Chapter 23

Twenty-Three

Jasper

I t’s hardly a surprise when Lambert announces, “We need more cushions!”

The suddenness—and loudness—of it shocks me into fumbling the blanket I’ve been folding.

“It’s not a little girls’ sleepover.” Dakari scoffs, his voice muffled by the table that he’s crawled under.

He’s on his back, one hand on his grimoire, and the other pressed up underneath the bulky projector as he tries to link the device to the necklace resting between the pages.

The three of us have been at this for almost an hour, and I’m not sure what more we can realistically achieve. The classroom tables have been shoved to the side, and Lambert transformed several pouffes into a large sectional that’s closer to a bed than a sofa.

Tiny wisplights flicker around the edges of the room, but we’ll dim them once the game starts.

“Wrong!” Lambert calls, interrupting my critical glance. “It’s Kyrith’s first magiball slumber party, and she’s gotta have the full experience. Now, get conjuring.”

I’m not much help, but I take the cushion Leo passes me and press it into the mass already covering the seat. We’ve turned the lecture space into a kind of cosy den, padded with dark navy fabrics that make me want to sink into them.

Or perhaps that’s just the perpetual tiredness that’s plagued me since Dakari brought me here. Magic, I’m properly knackered, and it’s damned frustrating.

“This is so immature,” Galileo grumbles, handing me another. “The Librarian is a grown woman?—”

“Shh, you heard her! She hasn’t experienced any of this.” Lambert conjures a cushion that’s covered in Barbie pink sequins that clashes horribly with the others. Galileo rolls his eyes and mutters a spell to fix it, then adds it to the pile.

I actually think Kyrith might be helping, supporting Lambert’s crazy for reasons I don’t understand, by changing the drapes and nudging things around when we’re not looking. I swear that the curtains didn’t have wee magiballs embroidered on them before, and occasionally a cushion pops up among the rest that I swear I don’t remember placing.

Perhaps it’s just my foggy brain. I’d hate to think she’s really watching us argue over blanket patterns.

Not my finest moment.

Neither was calling her ‘mistress.’ My cheeks heat at the memory as I scold myself for the hundredth time. I think I managed to pass it off as a joke, but the bossy Librarian with her confidence and her graceful curves has me tongue-tied. I don’t remember feeling that way when my father took me to the Arcanaeum for the first time as a bairn, but now…

Dakari noticed. He knew I had a thing for dominant women before I was taken, though he never understood it himself.

Maybe I came on too strong in the lineage room? She didn’t seem to mind, but now that I’ve had time to overthink, I wonder if she was just humouring me.

Just the thought of her quirking one of those brows expectantly has my cock hardening. I’m so distracted that I overbalance and stagger, only catching myself at the last minute so that I fall into the pile of pillows instead of the floor.

“Hey, no breaks!” Lambert calls.

Magic, where does he get his energy? “Simmer the fuck down. I just need a minute.”

She’s still trying to rebuild my magical well, and it’s working, albeit slowly. The process is…draining, but I almost wish it wouldn't end.

When I’m well again, I have to figure out what to do with my family, and what to do about the fact that I’ve lost ten years of my life that I simply don’t remember. I’ll have to think about leaving the Arcanaeum. Leaving her.

And maybe it’s just that she’s the first kind face I saw when I woke up, but I really, really don’t want to leave her. I think the others are the same way, because they gravitate to her, like moons caught in her orbit.

“Lambert, you’re going to be late,” Leo warns.

“Nah-uh, I’ll just exit in the locker room,” he retorts. “Besides, I want Kyrith to wish me luck before I go.”

Galileo rubs the back of his neck as he takes a seat in the armchair on my left and pins the cheery dunderhead with a look. “I doubt she’s going to give you your lucky blowjob.”

His…what?

“Tell me that isn’t a thing,” Dakari growls, echoing my thoughts.

Lambert shrugs, like he doesn’t care that all of us are caught between incredulity and disgust. “Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.”

I’m not usually one to judge, but isn’t using women as good luck charms a little disrespectful?

“Besides,” he continues. “I don’t need it this year. Kyrith’s going to?—”

“She won’t hug you,” Leo warns. “And if you ask her to blow you, I’m pretty sure she’ll banish you again.”

The room goes silent, and I know we’re all wondering the same thing: what would that even feel like? She’s a ghost, right? Even if we felt something, would she? It wouldn’t be fair if I couldn’t reciprocate…

Hypothetically , of course.

I definitely have not thought about her ordering me to my knees, pressing her dainty toes into my chest, and letting me shove those long skirts out of the way…

Getting horny for a ghost would be so wrong.

Shit. I don’t even care. I’ve not had sex—that I can remember, anyway—in ten long-ass years. What encounters I had before that were…bad. The fumblings of teenagers who lacked the confidence to ask for what they wanted or communicate properly. Telling your girlfriend you want her to boss you around when you’re nineteen is somehow more embarrassing than confessing that you’re still a virgin. Besides, after such a long period of enforced celibacy, I’d be more worried if I wasn’t wondering about the tits that are always almost spilling out of that corset.

Dakari rolls himself out from underneath the projector with a satisfied huff. “It’s done. Where’s your Ackland shadow? He needs to wear the pendant if we’re going to watch anything.”

“North?” Lambert looks around, as if only just noting that his friend is missing. “He said he was on his way.”

“I’m here.” North sticks his head around the corner. “But there was no way I was pissing around with cushions and shit.”

His yellow eyes light on me for a second, and the calculating gleam in them makes me look away, nervously.

“You’ve been here the whole time?” Lambert interrupts, aghast. “We could’ve used you?—”

North rolls his eyes, oblivious to the ghost who’s just materialised behind him.

“Whatever. It doesn’t look like her majesty is showing up, anyway.”

Grimacing on his behalf, I wait for him to notice, or for her to announce herself. Neither happens. Something in our expressions or silence must eventually give her away, because he whirls to discover Kyrith with her arms folded and an unimpressed expression levelled in his direction.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so cringeworthy.

A heartbeat passes, where we wait for him to apologise, or for her to give him a strike. He says nothing, and her brow rises as he turns his back on her as if she doesn’t exist and holds his hand out to Dakari.

“Chuck me the damned necklace, and let’s get this over with.”

“Kyrith, can I get a kiss for luck?” Lambert asks, bounding past his friend towards the Librarian who actually drifts through a wall to avoid him on her way into the room.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She scoffs, though she loses some of the stiffness in her posture. “What would kissing me achieve? Play well and make your own luck.”

Lambert doesn’t visibly react, except for the slightest twitch of his lips. “One day, boss lady!”

I’m pretty sure Kyrith mutters, “if I were alive…” under her breath as she passes me.

North grabs Lambert—presumably to try to stop him from doing anything more embarrassing—but he’s too late to stop the blond idiot from asking:

“What about a victory lap dance?”

He can’t see it from where he’s standing, but the corner of her lip actually quirks upward for a heartbeat before she manages to control her expression.

She turns to regard him in silence for a long second, and we all get to watch as he slowly starts to lose a sliver of his confidence.

“I mean… I could just… I’ll… Ahem…”

I stifle my chuckle behind my hand.

“Lambert?” Kyrith’s voice is silky smooth, and my cock, which had just gone down, hardens painfully again.

He swallows. “Yes, boss lady?”

“If you win…”

He’s actually holding his breath. To be fair, I would be too if Kyrith was considering giving me a lap dance.

“You’ll flash me?” he asks hopefully, bouncing on the soles of his feet. “Strip tease?”

Kyrith presses a hand to her mouth like she’s either aghast or about to lose it. “No one has seen me naked in five hundred years. What makes you think you deserve to?”

Lambert shrugs. “I’m a connoisseur of beautiful breasts and thick, juicy thighs?”

You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. Even Galileo is leaning forward, his fingers steepled beneath his chin as he watches their interaction with interest.

Kyrith’s tinkling laughter breaks through the room, and Lambert grins.

“I’ll take it,” he says before she can respond. “You laughed. That’s my good luck charm. Prepare to unlace your petticoats…or however you get out of that stuff.”

Before she can correct him, he spins on his heel, takes command of the hold North has on his arm and drags the two of them towards a wide yellow door in the middle of a bookcase.

“UAA Magiball cloakroom,” he announces, knocking twice and shoving through.

When he’s gone, Kyrith’s shoulders slump, and she sighs.

“Come sit down,” I suggest, shifting so a cushion covers the very evident arousal tenting the grey sweatpants that appeared in my wardrobe this morning. “The game will start soon.”

“If the necklace works,” Dakari mutters, taking a seat on the other edge of the sectional, leaving Kyrith the larger corner spot.

“It will.” I hope it does, anyway. College magiball seems like as good a way as any to break up the restlessness that’s wearing on me.

I’ve been jogging—well, walking—laps of the upper floors with Dakari to rebuild my strength and working on catching up with the world in between resting. I’m grateful for Kyrith and the Arcanaeum’s protection, and I don’t really want to leave, but I’ve been cooped up for the last ten years of my life, and the urge to do more with what time I have left is ever present at the edge of my mind. If only my body would just cooperate…

My thoughts cut off as she settles in the spot between us, her back rigid—and not just because of her corset.

“Relax,” Galileo orders from his armchair, ignoring the book perched on his knee in favour of studying her.

But Kyrith’s eyes aren’t on him. They’re glued to the scene being projected onto the wall.

My brows rise as I realise Lambert’s mistake.

He took North to the locker room, and Kyrith is now getting treated to an up-close-and-personal sausage-fest. Because of the enchantment on the necklace, we can see through his eyes, and although he’s not ogling the players, he’s not averting his gaze, either.

Oh shit. Is this making her uncomfortable? People back in her era were super repressed, weren’t they?

“You don’t have to watch,” I suggest, blushing scarlet.

Kyrith snorts. “I am not missing this.”

The unexpected response draws all of our focus to her, and Dakari is the one who asks what we’re all thinking.

“You’re not upset?”

Kyrith rolls her eyes at him. “I’m dead but not that dead. I can still look.”

I chuckle under my breath, kinda liking that she’s so bold about it. Besides, it confirms what I already knew—she was checking me out earlier. “Looking isnae going to hurt; besides, North is leaving.”

But not before Lambert rips off his shirt, and Kyrith… Okay, normally she’s hard to read. Not now. Her mouth pops open on a sigh, and her pupils dilate.

For all her protests, she’s into the tat-covered transmutation arcanist. I mean, I understand it. Lambert’s sculpted like the athlete he is, almost as heavily muscled as Dakari.

“Did people not… back when you… I thought they waited for marriage in your time.” It’s kinda funny, and completely out of character, for Galileo to struggle for words.

Kyrith sighs, looking back at the confused faces of the others. “Yes, moral standards were stricter when I was alive, but I was an orphan. My marriage prospects were null, and there weren’t many people alive who cared that I didn’t die a virgin.”

That sounds…really lonely.

“I miss it,” she admits, so softly that I don’t think the others, who are farther from her than I am, actually hear.

“You’re lucky you can’t be touched,” Galileo finally says. “Otherwise, Lambert would be on you like a rash.”

Kyrith doesn’t respond, but I swear the corner of her lip twitches. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Lambert is a flirt. Kyrith…deserves someone who won’t drop her the second someone new comes along. It’s disturbingly easy to imagine myself as that someone, despite the obvious barriers.

“Look, North has found his seat,” she says instead.

He has, and thankfully he’s managed to find himself a good spot overlooking the diamond shaped pitch, almost exactly above the tall net dividing the court into two equal triangles.

“Ackland,” someone greets him, and I realise that there’s a reason for his good spot—he’s in the VIP box.

Hard to roll my eyes when I can actually see one of my cousins a few seats away from him. Magic, she’s gotten old. Is that…a toddler on her lap? How much did I miss?

My melancholy thoughts are cut off as the announcer’s voice booms through the Arcanaeum like we’re right beside the speaker. Dakari curses, flying from his seat to fiddle with the projector as the rest of us clamp our hands over our ears.

When the volume drops, and I lower my hands, it’s just in time to hear the announcer say, “And finally, Lambert Winthrop, star reaper of the University of Arcane Arts.”

And there he is, jogging out onto the court behind his teammates with an easy smile that has Kyrith sitting forward in her seat. His golden hair is secured in a man-bun, and his arms are bare to expose the runeforms all over his skin.

The sleeveless jersey is different from his five teammates, who clearly have different specialisms. One of them is strung with bandoleers full of potions and bombs, another has their grimoire already open and floating beside them.

The team faces up against their opponents with brisk nods as the referee strides to the middle of the pitch, setting out the three balls in a line beneath the net with practised precision. A clang echoes through the stadium, the board above lighting up to display two perfect scores of one hundred.

“How many of the rules do you know?” I ask, trying to casually lean in towards Kyrith without her noticing.

She levels me with a disbelieving look that makes me cringe. What am I saying? Kyrith has been around a long time. She might not have seen a game before, but I bet she’s read a book or two about the subject.

Something she proves when she humours me by replying, “The first to zero points—or whoever drops the gamma—loses the match,” she says, shrugging. “Five points are deducted from a team every time the beta hits the ground on their side of the net. If the alpha falls, all three balls speed up.”

She doesn’t mention anything about fouls or substitutions, and I wonder if that means her interest in the sport itself is fairly limited, like mine, or that she simply doesn’t want to go into the technical details. Dakari used to play casually before I was taken, but only because his grandfather forced his attendance. I’m not sure whether Galileo has ever stepped foot on a court before, but it seems like the sort of thing he’d know purely from his friendship with the Winthrop heir.

I’ve played with my cousins before, but honestly, team sports have never been my thing. Not that it matters. We’re here to support Lambert, after all.

Yet, when the buzzer sounds and the balls fly into the air, I can’t pay attention to the game at all. Instead, I find myself leaning back to watch as Kyrith flinches, bites at her lip, and gasps into her hand.

She’s infinitely more interesting to watch than players getting sprayed with acid or hit with shrapnel. As much as she’d deny it, her whole body tenses whenever Lambert is in danger of getting hit.

And when he scores the game’s winning shot, the cocky fucker looks right up at the box where North’s sitting and makes a dumb wee heart with his hands over his sternum.

A cacophony of screams erupts from the women of the crowd, and the Librarian rolls her eyes, clearly missing the fact that she was the one the gesture was aimed at.

“Can he not help himself?” she asks quietly. “Or was he born an impossible flirt?”

Leo shakes his head, the three of us exchanging a knowing look as she floats to a standing position, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in the ghostly fabric of her skirts.

“This was…interesting,” she finally settles on, and I smirk.

Would it kill her to admit she enjoyed herself?

“You were three steps away from ripping into the ref over a foul not ten minutes ago,” Leo remarks. “Don’t pretend otherwise when Lambert comes back. You’ll crush him. He’s an idiot about most things, but he’s sensitive about magiball. At least tell him he played well.”

He did, to be fair.

But Kyrith’s attention is no longer on Leo, or the rest of us. Instead, the projector has captured her once more, and I suspect I know why.

Josef Ackland is right in his son’s face, his dark brows creased with fury as he drags North out of the box by his collar and down a corridor, into a caretaker’s closet.

“You think you can just fuck around watching matches instead of doing what you’re told, boy?” Josef demands, slamming his son into a shelf of equipment.

And North—the proud asshole, who should be shoving right back—just takes it.

“No. Of course not.” I think that’s the calmest I’ve ever heard him. It’s certainly a far cry from his usual defensive attitude.

Josef isn’t mollified. “Have you forgotten ? —”

“No. I’m working on it. I swear. I just ? —”

“Librarian, this conversation is private,” Leo says, trying to put himself between the screen and Kyrith.

Only to find himself on the other side of the room.

“Edlynn isn’t getting any better while you mess around, ignoring the one job I asked you to get done.”

“I told you,” North protests. “It isn’t in the Arcanaeum.”

“If you believe that, you’re even stupider than your grades say you are.” Josef strides away. “No more wasting time. Get into the Vault and find that grimoire.”

The projection plays on, North’s harsh breathing echoing in the room, but Kyrith’s turned away. Her stony gaze settles on a spot on one of the shelves, hands tugging at her sleeves as her mind works furiously.

Her anger is palpable. The Arcanaeum is practically bristling with magic. Then, she looks up, eyes catching on the clock, where they settle for a second before widening.

All of her fury dissipates, replaced by…

Fear.