Page 43 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Increasingly Complicated

“What is wrong with you!” I shoved at his chest, pushing him back, and he bared his bloody teeth. “Get off me! I thought you were some kind of serial killer! Or a rapist!”

After a long-feeling pause, he raised himself up on his arms without pulling up all of his weight. I shoved at him again, then smacked his chest when he didn’t move.

“Get off! Now!”

“Is there any part of me you don’t intend to bruise or break?” he snapped.

“Then get your three thousand pound body off mine!”

We stared at one another, both of us with clenched jaws. He didn’t move.

“You’re a brute!”

“And you’re a psychotic cunt!” he snapped back.

“I’m not the one who attacked you!” I pointed out. “You abducted me! Like a total lunatic! You really thought I wouldn’t defend myself?”

He glared back at me, but as the seconds passed, I saw his jaw tick. That time, I could practically feel him thinking about my words.

“If I get off you, will you promise not to deck me again?” he asked finally.

“Why the hell did you swoop down at me and carry me off like a barbarian in the first place?” I demanded.

“Are you going to hit me again? Or not?”

“I might,” I snapped. “If you don’t tell me why I’m on the Great Lawn at two in the morning, a new outfit likely ruined by an out-of-control idiot who nearly crashed me into a tree and killed me.

” My voice hardened. “Why aren’t you out with your friends?

I thought there was supposed to be a big party on the Skyhunt Grounds tonight? Royals only?”

He blinked in surprise. “Who told you that?”

I hesitated, then looked away, shaking my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

There was another silence, then he exhaled in annoyance. “You should already know why I wanted to see you. We have a deal, remember?”

I looked up, startled. “Now?” I asked, incredulous. “You snatched me off the Promenade in the middle of the night, right in front of my friends, to drain your magic? Wearing a mask like you’re in some kind of death cult?”

His jaw hardened. “Can I? Or not?”

I couldn’t help noticing, now that I was looking, that his gold eyes shone too bright. I recognized that half-glowing, feral look, and the near-manic charge that came with it.

“We have a deal, Shadow,” he said. “I can’t always choose when it starts to become a problem. And I told you it was likely to be once a week… if not more.”

“It’s barely been five days since the last time you dragged me into a closet.”

“Again. I can’t control that.”

Shaking my head, I looked away, towards the dark waters of the lake I’d been about to throw myself into. “What would you do if I wasn’t here?” I retorted.

He avoided my eyes. “I have other ways.”

“So use those.”

“They don’t work as well.”

“What doesn’t work as well?” I asked in annoyance. “Why must you be vague about absolutely everything? Can’t you ever just name things, so people know what in the hell you’re talking about? Or do you think it adds to your dark sorcerer, rich asshole mystique, to be so damned cryptic all the time?”

“Shadow,” he said through gritted teeth.

“It’s just I don’t see that I’m getting much out of this deal, as of yet,” I said.

“Other than dive-bombing psychopaths scaring the crap out of me in the middle of the night. I thought you were going to help me find out who’s trying to kill me.

And, incidentally, who killed my parents.

So far you haven’t done a bloody thing to help me with either thing?”

“Shadow?” he warned.

“Fine! Do it,” I snapped, folding my arms between us. “At least get it over with, so I can go to bed.”

He took his weight off his left hand, and reached for me.

His hand slid carefully under my jacket, and wrapped around my right shoulder where it met my neck.

As he maneuvered his fingers to reach my bare skin, he glanced down at my low-cut top, and the short skirt I wore under it.

His eyes fell lastly on my high-heeled boots. His eyebrows went up.

“Pretty scant clothing for a night at the pub, mongrel,” he muttered.

“Fuck off,” I said, glaring up at him. “I didn’t ask your opinion.”

“I like your necklace,” he commented, his eyes fixing on the crystal.

I scoffed, and refolded my arms.

He frowned slightly, then closed his eyes.

I found myself tensing, in spite of myself.

I was nervous, I realized. My yelling at him was part of my nerves, maybe even a form of stalling.

Everything about what he did to me with his magic lit my nerves on fire, making it hard to breathe, to even think.

It felt so strange, so completely overwhelming every time we were together like this, yet I could scarcely explain to myself why when it was finished. Or maybe I simply didn’t want to.

Not only that, my reactions to it, and to him, were growing more intense. Each time, it was worse. Each time, I felt more uneasy afterwards. I knew I was lying to myself about some key component of what this was. I was lying to myself about how I felt about it, too.

His magic reached me subtly at first, as always.

He always seemed tentative in the beginning, as if testing me, testing my magic.

Or maybe like he knew we were doing more than we were talking about, too.

I felt him, though, even in those first careful probes.

His presence gradually flooded into me, filling every pore of my skin, every cell of my blood, every muscle, every organ, every bone.

It felt disconcertingly intimate. It felt like having him lie naked on top of me, his hands all over me, his breath in my face, his skin touching mine all the way down to my feet.

Why weren’t we talking about this? He had to notice how fucked up this was, didn’t he?

Was he deliberately ignoring it as much as I was?

Gods.

Had it been that way the very first time? Before I’d agreed to make it a regular thing?

I didn’t remember being this off-balance, or so completely unable to control my body or breath.

Maybe I hadn’t known him well enough to tell which parts actually felt like him, and which felt more mechanical.

Maybe since I’d had him in my mind in other ways, I had a better idea of what he felt like in general?

Whatever the reason, it confused me, disturbed me, made me want to both touch him and shove him off?

“Ra’s stiff cock, you think loudly,” he muttered.

Anger and horror made me flinch, then shut down my mind. Trust him to find a way to shame me in this, to embarrass me, when it was his bizarre compulsions that had us here.

He grunted over me, but I felt a whisper of annoyance off him, too.

“Don’t shut down too much, mongrel,” he said, a little out of breath. “I need you to take this.”

“You are such an absolute prick of a human being, do you know that?”

“Not a human being, love,” he reminded me.

His magic abruptly went from a trickle to a tsunami-like wave.

The change happened so fast, I couldn’t adjust. His gold, black, and green magic slammed into mine, washing over my skin, and my breath caught before I could stop it, and before I could finish my thought.

I felt him connect with some part of me, roughly almost?urgently, at least. The sun over my head and that hot, liquid pool of magic in my chest flared gold and green in the same instant.

I saw his chest glow gold through his dark shirt.

My vision whited out.

I let out a sound before I could stop it, and his fingers clamped down on my neck and shoulder and tightened until they hurt.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

He held me down strongly to the grass and leaned his weight.

He grew heavier, and more of his magic left his fingers and palm and gushed into me. I felt like I was choking on it, drowning in it, but it also felt so good I could barely stand it. I closed my eyes and fought to take it, like he’d said.

I tried to relax.

I breathed into one of my meditations, and something in me let go.

Instantly, that overwhelmed, choking feeling eased, leaving the much more intense feeling behind, the one that disturbed me a hell of a lot more.

Gods, it felt good. It felt so damned good.

I’d never felt anything like it. It felt addictively good, like a drug, only better than any drug I’d ever tried.

It was so much easier when I just let him do it.

It was so much easier when I just opened that part of myself to him.

But gods, it disturbed the hell out of me.

I felt myself surrender to it anyway, just allowing what was happening. My hands opened as I opened my arms, my muscles unclenching.

He shocked me with another, louder groan.

His magic grew even more intense.

I felt him lose control over it, in a way he hadn’t in a while, maybe ever.

He gripped my throat tighter, his fingers like hot irons, but it no longer hurt.

I watched the wave rise up over us both, and remained strangely at peace, lost in that no-time place.

I could see the exact instant the magic reached its peak.

I felt the release in him when the crest passed through me, crashing down on the other side.

Then, gradually, everything began to de-charge.

The light around us slowly began to dim.

There was a long moment after of silence, of peace.

That time, it felt like both of us. He was immersed in that feeling of serenity, too. He felt calm. Bizarrely calm. Calmer than I’d ever felt him. His relief washed over me, with what might have been… gratitude? Affection?

When my eyes started to clear, he was still breathing hard, panting, his head hanging down close to mine. He smelled like sweat and grass, and other smells my mind didn’t bother to pull apart, but might have included cologne and wind and campfire smoke.

He didn’t look at me, or move really, not right away.

Even after it was clear we were both mostly back to normal, and he was breathing close to evenly again, he didn’t move for at least another minute.

Then, out of nowhere, he raised his head. His nose crinkled, and he pulled a face, glaring down at me with open disdain.

“Are you drunk?” he asked incredulously.

I blinked up at him, confused.

Then my own jaw hardened.

“That’s none of your bloody business!” I snapped.

But he’d raised a hand, and a ripple of magic slid over me, making my skin prickle, raising the hairs on my arms.

“What did you just do?” I demanded. When he got up off me, I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling vaguely like my space had been invaded, and not only from the exchange of magic. “What kind of spell was that? What did you do to me?”

“Who gave you the amulet?” he demanded.

“The what?” I looked down at the green crystal hanging from its bronze chain, confused, then back up at him. “What amulet?”

“Would’ve been a little thing,” he said coldly. He held his fingers up in a pinching position, indicating something small. “A stone-like object. Someone, possibly even a bartender, would have put in your drink. Did you see it?”

I thought about that, then felt my jaw slowly tighten. “Why? What does it do?”

His eyes grew lethal. “It was Hollywood. Wasn’t it?”

“What does it do?” I repeated, annoyed.

“Was it him?”

“It’s none of your business!” I bit my lip. “What does the amulet thing do?”

“It relaxes inhibitions, Shadow,” he said, his voice even colder. He looked away, his jaw clenching as he seemed to be thinking about his own words. “Fucking perv. Needs a lesson in manners. Didn’t even tell you he was going to do it, did he?” he growled.

I stared up at him, feeling a mixture of annoyed, disturbed, and off-balance.

I found myself scanning backwards, remembering everything that happened that night.

I remembered the small pebble-like flash of gold the bartender had put in my drink, right in front of me.

There’d been no attempt to hide anything.

Not only that, it hadn’t just been me. The bartender gave all of us one: Draken, Miranda, Luc, Jolie, Darragh, me.

Draken ordered all six drinks right in front of me.

The bartender had been watching me, making sure I saw him make it.

“You’re reaching,” I said. “It did nothing of the kind.”

“It might’ve been a small one, but I can still feel it in your magic.

It popped right up when I cast the smallest substance identification spell.

” His voice dipped back into dangerous. “Probably told himself he was ‘helping you relax,’ right? Is that what he said? That it would help smooth out the rough edges? Neglected to mention it’s also an aphrodisiac, didn’t he? And a date rape drug in illegal doses?”

But I’d noticed something else by then, and scowled up at him. “You’re getting on me for being drunk? You’re slurring. And you smell like a bloody distillery! No wonder you nearly killed us in that dive!”

He rolled his eyes. “I did not. I was in perfect control the entire time.”

“?And Draken did not try to rape me!” I snapped. “I wasn’t even with him for most of the time after I had that drink!”

His gold eyes locked back on mine. “Who were you with?”

I hesitated, then felt my jaw harden again.

I deliberately blanked my mind when I felt him probing me for an answer.

I knew, somehow, Alaric wouldn’t thank me if I mentioned his name, especially right now.

The last thing I wanted was to get him in trouble with his unhinged friend, just for spending a few hours with me, for the first time since summer.

Keeping my mind mostly blank, I sat up, realizing he’d moved back enough that I could, and slowly climbed to my feet.

My limbs were still shaking from all the magic he’d put into me, but being vertical sobered me up even more.

If anything, I wanted a large glass of water, and maybe a shower. I no longer felt drunk at all.

“Well, you feel drunk to me,” he retorted. “Are you going to tell me who you were with, Shadow, if it wasn’t that Hollywood fuck?”

I gave him a cold look and brushed off my blouse and skirt.

Grass stains decorated the shirt, and my stockings were ripped up one side.

I looked around at where we were, and wondered if Draken and Miranda had sent the academy security patrol out looking for me yet.

“Shadow?” Caelum snapped.

“No,” I said, glaring at him. “I’m not going to tell you who I was with. I’m going to bed. And this conversation is over.”

Without waiting for his answer, I began walking in the direction of Malcroix Manor, and the path that would lead me to the Promenade and Grathrock College.

I kept my mind carefully blank until I was certain he wasn’t following.

Even then, I didn’t let myself think much at all until I’d looked over my shoulder and saw him walking with swift strides back in the direction of the forest, likely to collect his wings and whatever else he’d left back there to run after me.

I exhaled in relief only then.

Bloody lunatic.

Still, as much as it annoyed me, I felt guilty about throwing him into that tree.