41. Aligned Minds #2
He’d clearly gotten the same talk Bones and I did, from either Forsooth or Blackstone or both. He’d gotten the talk about Bones, anyway. Thinking about that, I reached out tentatively with my lower primal, now that I had one again.
I’d never tried to talk to Luc that way before, but I knew I’d reached him when I saw him flinch.
Do they know? I asked softly, shielding my thoughts from the rest of the table. I nudged his mind meaningfully, glancing around at our friends. Did they get the same story you did? About Malefic? And Bones?
Luc hesitated, meeting my gaze.
Not everyone, no, he thought back at me, enunciating his thoughts carefully.
Alaric, yes. Jolie and Nyx, yes. Miranda, Draken, Darragh, and Reena all think the masked mage turned out to be Malefic.
They believe he was after Bones’s money, and only made it look like Caelum did it so no one would try to rescue him.
He hesitated, meeting my gaze.
Essentially, they got the same story the authorities and newspapers will be told, he added, softer.
They all feel horribly guilty for doubting you, by the way, and for believing it was Bones, so maybe go easy on them when it comes up.
I know Miranda feels absolutely awful. She keeps saying she should have believed you about Bones from the beginning.
I winced, but still felt a lot of the tension in my neck and face relax.
Elysia? I asked quietly, glancing at the blonde witch, who was grimacing delicately at something Alaric had just said to her. What was she told?
No idea. Luc shrugged. That might be a question for Alaric.
He paused, his mind going temporarily silent.
You might want to have a talk with your brother, though, he added, quieter.
I thought about that, and glanced at Arcturus, who was chatting away with Nyx and Reena, telling them all about the Sanctum Occulus with Wraith still cradled in his arms. My new fire fox primal stood on the table in front of them, staring at Arcturus and the cat with its fiery tail swishing back and forth, almost like it was getting ready to pounce.
Before it could, Draken’s lion primal and Miranda’s corgi barreled down the length of the stone table, their light paws, legs, and bodies passing invisibly through plates and mugs.
They reached the fox and crashed into her, knocking her off the end of the table happily.
They jumped immediate after her, and the three of them began wrestling on the grass.
Bones’s bone dragon sat on his shoulder and watched, clicking its bone jaw disapprovingly.
When I glanced at Bones’s face, he was laughing, though.
I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen such a relaxed look on his face.
He noticed my stare and quirked an eyebrow, aiming his smile at me.
Taking my hand, he leaned down unexpectedly, tilted his head, and kissed me on the mouth.
It was definitely a more passionate kiss than I’d been prepared for.
When I returned it, sliding my fingers around the back of his neck, he released my hand, wrapping an arm around my waist and tugging me half into his lap.
His fingers fisted in my hair as he kissed me again, angling his head closer, his tongue hot in my mouth.
“Gross,” declared Arcturus.
“There they go again,” muttered Jolie, and Nyx laughed. “Is this what our future holds? Every group outing ending with the two of them snogging in front of us?”
“I’m with little Shadow,” Draken retorted sourly. “Gross.” He threw a piece of potato at us. “Not at the table, for fuck’s sake. Someone get the hose.”
Bones and I completely ignored them.
I didn’t make it back up to the tower for another hour, and only after Bones left through one of the mirrors to go see his mother, and hopefully check her out of hospital.
It felt strange to walk up that staircase alone, after everything that had happened.
It felt stranger given everything about to come.
The term had ended early.
Finals had been canceled or made optional, either to be conducted long-distance by individual professors, or omitted altogether, with grades being calculated by the work completed by students up until that point.
Given fire damage, the remnants of a dark curse still decorating the floor of our main assembly hall, and evidence still being collected across various parts of the campus, the graduation ceremony for the senior class would be conducted in Bonescastle this year, at the main temple in the center of downtown.
I was going upstairs to pack up a few things for me, Bones, and Wraith, and then I would hopefully be joining Bones and Varya in London, where he’d already directed some of his staff to clean out a house owned by the family in Kensington.
He had gone to the hospital in Exmoor to check his mother out first.
The Black Tower would be closed for a while longer, due to numerous law enforcement and military investigations, followed by what Bones cynically termed, “a stripped to the stone renovation and exorcism.”