Chapter 28 Promise Me #2
I didn’t realize how quiet I’d gotten, or even that I was sitting there alone, until Luc climbed onto the black, leather carriage seat next to me. I’d been lost in thought, staring out over the horn of the monocerus pulling our antiquated, Victorian-like carriage.
My own monocerus, which seemed strangely fascinated by the real thing, was walking along its back, snorting and pawing at the leather and silver harness.
When Luc landed in the driver’s seat next to me, maneuvering around a whip that seemed to be there purely for decoration, I actually jumped.
He smiled, and held out a mug of hot, spiced wine.
Unlike the rest of us, his face looked mostly normal, despite the goggles he wore on his head, and the blood-stained lab coat of his evil scientist. Someone’s spells, probably Draken’s, had runes and dark-looking equations rotating in the air around him, shining a poisonous green.
His lemur primal clung to his back, and occasionally reached up to play with his hair, which had been magicked poisonous green as well, and stuck out on all sides.
“Is it anything like the Overworld version?” he asked me, his mouth quirked as he adjusted his weight.
I took the proffered mug and looked back over the cemetery, where Draken and Miranda were running around gravestones.
I watched ghosts jump out at them and heard Miranda cackle in delight as another apparition materialized and began running towards them.
Werewolves, zombies, and smaller creatures I guessed had to be very cute demons, ran around after them, hissing, growling, and sparking with magic.
I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
“Not exactly, no.” I took a sip of the hot, spiced wine.
I shivered with appreciation as warmth spread through my body, at least partly from a potion additive in the drink.
I hadn’t fully realized how cold I was, but now I huddled gratefully around Luc’s drink.
“But you did an amazing job, you and Mir.” I motioned over the cemetery. “It’s absolutely perfect.”
Luc smiled, and I raised the mug he’d given me.
“This is lovely, too,” I added. “Thank you.” I shivered as I looked up at the dark sky. “It looks like it might actually snow.”
The cemetery lived on a steep, tree-dotted hill, not far from Devil’s Fall, in the same broader park northwest of town.
When we’d first got there, not having visited a Magique cemetery before, I hadn’t been able to tell which parts had been altered by my friends.
The tombstones all appeared hauntingly lifelike, and were often carved in the shape of the deceased, or sometimes their primals.
Only a handful depicted other things, including an elaborate lineage tree I examined over a family grave.
More startling than the carvings, a lot of the headstones were spelled to interact magically with visitors.
Some recited poems, some talked interactively for a few minutes, a few even played instruments or sang.
One I stopped near emitted a lifelike apparition of the deceased who gave a long speech about the importance of the magical sciences and advocated for constant innovation in all disciplines.
Luc and Jolie explained that, given this was Bonescastle, a lot of famous researchers, writers, teachers, and artists had been buried here.
But, despite the city’s name, none carrying the Bones name were interred here. Nyx said they had a family cemetery on the grounds of their main estate, an enormous castle with an actual moat, which everyone called the Black Tower.
“Not at all ominous-sounding,” Draken had scoffed.
“I more think it’s weird they didn’t name their castle Bones-anything,” Miranda commented. “Isn’t that their thing? To name everything after themselves? Why isn’t it Bone Tower, or Tower of Bones, or something like that?”
I couldn’t help agreeing with both observations.
But thinking about Bones, any Bones, even dead, non-maddeningly alive and impossible to comprehend Magicals with that name, wasn’t something I really wanted to do right then.
“Are you okay?” Luc asked, quieter.
When I glanced over, I saw him studying my face.
The scrutiny there made me look away.
“How are the Offensive and Defensive Magic sessions going?” he asked, his voice neutral. “You had one today, didn’t you?”
I hesitated, considered lying, then, for some reason, didn’t.
“We fought pretty much the entire time,” I confessed. “It was a bit more exhausting and vicious than usual.”
Luc quirked an eyebrow. “You and Bones?”
I nodded.
Luc swallowed a mouthful of wine as he studied my face. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing that? That’s generally the idea of those sessions, isn’t it? I’d assumed they’d get more intense as you progressed.”
I exhaled, holding my own mug with both hands and inhaling the scent of cinnamon and cloves. “Well, in theory, yes,” I acknowledged. “But in this case, I meant arguing more than sparring. We spent a good chunk of the session arguing during the talking part of things.”
“Talking” was a generous way to describe any part of what we’d been doing.
Luc’s eyebrow rose higher, but I saw a faint quirk reach his lips.
“Any particular reason?” he asked.
“Other than him being a maddening, deliberately cryptic, and lying prat?” I asked, letting annoyance seep into my words. “Not really, no. Do I need a specific reason?”
Luc grunted.
“I suppose not,” he said, still watching me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Remembering the conversation that had so incensed me, I immediately wondered why I was telling Luc any of this.
It’s not like I could share the details of what we’d been arguing about.
Not that I was entirely sure what we’d been arguing about, other than his stubborn refusal to admit what he’d done the night of my birthday, much less apologize for it.
Not only had he not been apologetic, he’d had the unbelievable gall to be angry at me.
He insisted I’d never shown up at his place, that he’d waited for me, that he’d stayed up late waiting for me, until he’d eventually given up and gone to bed.
He couldn’t even tell me what the broadcast had been about, since, according to him, he’d never bothered to listen to it.
When I asked him why not, he just repeated what he’d said the other day, that he never listened to the Priest’s broadcasts, and only intended to that night because he’d thought I would want to hear it.
Then he proceeded to make cruder and cruder remarks about me and Draken until I stopped talking to him altogether.
Absolute wanker.
“I knew him a little, you know,” Luc commented. “We were actually friends for a while in secondary school.”
I flinched, then turned my head, staring at the blue-eyed mage in surprise.
“Bones?” I asked incredulously. “You were friends with Caelum Bones?”
Luc nodded slowly. “We went to the same Academy. Before my parents split up, and I left with my mother for France.” His lips quirked, and he took another swallow of wine. “We were dorm mates. For a full year before I left, I hung out with him and Alec Greythorne practically every day.”
My eyes widened even more. “Alaric?”
Luc nodded. “It’s funny, Greythorne strikes me as a lot the same as I remember him back then. I see it especially when he’s talking to you.”
Astonished, I could only stare at him while my mind processed that bit of information. Then I let out a humorless sound. “And Bones? Was he as batshit crazy in those years as he is now? Or is that something that only manifested in adulthood?”
Luc’s smile faded. Even under the mad scientist make-up and hair, I noticed the change at once. His face took on that serious cast it sometimes did, and I was startled to see something like sadness reach Luc’s eyes.
“He’s got real issues, Leda,” Luc said, his voice frank. “Honestly? I used to worry about him. I don’t think his home life is very good.”
I took a sip from the mug. Nodding slowly, I acknowledged his words.
“Alaric said they kind of bonded over that, initially,” I admitted. “A lot of royals seem to be pretty messed up by their parents––”
“I think Bones’s situation is considerably worse,” Luc interrupted.
a touch warning. “He used to get nightmares, Leda. Really bad ones. I didn’t really get it at the time, I was too young to understand what they meant.
But they scared me.” Swallowing another mouthful of wine, he added with a shrug, “Looking back on it, I suspect it was trauma. His dreams always got a lot worse right before a break where we’d all be going home. ”
Luc stared over the graveyard, his eyes distant.
Slowly, he shook his head, as if to clear it.
“Both me and Alec worried about him.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “We used to talk about it, when he wasn’t around. We didn’t know what to do about it.”
I felt my skin growing cold as his words penetrated.
When I didn’t say anything, Luc shrugged.
“I just…” He hesitated. “I guess I’d just advise you to have a care with him.”
I fought to smile, but couldn’t really.
“Are you telling me to be nicer to him?” I hesitated, keeping my voice light with an effort. “I don’t actually enjoy arguing with him, believe it or not. Or some of the vile things that come out of his mouth. Do you think I’m misunderstanding him in some way?”
Luc winced, then shook his head.
“Not exactly that, no,” he said. “I more meant, he might be more fucked up than you realize.” He gave me a serious look.
“I’m pretty sure his father beat him, Leda.
Badly. He could barely walk a few times when he came back to school.
The teachers pretended not to notice. They were all more than aware of who his father was. ”
I fell silent. Remembering the scars on Bones’s body, what he’d said about “rules” and how he couldn’t leave campus, I didn’t answer. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Luc that I was pretty sure he was right, that it might be significantly worse than he thought.
It felt like a betrayal of confidence, even now.
“Did he ever sleepwalk?” I asked, remembering my birthday. “Bones. Did he ever get up and do things, and not remember having done them?”
Luc looked at me, his eyes probing.
I felt a whisper of puzzlement on him as he studied my face. “Not that I can remember. Why? Has he told you that he does?”
Frowning, I shook my head. “No.”
Anyone else would have probed further.
Luc, for some reason, didn’t.
I was glad he didn’t, because I had no idea what I would’ve said, but it made me think about Luc himself.
There was a lot about him I still didn’t know.
I’d always liked him, from the moment we’d first met, but I tended to overlook him in some ways.
Maybe it was because he was so quiet, or maybe because he always seemed to have everything all worked out.
It bothered me, once the realization struck. Luc was definitely a good person.
He might even the best person out of all of my friends.
“How did you stop being friends?” I asked. “Did the two of you have a falling out? You and Bones? You don’t seem to acknowledge one another at all now.”
“No.” Luc shook his head slowly. “We didn’t have a falling out.
I wrote both of them letters from France, and when I first started school in Switzerland.
Alaric wrote me back, usually with ridiculous things he’d been up to, and a lot of questions about where I was, my new school, and so on.
We probably wrote a hundred letters back and forth, but slowly stopped writing after a few years.
Not for any specific reason, just because we got busy with other people, other things. ”
“And Bones?” I ventured, watching his face.
Luc gave me a faint smile, even as he shrugged.
“Bones never wrote me,” he said. “Not once. I think I sent him four or five letters? Maybe more. I told him all about France, my classes, my siblings, my parents’ divorce. I finally gave up sometime after I got to Switzerland.”
When I saw Luc studying my face, I turned away, gazing out over the graveyard.
Miranda squealed while I watched, throwing something that looked like a water balloon at Draken.
It hit the werewolf arm he’d magicked onto his body and exploded, letting out black spiders the size of cocker spaniels.
Draken ran out of there, yelping, like a dog being chased by an angry bull.
It would have been funny if we’d been talking about anything else.
“Don’t say anything to Draken,” I said, quieter.
“About me fighting with Bones. I don’t want to get him all fired up about that again.
” I glanced at Luc, thinking about what we’d just been talking about, and Luc’s advice.
“It’s not just Draken, it’s Bones, too,” I admitted.
“I have no idea why, but they really set one another’s teeth on edge. ”
I drank down a few more swallows of wine, grimacing when I remembered our argument, and the last few choice words Bones had on the subject of Draken Joran.
“I don’t doubt it,” Luc said seriously. “I’ve seen the way he is with you. It’s like some twisted compulsion in him, to try to anger you.”
“You mean Bones?” I frowned. “I was talking about his issues with Draken, not me.”
“I know what you were talking about. I’m just not sure how much Draken has to do with it.
” Luc hesitated as he studied my face. “I won’t say anything to Joran,” he assured me.
“But Leda, really, be careful with Bones. I’m not saying you shouldn’t stand up for yourself.
But don’t get too close. And don’t push him too far. Promise me?”
I forced myself to smile reassuringly at the worry in his blue eyes.
“I promise,” I lied.