Chapter 4 Carriage
Carriage
Present Day
Bridge Street and York Road, London
Ibarely looked around as I pushed my way into the carriage.
It was full to bursting, even more than it had been the year before, or on the ride back to London in July.
I could barely see past the row of shoulders, backs, arms, cloaks and coats that greeted my eyes.
Unlike last year, I at least knew where I was going, which helped me focus more on protecting the black cat I had harnessed inside my satchel, and less on having to look around to orient myself inside the vehicle.
I knew where to go this time, too.
Luc, Draken, and Miranda were saving me a seat on the upper level. My stop, meaning the one nearest to the Dragon’s Keep, was one of the last on the route to Bonescastle. I would be the last of our immediate friend group to arrive.
I squeezed through an opening between two witches, my satchel and Wraith held out in front of me and protected by my arm.
Both witches laughed as a furry creature with wings, its tail whipping back and forth, landed unsteadily on the shoulder of the shorter, darker-haired witch.
I slid around a group of five mages next.
They stood talking at the base of the stairs, all of them bent over a newspaper that showed images of the latest Skyhunt match.
Adjusting my satchel so that it rested a little more on my hip once I no longer had any immediate obstacles to worry about, I caught hold of the iron railing with its dragon head design to yank myself up the circular staircase.
The end of the railing writhed under my fingers and palm, the dragon’s mouth opening to expel a jet of green fire.
It didn’t hurt, or even startle me much, since I’d seen the effect during my last two carriage rides.
I began climbing, and the serpent-like body twisted under my hand, following me up and around in a slow circle to the top floor. The scales provided just enough roughness for me to keep my grip when the carriage lurched into motion, jerking me sideways.
I reached the top floor, seconds later, and looked around.
It was a lot quieter up there.
I’d only glimpsed half the seats when I met Draken’s gaze, and saw his eyes light up at the sight of me. He grinned a bare instant later, then nudged Miranda, who looked up, saw me, and promptly howled my name at the absolute top of her lungs.
“LEDA LEDA LEDA!” she shrieked. “LEEEEEDA!”
I couldn’t help it and burst into a laugh.
“Maniac,” I called back fondly. “Maybe everyone else up here would like use of their eardrums when the term starts…?”
I trailed when I felt eyes shift in my direction, and the hairs on the back of my neck promptly stand on end. I turned before it occurred to me maybe I shouldn’t, glancing at the one section of stuffed, high-backed, carriage seats that I hadn’t yet looked at.
Gold irises met mine, the instant I did.
I felt the immediacy and nearness of him like a punch to the chest, even before my mind put a name to his pale, inhumanly perfect face with its long jaw and high cheekbones.
He sat there, lounged really, against the wall of cushions, a pair of feminine legs hung over one of his muscular thighs.
Red, sheer stockings adorned the extra pair of legs, along with matching high heels.
One of his ring-covered hands rested casually on the witch’s knee.
He stared at me with absolutely no expression on his face. The utter blankness there might’ve been what kept me staring back at him longer than I would have.
That, or I was just an utter and complete fool, as usual.
Either way, when I didn’t avert my gaze, a faint snarl curled his lips. A colder look, mixed with what struck me pretty unmistakably as disgust reached his eyes.
Seemingly the instant the muscles of his face moved, I jerked back into motion. Maybe before that, some part of me questioned whether he’d been alive at all.
The effect ended with me acting like I got hit by a branding iron.
I took a half-leap forward, in the direction of my friends, moving like a startled deer. It hadn’t even occurred to me to be angry yet. I wasn’t embarrassed yet, or shocked. I think my only instinct was to get the hell away from him, as fast as I possibly could.
I wondered later if he’d thought I was afraid of him.
I’m not even sure whether I wasn’t.
I honestly didn’t care what he thought, or told myself that, anyway, but a part of me wondered for my own reasons. At more than one point in our short-lived “agreement,” he’d definitely seemed to want me to be afraid of him.
Had he succeeded in that, finally?
It bothered me on some level that I honestly didn’t know.
Regardless, if any of those more concrete emotions were involved in my reaction, I couldn’t parse it at the time. It felt closer to being punched in the face, or maybe shoved, hard, in the middle of my chest, so that I had to move to keep from falling.
I couldn’t breathe.
My heart constricted to a knotted clump behind my ribs.
By the time I could think at all, I’d walked most of the way over to my friends.
The carriage lurched right as I’d nearly reached them, jerking me forward as if the driver had slammed on the brakes while going 150 kilometers per hour.
Worried about my cat, I turned to protect her, even as I lost my footing and careened into the padded wall where Miranda, Luc, Jolie, Draken, and Darragh all sat.
Draken must have seen it coming.
That, or he just happened to be nearest to me when I lost my balance.
Either way, I lurched forward, twisted the cat and satchel away…
…and crashed awkwardly onto his lap.
“I’m not complaining,” the tall wizard said, holding me with one muscular arm as he grinned up at me. He winked, eyes teasing. “You can sit here the whole way to Malcroix if you want, Leda. I’m perfectly comfortable.”
I rolled my eyes, but laughed, in spite of myself.
I started to get up, but his arm tightened.
“We actually are short of space,” he said, his voice slightly apologetic. “We hadn’t expected Nyx to be on this carriage. We were all going to squash in when you got here, but if you’re comfortable, you might as well stay where you are. I honestly don’t mind.”
I flushed a little, not sure that was a good idea.
Really, I knew for a fact it wasn’t a good idea, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by being weird about it, when it should be a totally innocent thing between friends.
I’d made a mess of that, though, when I went to stay with Mir over the summer.
Draken and I shared a drunken kiss on the beach one night, at a bonfire party made up of about fifty of their film industry and other L.A. friends.
Really, it was more of an extended snog.
I wasn’t proud of it.
Honestly, I still felt an uncomfortable curl of shame whenever I remembered that night, even apart from all of the stupid, childish reasons I’d let it happen.
Worse, I’d known it was a bad idea, even at the time.
Miranda reinforced that fact the next morning, warning me that Draken was “crushing on you like a teenaged virgin, Leda,” and I shouldn’t go there with him unless I wanted to try and make something real happen, because Draken wasn’t going to take it well, otherwise.
Mir’s warning was dire enough that I’d pulled Draken outside with me, not long after he showed up in the kitchen that morning.
I took him to the beachside deck, handed him a cappuccino I’d made for him in Mir’s enormous, copper, espresso maker, and told him how much I valued our friendship and that I didn’t want things to get screwed up.
Which had the benefit of being true, but I still felt pretty terrible about it.
He’d pretended to take it well, but I suspected he hadn’t.
“Let her go, you neanderthal,” Miranda said, shoving at his arm.
“And put her where?” Draken retorted back.
“We can make room,” Mir said, exasperated.
She blew her bangs out of her face, and I noticed for the first time that she’d dyed her longish bob green since I’d last seen her. Her eyes matched the shade perfectly, like sea glass, or the lightest jade imaginable, and looked nothing at all like mine.
The carriage swerved, and Draken’s arm tightened to keep me from sliding off his lap and onto the floor.
I gripped his jacket’s sleeve briefly for the same reason, and made the mistake of glancing up, once I had my legs in a slightly more dignified position on one side of Draken’s thighs.
That bare instant I wasn’t focused on my friends, I found those gold eyes staring at me again.
He looked away before I could make sense of his expression, but not before I saw his irises flash with a ripple of gold-green fire that slid through the rings.
I wondered again, how no one else ever seemed to notice how utterly bizarre his magic was. For someone who seemed to want to keep it a secret, he did a crap job of hiding it.
He leaned down while I watched, saying something into the ear of the brunette witch who still had her legs hooked over his.
She laughed, and shoved at his arm.
I gently tugged Draken’s arm from around me.
As I did, I couldn’t help wincing, remembering our longish snogging session on the beach that summer.
The most difficult part of that had honestly been how much I’d enjoyed it.
Granted, I’d been hammered, and he’d been hammered, but I’d still liked kissing him much more than I should have, given who he was.
Draken ended up being a much better kisser than he had any right to be, and I’d let it go on for far too long at least partly for that reason.
I still didn’t see him that way, not really, but I could admit to myself that it’d been hot, kissing him.
Hot enough to confuse me, and to have me fully in his lap by the end, my hand massaging his cock while he groaned against my neck.
Honestly, if Mir and the others hadn’t been there, I might have let things go a lot further.
That realization had mortified me the following morning.
Now I wondered why I hadn’t been willing to even try with him.
A noise on the other side of the carriage jerked my eyes up.
Bones was on his feet, breathing hard. I watched, body tense, as he bent down to rip a cloak off the seat near where he’d just been sitting.
He straightened before throwing it over one arm.
I realized only then that he wore a full, very expensive-looking, brocaded suit, black with tiny gold designs on the vest under a black jacket and over a black shirt.
His face looked darker than it had, but that off-kilter glow had sharpened in his eyes.
I saw another, brighter tongue of gold-green fire slither through his irises, right as his jaw ticked.
“I’m not sitting up here,” I heard him growl to the witch with the red stockings. “Stay if you want. What do I care?”
Without another word, he aimed his feet for the spiral staircase, and I couldn’t help noticing he walked with a limp. His upper body moved strangely too, like he’d hurt himself somehow. His back, maybe?
Whatever it was, I’d never seen him move that ungracefully before.
Hating that I’d even noticed, I stared after him until he disappeared, feeling anger for the first time, along with a confused, frustrated feeling I’d nearly forgotten, that only ever seemed directed at him.
I had the overwhelming urge to go after him for the sole purpose of shoving him, or maybe slapping him across the face.
I was still staring at the staircase when Wraith, who was normally a bizarrely quiet cat, let out a plaintive meow.
Draken clucked at her, then coaxed Wraith out of my satchel and onto his lap once I’d squeezed down on the seat between him and Miranda. I almost regretted getting off him once I had. Now, instead of sitting on his legs, my entire body pressed tightly up against his.
Mir must’ve seen the look on my face, because she slipped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to her.
“Stop stealing her cat,” she scolded Draken, then said quieter, in my ear. “I’ve talked to him. I know you talked to him, too. Stop feeling bad. I can see it all over your face.”
I didn’t answer.
Somehow, my eyes flickered back across the carriage, as if looking for those gold eyes against my will.
Instead I found the pretty brunette with the red stockings glaring at me, arms crossed across her chest. I jerked my eyes away when Wraith meowed plaintively and walked back onto my lap.
I scooped her up and held her against my chest, feeling weirdly protective of her and clingy and maddeningly emotional all at once.
I felt my eyes prick and clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
Gods-damn it. What was wrong with me?
How could I possibly be this stupid?
He’d given me months to get used to his utter indifference towards me last year. Not to mention my having to watch half the witches in school in his lap at one time or another.
My eyes fell to Wraith, who pressed herself into my chest and arms, her claws clinging to my jacket, a dark red, vorisk leather thing Alaric picked out for me and insisted I buy or he would buy it for me.
As usual, I ended up loving it, just as I did with all of Alaric’s “suggestions.” He had opinions about my wardrobe that sometimes made me laugh, sometimes made me roll my eyes, but that I usually ended up agreeing with in the end, as annoying as it could be.
The emerald green, camisole-like top I wore under the jacket was also an Alaric suggestion, and now one of my favorites.
As the cat melted against me inside the jacket, her purr rumbling against my chest, Draken, Luc, and Miranda talked about their class schedules, and the carriage began to accelerate faster on its way out of the city.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes.
He didn’t matter, I told myself.
Whatever and whoever he really was, it didn’t really matter in the end.