Chapter 37
Ambrose
This could not be happening. I’d stayed up all night to finish reviewing Evelyn’s paper.
When Sasha had come over in the morning for breakfast, she’d found me half asleep at the kitchen table.
But here, in the restricted section of the Vesten Library, the Vesten Point said none of it mattered?
My wolf clawed at the confines of my mind, and I didn’t have the necessary discipline to restrain him.
I had finished it. The paper was sound. Everything should have been equal again.
The Vesten Point’s decision should be based on how he envisioned the evolution of the historian position, not based on a single item in our academic records.
“What do you mean she’s disqualified?” Heat surged through me, and my wolf paced a steady line back and forth in my mind. I hoped it wasn’t noticeable, but the way the others glanced at me, I was confident everyone could feel the tenuous hold I had on my magic at the moment.
With the Vesten Point’s words, Evelyn had gone catatonic, but my question ignited a spark within her.
Her spine straightened as if she were remembering every one of the experiments she had done, the papers she had written that had brought her to this moment.
I hoped she remembered how much she deserved to be here.
Her hands balled into fists at her sides, and her chin raised. “Please explain.”
Carter tilted his head and shot another subtle glance at Lord Arctos.
“I don’t think he’ll leave the room without an answer,” Arctos drawled. “And I am sure she would tell him immediately anyway.”
My brow furrowed. Were they talking about me? Why would I leave?
Carter glanced at Evelyn. “The answer is somewhat private, and for your ears alone.” He glanced at me. “Would you prefer we ask Ambrose to step back into the Great Room? Or do you accept Arctos’s assessment?”
Evelyn sighed, then dropped the pretense that we weren’t in this together. Our hands had disentangled when Carter and Lord Arctos broke their connection. She gripped my hand again now and repeated herself. “Please explain.”
At her move, the smile on Carter’s face was so feline that the hair on my arms stood on end. Nervous energy flooded me; my heart raced as I wondered what he could have to say to her. How could she be disqualified from winning the position?
“It turns out, Evelyn, that your disqualification is the same as mine.”
That didn’t make sense. Carter had had to step down from the position when…
“Surely, you’re joking,” she said, putting the pieces together more quickly than I did.
“You may not have been as honest with me as I was with you, but I assure you, I was serious when I said the court still requires a veil cat shifter to lead. What I didn’t say was that it can no longer be me.”
Fear flashed through her eyes at the mention of her shifted form. She shook her head slowly as Carter spoke.
“Did you not suspect?” he asked. “You didn’t wonder why I told you information that only the court leadership knows, about how the next Vesten Point is selected?” He nodded even as Evelyn continued to shake her head in disbelief. “Yes, Evelyn, you will be the next Vesten Point.”
I swallowed, finally making sense of everything. Of Evelyn’s shift, of Carter’s apparent fascination with her, of her attunement to the magic in nature. I’d known she was magnificent, but this was even more than I realized. I squeezed her hand.
“This can’t be right,” she said, shoulders pushing back as if she’d found new confidence with my touch. “How do you even know about my shift?”
Lord Arctos gave up the pretense of letting Carter handle this and moved toward us. “I am a god.”
Evelyn sighed loudly.
Carter stepped back in. “Lord Arctos suspected. I had hoped that when we spoke at the willow tree, you would say something, but you didn’t.
In the end, your draw to the tree was enough for me.
There are no other veil cat shifters on record, so it makes sense that the next Vesten Point would be half-fae—the only children not tested by the court.
” He shrugged and glanced at Arctos. “I also trusted the god, I guess. And you’re not denying it, so I suspect he didn’t steer me wrong. ”
Evelyn surveyed Carter, and it was as if I could hear the pieces clicking into place within her mind. She deduced something, but still, her following words were a question. “Why can’t you do it? It has something to do with traveling beyond the veil, doesn’t it? Through the willow tree?”
Now she took control of the conversation.
She believed what he said, although her last sentence had gone a bit over my head.
I knew she would hold her own from here on out.
She didn’t need me. I attempted to slip my fingers from hers so that she could fully stand against these two powerful beings, but she shook her head without looking at me and latched on tighter.
I knew better than to think it was from any fear of them—any need for me to defend her. I could do no such thing. She’d proved her lack of fear of them time and again. The action said she wanted me here. She wanted me to stand beside her as she received more news that would forever change her life.
And I would do so happily—proudly—for whatever time I was granted.
Carter nodded in response to her questions.
“Though I only became Vesten Point within the last few years, something happened when we freed the continent from the mist plague. It means I have commitments elsewhere. Commitments I’ve not been in a position to act upon because of the ones I currently hold to the continent.
I’ve been slowly splitting in two, and then Lord Arctos pointed out that there was an easy solution—to find my successor. ”
“Where could you have commitments that are not on the continent?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if he’d answer me, but with another glance at the way Evelyn kept me close, he seemed to decide it was acceptable.
“Beyond the veil,” Evelyn said before he could. “That’s what he was trying to tell me. He has commitments beyond the veil, and he can’t be in both places at once.”
He nodded.
“Do I get a choice?” Evelyn asked.
Carter smirked. “Only you can answer that. The call of the Vesten Point position is a real thing. But if anyone could fight it, it would probably be you.”
I tended to agree with that assessment. Resisting the call of court leadership was unheard of in Vesten history. But I remembered how hard she had fought her veil cat—how long she had gone in between shifts with no control. Evelyn could do anything she put her mind to.
“Would you want to fight it?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
With a quick glance at his father, he continued.
“Father believes that your aim with the historian position was to elevate half-fae in our society, starting at the heart of the courts. I think you could accomplish your aims much better as the Vesten Point.”
She bit the inside of her lip. “What about my research?”
Carter looked like he understood that question all too well. “It’s a different kind of research, but a no less important use of your skills. You have to understand history and magic to be able to guide our people in a new direction.”
The way he said our people with no hesitation warmed me to him immediately. I had believed Carter was different, of course. Gabriel was the most empathetic fae I knew. But to hear the leader of the Vesten so openly include half-fae in his statement meant we were already on the right track.
With Evelyn at the helm, we’d be unstoppable.
She seemed to accept his answer. “What about the historian position?” she asked.
Carter laughed. “I’ll let you fill it as your first act as successor.”
Her lip tilted dangerously, and she turned to me.
This was all going too fast. Evelyn would be the next Vesten Point?
Did that mean she would move to Compass Lake?
Of course she’d have to, that was where her duties would be.
Would she ask me to come with her? And now she was responsible for filling the position of Vesten historian?
How would she choose? What qualifications would she look for?
“Ambrose, will you accept the position?”
The current Vesten Point seemed to believe my response was a technicality he did not need to witness. “We’ll leave you two to talk. I’ll return to Compass Lake tomorrow. I want to talk to you again before I leave.”
She nodded but called after Lord Arctos’s retreating form, “How long have you known?”
He laughed and didn’t look back at her as he replied. “Since the first time you told me to go away. Only a Compass Point could be so disrespectful.”
Then they were gone, and Evelyn and I stared at each other in the restricted section. My mind looped through all the ways our lives had changed in what felt like moments.
Evelyn was to be Vesten Point.
That voice in my brain that always urged caution spoke softly. Did she really want me as Vesten historian? Her life had changed so rapidly. I didn’t want her to think… “Evelyn, you don’t owe me—”
“I would never ask you to be historian because I thought I owed you something.” Her eyes narrowed. “I respect the position too much for that.”
My lip tugged into a half smile. “The position, not me?”
She waved her hands in the air, likely at her wits’ end. “Both!”
I discovered new pieces of Evelyn Knowles every day.
Once, I’d watched her conduct an experiment that entailed trying to get a blueberry plant to grow.
She’d been determined to use magic to ensure that there was enough food for everyone, even if growing cycles were disrupted.
I’d known she considered it a stressful project; there were many newly awakened on the continent, and the food supply wasn’t entirely ready for the surplus.
Even then, though, her hands had been steady, her brow only slightly scrunched.
She’d shown nearly no signs of the pressure she was under.
Now she did.
She paced the restricted section. Her hair had been carefully plaited when the meeting started. Every pass back and forth across the room had her tugging another strand free. She was unraveling before my eyes.
I found her strikingly beautiful as she showed me more of the real her.
Usually, her movements were too practiced.
I didn’t like to consider it, but she clearly experienced stress reactions often, and was skilled at hiding them.
But now, she was showing me without a second thought—and it was that knowledge that made me secure in her offer of the historian position.
This was my first peek behind the curtain, an offering of trust she handed only to me. And I was intoxicated by it.
No amount of Evelyn would be enough. This addiction I had to her would only grow, never reaching its peak. Anything she asked me to give her, I would.
So, I did what I did best. I pulled out my pencil and notebook and said, “Maybe we should take some notes on this particular situation.”