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She did not know what complex alchemy in their kiss made her fall back into her pillows with her good arm curled around Lautric’s neck. He followed without protest, his mouth melted to hers, and broke their kiss only to slide his mouth against the hot column of her neck, sucking the frantic flutter of her pulse.

His kisses were clumsy and earnest and hungry, and a terrible surge of desire and affection hit Fern with the force of an avalanche, bringing her crashing back to the reality of what she was doing.

She wrenched herself away from Lautric with a gasp of horror, pushing him away with her good arm and scrambling off the bed.

Lautric rose to follow her, his eyes glazed and his mouth a pink wet mess, and said, “What’s the matter?”

His voice was hoarse.

“We should stop,” Fern said.

“Yes,” replied Lautric emphatically, and leaned down with his arms behind his back to catch her mouth in another kiss.

Less innocent, this time, his lips and tongue a question, a command, an entreaty. Fern blossomed open to the kiss, her mouth a flower unfurling to sunlight. Lautric’s fingers brushed the curvature of her waist, pulling her to him, an invitation from his body to hers, and she thought: why not?

And her mind answered: because you ought to know better.

Fern tore herself away from Lautric with a sigh of frustration. His mouth traced a wet line across her cheekand into her hair as she swept past him. She all but ran to her door, and yanked it open, and said, “I’m sorry. This was a mistake. You should go.”

And, because he looked as though he was about to kiss her again, and Fern was not quite sure she would find it within herself to pull away one more time, she breathed, “Please.”

Lautric nodded, and straightened himself, and wiped his wet lips with his thumb.

“Ah—of course. I’m sorry for—no, I’m not.” He shook his head, and smiled a strange, tilted smile. “Goodnight, Fern. I wish you well in tomorrow’s assignment.”

“And yourself.”

Fern closed the door after him and locked it with trembling hands. She rested her forehead against the panel and let out a long, shuddering sigh.

This night had been a disaster on every front, and none of it more disastrous than what she had just done. She squeezed her eyes closed. How could she do this? How could she make such a mistake? As though she didn’t have a thousand things to worry about, as though there wasn’t enough chaos to contend with.

She could not believe herself.

She had been beyond reckless, appallingly foolish, and, worst of all, utterly lacking in professionalism.

Too late, she realised she hadn’t even found out his reason for coming to her room in the first place.

Chapter thirty-eight

The Circle

Fern entered the GrandMage Hall with a disturbing sense of fatality weighing over her.

So much had happened since the first assignment—since Fern had arrived. She could not help but feel altered, somehow. She’d been so determined not to let herself become caught in the tangle of the other candidates, but she had erred on every front, and now she could not pull herself free of them.

She’d befriended Josefa and lost her, she’d failed to find Vittoria. Edmund’s words had burned her like acid, and Dr Essouadi’s tumour hurt her, because she could not imagine how it must feel to do everything they were all doing in Carthane with her own body fighting her. She admired Ravi Srivastav, who always chose courtesy and kindness, and even Vasili Drei, who worshipped no other god than himself.

And worst of all, the deadliest candidate, the very son of the family sheknewto be her enemy—well—she could not bear to think of what she had done.

She entered the Mage Hall side by side with him, not daring to look at him.

From the corner of her eye, she saw that he wore deep blue wool, and that his hair fell like black silk over his forehead, and that he seemed pale and distracted.

The Grand Mage Hall was a great chamber of stone supported by rows of Gothic archways. The dark floor was so polished that Fern could see the arabesques of the arches reflected in it. At the head of the room, in the pool of light cast by a great circular window, three Grand Archivists sat at a heavy desk of carved ebony. Professor Kundani, Dr Auden and Lady Covington.

Fern glimpsed shifting luminescence at the edges of her vision and glanced up. A ward surrounded her and Lautric like a bell jar, she had entered it without even noticing. A clever ward, subtle and no doubt powerful, designed to protect the room and the Grand Archivists from any mistakes the candidates might make in their spellcraft.

At the head of the room, the Grand Archivists watched with cold eyes as she approached them, and Fern suppressed a shiver. It was as though the Grand Archivists could sense all her mistakes: her nights spent in the passageways instead of work, the hermetic spell she’d used on Professor Saffyn’s desk, even the kisses she’d let Lautric burn along her neck the previous night.