Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
I awoke suddenly the next morning.
Or maybe it was afternoon?
Either way, I had been asleep, and now I wasn’t.
A sharp rapping on the door had me jerking up into a sitting position. It went on for a long time, as if this hadn’t been the first time that the person had knocked.
“Who is it?” I asked before I remembered that I was in Aiden’s room, in the boy’s wing, where I specifically wasn’t supposed to be.
“It’s Lilia!” called the voice, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Tell her to go away,” Aiden mumbled, wrapping an arm around my waist and tugging me closer to his warmth.
“It could be important,” I said, pulling away.
I yanked the blanket with me, leaving Aiden the sheet. I haphazardly wrapped the blanket around my body as I stumbled to the door, my legs not yet functioning properly, and opened it.
Lilia was lifting her fist to knock again, but she dropped it when she saw me. “Oh, thank every deity in existence!” she exclaimed, pushing past me into the room. “Is Moonbeam with you?”
“I assume so,” I said, letting the door close behind me. “Come on in,” I added sarcastically.
Lilia was peering under the bed. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”
I headed for Moonbeam’s bed and lifted Aiden’s shirt off the kitten, who blinked her big eyes at me and yawned, stretching her arms out in front of her. “She’s right here. What’s going on?”
Lilia collapsed to the ground in relief, reaching out and offering her fingers to Moonbeam to sniff. “No licking,” she said to her before looking up at me. “You may want to sit down for this.”
That didn’t sound good.
“You’re scaring me. What’s going on?” I asked, sitting on the end of Aiden’s bed.
“There’s a bounty,” Lilia whispered.
The words didn’t make sense at first. “What’s a bounty?”
“A bounty on who?” Aiden asked, sitting up, his fist smoking.
“I think you know,” Lilia said quietly.
Suddenly it made sense. “They’ve put a bounty on manducares?” I gasped.
“It came in this morning,” Lilia said, nodding in confirmation. “Officially stamped by the United Kingdom Ministry themselves. They’re paying a hundred thousand pounds for every manducare brought in, dead or alive.”
“A hundred thousand ?” I squeaked. That was a lot of money. I could feel my face whitening. “Who knows we have her here?”
“None of us would ever do that to her,” Lilia said firmly.
It was nice to have confirmation that my friends were good people who weren’t swayed by that much money.
“Anyone else?”
Lilia shook her head. “I don’t think so. There’s always a chance that someone might suspect that you kept her, though.”
Aiden bit his lip, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. “We’ll have to be extra careful.”
“Hang on, if there’s a bounty here, does that mean that the Dark Forest is open season?” I asked, feeling sick.
Lilia wrinkled her nose. “Headmistress Blackthorn lifted the ban at breakfast. There are rules, of course, but…” she trailed off.
“What kind of rules?” Aiden asked, his voice quiet.
“The kind that protects the students, not the animals,” Lilia said, scratching behind Moonbeam’s ears. “One fourth year student or tutoring assistant per group, you have to register the time you enter and exit the forest. That sort of thing. Oh,” she snapped her fingers, “a mirror. In case you get lost, I guess.”
“That’s disgusting,” I whispered. I searched for Aiden’s hand without looking, gripping it tightly when I found it. His skin was cold, colder than I’d ever felt it. “And people are going along with this?”
“It’s a lot of money,” Lilia said quietly. “There are people protesting, of course. But they’re —we’re—definitely in the minority.”
“Aiden, what if Moonbeam is found?” I said, a tear trickling down my cheek.
“She won’t be,” Aiden said grimly. “We won’t let her be.”
“You shouldn’t join the protest,” Lilia said suddenly.
“Why not?” I asked, my head whipping around to her. “This is despicable!”
“Well…” Lilia hesitated. “Maybe you can. You don’t want to seem too eager. We don’t want anyone to suspect anything.”
“Because having all our friends protest, but not us, isn’t a dead giveaway?” I said, and then winced at my choice of words.
“We’re not marching around with signs or anything,” Lilia said with a chuckle. “We signed a missive.”
“We should definitely sign it, too,” I said. “The more signatures the better, right?”
“I suppose.”
“We should join a hunt,” Aiden said suddenly.
“What?” I asked incredulously. “Why would we do that?”
“Everyone would assume that we are going to try to find Moonbeam in the forest if we let her go. Try to protect her. But if we don’t go, then they’ll assume we kept her.” Aiden’s eyes flared with fire. “And if our group does happen across a manducare, we can prevent it from being killed.”
“And how would that divert suspicion from us?” Lilia demanded. “We cause an incident that prevents the capture of a manducare, and suddenly, we’re suspects again.”
Aiden deflated. “I just hate doing nothing.”
“I know.” I stroked his hand. “We all do.”
“I’ll discuss the idea of joining hunts with the others, with the goal of distracting the hunters,” Lilia said slowly. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea.” She climbed to her feet. “Come down for lunch. We’ll meet you in the mess.”
“Okay.” I closed the door behind her and then climbed back into bed, curling up in Aiden’s arms. “What can we do?”
His big hands stroked my hair. “I don’t know.” His chest heaved with a sigh.
“You have to study,” I said suddenly.
Aiden chuckled. “I always have to study.”
“For your underwater test, I mean,” I clarified. “It’s tomorrow.”
“As long as I don’t let Moonbeam lick me, I’ll be fine,” Aiden said. “I’ve tested the bottle spell recently, and it works just fine. So it won’t be a problem.”
I relaxed against him. “That’s a relief.”
“Sooooo…” He trailed off and I twisted around to look at his face. He was frowning. “What should we do about the hunt?”
I hesitated. “I don’t think I could handle it, to stand by and watch as our classmates brought down a manducare. What are the chances they would even find one?”
Aiden’s eyebrows went up. “That’s a good question. We’ve never seen one before, or even had a recorded history of seeing one around here. Why did Moonbeam’s mother come here?”
I silently traced a pattern into the blanket still wrapped around me. “I’m wondering if the nexus points had lingering magic around them,” I said slowly. “Like they took longer to drain than the lines themselves because there was more magic here in the first place.”
“You think that Moonbeam’s mother came here because there was a stronger magical energy than wherever she was,” he said thoughtfully. “That makes sense. Where do you think she was before this?”
“Not near a stronger nexus point.” I reached for his Nexus textbook and flipped to the page detailing the points on the ground. “We can eliminate the ones in the water; the manducare are not aquatic without gills. I think we can eliminate the ones in the air as well.” I traced the lines near Academy Island. “I would guess she came from Northern Scotland. Perhaps on a little island further north, if there are any. They’d be too small to show up on this map.”
Aiden, who had hooked his chin over my shoulder while I studied his textbook, reached over to trace a different ley line. “What about Iceland? Or even Greenland?”
I sighed heavily. “Yes, she could have come from there, too. There’s a minor nexus point off the coast of Greenland. She could easily have traveled here from there. I wonder why she didn’t go to northern Canada instead?”
“Winds,” Aiden said promptly. “It’s easier to travel with the wind than against it, and winds blow west to east, with the turn of the Earth.”
I wanted to smack myself. “Obviously.”
“Are you okay?” Aiden asked, concerned. “That was an easy one.”
I wanted to tell him I was fine, but I wasn’t so sure. “I think this hunt is rattling me more than I realized. It’s just so…” I trailed off. “Barbaric,” I said. “Hunting for food is different. This…” I shook my head. “It’s horrible.”
Aiden tightened his arms around me and rocked back and forth for a minute. “Hopefully, the other manducares stayed where they were, and it was far from here.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, sniffing a little.
“Why don’t you get dressed and play with Moonbeam a little, tire her out before we leave?” Aiden suggested. “We should meet our friends soon, and we don’t want Moonbeam following us.”
I shuddered. “That wouldn’t be good.”
Moonbeam leapt onto the bed and pounced on my blanket-covered foot playfully. “Mmmrrp?” She cocked her head, her look questioning.
I scooped her up in my arms and cuddled her close before holding her under her arms and looking in her eyes. “You have to stay in Aiden’s room,” I told her seriously. “Stay. Here.” I emphasized each word carefully. “You are safe in here. If you leave, we won’t be able to protect you. Do you understand?”
“She’s a kitten,” Aiden protested. “She can’t understand us.”
“She’s a manducare,” I retorted, not looking away from Moonbeam’s swirling purple eyes. “We don’t know enough about them to know whether she understands or not. I’m hoping she’s got some intelligence, like a toddler. Moonbeam, stay.”
“Mmmrrp,” Moonbeam responded.
“Good enough for me,” I said, putting her down in my lap and petting her head.
She rolled onto her back, exposing her soft belly.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I said, pulling my hand away. “I’m not playing claw-the-Siobhan today.”
Aiden chuckled and kissed the top of my head as he rolled out of bed.
I eyed his bare skin as he wandered around his room, hunting for a change of clothes and his shower caddy.
“I’m going to have to do the walk of shame back to my room to get my clothes for the day,” I said.
“Sounds good. Why don’t you give Moonbeam her breakfast before you head out?” Aiden suggested before he left the room.
“All right.” I retrieved one of the magic generators and turned it on, placing it inside one of the toys we had created for Moonbeam’s enjoyment.
Moonbeam’s gaze tracked every movement I made, making me glad that the magic generators were impotent when off, or else she would attack the box and eat them all before the day was over.
“And now for your solid food,” I said, opening the latch on the mini-fridge we had enchanted in the corner of Aiden’s room. Inside, were several prepared meals for the kitten, full of the dietary needs of a growing magical creature, according to Rhiannon. I chose the tuna and scraped it into a little plastic dish. A second dish was beside it, a quarter full of water.
“You need more,” I said to Moonbeam, carrying the dish to the sink and filling it with water and placing it back beside the tuna bowl. The water dish had a splash-proof enchantment on it, because we didn’t want Aiden’s things to get moldy from water.
I got dressed in my gauzy dress from the night before, after dealing with the litter box that we had tucked away in the bathroom for her to use, flushing the clumps down the toilet.
“I’ll see you later this afternoon,” I told her. “Be good. Stay here.”
Moonbeam looked up briefly from her tuna, licking her whiskers. I hoped that was an acknowledgement of my words.
I saw a few people in the hallway between Aiden’s room and mine, but nobody I knew well. They all wore expressions of amusement when they saw me, but I didn’t really care. I knew it was considered a walk of shame, but I felt no shame in having spent the night with my soulmate. We were meant to be.
Professor Dunlop was standing in the middle of the foyer, his arms crossed over his broad chest. “Miss Doyle,” he said.
“Hello Professor. Need me to get a message to Grandfather for you?” I replied nonchalantly.
No shame, but we technically weren’t supposed to sleep in any bed that wasn’t our own.
“Should I be congratulating you on your nuptials?”
“It’s a foregone conclusion,” I said with a shrug. “Besides, my presence eases Aiden’s soul bond.”
“Surely, he can manage for one night without you,” the professor said dryly.
“One, probably. But with the ley lines missing, and his magic going haywire, we thought it was prudent for me to stay nearby.” I smiled innocently.
Professor Dunlop buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook for a moment before he got himself under control. “I can’t make an exception for you just because your grandfather is my best friend.”
I shrugged. “You’re not. You’re making an exception for me because my soul bond helps keep my boyfriend’s magic stable.”
“He’ll pass his underwater test tomorrow?” The professor’s shaggy eyebrows rose.
“His magic is much more stable,” I reassured him.
He sighed heavily. “Don’t rub this in other people’s faces. I don’t want the headmistress to hear about this. I might lose my job.”
“We’re not advertising it,” I said seriously. “I’m sure your job is safe. You’re looking out for your student, and I’m certainly not being pressured into anything.”
Professor Dunlop rolled his eyes. “Be safe. Come to me if you need anything. I don’t want to hear anything about this from anyone .” He stalked away to his office.
I breathed a sigh of relief and continued to my hallway, looking forward to Aiden’s test on Sunday morning.
Aiden had an audience when he surfaced at the end of his hour under water. It was a relief to have our friends here, supporting him, even though I knew every single one of them would rather be asleep right now. We all stood up from the benches and applauded him.
He smiled a bashful grin before focusing his attention on Professor Akhtar, who had run the test personally.
“I’m glad you were able to work through your issues with the ley lines,” the professor said to him. “I will be double checking every student before we go to Atlantis next week, just to make extra sure that there aren’t any accidents. Go get dressed and bring me your backup plan in my office.”
“Yes, sir,” Aiden said.
“You did well,” Professor Akhtar said reassuringly. “I’m pleased you were able to figure things out.”
“I needed a little more time to adjust to the lack of ley lines,” Aiden said. “And having Siobhan near me helped.”
We had decided to continue the rumor that his soul bond was the reason his magic had gone haywire. The few other beasts at Blackthorn Academy had agreed to encourage it, given that they would also gain more time with their soulmates. I figured I wasn’t rubbing it in people’s faces, I was getting backup, so Professor Dunlop couldn’t be angry with me. Nobody had connected the manducare with Aiden’s flares of power, and we hoped we could keep it that way.