105. Summer
Chapter One Hundred Five
Summer
I brush my fingers over the ring that encircles my pointer finger.
It’s a simple ring. It looks like aged, unadorned brushed steel, but it’s so much more than that.
The band is crafted from the armor of Beowulf himself, and I have no idea where Alice got it.
The morning after my blowup with the stranger, I was panicking because I still didn’t have a plan.
No matter how hard I tried to allow the anger to fuel me, there was another emotion ousting it.
Throughout the night, I felt his energy slam against the walls, trying to get in to me, and I had no idea why he couldn’t get through.
It certainly wasn’t the rune I had drawn on the front door.
That was only ever going to slow him down.
But then Alice came into my room holding this ring, and I felt the power rippling off it.
The headmaster confirmed it would work, and after a few minor enhancements, we were both confident it would keep him out. For a while.
I knock on the headmaster’s office door, feeling on edge, feeling like I’m being watched.
“Enter,” he calls, his deep voice slipping beneath the door.
I heave the door open and hurry inside. “Sir, I need help,” I say, trying to keep my breath steady.
“Help?” he asks, his silver eyes focused intently on me.
“Yes, sir, I’m being followed by a?.?.?.” Shit, I should have planned more. Just say it, Summer. Just say you’re being followed by a faceless stalker. “Curse.” Coward.
“A curse?” He frowns and stands up, striding to one of the shelves. “Do you know the origin?”
“No. It is . . . faceless.”
The headmaster scans the wall of shelves, opening a small, intricate box, only to close it and pick up another. “A faceless curse, but I’m assuming it’s humanoid in form at least? What’s it composed of? Pure arcane? That is the most common.”
I think of the stranger, and my heart hurts, but then my neck and arm do too, and it’s nothing compared to the pain Max must be feeling. “Humanoid. Dark. Malevolent. Possessive. Dangerous.”
He stops and turns toward me, and I nearly flinch beneath the weight of his gaze. “Miss Tuatha De Daanan, how long has this been happening?”
I exhale. “Do you have something I can use to repel it?”
“I would think after last year you would come to me first with this sort of problem,” he says, the harshness of his voice matching that of his eyes.
“Coming to you last year proved not to be enough, sir.” My tone is sharp, and my words are like daggers.
His eyes glow. “Thank you for the reminder of my great failure, Miss Tuatha De Daanan,” he growls, grabbing a box from the shelf and slamming it onto his desk.
He opens the lid and pulls out a busted iron ring.
“A piece of armor from Beowulf.” He waves his hand, and various runes hidden on the metal light up.
I watch as he focuses on them, altering them before my eyes.
“Curse protection,” he says. Once the runes still and fade, he holds the ring out to me.
“It’ll keep him away?” I ask, looking between the ring in his hand and his eyes.
“Him?”
“It,” I correct, releasing a shaky exhale.
“Yes. It will keep it away.”
I nod and take the ring, sliding it onto my forefinger. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Tuatha De Daanan. If it worsens, please do revisit my office, and I can alter the wards on the artifact. Now, unless there is anything else,” he says, gesturing to the door before focusing back on the work on his desk.
I leave his office without another word and without an ounce of guilt.
The stranger has tested the boundaries a few times since then. I felt the ring pulse a little in response to his powers, but the more he does it, the faster it will adapt. If he has tried in the last week, I haven’t noticed.
Alice told me the ring is only as powerful as the wielder, and luckily, I have enough power to go around.
As the weeks have passed, I’ve spent every spare moment delving deeper into my power.
The first thing I did was look for the bottom, but I never found it, not yet anyway.
I might not know what to do with it, but it appears that I have a shit-ton of it.
“How many people have you invited?” I ask Alice as I walk down the stairs. The room has been completely transformed into a winter wonderland, putting even Connor’s display from last year to shame.
Alice glances at me, her hand in midair as she’s placing a maroon bauble on the tree that is nearly the same color as my dress.
“Is that a question you really want me to answer?”
I sigh and walk to the bar cart that Alice set up.
Pouring myself two heavy measures of scotch, I take a healthy sip.
“Is Rafe’s girlfriend coming?” I ask, trying to hold back my grimace at the thought of having to spend an evening with his blond bombshell of a girlfriend.
It’s not that I don’t like her. She’s just high energy and loud, and they just seem like an odd pair.
I still think about Mira, but we’ve all been told, under no uncertain terms, not to mention her.
Rafe and Annabeth met the second week he returned to school, and at the time, it felt like the kitsune was a very welcome distraction.
“I guess,” Alice says, scrunching her nose.
“She’s okay, Al,” I say, throwing her a look, though I know I’m being hypocritical.
Alice shrugs. “I know. But she’s not right for Raf?—”
“Stop.”
Alice sighs, putting another bauble on the tree. “I’m still rooting for Mira.”
I can’t say that I disagree. The version of Rafe with Mira was confident, happy, and vibrant. The version of Rafe with Annabeth is timid and awkward.
“Me too,” I concede, “but we can’t. He needs this. It’s helped get him back into classes.”
“All right, supportive mode activated,” Alice says, shaking it off.
I take another deep drink, looking at the ring as it taps against the glass. My chest tightens a little, but I shake my head, clearing the thought.
Rafe comes down the stairs wearing a button-down and jeans. In that moment, I’m glad for the distraction as it gives my mind something else to think about .
“Shit,” he says, looking at the bar cart. “That is a lot of alcohol.”
Alice ponders the cart. “Really? I thought we might need more?.?.?.”
I glance at Alice and then at Rafe. “So is Annabeth upstairs or?.?.?. ?”
Rafe doesn’t react to her name, and he looks completely unconcerned. “She’s on her way.”
“Right,” I say with a nod.
Alice, sensing the tension, walks to the cart and pours a drink so golden it appears red in some light. “I got you some hellfire whiskey. I can make you a cocktail with it.”
“Thanks,” he says, “but I’ll just take it on ice.”
Alice sighs, then finishes pouring the liquid into the glass. Careful not to get any on her skin, she hands it to Rafe and turns on some quiet music to ease the guests in as people start to arrive.
“Hello?” a voice calls from the other room, and I tense, recognizing it immediately.
“You invited Max?” I hiss, grabbing Alice’s arm.
Max walks into the room and zeroes in on me, giving me an awkward smile and a wave.
I’d barely seen Max since that night in the infirmary.
He pushed back when I told him I needed to stay away from him, but when I presented him with a ring of his own, he accepted it and put it on.
It isn’t nearly as powerful as the one Alice gave me, just heavily runed to protect him as much as possible, giving him the opportunity to get away.
I think it was as I was explaining what it did that he realized he was in the middle of something complicated.
I asked Alice to check on him a couple of times, and I’ve seen him in the corridor, but I haven’t been back to the gym.
“Yeah, I invited everyone,” Alice says, pouring herself a drink. “Want me to kick him out?” she asks. I consider it, but as the house slowly fills with people, it feels awkward to force him away when I don’t know the names of most of the people currently littering my living room.
“No, I’ll just avoid him,” I grumble, grabbing my tumbler and going through to the kitchen to get some more ice and maybe even have a couple of drinks in there to ease the awkwardness.
The kitchen door swings closed behind me, and the silence is soothing until I hear the door again, and I glance over my shoulder to see Max entering, holding a beer .
“Hey,” he says, leaning against the counter. My heart tugs at the memory of the first party I came to here, when Connor sat me on top of that very counter, when he stopped our make-out session to feed me so he could kiss me, knowing I was in my right mind to consent.
Looking back, it all seemed so simple then.
“Hey,” I reply, grabbing the first bottle I see and pouring myself a healthy measure of scotch.
“Still avoiding me, I see,” he says, taking a deep swig of his beer.
“Max?.?.?.” I say with a sigh and a grimace, keeping my back to him.
“It’s because I kissed you, right?” he asks.
“What?” I ask, taking a sip of my scotch and glancing at him over my shoulder.
“I’ve put the pieces together,” he says, putting his beer down on the counter, his eyes on me. “My arm. It’s ’cause I kissed you.”
“Fuck,” I say, looking back down at the counter.
“Worth it,” Max says.
Shocked, I turn to face him and find his gaze locked on me.
He pushes off the counter and rounds it to stand in front of me.
I look up at him, clutching my glass against my chest. His gaze drops to my lips, and my tongue flicks out to wet them.
This is a bad idea, a very bad idea, but I’ve missed him, and I’ve missed intimacy.
The stranger is gone, and so when Max leans in to brush his lips over mine, I don’t stop him.
I don’t kiss him back immediately, but when he pulls back to check that I’m okay, I’m the one who leans back in to press my lips against his.
It feels so good to be touched like this.
I’ve deprived myself of all contact like this, and I’ve missed it.