“Please, Morgan,” Phil said, looking over my shoulder, and I was shocked when that traitor tiptoed past me.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just shout if you need me.” Then she pulled the door shut behind her on her way out, and Phil and I were alone.
“Cheesecake?” he asked. “Really?”
“What?” I asked faux-innocently, shrugging as I put the plates down on the worktop. “I figured everyone would be hungry since you weren’t bringing anything, and this game is played at the least convenient time ever. So excuse me for acquiring sustenance.”
“Please don’t be like this,” he said, his face pleading.
“Like what?” I crossed my arms. Seriously? He was going to lecture me about reacting poorly?
“You know,” he said. “Petty. Vindictive.” I could guess the last word before he said it, but I urged him to stop before he did. “Childish,” he said anyway.
“Childish,” I repeated. “You thinkI’mbeing childish.”
“Um, yeah,” he said. “Bringing cheesecake. Turning Jack against me. Wearing…” He waved vaguely at my outfit but fell short of acknowledging it.
“I didn’t turn Jack against you.”
“Oh yeah? What did you say?”
I shook my head. “Honestly? Almost nothing. I didn’t tell him the worst of it. Not by a long shot.”
“Well, if looks could kill, then I would have dropped dead the moment he walked through the door.”
“Maybe you should leave then.”
Phil looked taken aback by that. “You wantmeto leave?MyD&D game?”
“OurD&D game,” I said. “And if you can’t handle being around me, then yeah,youshould leave.”
I picked the plates back up and stepped closer to him, pausing when I was just a couple of inches away. I was hoping the heat that usually pulsed between us would have burned off after the other night, but it hadn’t. I could still feel every breath he took as if it were my own. So I just used it the way I always had before this summer: as fuel for my hatred.
“Because I’m not going anywhere this time,” I said, pitching my voice low, trying to keep it soft and even. “I’m not running off to another city, or avoiding anything because of you. So if you can’t handle the outcome of your decisions, maybe you should make better decisions.”
“That’s not fair,” he said, and I refused to let the wobble in his voice mean anything to me. “You know why I did it.”
“And I don’t fucking care,” I said. “You’ve made your bed. Now you get to lie in it.”
Then I pushed past him and through the kitchen door, plastering the smile back on my face as I did. I had cheesecake to serve, and an upper hand to maintain.
Chapter30
Yorick Proudhollow
Yorick looked desperately around for where Nephrine had taken Eden, but they were gone. He’d been looking directly at the door, so he was certain they hadn’t left that way. Which meant they had to still be in the room somewhere. He spoke a spell of his own to see any invisible creatures around, but there were none. He cast another to detect any magic at the nexus of the smoke, which turned out to be not the brazier but the bookshelves in the corner of the room. The smoke itself began to shimmer slightly with transmutation magic, which was no surprise, and Calamity’s magical light was a well-known evocation. A few spell books on the shelves glowed as well, but nothing else appeared to be magical in nature.
Yorick pinched his eyes shut; he needed a deep breath, but there was still smoke in the room. This was all his fault. He’d insisted Eden stay behind, and she was now paying the price for it. And in the end, it had been his card that had rung true– he’d been puppeted right into giving over the clue they’d risked their lives for.
Surely he could still fix this. Surely it wasn’t too late. Otherwise, he’d never forgive himself.
Yorick pulled his robe up over his mouth and plunged into the smoke, fighting the burning in his eyes as he scanned the shelves for another clue. The smoke was gone by the time he found it, but eventually he noticed another twelve-pointed star– this one crude and hand-drawn– at the base of an unrelated book: a history tome he recognised from his training at the bard college.
As he reached out to examine the book, it refused to come away from the shelf, simply tipping backwards instead. And as it did, a deep clicking and groaning emanated from the bookcase– no, from beyond it– and the shelves swung open to reveal a dark staircase leading down into the earth.
They couldn’t be certain, of course, that Nephrine and Eden had gone this way. Not without magic, of course. So Yorick cast another spell, this time holding the image of Eden’s star crystal in his mind’s eye, grimacing as he pictured Nephrine wearing it. He would tear it from her neck if it were the last thing he did.
As the spell manifested, Yorick could sense the crystal descending bumpily beyond the secret door.
