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“Hey!” I try to pry his fingers off me. “Let go.”
“What is this?” he snarls. “This mark on your neck.”
“Let go of me. It’s my birthmark. It’s the Apollinari mark, Miss Worthy told me.” I try to shove him away. “What do you want?”
He’s close, so close, and for the first time I’m kind of scared of him. “It’s like a moth.”
“Yes!”
His grip tightens more. “The mark of the Apollinari family is a crow. The two look similar at first glance.”
“So you say,” I grind out, the photo slipping from my fingers, falling to the floor.
“I’ve studied your family,” he says. “It’s the strongest witch line in the land.”
I give up. “What’s your point, Ash?”
“That this isn’t the Apollinari mark. I need to find out what it is.”
“You’re insane,” I whisper. “What does it matter? Maybe it came out differently in me.”
“You’re not an Apollinari,” he says.
My heart stops in my chest. “Ash—”
“Who are you, then? Why are you going through my things, asking about dead people, why are you here, at the Academy?”
But Ashton’s door flies open right then and Sindri steps inside, eyes bloodshot, mouth set in a line. “Let go of her.”
Ashton’s gaze snaps to him. “What do you want, Sin?”
He storms at us, grabs Ashton’s hand and throws it off me. “I said, unhand her,abesh k’emel.Everything she’s done for you and you stand there, holding her against her will, accusing her of things—”
“You know nothing.” Ashton shoves at him and unexpectedly Sindri stumbles, as if he’s drunk, careening into a wall with anoof. “All this time you mock her and mistrust her and now suddenly you want to protect her?”
“Ash—” he starts.
Ashton grabs him by the collar and slams him into the wall. “Why are you here, Sin? I’m asking you one more time. I wasn’t hurting her, only asking questions. Were you eavesdropping? What the hell do you want?”
“Eavesdropping?” Sindri chuckles. “Who do you think you are?”
“Then what is it?”
“I was in my room, about to crash on my bed, when the mirror showed me something.”
“The mirror.” Ashton scoffs. “Just how high are you, Sin? What did you take? Are you drunk?”
“I’m as high as possible with my current means,” Sindri mutters. “It’s embarrassing. But as for the mirror, it is magical, Ash, all my furnishings are, and it showed me your room.”
Rubbing at my shoulder where Ashton’s fingers must have left bruises, I look from one to the other boy.
“My room,” Ashton says. He still has his hand fisted on Sindri’s collar. “And you felt you had to come and take a look at it?”
“Fuck off,” Sindri says faintly. He doesn’t seem to be doing so well. Sweat is running down his face and there are faint lines of pain around his mouth.
Finally moving, I grab Ashton’s wrist, trying to wrench it away. “Ash, stop. You’re hurting him.”
“He’s a goddamn fae, as strong and as powerful as me,” he snarls.
