“During our first winter break, Elizabeth was manipulated by a dark mage. From what I could piece together from her journals later, he got into her mind and convinced her that he was actually me. And from there?” Doc releases a long breath, fogging the windowpane. With his free hand, he draws a spiral in the mist. “Understand, Stevie. The most dangerous thing about true mental manipulation is that it requires very little upkeep. All he had to do was plant a few tiny lies, like scattering seeds in a freshly tilled field. With very little encouragement, those seeds eventually rooted, and from there, they bloomed into a tangled garden of deep, dark deceptions.”
My skin erupts in goosebumps, and I wrap my arms around myself, trying to keep the chill at bay.
“Elizabeth had very quickly invented an alternate reality, one in which she and I were married and in love, hiding our relationship to avoid accusations of favoritism. But after several weeks of this, she decided my lack of affection was due not to my standards of professionalism, but to an affair. She convinced herself I was sneaking around behind her back, mocking her ignorance, undermining her credibility as a woman as well as a witch. She never discussed this with me, of course—it was all unfolding in her mind. It only came to light through her journals. During this time, my colleagues and I knew she wasn’t well—her grades had dropped, she’d shut out her friends and fellow students, she was exhausted and delirious on the best of days—but no one could get through to her. Not even the headmaster or the academy healers.”
“What about her family?”
“She was twenty years old, no guardians or next of kin listed in her records. For months, we were at a total loss. All we could do was try to encourage her studies and keep an eye on her to the limited extent we were able.”
“Goddess, that’s awful.”
“It’s ahorriblething to watch someone’s mind unravel before your eyes, with no idea how to stop it. How to help. She was clearly angry with me, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. She’d never expressed her feelings to me directly or acted inappropriately, so it’s not like there was a rejection to contend with. From what we could tell, there were no substance or alcohol issues, no missing magickal ingredients from the potions classes. We’d reached the point where we were considering bringing in magickal specialists from London to work with her privately, but then things got a bit better. She was participating in class again, her health had improved, some of the spark had returned to her eyes. But one day, she walked into my classroom while I was alone with another student—a third-year witch who needed help with visualizations. Elizabeth saw us practicing the role-playing exercises and assumed the worst. She tore into the room, crying and shouting, ripping up papers and tossing books on the floor… I’d never seen such a tantrum.
“We contacted one of the healers, who gave her a mild sedative and took her back to the healing center to rest. Later that night, Elizabeth attacked the healer, snuck out of the center, and broke into the third-year student’s suite. She…” Doc shakes his head, then finally cracks open the bottle again, taking another swig before continuing. “She beat that poor girl into a coma, Stevie. Broke her ribs, carved her face up with an athame, left her blind in one eye… She told the authorities that I implored her to do it. That I worried the student was plotting to kill me… Goddess, it was such a twisted fantasy, such an impossible tale. But in her mind, all of it made perfect sense.Wewere the crazy ones for doubting her.”
Doc lifts the bottle to his lips again, but changes his mind, setting it back on the dresser and taking a seat on the bed. I sit down next to him, leaving a little space between us, not wanting to crowd him.
“After the attack, one of her former friends was finally able to track down next of kin—an aunt in Munich—and the authorities agreed to release Elizabeth into the woman’s care. They’d found her journals by this point, and after thorough review, turned them over to me. That’s when I learned about the man she’d encountered over winter break. The way she described their encounters, I knew immediately what had happened. Likely he’d been watching us both for many months. He knew exactly how to prey on her vulnerabilities—on her feelings for me.”
“Was he ever caught?”
Doc shifts uncomfortably, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “To quote the authorities, the rambling diaries of a mentally unstable witch obsessed with her professor were not compelling enough evidence to justify an investigation. But no matter.” He lowers his head, shame flooding his energy again. “The mage may have planted those seeds, but I tilled the field. By my action or my inaction, I destroyed that girl’s life.”
I reach for him, fingers skimming his knee. “Doc, no. You—”
“I could’ve stopped it. If I’d set clear boundaries, if I’d maintained a proper distance from the onset, her feelings for me would never have progressed. She would’ve understood that I would never return her affections. She would’ve focused more on her studies and less on her professor. Her mind wouldn’t have been so open to the power of the dark mage’s suggestions—she wouldn’t havewantedto believe it was me. She wouldn’t have been trying to please me. Goddess, sometimes I still can’t believe he bested her like that. Of all my students, she was the strongest. The most clever. I never would’ve thought…”
He trails off, rising from the bed and crossing back to the dresser, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
“I couldn’t bear to be there,” he says. “I had to leave. The headmaster got in touch with Anna Trello, and after some favors promised and exchanged, I was released from my contract in Copenhagen and transferred. And here, I regained control. I dedicated myself to teaching studentsnothow to manipulate through magickal means, but how to defend against it.”
He grips the edges of the dresser mirror and drops his head, the muscles of his back and shoulders rippling as he struggles to contain the darkness inside.
The confession leaves me reeling. It explains so much—why he has so many rules and boundaries, why he’s so afraid to get close. Why he blames himself for Ani.
There’s still so much pain inside him, so much bleakness. Sharing this with me hasn’t unburdened him at all; if anything, it’s made him feel worse, shame and loathing burning hot through his energy.
But no matter how deep his wounds, running beneath the waves of self-loathing is an energy of pure, golden love. Hope. Desire. He wants to be near me, wants me to help him through this.
He wants to allow himself to love me.
Yet still, he fights. He fears.
Slowly, I get to my feet and go to him, standing behind him, waiting for him to meet my eyes in the mirror.
“I’m not Elizabeth,” I begin, but fear chokes off the rest. I can’t find the right words, the right way back to him. Logically, heknowsI’m not Elizabeth. He knows our circumstances are completely different. He knows Ani’s condition isn’t his fault.
He’s just punishing himself.
“Doc,” I say. “Cassius, please.”
At the sound of his full name, he finally meets my gaze in the mirror, storms raging in those slate-gray eyes, shadows haunting every plane of his beautiful face, heartache bleeding through his energy, threatening to drown out the rest.
“The day I left Copenhagen,” he says, “I told myself—Isworeit on my own magick—I would never, ever let the lines between professor and student blur again. And for nearly fifteenyears, I’ve had no problem keeping that oath.”
Until you came along,he means, but he doesn’t say that part out loud.
“Doc, I—”
