Without meaning to, I’ve created a storm.
Shit. Not again.
Thunder rumbles, and a bright bolt of lightning illuminates the Skyreach Spire and the academy’s courtyard below. There’s another rumble of thunder, accompanied by a stronger gust of wind, and then rain begins to fall.
It’s not a light, playful rain. It’s a deluge, and it’s focused right over the spire, leaving the rest of the academy untouched. The rain is frigid where it hits my face, and I draw breath as it slips down my neck and runs along my spine, chilling me immediately.
Another bolt of lightning flashes, and I wince away from the scalding brightness. The wind continues to blow, sending my hair whirling around my face in a blinding vortex.
“Maeve!” Professor D’Arques calls.
And that one word sends a different type of lightning zipping down my spine. Because I’ve wondered what it would feel like to hear him say my name. And the sound of it is even better than I’ve fantasized about.
“Hurry!” he calls again.
I reach up and push my long wild hair out of my eyes to find him holding the door open, gesturing me into the stairwell. As the rain intensifies, I run for the safety of the building, and I slip into the darkness just as thunder crashes overhead, causing the stone beneath my boots to tremble.
Severin steps inside behind me, and after fighting the wind for possession of the door, he’s finally able to yank it closed. As soon as the latch clicks, the sounds of the storm are muted, leaving us in a tense quiet broken only by our heavy breathing and the delicate drip of rainwater falling from my hair and clothes.
It only takes me a moment to understand the situation I’m in.
I’m standing in a dark stairwell with Professor D’Arques, with my hair and clothes soaked from the rain, and he’s close enough to me that I can smell a hint of his musky cologne—cedarwood, I think—and something sharper, like alcohol.
My eyes adjust slowly, and when they do, I can better see Severin’s figure in the darkness. His body is angled away from me, shoulders hunched slightly, tension evident in his frame despite the low light.
His breathing sounds strained, and a burst of concern goes through me. Did my energy sphere hurt him in some way? Did a rogue bolt of static strike him when I wasn’t looking?
“Are you all right?” I ask, reaching to place a hand on his arm.
When my fingers find him, everything changes. I don’t even see him move.
Between one second and the next, Severin has dropped his sheathed sword and has me backed against the wall, his body looming over me in the dark. His breathing is still strained, and now, with him this close, I note the tension in his jaw and tightness of his narrowed eyes. He looks like he’s trying to hold back a beast as it claws him from the inside.
Immediately, I know I didn’t hurt him with my magic. This is something else entirely.
“You... need to go,” he grates out through clenched teeth. Despite the dark, I see his pearly-white fangs peeking out from beneath his lips, long and sharp and perfectly made for piercing skin—skin like mine. Just like in my dream.
He’s probably right. In fact, I know he is.
But I also know that neither of us wants that.
For one, he’s blocking my path down the stairs. And two, given his labored breaths and my heart galloping in my chest, I think we’re both too far gone to step back now.
Tension crackles between us. No one’s here; no one would see. And I’m already standing on the edge of this cliff, a cliff I’ve been tiptoeing toward since the first time I met his eyes in class all those weeks ago.
And I’ve never been afraid to jump.
So I wrap my hand around Severin’s neck and tug his face to mine.
The moment our lips crash together, the tension explodes.
His body is on mine in an instant, one hand gripping my waist, the other tangling in my wet hair. I clutch his soaked tunic in my free hand, the other still wrapped around his neck, preventing him from pulling away.
His mouth devours mine, and I was right about the scent of alcohol. He tastes like whiskey—the good stuff—and he groans when I break our kiss to drag my tongue across his lips.
“What,” he grits out, chest heaving, “was that magic?”
I press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, feeling the scratchy beginning of a beard against my lips.
