Page 59 of Blood Oath
Baelfire has perked up. “That’s Maven’s next class? She’ll be there, then. I’m going with you, Snowflake.”
Gods on high, I hate that nickname. I also hate him and the rest of the Decimus family.
But the gods must know something I don’t, and I’m not about to insult them by freezing to death someone in my own quintet. Not even if it would be super satisfying.
Less than thirty minutes later, I’m eyeing Professor Haagen’s potion crafting classroom, which is smaller than many of the vaulted, amphitheater-style rooms at Everbound. This one, in contrast, is just a room with one wall made of glass looking out over one of the fields leading to the forest. It’s filled with tables set with many beakers, cauldrons, and other shit casters will need for potions. The opposite wall from the window is lined with shelf upon shelf of bizarre potion ingredients—everything from dried mosquito sacs to hawthorn berry oil to tiny jars of ectoplasm.
Students begin filing into the room, and several stop to gawk openly at me sitting at the front of the classroom behind Haagen’s desk. Their reactions range from mild surprise at seeing an elemental professor in a House of Arcana class to the long stares of legacies who still see me as a supermodel.
Ignoring all of them, I study the contents on Haagen’s desk. He’s a bit of a slob, having left a banana skin to brown next to a pile of crinkled papers smeared with food of some kind. But I pretend it’s something important I’m reading until she walks in.
And just like the first time I saw her standing on the stage at the Seeking, my heart almost stops.
Maven’s dark eyes arrest mine for barely a heartbeat, but if she’s surprised to see me in her class, she doesn’t show it before walking to a table at the back of the room. She also has no reaction to the fact that Silas is already at the table waiting for her, his eyes tracking her every move with a possessiveness that would make anyone else flinch.
Baelfire is sitting at the table next to them, and the raw emotion on his face when he sees Maven makes me wonder what the hell happened earlier between them. He tries to say something to her, something I can’t hear, and extends the bouquet of dead flowers.
Maven ignores him completely, just watching me like all the other students.
But her gaze is not just like the other students’ stares, not for me.
No, knowing she’s watching me has my nerves twisting into knots and my heart doing double time. Frost prickles across my palms, which I tuck into my suit pockets as I finally stand and address the class, pointedly not looking at her because the last thing I want is to fucking blush in front of a bunch of grad students.
“Professor Haagen had something else come up. Today, you will be?—“
“Is it the investigation?” one of the students at the front cuts me off, eyes wide. “Is he helping clean up the corpses? What happened? Do you guys know if it was humans who did it?”
Voices explode across the classroom as legacies throw in their two cents, all talking over each other.
“As if humans could kill one of us, let alone four!”
“Didn’t you see the way the corpses were dressed? They were supposed to look like the Immortal Quintet! Isn’t that so fucked up?
“Why didn’t anyone see them setting all that up?”
“Oh, relax! It was probably just someone pulling a stupid prank?—“
The moment my patience runs out, the temperature in the room plummets sharply enough to crack the glasses of a mage in the front row, who yelps. Two light fixtures also shatter. Ice climbs up the walls while students draw in surprised gasps, the air pluming in front of their faces, huddling in on themselves and looking at me with wide eyes.
Most elemental students I teach come from highly religious, devout families and would never bring shame to their last names by speaking out in class like that. They’re too respectful and too aware of their own self-images.
Apparently, the House of Arcana is far more lenient.
“The next person to interrupt me will get to enjoy feeling their toes snap off due to frostbite,” I say calmly, flipping open the old grimoire on Haagen’s desk as an excuse not to look at my keeper just to see what her reaction to this might be. “Now. As I was saying, today, you will craft anything that you think will be useful during the First Placement.”
There are three Placements at Everbound. First Placement is a test at the end of the first semester for all legacies, matched or unmatched. It tends to be brutal and often results in several students’ deaths, but the actual test changes from year to year. It’s hard to tell what it could be, so any amount of preparation is useful. Second and Third Placements happen next semester among quintets to cement our rankings, active service assignments, and future careers.
After six years of waiting, I’ll finally be participating in those.
Students exchange glances, but no one else speaks out of turn. I can hear Baelfire snort derisively at me in the back where he is completely unbothered by the cold, as dragon shifters always are—but Silas quickly slips out of his dark wool Chesterfield coat and offers it to Maven.
Damn it, she must be freezing. I’m an idiot. I’m tempted to apologize solely to her, but after she says something quietly to Silas that makes him scowl and set the coat in front of her on the table, she looks back at me and…smiles.
Smiles.
My stomach flips. I swear on everything holy that she is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.
And now I know I’m blushing because my ears feel warm.
