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She tilted her head, those slate-gray eyes fixed on his face. “Why would I do that?”
A measured silence. She knew as well as he did that he couldn’t even try to answer that question in this setting. Nor could he tell her anything about the research he’d been doing in the school’s governing documents… not that that particular project seemed to be going anywhere fast. He needed another tactic. “I wanted to talk to you about something, actually. An idea I’ve had that I wanted to run by you before I take it any further.”
A flicker of interest, carefully hidden. She was hard to read, but not impossible… and he was more than willing to learn, if that was what it took to get closer to her. “What’s the idea?”
“Your lecture on the history of the Mage’s Guild was fascinating,” he said. It was true. Quite outside of the way he felt about her, he found the subject she’d spoken on deeply fascinating. “I’ve been mulling over the prospect of diving a little deeper into the subject. We’re encouraged to pursue subjects of personal interest when we find them—I’m sure the Dean would be happy to approve a project if I get a solid proposal together.”
“Are you asking me to be your academic supervisor?” She lifted an eyebrow. “You know I’m only at the school until the end of the semester.”
What did that mean, he wondered? It felt oddly like a threat. But he couldn’t challenge her on that, not surrounded by people as they were. “I don’t imagine this taking any longer than that,” he managed. “Or, I could at least take that into account when determining the project’s scope. But—” He took a breath. “The point is—I want to visit Mage’s Guild chapters in person.”
Kaya looked at him for a long moment, her eyes unreadable, but he could tell that she was following his reasoning. A school-sanctioned trip outside of the insula would give them the opportunity to spend time together without prying eyes or listening ears. He’d felt a little guilty about the plan as he’d been developing it—it did feel like he’d be deceiving the school. But he was genuinely interested in the subject, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t learn something about the world and get to know his soulmate better at the same time, right?
“I suppose I’d look over a proposal,” she said after an agonizingly long wait. “If you get the Dean’s approval.”
Callan felt relief crash over him, and something like delight, tempered a little by the look on her face. A cautious, hunted expression, as though he’d proposed they take a stroll across a battlefield. He badly wanted to reach out and take her hand, ask her what was wrong, tell her she could let down those mile-high walls with him. But even as the thought occurred to him, a burst of laughter from a nearby table made him flinch. They couldn’t talk here. So he just smiled and promised to get in touch as soon as he had a concrete proposal in mind.
Then she was gone as quickly as she’d arrived, the flash of her white-blonde hair a bright point in the relative gloom of the hall. He watched her go with an uneasy feeling deep in his belly. He’d been thinking of nothing else but seeing her ever since the moment she’d left him behind in that study room. She’d sought him out, she’d all but told him she was happy to spend more time with him.
So what was making him feel worse now than he had before?
Chapter 8 - Inota
The cracks were appearing in earnest, now. Inota was starting to feel like a caged beast in this school, restlessly pacing the hallways as the days crept agonizingly by. Her paranoia seemed to grow at the same pace as the familiarity of the people around her. A few of her fellow teachers had started inviting her to sit with them at lunch whenever they saw her, and she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to turn them down. At least a dozen students a day greeted her by name in the corridors of the school, always sending a cold shiver down her spine. And all of that didn’t even touch on the situation with Callan.
She was doing her level best to keep it together, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she let something slip. Every morning, she studied her face intently in the mirror, terrified that she’d forget some detail, let her lips be too thin or the angles of her cheekbones be off by a fraction. It didn’t take much to make a face unrecognizable, she knew that from long experience. This level of consistency had never been a problem before, because she’d never needed to resemble the same person for longer than a couple of days at most.
She kept thinking about what Callan had said in the library, before she’d made her abrupt escape… that her eyes had changed color. She kept telling herself that she shouldn’t have overreacted the way she had. What if he’d only been speaking poetically? Men had said more ridiculous things to her before. But the awful thing was, she couldn’t remember what her magic had been doing. Whether or not she’d actually lost control of her appearance was beside the point—the fact remained that she’d lost control of her mind. And that was much worse.
But she couldn’t keep avoiding him forever, could she? Uncomfortable feelings or not, he was still her mark and she was still doing this for a reason. She should have been grateful for how well her plan was working. Callan was basically doing her job for her at this point. He was head over heels for her, that much was clear from the way he looked at her, and organizing a study trip for the two of them was a stroke of genius. If she’d had her wits about her, she’d have encouraged it more. But it was all she could do to stay on top of the seething terror in her that the hammer was about to fall.
He came back to her surprisingly quickly with a finished proposal for his project, that dazzling smile in full force on his face as he told her he’d gotten full approval from the Dean—pending her approval, of course. Class had just finished, and Callan had waited around for her as the other students filed out. They were beginning to make a habit of this, which would have worried her if Callan hadn’t made it clear that this was far from unusual behavior from him. She looked over the proposal. He’d really fleshed out the central premise. A quick glance around the room to ensure they were alone, and then:
“You’re very good at this,” she observed, flipping through the pages. “Well and truly above reproach. Even I’m second-guessing whether you’ve got an ulterior motive.”
He laughed, but it was a slightly uncomfortable sound. Then he was sitting beside her, the heat of his body too close, too immediate. She flinched away, withdrawing her hand before he could take it in his. Callan drew back, and she could sense the hurt in him even without looking at his face. “If you don’t think this is a good idea, I’m happy to table it,” he said after a long pause. “I just… thought this might be a good way to get some time to ourselves, without threatening your position here.”
Get it together, Inota. This man’s doing your job for you and you’re choking? She took a breath, trying to get a grip on herself. “No. This is an excellent plan.” That wasn’t enough, she knew that. She’d been acting weird about this for days, she had to give him an explanation or he was going to develop suspicions, no matter how head over heels he was for her. “But we can’t go to Hammerfall.”
He looked down at the itinerary, where she was tapping with one finger on one entry. “Why not?”
Good question, Inota thought faintly. And a difficult one to answer. It was true that things would go very badly if the two of them tried to make a visit to the Mage’s Guild chapter on Hammerfall, but for reasons she absolutely couldn’t let him know. Time to adjust her carefully curated backstory a little.Come on, Inota. You used to be so good at lying. “It’s a long story,” she heard herself say, stalling for time. “One I’d rather tell in another setting, if that’s alright.”
“I understand,” Callan said softly, but the brief hesitation before he spoke made her heart sink. This was how suspicion started. She’d seen it before. They’d say they understood, claim that they were fine, but then you’d come home to find them rifling through your possessions and shouting that they were going to get to the bottom of this no matter what… no, she had to give him something here. So she reached out and grabbed his hand, letting the shock of warmth rush through her and affect her voice.
“We can talk on the trip, okay? There’s—there’s more going on than I’ve told you. I’m not shutting you out because I want to, I just… I need you to trust me for a little longer. Is that okay?”
There, she thought faintly, feeling a tear spilling down her cheek, feeling Callan squeezing her hand in response. An award-winning performance of emotional vulnerability. He was murmuring his assurances as he pulled her into an embrace that was soft and warm and utterly perfect.
Inota only wished she knew how to forget that she was a monster long enough to let herself enjoy it
Chapter 9 - Callan
Callan had expected the term to crawl by, knowing what was at the end of it, but he was pleasantly surprised to find his classes keeping him busy. Not so busy that his mind didn’t stray back to Kaya every few minutes, of course, but he’d given up on the idea that she’d ever be far from his thoughts again. That was part of the deal with soulmates, wasn’t it? They stayed with you, no matter how much time you actually spent together in person. And he certainly wasn’t seeing much of Kaya at school. Since the conversation they’d had when she’d agreed to go with him on the study trip, they’d been keeping their distance. It made him feel restless and worried, of course, but whenever he started to spiral, he reminded himself that she’d asked him to trust her. This was the first test of their relationship, and he was determined to pass with flying colors.
Besides, there was plenty of planning to keep him busy. After Kaya’s cryptic but emphatic rejection of the leg of the trip that would involve visiting Hammerfall, he’d made some adjustments to his project, ending up with an itinerary that would minimize the amount of inter-insular travel they needed to do. There were three chapters of the Mage’s Guild on Isthmus alone, and from what he’d learned in his preliminary research, he could get most of what he needed there. Traveling through the Fog was a lot safer than it once had been, but it was still a little risky… and expensive, too, which he was mindful of. There was an ample budget allocated to this kind of research trip for students, the Dean had explained, but Callan was very aware that he was at the school on a scholarship in the first place.
It would be a good project, he told himself firmly. He could make sure of that at the same time as he got to know his soulmate better. He was curious, fiercely curious about what Kaya had been hinting at when she asked him to remove Hammerfall from the itinerary. Could it have something to do with the Mage’s Guild there? He’d been wondering for a while how a dragon like her had gotten so much seemingly insider information about an organization that only accepted humans as members. Hopefully, some of those questions would be answered on their trip. And if not, well, he could be patient.
