I never want to leave this room.
“If I tell you, will you please forgive me?” he asks in a solemn tone.
“Tell me what?” I reply absent-mindedly.
I run my finger down the spine of a particularly worn-looking book, the spine slightly bent and the hardcover peeling back.The Many Ways to Use Wolfsbaneis faded but still legible. Either a lot of people want to poison someone, or the healers favor this toxic plant for traditional medicine. It could honestly go either way.
His deep baritone laughter brings me out of my macabre thoughts. “I see you like the library. I thought you might.” A grin spreads across his face.
It’s unfair how beautiful this man is on any given day, but when he smiles? It’s so easy to forget why I’m upset with him. Even the beauty of this library has nothing on him.
Sharp blue eyes watch me as I push the book back onto the shelf. His hair hangs loosely to his shoulders today, the thick waves pushed back from his face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw.
I pull my gaze away.
We walk through a narrow aisle, taking a seat at the back of the library, being sure to keep our voices to a whisper.
“I’ll tell you the backstory if you say you’ll forgive me for letting you down. I promise, where I had to be couldn’t be avoided.”
“Ambrose, I’m upset. But that’s something I need time to work through. I can’t stuff my feelings in a little box and make them go away to suit you.”
“Is there anything I can do to speed up the process?” he asks, his voice soft and low, but with a slight humorous tone.
“Where were you last night that was so important you couldn’t be there for me?”
He shakes his head. “Anything but that.”
I push my chair back from the table. “Back to square one. Secrets. Since when did we start keeping secrets from each other?”
“Since I have to,” he says without an ounce of regret. “I can’t tell you what you want to know about last night, but I can answer your first question. Kingston and I have bad blood because of who he is. What he stands for—” he presses his lips together, waiting for the small, frail-looking woman with an arm full of books to pass. She must be the librarian.
As soon as she passes, he continues, his beautiful blue eyes taking on a hardened edge. “—Kingston doesn’t just practice dark magic. Heisdark magic. Dark to the core and makes no apologies for it. He’s one of the most talented in the academy at mind control.” His lip curls in distaste. “Only a select few Noctryns can perform that level of dark magic. He will wedge himself into your thoughts, taking what he wants and leaving whatever he desires. And when he’s done, if he doesn’t eliminate you, he’ll make you want to terminate yourself.”
I don’t say anything. I just listen.
His lips lift in a sneer, causing his straight white teeth to stand out against his tan skin. “As you know, we as Veils use the gifts we were bestowed upon at birth, our rightful abilities. They’re different,” he adds. “The Noctryns sacrifice their natural-born powers to wield darkness, both figuratively and literally. He’s the worst of his kind here at Kintoira.”
He sounds dangerous. Interesting—I’ll give him that—but dangerous.
It’s entirely up to us where we fall on the spectrum of good versus evil. Light versus dark. The academy assigns us to a regiment, but we play a big part in it all. How we test during the Asylamation will tell the academy exactly what they need to know. At least that’s what they feed us.
Do we stay to the light and use our core powers to defend and fight for the realm, or do we sacrifice those for the dark powers of wielding shadows, mind control, and blood magic? They’re both valuable and dangerous in their own right.
One is just naturally born, and the other is, in a way, stolen.
I steeple my hands on the table, staring intently at Ambrose. I raise both of my eyebrows at him, knowing there’s more.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re like a dog with a bone?” His words say one thing, but his eyes say something else. He’s looking at me like he’s impressed, not annoyed. “You don’t give up.”
“Don’t evade, Mr. Ballard.”
Sighing, he leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. “Last year, when a certain object went missing—’’
“A dark object?”
“And a professor—’’
“A professor went missing?”
