Chapter 13
~13~
A lise couldn’t breathe. Her ribs closed in hard around her heart, sending it thumping frantically, and she couldn’t seem to force them to expand to draw in air. Sparkling black stars shot in around the corners of her vision and the world lurched into spinning motion again. No that was the room, twirling like a top around her. Fast. Too fast. The black stars burst and dragged her under.
She blinked her eyes open right away.
Or was it right away?
Somehow she’d ended up on the floor, the cavernous ceiling of the archives looming above. The entities she’d harnessed had vanished. Well, fuck.
“Alise,” Cillian said, squeezing her hands. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you. I’m not deaf.” She pushed to sit up.
“Don’t move just yet. Are you dizzy still?”
“Why would I be dizzy?” Come to think of it, she was kind of muzzy headed. Probably the power of suggestion. But how had she ended up on the floor? She extracted her hands from his and levered up. She decided against standing just yet.
“Because you fainted.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Her voice sounded just like her maman. “I’ve never fainted in my life.”
“Well now you have,” he informed her. “Did you hit your head? I couldn’t catch you in time. I’ll summon a healer.”
“No!” She couldn’t reel back the too-strident denial, but she could make an effort to be rational and stop any impetuous actions on Cillian’s part. “It’s not necessary,” she added with a weak smile. “People faint, right? First time for everything.”
Cillian, who’d been kneeling beside her, plopped his butt down and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Alise, this has got to stop.”
“What has to stop?” she demanded. “If you mean the independent study, I’ve been trying to stop it. You’re the one who—”
“I don’t mean the cursed independent study and you know it!” he fired back, with eyes blazing, no sign of the mild-mannered librarian about him. “You’re running yourself into the ground. Exhausted, overworked, underfed, and so terrified of this Gordon Hanneil that you literally collapsed at my feet at the mere mention of his name.”
The bones of her skull throbbed and she dropped her face into her hands, despair welling up to sting her eyes. She’d utterly failed to do a very simple thing. All she’d had to do was keep her head down and her mouth shut. Essentially avoid doing something wrong, and she’d screwed that up within only a couple of days. And now both of them would pay the price.
“Alise. Sweetheart.” Cillian gently pried her hands from her face. “I’m sorry. That was harsh of me. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I’m not,” she said, aware of the lie as she spoke it, the taste of salt tears on her dry lips.
“You’re going to tell me what this Gordon Hanneil did to you,” he said, holding her by the wrists, his expression fierce. “And then we’re going to deal with this situation.”
“Cillian, please,” she begged. “You have to stay out of this. It’s not safe for you. You’re already in danger and you have to let me go.”
He cocked his head, as if he hadn’t quite heard her correctly. “You’re terrified to the point of fainting because of whatever this creep said or did to you and you’re worried about me?”
She bit her lip against saying anything more, pleading with her eyes for him to understand, to let this go. “You have to walk away,” she whispered urgently. “This isn’t your fight.”
“You’re a real piece of work,” he said slowly. “You know that?”
Alise flinched, unable to meet his accusing stare. She knew it. And she didn’t blame him for hating her. Though it gave her a pang to realize she’d dealt the killing blow to whatever friendship they’d begun. Still, he didn’t release her wrists, tightening his grip when she feebly tugged away.
“Alise Phel,” Cillian said with the deliberation of someone speaking a vow, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m certainly not abandoning you to this… situation, whatever it is. I might be only a librarian-wizard, but—”
Her gaze flew up to his. “I never meant it that way! I’m only trying to protect you.”
His tight face softened, along with his grip on her wrists, and he stroked his thumbs over the backs of her hands. “I appreciate that. It means a great deal to me that you feel that way. Is it then so difficult to understand that I have the same desire to protect you?”
She had no words, gazing at him helplessly, thinking she couldn’t let him do this, but also how some agonized part of her deep inside leapt in aching need. If only he could protect her. “I don’t know how you can,” she whispered. “Not because you’re a librarian,” she added hastily, unwilling to hurt him again, “but because… You just don’t know.”
“With House Hanneil involved, I have an idea,” he replied grimly. “But whatever it is, you’re not handling this by yourself. That only makes things harder and worse. You’re not alone in this, Alise. There is no way I’m walking away to leave you to deal with the problem on your own. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”
This firm, determined Cillian was new. Or was he? He’d certainly pushed her into eating and refilling her magic the first time they met, like a velvet-covered elemental carriage rolling over her protests. “I just don’t know what—”
He laid a finger over her lips to stop her words. “We’ll figure it out,” he insisted softly. “Just let me help. Let me prove I can take care of myself—and of you.”
Mute, feeling dizzy again, for a different reason, she nodded. The movement dragged his finger along her lips, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. Feathering his fingers over her cheek, he leaned in, as if drawn by an invisible string, hovering there for an endless moment.
She should pull back.
She didn’t want to.
His lips breathed over hers, a barely there caress that nevertheless tingled with bright sparks of delight. The cold, hungry, empty places inside her seemed to thaw, receiving the kiss, opening to him.
With an incoherent sound of profound need, she moved into the kiss, deepening it hungrily. Cillian met her more than halfway, running his hands into her hair and cupping her head, holding her while he returned the kiss, feeding and nibbling on her lips as if they tasted delicious. Hesitant at first, she lifted her hands to his black curls that the girls had so rhapsodized about, finding them as deliciously silky as they’d speculated. He hummed deep in his throat as she touched him, encouraging her, and she found they’d both risen to their knees, all the better to press together, clinging to each other, kisses almost frantic. Alise had never felt anything like this, a wildness rising in her demanding to be freed, craving more and more and more.
Cillian broke the kiss, holding onto her still, but staring at her, his expression distraught. “We can’t do this,” he whispered, sounding stunned. “ I can’t do this. I apologize. I shouldn’t have. This can’t have happened.”
A giggle welled up in Alise, entirely inappropriate given his chagrined horror. “It did happen, though,” she confided. And she was… happy?
“But I—I promised,” he stammered. Seeming to realize he still clutched her close, he let her go suddenly enough that she nearly fell. Which, naturally, meant he reached out to steady her—and then yanked away his hands again, holding them out a short distance from her, like they might soil her if he got them too close. “What have I done?” he cried.
“Oh, Cillian,” she said on a laugh. “It was a kiss. Nothing more.”
“How can you laugh? This is a disaster.”
No, the disaster had been everything else, one terrible event piled upon the next, until the accumulated pressure became crushing. This was the one good thing that had happened in… certainly longer than she could remember, maybe the best thing to ever happen to her. She patted his cheek and pressed a light kiss to his parted lips, a kiss he was still too stunned to return. “I liked the kiss,” she told him, surprising herself by admitting it. And not above taking the distraction to extract a bit of reprieve from the uncomfortable interrogation. “Kiss me again,” she invited.
Cillian’s head whirled, his body throbbing with unaccustomed desire. And there was Alise, acting like everything was fine. No, more than fine: her depthless, sharp black eyes sparkled with lively happiness, a very real smile curving her perfect lips, plump and shining from their kiss. Their kiss. He’d kissed Alise Phel. His younger self, the bookish, timid boy who’d regarded wizards like those of House Elal with considerable awe, fluttered in delighted surprise. His current self, the one who knew much better and should have been thinking , cringed in different, but equally strong disbelief.
What in the dark arts had come over him?
Groaning, he pulled at his hair, remembering how sweet her slim, delicate fingers had felt against his scalp, both soothing and stimulating. He wanted it again. And again. He’d uncorked a bottle that could never be sealed the same way. Speaking of bottles, though…
“Is that a bottle in your pants pocket?” he asked, gesturing vaguely in that direction and heroically attempting to banish the image of her slim thighs beneath the baggy material. As soon as he said it, he realized the question echoed a common bawdy joke. Alise’s raised brows indicated she thought so, too. “I mean, I felt it when, we, ah—” He coughed into his fist, then deciding they were much too close, pushed to his feet and gazed beseechingly at the stack of information he’d prepared for her. That was the real and very pressing reason they were alone together.
“A bottle, yes.” Alise stood up also, placing a proprietary hand on that pocket. “It’s nothing.”
That was a lie—and at least, it woke him to his senses. He rounded on her, planting fists on hips. He’d had flat enough. Yes, he’d made a massive mistake, but there was nothing to be done about it now. And it didn’t change the bald truth that Alise had been hiding all sorts of unpleasantness—from him and from everyone else—and he’d resolved to put an end to it. For her own fucking good.
“No more lies,” he told her. “No more prevarications, or deliberate omissions, or deflections to conceal the truth.”
She glared at him, cheeks flushed. “You don’t tell me what—”
“Who else is there?” he demanded. “Who is taking care of you while you deal with this ?” He stabbed a finger at the files he’d uncovered regarding the wizard masquerading as Gordon Hanneil.
Her gaze flicked to the stack of paper and away again, face tightening with such real fear that his heart broke for her. “Who else can you trust?” he asked, more gently. “Because you can trust me.”
“I don’t want you hurt.” She shook her head as she spoke.
“Good, because I don’t want to be hurt, and now you will understand how I feel.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Let’s start with the bottle. If it’s nothing, then you can tell me why you’re carrying it in your pocket.”
She sighed deeply, but complied, digging it out and handing it to him. “See? A basic grooming imp bottle.”
“And you’re carrying it around in case you have a grooming emergency?” Many students did, he knew, but they favored the smaller, portable ones. Not the heavy desktop variety.
Rolling her eyes at him, she reached for it, but he moved it away, giving her a pointed look. “I stuffed it with spirits,” she said, as if that explained anything. “And it requires my attention to keep them in there, so its easier to have it on me. Proximity reduces the magic drain. May I have it back now?” She held out an imperious hand and he placed the bottle in it.
He wasn’t done with this, though. Not by a league. Watching her tuck the bottle back in her pocket, he triaged his thoughts on the subject, deciding which to lead with. “Why,” he inquired, as politely as he could manage, “did you stuff a grooming imp bottle with a collection of spirits?” Maybe she had a good reason. He seriously doubted it, but he definitely wanted to hear this one.
She flicked him a glance, buttoning the pocket. “I didn’t want to be spied on, so I gathered all the spying entities in my room, then I had to put them somewhere.”
He held onto his temper by a thin thread. “I know you’re capable of banishing them.”
“Yes, but then the wizards I stole them from would know I did it,” she replied with impatience, as if that reasoning made any sense. “Though now I’m fucked because I used two of them for the cloaking on the way here and lost my hold on them when I… blanked out for a moment there.”
Not admitting that she’d fainted, he noted. Stubborn woman. “What will the repercussions be?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted darkly. “I suppose I’ll find out.”
“Then let the rest go,” he suggested. “The damage is done.”
She put a possessive hand over the pocket holding the bottle. “I won’t. I have my reasons.”
“Even though it’s harmful to you?”
“Even so.” She stopped short of pouting, but the obstinate lift of her chin told him her pride was involved. Alise wasn’t behaving rationally, that much was abundantly clear.
Cillian chose his words carefully. “I feel like this is not a long-term solution, if it’s draining your magic.”
“I know that.” She held up a hand in tacit apology for snapping at him. “I need to figure out what to do. I just haven’t had time. I thought about asking Professor Cixin, but how would I explain why this was necessary?”
He thought that question should be her first clue that she wasn’t thinking clearly, but he restrained that observation. “Let me do the research for you,” he offered instead. “I bet I can find something in the archives, in the records off-limits to students.” He’d have to go carefully, to avoid questions from his supervisors, but he could always spin a tale about a personal research project tangential to the information he truly needed. He could pull that off. Nothing about it was illegal, so it wouldn’t be anything like what had happened with Szarina.
The look of gratitude Alise gave him made it all worthwhile. “That would be amazing. Thank you.”
Then she stepped up and kissed him lightly, cupping his cheek and giving him a radiant smile, and the conflicting emotions nearly wrenched him apart. He wanted nothing more than to pull her close and kiss her senseless. He also couldn’t allow this to continue. Taking his willful romantic longing firmly in hand and shoving it behind a locked door, he pursued the most important course of conversation and dumped metaphorical ice water on the situation. “Now, tell me about Gordon Hanneil and what he did to hurt you.”