Page 41 of Strength of Desire

I realized, suddenly, what that chime had been. I must have triggered it as I kept inching forward. Dammit. Why couldn’t I have held back?

“And I suppose you could have done better?” Rekha said sweetly, though there was a hint of poison in her voice.

Sean sighed. “Whatever. We were done here anyway.”

“Don’t let us stop you,” Ash said brightly. “We wouldn’t dream of interrupting your skullduggery.”

Rekha began collecting the maps, sliding them on top of each other. Then she turned to a cabinet behind her with many long, thin drawers, and pulled one out. There were more maps inside it.

“Just leave them,” Sean told her.

Rekha glared at him. “You’re the one who insisted we had to do this at night, when no one else was around. Now you suddenly don’t care? You want to leave the maps out for these idiots to rifle through?”

She shoved the maps inside, sliding each one into a different place in the stack in the drawer.

“They don’t know what they’re looking for,” Sean said, rolling his shoulders out with a smile. “They couldn’t do anything with the maps if they tried.”

“A spring,” I said, annoyed. I didn’t want to admit how long I’d been listening, but Sean’s tone irked me. “Near a mound or something. It’s not on any of the maps, but you were trying to find it by putting together information from three of them.”

“Very good, Cory,” Sean said, his voice patronizing. “And why, pray tell, were we looking for it?”

About that, I had no idea. I shrugged again, still hoping I was coming off more relaxed than I felt.

Sean turned to Rekha and spread his hands out. “I rest my case. Let’s go.”

“The Spring of Irylis,” Felix said softly. “You’re looking for the Spring of Irylis, which appears on Vesperwood’s grounds on the evening of Imbolc, surrounded by mellora flowers. Take a flower from the glade before it disappears at dawn, and it will grant you one wish. Take water from the spring and it will heal even mortal wounds. So they say.”

I turned to stare at him.

“Ohh,” Ash said, recognition clear in his voice. He nodded to himself. Whatever the spring was, he’d at least heard of it before. He looked at Felix. “Is any of that true?”

It was Felix’s turn to shrug. “It’s more of a myth than anything else. People who claim to know how to find it always seem to have gotten the information from someone who got it from someone else. Some people say it moves to a different location each year. But that doesn’t stop students from going out to look for it every year anyway.”

“It moves?” I said, feeling my eyes widen. I should probably have gotten used to things like magical disappearing springs by now, but I still hadn’t.

“If it exists,” Felix said, sounding doubtful. “Myself, I think it’s an urban legend. How likely are flowers in February? In northern Wisconsin?”

“See?” Sean turned to Rekha. “They’re not going to look for it.” He laughed. “Even if they thought it was real, none of them woulddreamof breaking a school rule.”

I frowned. “Why would we be breaking a rule?”

“You have to hunt for it at night,” Ash said.

“Outside,” Felix added.

“Oh.”

Since the moraghin attack, underclassmen were discouraged from roaming the grounds by themselves during the day. The faculty definitely wouldn’t want us going out at night. And the dean had said Imbolc would be celebrated indoors this year. Somehow, I didn’t think searching for a magical spring was the kind of thing he would make an exception for.

“Oh,” Sean said, his tone mocking. He stepped forward, looking me up and down. His voice dropped low. “You wouldn’t do it even if youwereallowed. Out in the woods at night? All alone? No one to rescue you? You wouldn’t last an hour. You’re too weak.”

“I am not,” I said, knowing how childish I sounded, but unable to help it.

“Actions speak louder than words, Cory,” Sean said. “And your actions…well, let’s just say that from what I’ve seen so far, I think you’d be down on your knees within a minute, just begging for someone to tell you what to do.”

It was such obvious bait that I knew I shouldn’t rise to it. I was sick with myself for what I’d done with Sean. What my body had wanted. I knew he was goading me, and I knew better than to respond.

“Think what you like,” I spat. “We’ll see who’s right, the morning after, when I’ve found the spring and you haven’t.”

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