Page 24

Seven Years Ago

Y EAR TWO AT SCHOOL WAS VERY DIFFERENT , now that Rory and Cordelia were exchanging shy glances. And more.

It seemed everywhere Briony looked, they were holding hands or sitting with each other in the sun or even kissing ravenously in the suite Briony shared with her brother, at which point Briony loudly reminded them that the sitting area was a shared space.

Briony was alone more and more, except for when Didion asked to walk her back to her rooms upstairs.

She’d let him kiss her after classes one day, and it was fine.

When Didion kissed her again the following day, she had Toven’s words in her head— Do you really think anyone keeps their hands to themselves in year two?

—as his hands moved delicately over her waist, drifting upward.

He had a sheepish smile on his face when she pulled away, and Briony supposed that it had been nice. But the next day she made an excuse about needing to get back to her room quickly, and she spent quite a bit more time there.

At the Eversun school, the chill of the Bomardi mountains was a distant memory.

The school was set on a lake and made of limestone, just like the neighboring Claremore Castle.

The property sprawled outward instead of upward, like the Bomardi school.

Briony’s room had the perfect view of the lake, and it brought her so much peace of mind to look out the window and see the water.

That is, until summer came with its unbearable heat. And the Bomardi boys began using the dock below her window to strip down to their underwear and jump into the water.

Briony was concentrating on her maths one afternoon when she heard a familiar deep baritone voice drifting up to her window, joined by several others. She took a deep breath and tried to ignore them, just like she had every afternoon this week.

But then Toven Hearst’s hearty laugh bellowed up to her, and she slammed her book closed and went to her window, careful to stand to the side so she wouldn’t be seen.

Finn Raquin and Collin Twindle were already in the water, splashing and floating. Liam Quill was struggling with his boots. And Toven was just peeling his shirt off his shoulders, his back rippling with the action.

Briony sighed in exasperation. She couldn’t say anything about it, because if they knew this was her window, they would probably find even more inventive ways to distract and annoy her.

As Liam shucked his trousers and jumped in inelegantly, Toven’s hands went to his belt, taking his time. When he did slip his trousers off, he folded them neatly on the dock before diving into the water like a practiced swimmer.

His hair was darker when it was wet.

Briony watched the sunlight glisten off the water drops on his shoulders for longer than she cared to admit.

When she finally pulled herself from the window, she cast a deafening spell to block outside sound from her room.

The following week she took her schoolwork outside after classes, trailing the densely packed tree line around the lake toward her favorite tree.

There was one solitary willow on the west side of the lake, with branches that dropped reedy vines all around, almost fully enclosing the tree.

She loved to read there when it was balmy outside.

Only now, as she approached, she saw a person sitting at the base of her tree, with his own book.

Briony ducked behind a thick oak trunk and peered between the drooping branches.

Toven Hearst. Of course.

He was reclining against the trunk of the willow, a book in his lap and his collar undone. His shoes were off, and his socks were different colors.

For some reason it was the socks that kept Briony up at night after she’d walked all the way back to the castle and resigned herself to reading in her room instead.

Was he blind to colors and patterns? Was he simply lazy about his undergarments?

Briony couldn’t figure it out, and she tossed and turned all night.

A week later came the hottest day of the summer. Briony loved the heat, but this was excessive. She was dripping and panting by the time she reached her tree, only to find bare feet this time.

Briony growled and pushed through the fronds.

Toven Hearst lay on his back, his book over his face as he snoozed. His feet weren’t the only things that were bare.

His shirt hung from a knot in the trunk, and the expanse of his stomach and chest was there for Briony’s inspection.

“No,” she said. “Leave.”

His hand reached up and removed the book from his face. “Excuse me.”

“This is my tree,” she said, still catching her breath. “Go away.”

He lifted a pale eyebrow at her. “Your tree? Did you carve your name into it, Rosewood?” His eyes widened, mockingly. “Oh, that’s right. It was your brother who showed skill in carving his name into trees, wasn’t it?”

Briony flushed at the reminder that Toven knew her secret.

“Do you plan on telling anyone that I boost my brother, or are you just going to mock me with it for the rest of school?”

“Perhaps I’m waiting for the perfect opportunity to blackmail you.” He placed the book back over his eyes, resting back on his arms.

She huffed. “I found the tree in the first week. It’s mine. You have to leave.” She knew she sounded abysmally petulant, but she couldn’t help it.

“I’m not going anywhere. I was here first,” he said, voice muffled behind the book.

And as he lay there, bare-chested and relaxed, she realized that he didn’t think of her as a threat at all. She itched to change his mind about that, but knew what her father would say.

She tapped her foot against the damp shore, glancing around for some way to make him go and finding nothing.

And then her gaze fixed on two mismatched socks at the base of the tree.

She narrowed her eyes at them, wondering how someone who peacocked about school, caught his reflection in every mirror, and folded his trousers before jumping into the lake could possibly fail to match his socks.

“Are you still here, Rosewood?” he asked lazily.

She stamped her foot and marched away, determined to beat him to the tree the next day.

Which she did. When she saw him walking up to the willow, she cast a barrier charm on the curtain of fronds.

“I was here first. You’ll have to leave this time, Hearst.”

He glared at her and tried to push through the fronds. She adored the look on his face when he realized she’d barred him.

The next day, he was there first.

Briony raced from lunch the following day, grabbing an apple and nothing else. Didion tried to stop her, but she pushed past him apologetically.

She moved quickly to the lake, cutting a path along the shore to get to the tree first.

She heard footsteps in the tree line next to her.

Briony doubled her pace, her dress catching on tree roots and tearing as she barreled through the brush around the lake.

Toven came to keep pace with her. “Is this tree really worth so much to you?”

“Beating you is worth this much to me,” she said, annoyed that his breath didn’t seem to be affected while hers was straining.

Toven puffed what could have been a laugh, but then broke out in front of her with his long legs and then abruptly turned around to run backward, still faster than she could run forward.

“I’ll tell you what, Rosewood,” he said. “I’ll leave the tree alone if you give me the top spot in elixirs.”

Her feet stumbled. “I don’t have the top—”

She stopped herself as he smirked knowingly at her. Rory had the top spot in elixirs.

“But of course, if you prefer to race me every day,” he said, glancing down her body with a smirk. “I don’t mind the view—”

With a sharp gasp, Toven was suddenly on his back, having stumbled on a root.

Briony burst out laughing, curling over to brace on her knees. The race was forgotten as she crowed at Toven’s scrunched face, the wind knocked out of him.

He sat up, taking deep breaths and glaring at the root that had taken him down.

“Oh, that was priceless,” Briony said, wiping her eyes. “Thank you for that.”

“Stones, that was …” Toven reached behind his head and touched it gently. His fingertips came back red.

Briony blanched. “Oh! Are you all right?”

She dropped to her knees at his side.

“It’s fine.” He tried to shrug her off as he brought more blood away on his hand.

“Let me see—”

“No need.”

“Really, Toven, I could fix it quick.” She reached for his shoulder.

“Rosewood, get off me,” he said without malice. “Like I’d trust an Eversun to heal.”

Briony glared at him. “Mind magic works just as well for healing. I can handle a scrape fine.” Her eyes widened innocently, playacting. “Unless you think I should call for a medical team? Are you so terribly injured that we should call all the tutors out to the lake—”

He sighed. “Just—hurry. And don’t leave a scar.”

Briony snorted and crawled around behind him, muddying the knees of her dress.

His silver-gray hair was matted with red. She winced, and quickly banished the blood with a pushing motion. There was a cut at the base of his skull, right at the hairline. She braced her thumbs and forefingers around the cut and focused on slowing his blood flow, encouraging coagulation.

There was a slight breeze, and his scent hit her. Peppermint maybe.

She passed her fingers over the wound, pulling the skin back together. Gooseflesh broke across his neck.

“Don’t scar me,” he repeated.

“Don’t be a baby.”

She worked the sides of the cut closed with small push-and-pull movements of her fingers against the air. Her face was close to his neck, and she could see her breath stir the fine hair above his collar.

And it hit her rather suddenly that they were alone in a dense tree line. Unchaperoned.

Briony’s heart thumped with the intimacy of their position—her on her knees behind him, her hips and stomach almost touching his back.

His voice floated back to her from the winter solstice— Do you really think anyone keeps their hands to themselves in year two?

She swallowed and pulled her fingers away.

“You’ll have to get the medics to finish,” she said, knowing full well that she could have completed the stitching and left no scar. She pulled up from her knees to standing and grabbed her book and her apple. “I’m taking the tree today. You should go get that seen to.”

He had just started to turn over his shoulder to look at her when she began walking away, her skin flushed and her ribs tight with something.

The next day, Didion found her sitting under the willow tree, and Briony pushed back the disappointment that he wasn’t someone else.

When Didion distracted her from her reading with a soft kiss, Briony let him.

She let him curl over her as she reclined under the trunk, and with her eyes squeezed so tight that she could imagine his dark hair was a paler color, she brought his hands to her breasts.

He couldn’t untie her laces there, and he complained of a cramp the entire time, but she was desperate to relieve the burning inside of her, encouraging him to continue, to press harder, to rock against her.

No one keeps their hands to themselves in year two, anyway.