is deadly, and he returns my cold expression with one of his own.
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ I say to Tilly. Deciding my best option is to ignore Sebastian right now and stop Tilly from attacking a unit leader three times her size. ‘I slipped off the cliff and had to climb back up. He turned up just as I made it back over.’
Her eyes flare wide, horror filling them. ‘Oh my god!’ She leaps toward me, wrapping her arms around my torso. ‘Are you all right? Come, I’ll take you to the—’
‘I’m fine,’ I interrupt, offering her a small smile. ‘I’m just tired and need some salve and then I’ll be good. I don’t think I can face that many people in the infirmary right now.’
Tilly nods, understanding. ‘Okay, no infirmary, got it. But will you at least come up to my room so I can take a look? I’ll make you a tea and we can talk. Away from prying ears.’ She shoots Sebastian a stern look as she says that.
‘That actually sounds perfect,’ I say, meaning every word.
We leave Sebastian in the Grand Hall. I could tell he wanted to say something to me before I left, but I just needed to decompress and spend time with my friend while I try and sort through everything in my mind, versus what I’m feeling.
I tell Tilly what happened as we walked up to her room. Not that Sebastian and I kissed or what followed after. Just about how I’d slipped over by the cliff and how upset I was with myself and with Lukas.
Which is how we’ve ended up cross legged, facing each other, practically knee to knee.
My dagger that is hidden beneath my pants on my right leg digs into my skin, so I shift to ease the pressure, leaning back against the wall her bed is pushed up against and bringing my knees to my chest. I rest my cup of tea on my knees and blow at the steam.
I have a few small bandages on my palms and my torso that Tilly patched up for me.
I offered to do it myself but gave in once I noticed the worried look in her eyes.
I think she felt bad she wasn’t there, that she didn’t follow me once I took off from class.
Her way of helping now was to patch up my wounds, so I gave in and sat quietly as she cleaned them, applied a salve and covered them up.
It was strange stepping into the Opal tower.
The layout is very similar to Malachite’s, though the overall feeling is utterly different.
Tilly’s room is on the second floor at the furthest end of the short corridor.
She has a large bay window seat that’s adorned with soft powder blue cushions, her bed is a double like mine and, where I only have a dresser and a few shelves for my belongings, Tilly has an entire wall of floating shelves, and each one is full.
‘Stars, Till. It looks like you’ve been here for years, not weeks.’ I take note of the sealed jars of herbs, oils and powders, the stacks of books and knick-knacks scattered about in what I can only describe as organised chaos. ‘I mean look at all this stuff.’ I gesture … to everything.
‘I’m an over-packer,’ she explains, pushing a stray curl behind her ear. ‘And call it stuff one more time and I might push you off my bed.’
‘My apologies, what I meant to say was look at all this fascinating …’ My eyes narrow on a labelled jar at the end of a shelf. ‘Does that say bird brains?’
Tilly follows my gaze. ‘Ew, no. Gross.’ Her nose scrunches. ‘That’s bird bones. Why the hell would I have bird brains in my room?’
‘Why would you have either of them in your room?’ I ask, bemused and a little horrified. Not once have I ever seen bird bones inside my mother or father’s study.
‘They’re for my Divination studies. Bones can be used when scrying, and I prefer to use bird bones,’ she explains as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.
‘As opposed to what? People bones?’ I say it as a joke but when she lifts one shoulder in a shrug, I blanch.
‘People bones are harder to acquire.’
My eyes immediately fall to the cup of hot tea in my hands, and my mind starts imagining all sorts of things.
Tilly’s laugh fills the air between us as she notices my worried expression. ‘You quite literally saw me make the tea, so stop looking at it like you’re expecting an eyeball to suddenly float to the surface.’
‘Bird bones, Tilly.’ I point to the jar. ‘You sleep next to bird bones!’
‘And you sleep next to a six-foot -something fire wielder who looks at you like he’s three seconds away from picking you up and taking you back to his cave where he’ll pump you full of his fire baby seed.’
My face screws up. ‘I cannot believe you just said that!’
‘Really? Then you should probably stop blushing.’
‘I am not,’ I refute, even as I feel my neck flush with heat. ‘It’s the tea, it’s hot.’
She shoots me a look. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but something has changed between you two. I know I’m not imagining the tension rolling off you both when you’re in a room together.’
I contemplate how much to share for a moment, then ultimately decide to tell her the most pressing issue. Because all the other stuff can wait.
The sigh I let out is heavy, weighted down with the cyclone of emotions I’ve felt in just one day.
‘He told me …’ My fingers run along the floral details on the tea cup in a soothing motion as I try to wrap my head around what I’m saying.
‘He said that he tried to make me leave to protect me. That he didn’t want to hurt me, but thought it was the only way to get me to walk away from the academy. ’
Tilly’s eyes flare, her mouth opens and closes. ‘O-okay. I’m trying very hard to not push my opinion on what just came out of your mouth right now. So instead, I’m going to ask what you think about that.’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly, letting my head thud against the wall.
Then I take one last sip of my tea and reach over to put the cup on her nightstand.
‘On the one hand I’m furious. He was so awful to me, Till.
But on the other hand, I almost get why he did it.
If he came up and told me it wasn’t safe to be here and that I should leave, I know that I wouldn’t have listened. ’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m stubborn,’ I shrug.
Because I can’t face going home empty handed. I can’t stand looking into my father’s eyes and telling him I gave up. That I failed … again.
Curls bounce when she starts to shake her head.
‘That’s not why you would have stayed,’ she says.
‘You would have stayed because you’re the type of person who won’t walk away from something just because it’s hard.
You could have walked out of that Training Centre the first day and refused to go back after Sebastian warned you off, but you didn’t.
You could have chosen Opal or even Agate at the ceremony, but you chose Malachite, the most dangerous unit we have and even after being attacked, you still carried on. ’
She reaches forward to take my hands in hers, hazel eyes meeting grey.
‘You could have given up years ago when your element didn’t manifest, but you haven’t.
You still persevere, even when it fails and you feel like giving up.
You don’t. You’re one of the most determined people I know, even when the odds are against you. And Stars, I admire it.’
Emotion swells in my throat. ‘You do?’
She nods, her voice softening. ‘Which is how I know when you see Sebastian next, you’re going to tear him a new one for treating you that way, because that was bullshit. And then you’re going to decide if what he did is something you can forgive.’
‘And if I can’t?’
‘Then at least you’ll know where you finally stand with him. I saw the way he looked at you that first day, Aria. I can tell you right now, it’s nothing like the way he was looking at you today.’