Chapter 16 #3
He steps half a pace away from us, gesturing toward the edge of the firelight, and I follow because the alternative is to refuse him in a place where two dozen people are pretending not to listen.
I wonder what kind of supernatural faux pas it would be to refuse the prince?
Two paces. Three. The music covers what we say next.
"You came," he says.
"Mandatory attendance."
"Mm." His brown eyes are warm. They hold the firelight. "You look well. Considering."
"Considering."
"The library. I was—" he pauses, regretful, like a man choosing his words "—relieved to hear you survived. Truly, Calypso. Devenir would not be the same without you."
My free hand tightens around the glass. I don’t say anything. He is too good at this, and the only safe move is to let the silence carry the weight of what he just chose to say to me.
"I have a request," he goes on.
"No."
"You haven't heard it."
"I don't need to."
He laughs. Soft. Genuine-sounding. His index finger taps his thigh once, twice, three times. What the fuck does that mean?
"I would like you to consider being my partner for the season."
"No."
"I would like you to consider being my partner for the season, with the partnership announced at the Revel, on the night of."
"No."
"As my date. As the witch I have invited to walk in beside me when the Revel opens.
The unveiling, as it were, of a renewed academic and ceremonial pairing.
" He tilts his head, his lashes fluttering firelit shadows onto his high cheeks.
The motion is almost charming. "Calypso.
Listen to what I am saying. The Revel is a place where people choose their footing for the next year. I am offering you mine."
"I have a footing."
"Do you?"
It is a question and it is not. He knows the wide chasm between his privilege at this school and mine. Neither of us are blind to it.
"Calypso," he says, and now his voice has gone quieter. The finger has stopped tapping. "May I ask you something?"
I stare back at him.
"Have you considered the possibility that what happened in the library was not a coincidence?"
My stomach drops.
"You walk this campus without an anchor.
Without a name on your door. Without a partnership, without a sponsor, without a noble house formally vouching for your protection.
" He is gentle. He is almost sad. "Do you understand what that looks like, to a culture built on knowing whose property is whose? "
"I am not property."
"No. But in the absence of a known affiliation, people make assumptions." He waits. He lets the assumption land. "Thierry Vasreaux did. The next will too. I would like to spare you the next."
"Get away from me."
"It is a generous offer, Calypso."
"Get away from me."
He smiles. A small, sorry thing. He inclines his head.
"Think about it."
“I won’t.”
He turns. He walks back toward the fire without rushing, and three steps in he passes Nellie, who is already on her way to me, and he says something under his breath to her that makes her stop in her tracks. She rounds on him. Whatever she says back is sharp and fast, and his smile does not change.
By the time she gets to me I am already walking.
I need space. From him, from that, from everything about this event and what it stands for.
I make it to the edge of the firelight, past the trees, to where the lanterns thin out and the shadows of the old elms run long and the smoke doesn’t quite reach.
There is a low stone wall there—the kind that used to mark a garden bed before the academy decided to put a quad on top of it.
I lean against it. I close my eyes for a second. I open them.
"Cal."
Nellie's voice. I turn my head. She is two paces back and her face has a careful expression I have not earned.
"Hey."
"I am going to murder him in his sleep."
"Nellie, don't joke."
"Who is joking? The audacity. The condescension." She tries to take my elbow and I twitch back without meaning to, and she pulls her hand away, careful, hurt. "Sorry. Sorry. I know."
"It's fine. I just—"
"I know."
We stand there. She doesn't push. I love her for it. I can't say so out loud because the part of me that says things like that out loud hasn't come back online yet, and may never; I just stand against the wall and breathe and let Nellie be Nellie next to me.
I scan the crowd because the only other thing there is to do is drink and I really don’t need another reason for my magic and my insides to stir up.
Aamon has moved closer to the fire, closer to the older vampires, closer to the political middle of the quad. He hasn't turned my way once. Good.
I look at the fire. I look at the crowd. I look—
Pull.
Behind my sternum. Low. Magnetic. Compass-needle. Direction. My head turns before I authorize it. My eyes find the line of trees beyond the wall. The dark between the trunks.
He's in the shadow of the third elm.
Hands in his pockets. Shoulder against the trunk. Watching.
Kage.
I shouldn't go to him. God, I know I shouldn’t go to him.
I have a sling and a bandage and a noble vampire across the quad who has just informed me that I am unprotected, and going to the shadow at the edge of the trees with a man whose blood is in my veins is going to go on a list of decisions that are just too dumb to analyze.
But he… saved me. And my magic does that current-reversal thing and I can’t help but follow the pull.
Nellie sees me move and opens her mouth to ask. I shake my head. She closes her mouth. I love her so much for not trying to stop me my eyes sting.
I cross the wall—a single careful step over, my left hand braced after I set down my glass—and I walk into the shadow.
The grass is wet. Away from the fire, the smoke thins and the air goes quieter. He doesn't move as I approach. He's also in all-black like he dressed for the event, sleeves rolled, dark hair fallen forward across his face. His jaw hasn't loosened.
Perhaps it never does.
He's watching me with the storm-blue eyes that I swear I saw split open with terror over my body on a library floor.
I stop a pace away from him.
Nobody says anything for a long, long second.
"Hi," I say.
He doesn't answer. The firelight from the quad catches on the scar through his eyebrow. His mouth doesn't move.
"Hi, Kage."
"I heard you the first time, Hex."
I exhale. He’s not going to make this easy, is he? "I came over to say thank you."
"For?"
"For the—"
I gesture vaguely with my left hand. The library. The body. The tearing. For my life. I can't make my mouth say for saving me. The words don't fit.
His eyes drop to the sling. They come back up. Whatever's in them isn't kind.
"Don't thank me," he says.
"What?"
"Don't thank me, Hex. Don't make it a thing it wasn't."
"It wasn't—"
"It wasn't anything. I felt you scared and the floor went out from under me, and I came, because I would have come if I'd been on the moon and I would have come if you were a stranger.
" He shifts off the trunk one inch. "It wasn't personal.
It was a body's response. My blood is in you and that puts things in motion that aren't about either of us. "
"Okay."
"Don't okay me like you don't believe me."
"I'm okaying you like I heard you. I don't have to believe you. You don't have to believe me either."
He looks at me. He looks at me long enough that I can see his pupil widen against the dark.
"Why are you here, Hex?"
"Because my magic dragged my head around the moment you stepped under that tree."
"That's not what I asked."
"I know."
We watch each other.
"Can I ask you something," I say.
"You can try."
"Who are you?"
His face changes.
It changes fast. The almost-laugh evaporates and his face goes still. Not anger. Something colder. He has heard a sound he doesn't like. His jaw works. His hand comes out of his pocket and he runs it through his hair and the gesture is rough.
"That's the kind of question," he says, quiet, "you don't ask people in this place."
"I'm asking it of you."
"You don't—"
"Kage." I lift my left hand. Open palm. Slow. "I'm not asking for a council file. I'm not asking to put it on a form. I am standing in the dark with the man who killed somebody for me three days ago and I don't know who you are. And I would like to."
The quiet between us stretches.
"Please," I say.
I'm not above please anymore. Twelve years of please in a facility burned that out of me a long time ago, and Devenir hasn't yet given me back the dignity to refuse it.
He looks at me a long time.
“Jesus Christ, I’m not the fucking IRS.”
"I was somebody else, once," he says.
I wait.
"Not somebody better, Hex. Don't get romantic about it.
Just somebody whose life belonged to him.
" His jaw works. "I had a name then. I'm not going to give it to you tonight.
I haven't said it out loud in—I don't remember.
Long enough that if I tried it would come out wrong.
" He rolls his shoulder. "I'm not a student. You obviously knew that."
"I knew."
"I'm not faculty."
"I knew that too."
"I'm—" His jaw flexes. The word doesn't come. He looks past me, past my shoulder, into the trees. Tries again. "I'm here because the people who decide where I am decided. I do work nobody else wants to do. I take orders from a man who doesn't need to ask twice."
His mouth twists.
"And on a good night, if I'm lucky, he forgets I exist for a couple of hours and I get to come to things like this." His eyes flick to me. "Is that enough for you, Witch?"
"Are you—"
"Don't ask if I'm okay."
"I wasn't going to."
"Yes you were."
"I was going to ask if you've been like this a long time."
He looks at me.
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Longer than you've been alive, Hex."