Page 1 of Bonds of Magic (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #3)

NOAH

“ W hat the hell did you do?”

Cory still hadn’t spoken since I’d found him in the clearing. He’d gone mute. And sure, he was pretty beat up, so maybe that was to be expected. But he was in the best shape of anyone in that clearing, and he wasn’t talking.

My mind reeled, remembering what I’d seen. Erika Martinez dead. Seb collapsed on his side, hands pressed to his stomach, his blood staining the snow black. Cory, wavering on the point of collapse. And the fourth body in the clearing.

Jude Ingram.

His face was seared into my memory. He was the one Argus had sent to hound me into joining them. He’d been impossible to get rid of. I’d had to leave in the middle of the night, just to get away. The man had been dogged, stubborn, and coldly cruel.

And Cory had been standing next to Jude’s body in the snow.

What had he done?

“Noah,” Isaac chided. “I think a little less accusation might be in order.”

I rounded on him. “Two people are dead. Sebastian’s bleeding his guts out in the infirmary. At the very least, Cory saw what happened. At worst—”

I broke off, still trying to make sense of it all. Could I have been so wrong? I’d thought Cory was vulnerable. Weak .

But weakness didn’t kill two people.

Or did it?

I turned back to Cory and snapped, “What. Happened.”

He still said nothing. I wanted to shake him.

“Stop standing there like a post and speak ,” I commanded. But Cory refused to open his mouth. I worked to keep my rage in check.

I’d demanded to know what Cory had done from the moment I’d seen him in the woods, but he’d stayed mute. I’d made a round of the clearing, ascertaining that Erika and Jude were dead, and discovering that Seb wasn’t , when he moaned softly as my fingers touched his pulse.

“Not…fault…” Seb had gasped, before lapsing into delirium.

I’d cursed my lack of healing ability, my lack of magic entirely. Seb’s hands fell away from his wound, weak with blood loss, and I’d taken over applying pressure, wondering how the hell I was supposed to save him. My knees were freezing as I knelt in the pool of blood congealing around his body.

I’d looked over my shoulder and yelled at Cory again. “What happened here? Who did this? Was this you?”

But he’d just stood there numbly in the snow.

How long had I stayed there, trying to keep Seb’s insides inside his body? It felt like ages, but it might have only been a few minutes. At some point, Isaac had shown up, along with Orlando Moyano, the head of Heal, and Hye-Soo Chun, a professor in Harvest.

Orlando had enough skill to fix much of the damage right there in the snow. Still, he and Hye-Soo had brought Seb back to the infirmary to consult with Cinda. Isaac ordered me to take Cory back to his office and wait while he dealt with the bodies.

The bodies.

I had no idea what Issac had done with them. What would he tell Erika’s family? I didn’t want to think about how that conversation would go. I knew the pain of losing a child all too well.

Did Cory have something to do with all of this? He couldn’t have killed Jude, surely. But Erika?

I’d been worried about Cory at first, racing through the trees, hoping only to find him alive. But if he didn’t have anything to do with Erika’s death, then why didn’t he say something to defend himself?

Maybe he did need shaking. Without stopping to think about it, I stepped forward and put my hands on Cory’s arms.

“Noah.” Isaac’s voice cracked like a whip, gentle chiding gone. “Can’t you see that he’s in shock?”

“We don’t have time for him to be in shock. We need answers. And if he knows something—”

“Of course he does. But this is not the way to draw it out. Take your hands off him.”

I flinched at the implication that I was about to hurt Cory. But then—had I been? I let my hands fall and really looked at him for the first time since getting back to the manor.

Out in the snow, all I’d gotten was a general impression of blood smeared across his face.

But while the light in Isaac’s office was dim, I could still see that Cory had two black eyes blooming under all that blood, a split lip, a hell of a bruise across one cheek, and a crumpled nose that had definitely been broken.

And that was only his face. His clothes were torn and stained, soaked through by snow and blood. I didn’t want to guess at what the rest of his body looked like.

You were happy to think about the rest of his body a few hours ago , whispered a traitorous voice in the back of my mind. I mentally shoved it away and forced myself to take a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

Whatever had happened, Cory needed medical attention. He might not be in as dire straits as Seb, but he had clearly been in some kind of a fight. And now that I thought about it clearly, difficult as that was, I knew he wasn’t at fault here.

Probably.

Unless the kid was way more devious than I’d thought.

But he couldn’t be. Not Cory . He was so sweetly naive. He’d never so much as thrown a punch before, if his performance in Combat could be believed. And Isaac was sure he hadn’t been turned by Argus yet. I didn’t know Cory that well, but there was no way the kid was that good a liar.

I sighed. I wanted to do something with all my anger, but deep down, I knew he wasn’t the right target for it.

“Cory,” Isaac said, walking over to the two of us. “Why don’t you sit down and catch your breath?”

He took Cory by the hand and led him to one of the chairs in front of his desk. A flash of something—anger? jealousy?—stabbed through me at the sight of Cory’s hand in his. I wasn’t allowed to touch Cory, but Isaac could?

I forced myself to remain calm as Isaac sat down in the other chair in front of the desk, facing Cory.

He crossed his legs at the ankle and gave Cory what he probably thought was a reassuring smile.

Isaac’s face wasn’t really built for reassurance, so it came across harsher than it should have.

But I didn’t think Cory even noticed. He stared at his hands, which lay listlessly in his lap.

“Perhaps you would fetch us some water,” Isaac said to me, nodding at a small table by the sofa where a pitcher and a few glasses stood.

Fetch ? I wasn’t a dog. I filled one glass. If Isaac wanted water, he could get it himself.

I held the glass out to Cory, who didn’t notice it for a long moment.

Then he looked up for the first time, and his eyes met mine.

They weren’t blank and dazed anymore. They were wide, and filled with a fear so big my heart hurt.

A trickle of blood ran down his cheek from a gash on his forehead, and I fought the urge to wipe it away with my thumb.

“You’re safe.” The words fell out of my mouth. I wanted to flush, but I refused to do that in front of Isaac. Instead I cleared my throat and said, “Take it,” nodding at the glass.

Cory reached up, his blood-coated fingers brushing against mine as he took the glass. I exhaled softly at his touch, and when his eyes flicked back up to mine, I turned away, moving to stand next to Isaac’s chair.

Get a fucking hold of yourself , I berated myself internally.

Cory held the glass in front of him, until Isaac suggested that he take a drink. He did, uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure he remembered how to swallow. Then he rested the glass, surface smeared red, on his lap.

“I know you’re in pain.” Isaac’s voice was almost gentle. “I know tonight was hard. I wouldn’t ask this if it weren’t important to know the answer as soon as possible. To keep you safe, and to keep the other students and faculty safe. Can you tell us what happened in the woods?”

Cory looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.

“Thank you,” Isaac said, as though Cory had already told us something useful.

He would tell us something, wouldn’t he? He had to understand the significance of what had happened in the woods.

But it took him a while to speak. He kept opening his mouth, then closing it and swallowing, only to open it again and say nothing.

At one point, he closed his eyes for so long that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep, before opening them again.

That time, he actually managed a croak, before coughing and grimacing.

“Drink some more,” Isaac said.

Cory raised the glass to his lips automatically. He took a gulp, still grimacing. I could see bruises beginning to form on his neck. Was there anywhere the kid hadn’t been hurt?

He closed his eyes again. “It was—we were—it was so stupid. It’s all my fault.”

More blood trickled down his face, until I realized it wasn’t blood at all. It was tears, leaking from his eyes and mixing with the blood already on his face.

“Just tell us what happened,” Isaac said. His voice was steel draped in velvet.

“It was—” Cory started again, before coughing and taking another drink of water. “Imbolc. We were looking for the spring.”

I sighed, and Isaac tsked in consternation.

The fucking Spring of Irylis. A legend the upperclassmen told freshmen about each year. No basis in reality, but every year, students left the manor looking for it. And most years, at least one of them landed in the infirmary due to a fall or exposure or walking into a tree.

I’d thought that with Isaac’s restrictions, students would have the sense not to go hunting this year. Thought that the upperclassmen would have the sense not to egg them on. From the look on Isaac’s face, he’d thought so too. We’d both been wrong.

“You’re supposed to go alone,” Cory continued. “I did, but then I saw—I saw Erika.”

This time when he stopped talking, I didn’t think it was from pain. Not the physical kind, anyway. More tears slipped silently down his face.

“She was acting weird when I reached her,” he continued. “Like she was in a trance or something. I couldn’t get her to see me or hear me.”

I shot a glance at Isaac. That couldn’t be good. Isaac’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly, but he nodded at Cory to continue.