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Callan took her empty wine glass from her with a faint smile as he rose to his feet. “It’s been great talking with you, Kaya.”
“And you.” She studied him for a long moment, thinking fast, recalibrating. Her plan had been to play this slow, to keep him at arm’s length, to draw him in with mystery… but that plan was being drowned out by a much louder and more insistent voice that seemed to come straight from her gut. Where would she be if she’d made a habit of ignoring her intuition? Inota still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, but her silence seemed to have caught Callan’s attention, and before she could readjust, she realized they were past the point of no return.
Oh, well, she thought faintly as she leaned into Callan’s space, feeling the warmth of his body against hers. Her intuition had never steered her wrong before.
But the thrill that ran through her when Callan’s lips claimed hers was something she’d never felt before.
Chapter 5 - Callan
Callan slept much later the following morning than he was accustomed to, and it was well after midday by the time he finally felt ready to stir. Even as he sat up, he could feel himself tensing, frightened that he’d suddenly realize that what had happened last night had all been part of the dreams that had haunted his sleep and kept him lingering in bed. Dreams of Kaya, of her lips against his, of the soft brush of her hand against his cheek as she drew him into that effortlessly sweet kiss right there on the beach…
No. That part hadn’t been a dream. He’d have reacted with more grace if it had been a dream. As it was, he’d stood there like a statue for what felt like an hour, shocked to his bones, while Kaya flashed him a cryptic little smile like what had just happened was the most natural thing in the world. That was what was strange about it, actually—as surprised as he’d been by it, at the same time it had felt incredibly natural. He so, so badly wanted to talk to Morgan and Archer about what had happened, about whether it meant what he was almost too frightened to believe it could mean… but he couldn’t, could he? Kaya had been very clear about that, in the shell-shocked moments between the kiss and bidding him goodnight. He couldn’t even remember what she’d said, exactly—his ears had been ringing as though he’d been punched, and his heartbeat had done its level best to drown her words out, too. But the message was clear. They couldn’t tell anyone about this.
This, he thought faintly, a grin spreading across his face. They had a ‘this’.
Well, he couldn’t discuss it with his friends, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t work out a few theories on his own, right? And the evidence was beginning to stack up. The way he’d been drawn to her the moment he’d seen her up there on the stage. The way he’d been unusually tongue-tied, almost flustered, when they’d first spoken. The way he’d known immediately that he should take her class, that he needed to spend more time with her. Then the feeling in his chest when she’d kissed him, like taking your first breath of cool, fresh air after having been inside for far too long. He’d felt his dragon stir under his ribcage, surprised and curious, magic tingling under his skin the way it only ever did when he was about to transform.
She was his soulmate. She had to be. There was no other explanation for the way that he was feeling.
His delight at the realization was somewhat tempered by the knowledge that, at least for now, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Not if he didn’t want to cause trouble for her. Teaching positions at Brisant were highly sought after, and if she was interested in moving into a more permanent position than her semester-long guest spot, she couldn’t risk being seen to engage in inappropriate conduct with her students. They were good regulations, important boundaries to maintain, he understood that. Still, it made him feel a little impatient, a little frustrated. Forbidding casual flings was one thing, but what if they were soulmates? Something like school regulations couldn’t be expected to take precedence over something like that…
He was getting ahead of himself, he suspected. What was the rush? They’d only just met, and they had a whole semester ahead of them. There was nothing to say they couldn’t get to know each other, take it slow, keep to activities that wouldn’t cause the school administration to raise any eyebrows. As impatient as he was to pursue the soulmate question with everything in him, at the same time, he had to admit that the thought of just chatting with her sent a thrill down his spine. He was so happy they’d met at all, he could be patient about how long it might take for their relationship to escalate.
They were dragons, after all. They had their whole long lives ahead of them. There was no need to rush. At least, that was what he told himself as he drummed his fingers impatiently on the countertop in the kitchen. The truth was, he wanted to rush. In an ideal world, he’d be rushing over to her accommodation right now, bursting through the door, sweeping her into his arms and demanding she quit her job right now and spend the rest of the term in his bed…
Callan exhaled hard, straightened his back, and walked out of his dorm before his thoughts could get any more ridiculous.
The fine weather from last night had held, and a few quick laps of the island got his blood pumping and his mind a little more settled. He still couldn’t get Kaya out of his head for more than a few seconds at a stretch, but at least he was a little calmer about her. He even managed to get a bit of reading done in the last of the late afternoon sunshine, before the tell-tale rumble of thunder in the distance sent him hurriedly inside. He’d managed to stop himself from wandering the whole school in search of Kaya all afternoon, but he couldn’t help scanning the heads of his fellow students as they drifted towards the Dining Hall for dinner.
Instead, he found Morgan and Archer, who waved him over to their table as soon as he’d grabbed his meal. He’d never felt less hungry in his life, but he picked at the food dutifully anyway, remembering with a pang of dismay that he couldn’t tell Morgan and Archer about what had happened with Kaya on the beach. But they were bound to ask after the conversation the three of them had had earlier. Callan hid a grimace, wishing he hadn’t been so quick to spill his suspicions to his friends.
“You left early last night, huh?” Archer said, and he looked up, surprised. He’d stayed later than anyone… then again, he and Kaya had been sitting quite a distance down the beach. He hesitated, wondering if he should correct his friend. But how could he tell them how late he’d stayed out with her without arousing their suspicions? He didn’t feel great about lying, but all things considered, it seemed to be the lesser evil.
“I was pretty tired,” he said, taking a sip of his drink to hide his discomfort. That wasn’t strictly a lie, right? It was true that he’d been tired at the end of the week. He was tired now, too, after the long night he’d had, and the interruptions to his sleep caused by all his dreams about Kaya…
“Did you talk to her?” Morgan wanted to know, leaning forward with curiously vivid expression.
“A little,” he admitted, knowing that lying to Morgan was a whole separate ball game. She seemed to sense his hesitation, though, and she lifted her hands.
“For the record, I’m not looking at your aura. This is private stuff. I can’t imagine how angry I’d have been if someone was reading me while I was figuring everything out with Archer.” She flashed her soulmate a smile, which he returned. “And if you don’t want to talk about it, we won’t pry. Okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed, feeling a warm rush of gratitude for her. “Thanks, Morgan.”
“I mean, I’m going to die of unsatisfied curiosity, so you’ll have that on your conscience, but yeah, same goes for me, I guess,” Archer added. He was never a guy to leave a sweet, genuine moment hanging in the air for long, Callan thought with a grin. But he felt better, knowing he could trust Morgan to respect his privacy. He only hoped that Archer was joking about the strength of his curiosity. He wasn’t a gossip by any stretch of the imagination, but he did spend a lot of his time socializing, and it was very easy for word to get around, especially when you didn’t want it to…
Callan spent the week restless and preoccupied with thoughts of Kaya, swinging wildly between delight at what had happened between them and worry that she hadn’t made contact since that night on the beach. She was busy, he told himself firmly. The first of her three-lecture series about the Mage’s Guild was coming up at the end of the week, she was most likely preparing for that. He resolved, after another night of restless sleep, that after her lecture, he’d hang back to talk to her. There was no need to rush anything, that was true, but at the same time he wasn’t going to be able to survive this kind of uncertainty for much longer.
His heart somersaulted when she walked into the lecture hall at the end of the week. The image of her hadn’t left his head since the party, but it was still a thrill to see her in person again, to observe the subtle differences between how he remembered her and how she actually was… her hair a shade lighter, her eyes a little darker, her graceful, swanlike neck somehow even more beautiful than he remembered. As she took in the waiting students, he thought her eyes might have lingered on his face for a fraction longer than the others, but that could have been wishful thinking on his part, too. She had an impressive level of control over her expression, her demeanor. Just one of the many things he admired about her.
The lecture was every bit as interesting as he’d expected it to be. She spent a lot of time on the history of the Mage’s Guild, with what she told them with a faint smile was the most accessible information about a famously secretive organization. The founding of the first chapter had been on Hammerfall, an insula he hadn’t visited, but subsequent organizations had quickly sprung up on other insulas as the benefits of banding together became clear to magic users. There was a lot of assumed knowledge about mages, which Callan made a note to read up on. He hadn’t realized, for example, that the majority of magic users were human. Not for the first time, he felt a pang of worry about how far behind he and the rest of the residents of his insula were. They hadn’t even known of the existence of humans until a couple of years ago, when they’d all been introduced to Cato. That was why he was here, he reminded himself firmly. If he’d already known everything there was to know about the world, there would be no point in being here.
The lecture wound up eventually after a short summation of the major conflicts the Mage’s Guild had had with the governments and other local organizations of various insulas—the next lecture, Kaya promised, would go into more depth on a few case studies. He was grateful to have a few weeks to read up on some of the historical events she’d mentioned in passing, well aware that he was missing some assumed knowledge that the other students took for granted. His classmates were so used to him asking every teacher they had for reading recommendations after class that nobody batted an eye when he hung back in the lecture hall, waiting for the rest of the students and staff to leave.
But when they were finally alone, her cryptic gray eyes inches from his, the last thing on Callan’s mind was extra reading.
Chapter 6 - Inota
This was all going exactly to plan, Inota told herself as she made her way through the winding halls of the university toward her quarters. There was no need for her heart to be beating this fast. She’d pulled a pretty decent lecture together given her complete lack of academic experience. The students had certainly seemed to listen attentively enough, and from the little nod she’d caught from her supervisor at the end of her speech, she had his approval, too. Her position here was safe, at least for another few weeks, which was plenty of time to come up with some more half-truths about the history of the Mage’s Guild.
