I’d made a mistake months ago of following my dick into a bad situation. I wouldn’t be allowing that to happen again, no matter how much it hurt to stop this little game.
Which was precisely why I rolled off of her and onto my back, my body tense with the need to do a lot more than chastely kiss her. “Now would be a good time for you to leave,” I said, my jaw clenching with each word. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Aflora seemed to pause, but I couldn’t risk looking at her. Because if I saw even a single ounce of desire reflected in her gaze, I’d do a hell of a lot more than taste the edge of her mouth.
While I adored stretching my limits and testing my resolve, something told me this female would destroy all my maintained control.
Worse, I’d welcome it.
As the door softly shut behind her, all I wanted was to go after her, push her up against the wall, and devour her entirely.
And allow her to do the same right back to me.
Chapter Eighteen
Zeph
“A Quandary Blood,” I mused.
The news didn’t surprise me. I had suspected it when we all saw different colors in her fire. That was a trademark Quandary Blood trait, a way to complicate their magic.
“I wonder what kind of wand the figments gave her at AcaWard.” I never actually looked at it, but I imagined it held traces of her heritage. “Have you asked to see it yet?”
Kols shook his head, his expression tired. “I was too focused on keeping her magic under control in Elite Class today. Emelyn has decided Aflora is a fun target for practicing her mean-girl bullshit, which put Aflora in an immediately defensive position.” He sighed, relaxing into my couch, and lifted a bottle of beer to his lips.
At this rate, we were going to go through my entire stash our first week. Good thing we had two break days coming up. Just had to get through another class tomorrow first, then I could pop into the Human Realm to pick up more. Except it would be on Kols’s dime. He came from money. I did not.
“We could ask for her wand now,” I suggested. “She’s next door, right?”
Kols took a long swallow, his golden irises flaring in a way I recognized. It told me what he was going to say before the words left his lips. “I need a break before I do something stupid.”
“Like fuck her?”
“Yeah, exactly like that.” His gaze narrowed at me. “And don’t tell me you’re immune from the pull. We may not have played together in a few months, but I know your type. You want her just as badly as I do.”
I lifted a shoulder. “It’s not going to happen.”
“I know. Now, if only my dick could get the message, we’d be on the same page.”
“Your dick always did get you into trouble,” I muttered. Technically, us, I corrected. His dick always got us into trouble.
He set his bottle down on the coffee table and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Yeah, if you need to blame me for what went down with Dakota, then do it. But I need your help here, man. This is a big fucking deal. If Shade mated her because he knows what she is, then there’s a lot more going on here than just an act of rebellion.”
I don’t blame you. I blame myself, I thought. But it didn’t matter, because he was right. We needed to focus on Shade and Aflora and whatever the hell was going on there.
“What did you read from her when you discussed her Quandary Blood?”
“Genuine surprise and a hell of a lot of confusion,” Kols replied. “She’s either an amazing actress or she had no idea about her abilities. I’m going with the latter because she seems to think it’s Shade’s fault. She was pretty adamant that her parents were pure-blood Earth Fae.”
“Her gifts prove that to be a lie.”
“I agree, but that doesn’t mean she believes it. Regardless, it shows innocence. I think she’s a pawn in a much larger game. What I want to know is, who is the master on the board? Is it Shade, his father, or someone else entirely? Because we both know the Death Bloods and Quandary Bloods share a dark history.”
“Hence the reason your grandfather killed them all off a thousand years ago,” I said, recalling the lessons from my history courses here at the Academy. It was a subject that always left me uneasy—the extermination of an entire bloodline to send a message to all the others.
Behave or you’ll be next.
The Quandary Bloods were seen as the villains of the story, but I always suspected there was more to the history than what we were told. It was a topic most of us avoided, something I assumed was done with a purpose. If no one questioned the events of the Midnight Fae Dark Age, then the secrets remained safely buried.