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“Yeah, you’re gonna wanna not talk about her like that,” Gideon says, curling his arm around me.
Gabe follows the movement with his eyes, his mouth quirks. “You know, based on our time together, I’d come to the conclusion that you’re a prude, Ro. But maybe Morgan is right and you are a slut. It certainly looks like you’ve got their dicks wrapped around your little finger. Or maybe it’s more like you’ve got your mouth wrapped around their cocks?”
I’m opening my mouth to retort, but Gabe just suddenly isn’t there. The last thing I see are his feet as he goes flying backward into the tunnel.
A second later, he comes barreling out again, heading straight for Fielder. “You dare to use magic against me?”
Fielder doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move, just stands with his hands in his pockets and lets Gabe charge him like a bull. Just as it looks like Gabe is going to make contact, he flies backward, straight toward us.
“Hey!” Gideon twists me out of the way, pushing me behind him again, while I try to keep eyes on the fight in front of me. “Watch out for Ro!”
Fielder hardly throws a glance in our direction. “Sorry!” he calls out, hands still in his pockets.
It’s mind-boggling, to be honest. I’m not entirely sure what I’m seeing. Fielder doesn’t seem to do anything. He’s not connecting physically with Gabe at all, but Gabe is still reacting as if he’s being hit. And he’s getting more and more frustrated the longer this goes on.
“What?” I can’t even form a full question.
“Elemental magic,” Gideon answers me.
Hardin slides in front of me too, and I make a distressed sound, poking my head between their shoulders to see as he explains further. “I have fire magic. Fielder has air.”
Oh,that makes sense. I can’t see it, but Fielder must be attacking Gabe with air magic. I open my mouth to ask another question, but flinch away when a heavy wood chair comes flying in our direction. A second later, a wall of stone is in front of us. The chair smashes into it and the wall melts back into the ground.
“Earth magic,” Ezra, on the other side of Gideon, explains.
“And before you ask,” Gideon says, inching over just the tiniest bit to give me room to see. “I have water.”
I glance over at Merritt. “Does that mean you have heart?” She looks at me like it’s a weird question, and I huff out a laugh. “Okay, I guess no Captain Planet fans here.”
Gabe is tiring. He hasn’t even gotten close to causing any sort of damage to Fielder, but he is bleeding from his nose and his eye is swollen. “Are you done?” Fielder asks, his voice full of derision.
Gabe drops to his knees, blood dripping down his chin to fall to the floor. “You started it, you asshole,” he gasps, hands hanging limply at his sides.
Fielder moves closer to him, squats down in front of him to meet his eyes. “I beg to differ, Verver. You started it when you tried to rape, Rosalind. I had thought that we’d finished it later that night when we told you to never talk to her again, to never look at her again. But apparently it wasn’t finished, because here you are talking to her, looking at her.” Gabe glares over at me and Fielder snaps his fingers to draw his attention away. “So we’re going to try this again, Verver. Let’s see if you can follow my directions this time. You will not talk to Rosalind. You will not look at her. You will never linger in the same room as her. We’ve already ensured that you don’t have any classes with her, but this includes the dining hall, the common rooms, the library, any of the hallways in any building on campus, the tunnels and the sacrariums.” Gabe’s mouth has sort of fallen open. “If you break these rules, believe me when I say we can andwillvote you out.”
“Not to mention the pain we’ll inflict on you before we do,” Hardin adds, grinning like a maniac. “But you remember all about that, don’t you, Verver? The pain. The blood. ”
Gabe shudders. I don’t even want to know what they did to him last time. Fielder creeps closer to Gabe until his face is right in his. “But most importantly, Verver, you’re never going to tell the council that she’s here. If her name so much as slips past your lips, I will know about it and retribution will be swift and final. Do I make myself clear?”
Final. I shudder at that word. It brings to mind death and destruction, something that can’t be undone. I can’t say that I’m not curious what exactly this retribution would be, but quickly decide I’d rather not know.
Gabe nods once, his jaw tight. Fielder straightens, uncoiling from the ground. “Good, you can start now. Leave.”
Gabe stumbles to his feet and heads to the exit. His glare falls on everyone in the room, except for me. Huh, apparently he’s really taking Fielder’s warning to heart. Then he’s gone, slipping into the dark beyond the mouth of the tunnel.
“Fucking hell, Harris,” Hardin says, running a hand down his face. “I’m supposed to be the one that starts fights. You’re supposed to be the one that remains calm, cool, and collected.”
The blond boy with green eyes tugs at his sleeves and then smooths his hand down the front of the jacket, as if he’d somehow gotten them out of place while he just stood there beating Gabe with wind magic. “He was about two seconds away from calling Rosalind a whore. I wasn’t about to let him.”
Merritt’s eyes are on the tunnel, but her gaze is far away, glazed over. “That’s not going to end well,” she mutters. Ezra shifts closer to her.
“What do you mean, Mer?”
Merritt gives her head a single slow shake. “I’m not sure. I just have a feeling he’s not going to just do as you say. He’s angry, has been angry for a long time.” She blinks and her gaze clears. She jumps back a little when she sees Ezra is standing so close to her, like she hadn’t noticed his proximity to her. “What did I say?” she asks after a second, almost cringing away from him.
“That Verver’s an ass,” Gideon answers, taking my hand and guiding me over to the bookshelf again.
I keep my gaze on my friend, though my feet follow him. “What just happened?”
