Page 83 of Spark of Sorcery

“What was so funny?” he asks with amusement.

“Briony eats plenty. She has a very big appetite.” Beaufort cocks an eyebrow at me and I can guess how he’s interpreting that comment. “In fact, I don’t know how she does manage to eat so much. The food in the canteen is disgusting.”

Beaufort looks at me for a minute, hands on his hips, beads of sweat racing down his neck in a way that shouldn’t be as sexy as it is.

“Come to our tower at seven tonight. You can eat with us.”

I raise my own eyebrow. “Hello, Briony,” I say. “Do you have any plans for tonight? Would you like to have dinner with me?”

Clare swings a wide-eyed gaze from me to Beaufort, obviously alarmed I talk to the all-mighty Beaufort Lincoln with such sarcasm.

“You do have plans,” he says, kicking at the grass, “with me.”

“It would still be polite to ask.”

He huffs and strides away.

“Sometimes I think you like to provoke him,” Clare says. “Is it because it makes things hotter between the two of you?”

“No,” I squeal, rolling on to my side and punching Clare on her arm.

She laughs. “Just saying. He invited you to dinner. That was a nice thing to do.”

“Yeah,” I say, rolling up to my feet. “But it was thewayhe asked.”

“I wish someone would askmeto dinner,” Clare says, peering across the field wistfully.

“Do you need to wait to be asked? Couldn’t you ask someone yourself? (and by someone are we referring to the boy in your history class?)”

“Ask him?” she says, eyes wide behind her glasses.

“Yeah, why not? This isn’t the sixteenth century.”

“But what if he said no?”

“You’d be no worse off if he did. And we’ll give him such evil looks for the rest of his time at the academy, he’ll wish he was never born.”

Clare giggles. “I’ll think about it.”

I offer out my hand and yank her to her feet. “Don’t think about it, just do it. That’s my motto … which, come to think about, it may be why I end up in such shit.”

“Come on,” Clare says, “I think dinner with Beaufort Lincoln calls for a new outfit.”

I sneak back to my room first to check in on Blaze. I promise him I’ll be back in time for his evening fly-around, and then I meet Fly on the landing and we walk over to Clare’s.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time in your room lately,” Fly says casually as we weave around a group of students passing around a bottle of alcohol.

“Have I?”

“Yes. Are you sure you don’t have a fourth Prince hidden away in your room, Cupcake? Or maybe you have your own thrall.”

“Can commoners have thralls?” I ask, trying to divert the conversation as best I can.

“Sure they can. I mean it’s not like it is here in the academy with collars and protection and shadow magic. But iftwo consenting adults want to establish that type of relationship … of course,” he adds, with a frown, “there are relationships where it isn’t consensual and that is just plain abusive.”

I think of how Muriel used me as her own personal servant, forcing me, a young kid, to do all the chores and jobs she hated the most. How she made me do them even when it didn’t seem like they needed doing.

“And that’s why I hate this stupid thrall thing. A relationship is one thing – being a thrall quite another.”