Page 9 of Spark of Sorcery

“Better,” I say softly, when the marks on her face are gone.

Her eyes flicker open and for a moment she seems alarmed to find me right in front of her. “Y-y-y-yes.” She swallows. “Thank you. You didn’t need to … That wasn’t why I …”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop it, but I won’t let her hurt you again,” I say. “I swear it.”

“It wasn’t you then,” she mutters, confused. I frown. What does she mean? “And if it wasn’t … then … I don’t know if I can trust you, Fox.”

“Professor,” I correct, because her saying my name sounds far too personal, far too intimate in this room, the firelight falling over both of us, her scent vivid in my nose and in my mouth.

“Professor,” she says. “Perhaps coming here was a mistake.”

She spins around to face me and I step right up to her and take her arm in my hand. My skin against hers makes her gasp, her eyes widening and falling to the place where our flesh meets.

“What is it?”I ask her.

“Your skin, it’s so cold. Like ice.” Her shocked gaze skims back up to my face.

I take a risk. “Some shadow weavers are. It’s just the way it is.”

A little crease forms between her brows, but she appears to accept my explanation, and is it my imagination or does she shuffle just a little closer towards me?

“My sister trusted the wrong people at this academy,” she says, her bright green eyes searching mine. “I don’t want to make the same mistake.”

“You can’t trust anyone in this place, Briony.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think I can trust my friends – Fly and Clare.”

“And yet here you are, late at night in my room, and not theirs.”

“Because I don’t want to endanger them.”

“But you’re happy to endanger me?” I snipe.

“I don’t think anything could endanger you, could it? You seem pretty invincible to me.”

“If you’re trying to flatter me–”

“I’m right, this was a–” She tries to shake off my hold and walk past me, but I grip onto her all the tighter.

“Tell me.”

She halts, inhales, then exhales with frustration.

“I think we both have secrets, Professor, and unless we’re both prepared to divulge them, I don’t think we can ever be friends.”

Chapter Four

Dray

“I’m beginning to suspect that while people are nodding obediently to our faces, they’re ignoring our fucking commands behind our backs,” I say, my gaze flicking around the Onyx common room, my left leg jiggling, my jaw working as I chew on gum.

The trial is over. Nearly every shadow weaver, but a handful, fucking aced it. Obviously not as fast or with as much style as I did, but as suspected we performed better as a collective than any of the commoner kids from the other Quarters. It’s made the kids here tonight high! It’s not their fault. They’ve been told all their lives how wonderful they are. Now they’ve proved it. They’re dancing on the tables, firing magic around the room, hooking up, and snorting lines of dust.

Usually I’d be right in the thick of it, shirt off, balancingsome girl on my shoulders, licking powder off another’s chest, and howling up at the ceiling.

Tonight, I’m stewing in the corner with Beaufort, observing. Every one of my wolfish senses is alert and finely tuned.

“What makes you say that?” Beaufort asks, dragging his own gaze away from the spectacle and back towards me.