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The search is like running on a bed of coals. We sweep through the western halls of the school, classroom after classroom, galleries and libraries and storerooms and dormitories. We search the shadows, and at any moment I’m expecting Galvin to show his face or for the spirits of the school to devise a new way to inspire chaos.
Finally, we reach a gallery of statues, a seldom visited part of the school housing antiquities of marble. We’ve been running for so long, and finally we take a breath, carefully scanning the rows of statues. There is no respite tonight. Everything is a threat.
Lonan isn’t breathing quite as hard as I am. Ridiculously fit bastard. He circles the statues, scanning the room, and stops beside the statue of a man, half naked, helmeted, and holding a sword. He holds the head of a monster in his outstretched hand. With his sword in his hand, Lonan is an odd mirror of the marble. I find myself studying him instead of searching the room.
He’s a riddle I can’t figure out. Or rather, he’s one that I thought I knew the answer to, only to discover I’d been tricked.
“Why did you hide it?” I ask him. “Galvin. Your . . . family.” I’m not even sure if that’s the right word for it. He was supposed to be an orphan, one of the only people in this school who came to it worse off than me. Seven years here, and I find out tonight that he’s the brother of the prince.
Lonan breathes deeply and sweeps a hand through his hair. It’s his nervous habit. “My past is . . . complicated.”
“Welcome to the club.”
There’s that flash of Darkness again in those depthless eyes. “There are things about my brother you don’t understand.”
“Then tell me,” I insist. “Saints, Lonan, how many secrets are you keeping?” Here I thought that he and I were in this pact of secrecy together. Yes, I hated him, thought he was dangerous, was jealous of his relationship with my godfather. But I also thought I wasn’t alone in my secrets. I thought we were together in our Dark pact. But he’s been playing games of his own this whole time.
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” he says. “Let me keep my secrets, I’ll let you keep yours.”
“Oh, he’s cryptic. Does that usually work with the girls?”
The edge of his mouth lifts. “Always.”
I cross my arms, guarding against the odd things his teasing does to me. “I have no secrets.”
One side of his mouth quirks up. And damn him, he winks. “Of course not.”
“All right, another question. Have you always been such a piece of shit?”
He chuckles, wiping a hand over his face. “Saints, Fontaine. That mouth of yours . . .”
I venture a different subject. “Dark magic—awfully treacherous of you, being the king’s son. Not sure if you noticed, but Gault’s whole thing is being the Illuminated Kingdom. Children of Light, all that.”
Imaelhain is my enemy. They took my father. I’ve spent years training for this fight. Light against Dark. And although Lonan and I both dabble in the Dark, he’s bathing in it. Native son of Gault, reveling in the shadowy nature of feeling and passion and magic that comes from within, not without. It’s unthinkable.
“You’re going to preach to me about loyalty to the Light? You hardly have ground to stand on there, Fontaine.”
“My father died for the Light,” I spit. How does he expect us to fight this war, making compromises like this? Does he not realize the stakes? Gault is the last kingdom of the Light, the final stronghold. If we fall to the Dark, if we don’t control our urges, chaos, destruction, and shadow will overtake us.
Yes, I use the Dark. And I hate it every time. I keep it in check, using it reluctantly.
Lonan watches me for a moment. He leans back against the statue of the warrior, looking down at me through his glasses, head tilted back, exposing the long column of his throat. Saints, sometimes I hate how effortlessly gorgeous he is.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of it,” he says. “You use your gifts. It’s what this school is supposed to train you to do. Sometimes it does a piss-poor job of that.”
I eye the walls surrounding us, their ancient stone, high rafters, flying buttresses. And I wonder if it can hear us, if we’re offending the spirits of the school. A coldness begins to settle over my heart.
“Like I told you, Fontaine, I’m not your enemy. The sooner you learn that, the sooner we can work together.”
My eyes cut to his like blades. “I’ll work with you, Lonan. I always have. You’re my cohort captain.” My words drip with disdain. “But I don’t trust you. I don’t welcome the Dark.”
He watches me for a beat. “But you’re so damn good at it.”
I swallow, my eyes locked with his. There isn’t an ounce of deception in his expression. He’s so damn charming. A master of manipulation, really. How many other secrets is he keeping? What are his real motives here? No matter his words, I know the way his eyes shine when he uses the Dark. I know how he craves it. He’s a person of hunger, of wanting. Under that cool exterior, he is nothing but appetite.
There’s a shift. The smallest movement over Lonan’s head. Instantly, my scythe is alight, and my feet move into a defensive stance. Lonan whips away from the statue, sword aglow and ready for battle in the blink of an eye.
Two red eyes appear over the shoulder of the warrior statue behind him. Saints, no.
