WINTER BREAK - December 4th
Things are a little too quiet at the Marblebrooks' house. I've been spending too much time thinking about kissing Aries. I probably haven't thought this much about a single kiss since I was a teenager. It's ridiculous.
But it's because it's Aries. I know I've fucked up. Aisling's gonna be pissed.
Today, Kelyn, Elandria, and I are all in the parlor. Elandria got a fire going and we're all lying around with a different book. I've got my thumb wedged between the pages of Folk Tales of Caburh, set open to the story Aries and I had read together a few weeks ago– Orendell and Luna.
A drunk kiss between friends on its own shouldn't be a big deal. Even if it was with tongue. It wouldn't have been anything remarkable had it been me and anyone else. I knew that. I kissed people, forgot about them, found them again later, slept with them, and sometimes never saw them again. The Stag's Court was a carousel of new faces, old faces, cold acquaintances, and friendly strangers.
But Aries– I mean, it wasn't like he couldn't have done this kind of thing back in Fel. Casual dalliances weren't unique to the vampire courts. He could have had experience. He's twenty-three, kind of cute, and a literal prince. But we didn't talk about it. We've never talked about it. I had a pretty good hunch that he didn't do this kind of thing. Had he ever?
What if this was a first?
It had been a shitty first kiss. I'm not saying I'm in love with the guy or anything, but we're friends. I can admit he deserved better than that. Better than this.
Aries had crushes, obviously, I was one of them. But it really hadn't occurred to me until now that I've never seen him with any of the others. Granted some of his crushes– most of the ones I'd heard about anyway– were guys who weren't exactly available: the groundskeeper, a proudly-married librarian, the hero in the novel he'd gotten from Noodle, a few popular tabloid singers, and so on. I tried to think of others; someone he knew, someone real. But I drew a blank.
It was just me.
I didn't make it through the fairy tale. I ended up pulling out another book. The grimoire. I practiced my casting gestures. It was easier to focus my mind on the hand motions from a diagram at the moment.
I was lost in thought to the point where I couldn't even feel magic in the gestures, even if it was correct.
"What book is that?" Marblebrook asked me. She was half asleep. It was that kind of day.
Her question suddenly snapped something into focus. I was on her couch reading from the grimoire - one of the books that wasn't meant to leave the Sanctum. And even moreso, I'd been caught. I should have been more apologetic, but my brain was still replaying the kiss with Aries on repeat. Someone should be shouting at me.
"Oh, umm…" There was no getting out of this one. "The beginner's grimoire -"
"That's not the beginner's grimoire."
"Well, yeah, I know. It's the other one," I said. "I realize now I shouldn't have it outside the Sanctum. I know, sorry. It totally slipped my mind. I just must have kept it." It was a terrible excuse. I was a shitty friend and a shitty mage. I hadn't even meant to leave the Sanctum with it. I didn't remember doing it.
"Zephyr, there isn't another beginner's grimoire. There was just one." Marblebrook said all of this while lying on the couch, head flat against a pillow. It was very hard to gauge her tone. She sounded bored and surprisingly chill about all this.
"It was on that shelf," I said, genuinely confused. "The beginner's shelf."
Marblebrook extended a hand from the couch. She wanted the book. I wasn't meant to have it. Of course she wanted it back. I got up and gave it to her.
She quickly flipped through it. "You've been practicing this?"
I shrugged.
"Someone's eager… And actually, I don't think it's you."
Marblebrook slipped a bookmark in her own book and set it aside. She sat up from her spot on the couch and gestured for me to sit beside her. "Has Orendell tried talking to you at all since your first full moon?"
Kelyn, lying on the floor in front of the fire, glanced over.
"No," I said. "If not for how the mark on my arm stings every time I use wolfsbane, I could forget we'd met at all."
"I guess that's one way to communicate," Marblebrook said.
I rolled my sleeve to show it to her. The moon Luna was waning, coming up on a new moon and I hadn't needed anything for it since the Masquerade. Right then, the mark was faded, and a weird spot between tender and tough, like scar tissue still forming. One bad day and it'd be raw and pink again. I tried to explain it to Marblebrook. At this point, Kelyn was listening too.
"Interesting…" Marblebrook mumbled. She still seemed particularly unbothered by my breaking a coven rule. "I want to try something. Think of it as an experiment or better yet, a game."
She snapped the cover shut, traced a sigil with her finger over the cover. It glowed soft red for a second before fading into the leather. Next, she pulled a thin leather bracelet from her wrist and fastened it around my own.
"I want you to go and return this to the Sanctum tomorrow and leave it there for the rest of the break. No going back for it. You can read anything else here but nothing from the Sanctum, not until the term starts up again. Alright? It's not a punishment, it's a test. I believe you when you said it slipped your mind, because that's been happening, right? Little lapses? Gods like Orendell make plans. He might not want you remembering the finer details just yet, but I'd bet that mark only hurts when you resist him. You don't like being a werewolf? I get it. It's involuntary. But the rest of what he wants? It could be just a suggestion - take this book. Try that spell. You might want the same things. Let's see what he has to say when you can't do it."
She passed the book back to me. "Open it and I'll know." It wasn't a warning. It was a fact.
She never sounded mad. I wasn't meant to get away with any of these things.
Where was Aisling when I needed her?
WINTER TERM - December 5th
I did as Marblebrook asked and returned to the Court the next day. It was about as empty as it got when the covens convened, only doubly eerie when the Sanctum too was deserted. I was here to return the grimoire. I can't pretend like I wasn't tempted to flip through it again, but Marblebrook asked me not to. I'd seen her trace a sigil over the cover. She'd know if I didn't follow her request.
I don't know if I really believed Orendell was behind it. I liked the grimoire well enough on my own. I liked the power of its spells. But if Marblebrook was willing to blame my mistake on a silent werewolf god, he could take the fall for this one as far as I was concerned.
I'd just set the grimoire back on the shelf, when a flash of familiar pain shot through my back.
I yelped. "Fuck!"
It'd caught me off guard more than anything.
"Zeph?" Who else would it have been? I was still trying to reach the spot on my back to rub where the spell had stung me when I heard the rush of his footsteps on the Sanctum's stone floors. "What are you doing here? I thought you were gone for the break!"
The force of his spell was one thing. The force of Aries crashing into me with a running start was another. He wrapped one arm around my shoulder and threw his weight into my chest. I had to grab hold of the bookshelf to keep us standing upright. He was somewhere between grappling me and hugging me, more excited to see me than he had any right to be.
"Hey, Aries." My voice was half an octave higher than it should have been. He'd pummeled me in a lung.
It had been exactly one week since the Masquerade. Likely about that much time since he'd last shaved too, his stubble was long enough to prickle my chest through my shirt.
"You missed me already?" I asked.
Aries stilled and drew back slowly. When his eyes drifted up towards mine, I saw it. Yes. Though to say it was mortifying. I didn't want him to say it. Knowing he'd missed me was enough to make something in my chest flutter.
His scruff was funny on him. I hadn't seen him this unkempt before. It didn't look good exactly, I don't think anyone would say it suited him, but too it felt like another piece of him unveiled. I knew now that his facial hair was patchy and light brown, darker than his hair. The kind of information I didn't know what to do with but collected anyway. When I ran my hand along the line of his jaw, it was rougher than it had ever been.
"Didn't really expect to see anyone this week," he muttered. His hand traced his jaw, the spot I'd just touched. "I've mostly just been studying. Better to get ahead while I still can."
"So, exams went alright?" I know he'd been worried.
"I passed," he said, as though it wasn't enough. "So, how are things at the Marblebrooks'?" I let him change the topic. It no longer mattered why either of us were here in the Sanctum, but we were here and we were alone. Aries plopped down on one of the lavender couches. His eyes were willing me to follow.
"Quiet," I said, sitting next to him. "Probably not what you're thinking though. They're pretty casual around me. Elan- I mean, Professor Marblebrook is a family friend."
"So is that why you're taking Divination next term?"
I hadn't told him that. "How did you-?"
"I was surprised given how much you hated it," he said. "I got a chance to look at the class rosters trying to talk Blackclaw into letting me take combat lessons this term."
"And are you?"
"Taking combat lessons? Yeah. Mostly thanks to you actually. He's only got one class open to first year mages next term, the one you're taking. He asked if we were friends and… he didn't come out and ask it, but he'd wanted to know if I knew about the whole werewolf thing. I told him I did. I hope that's alright."
I laughed. "Considering he's the one who found me on my first full moon, yeah. He knows."
"He found you?" Aries asked.
"Dragged me by the scruff back to his office. I shouldn't have shifted inside the Court. He gave me something to help me shift back. He still gives me shit for destroying my trousers. You know he calls himself a werewolf expert, right?"
That got Aries laughing. "Him? Really? I doubt he's ever even been to Caburh."
"You know he hasn't. But out here I guess you can be an expert if you've read the five books in the library and zapped a few in the war."
Aries rolled his eyes. "Typical. Obviously I'm no expert, but I know a few things about werewolves. You can't fit it into five books. Maybe that could cover some of the basics of anatomy, but werewolves shift. They're shapechangers. That wouldn't even touch upon history, culture, art-"
"You're far more of an expert than me or Blackclaw," I said.
Aries kicked my foot gently. "There's plenty to like about werewolves," he said. His eyes caught momentarily on my lips again, a second too long. When he realized I'd noticed, he whipped his head away.
"So we've got two classes next term," he said.
"Two?"
"I'm in Divination too. I got out of taking it last term, but Marblebrook suggested it for me."
"I'll probably hate it both terms," I said. "I like her, but astrology really isn't my thing."
"No, your thing is dancing apparently," he sassed.
We hadn't talked about the Masquerade. All this had been going too well. I should have known it was coming. Something had to go wrong at some point.
Part of me felt the sudden urge to start apologizing. I'm sorry I snapped at you about dancing. I'm sorry you wandered the room and stayed away. I'm sorry I got drunk and kissed you - but I wasn't really sorry for that. And I couldn't admit to any of these things, only that I knew it was my fault somehow and with every passing second it was feeling worse and worse.
I wonder now if he'd expected me to argue back or brush him off. I hadn't done either of those things. Not responding wasn't great. I was still an ass. But I felt his hand on the couch slip over mine. His thumb grazed over my knuckles, still scabbed from a tussle in the courtyard a few weeks ago.
Don't lead him on, my imagined voice of reason Aisling whispered.
There was no good reason he should want to hold my hand.
I was terrible. But he'd missed me anyway. I hadn't expected to see him at all, but he was here and we were talking, and I really wanted things to be okay again. "Would you want to grab a beer at the tavern in town later?" I asked.