Page 34 of Fortune Academy: Year One
Focusing, I positioned the needle at the end of the wound and began stitching.
Hendrik stiffened, wincing as I made the first puncture, but his jaw worked in silence as I sewed up the wound.
“So,” I said, threading the needle, “I suppose this was more than you bargained for when you asked us to come here.” I glanced up at him to gauge his reaction. I wanted to push him off his high horse and get him to see me as an equal, or at least as less of a freshman he could bully.
He waited until I’d finished the last stitch, knotting the thread neatly, before he spoke. A fine layer of sweat beaded across his forehead. “Have you done this before?” he asked, admiring my work.
I shrugged. “No memories.” I pointed to my chest. “Dud, remember?”
He chuckled, his gorgeous smile transforming his face in ways that made me want to let my guard down. “You could have fooled me.”
I became acutely aware that I was still in-between his legs and, in a sense, we were very much alone. Olivia slept soundly on the couch, the fire slowly bringing warmth back into her chilled body, and a new kind of warmth crept up my own thighs when I turned back to the handsome dark mage who was still smiling at me. “What?” I snapped. “Thought you were pissed off at me.”
“Oh I am,” he promised. His hand rested on my shoulder and his fingers ground into my collarbone in a possessive way, “but I’m also impressed, you?—”
His words cut off as his pitch-black eyes swirled with a glimmer of magic, reacting to something inside of… me.
Touch seemed to amplify my suppressed gifts and even though I couldn’t draw on his lifeforce like the succubus in me wanted to, I could still taste his desire for me. He liked a woman that was on the dangerous side, unpredictable, and a mystery. I was all of those things in a neat and tidy box as if I’d wrapped myself as a present on his doorstep.
There was something else in his gaze that had me on edge. His desire for me left a sweet taste in my mouth, but he had his own magic as well that crawled over me at our contact. It recognized me.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said, his voice low with accusation. “You’re…”
“Nope,” I said, launching to my feet. I stepped out of his reach and broke the contact, snapping free of his magic that had been tasting me and threatening to burrow under my skin. My runes burned hot, although, thankfully, they were still invisible. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and glowered at the dark mage. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” I reminded him. “We never met before I came to the Academy.” I crushed the remaining orb as I said the words, making a puff of magic filter through the room.
Hendrik didn’t seem to notice, and instead he relaxed under the compulsion of the spell. Hewantedto believe that I wasn’t the girl from his vision. He wanted to see me as a freshman at his Academy where he was in charge. That was familiar, exciting.
If I was the girl from his vision…
No, he couldn’t fathom it. My spell made sure of that. It capitalized on a deep-seated fear of what it might mean to him if I really was meant to head off the Third Echo of Calamity and I’d come to him for support. He had a cushy deal here at Fortune Academy and he had plans that would help his people, although I couldn’t see deep enough into his black heart to decipher what those plans were. All I could glean was that I was not a part of those plans and Hendrik, the all mighty leader of the dark mage clan, had enough responsibility on his plate without adding the fate of the world onto it.
“You’re right,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing his temples. With a grunt, he tried to stand and put weight on his injured leg. He stumbled back against the mantle and hissed with pain. “Well, let’s get down to business then,” he said, resolve seeming to wash over him as he transformed back into his old asshole self. His midnight eyes flashed up to meet mine and any kindness I’d seen there had vanished. Maybe my compulsion spell had worked a little too well to push him away and convince him that I wasn’t anyone special. “Any new dark mage that comes into my clan owes a blood debt.” He glanced at my sleeping friend. “She’s in no condition to provide it. In fact, she’s drawn so much magic from her reserves that she’ll die if she tries to work a spell again without entering into our collective and drawing from the blood sacrifices.” His jaw worked with irritation as he faced me again. “Dark mages don’t tap out on my watch, not in my clan. You will repay what she owed, what she took, and what she’ll need to survive. Those are my conditions.”
I stared at him in surprise. I’d been under the impression that the blood sacrifice he demanded was some power struggle, but he had a legitimate purpose for it. His clan survived on shared magic and worked together to make sure not any one mage’s reserves dropped too far. Hendrik could have drawn on his collective for the magic he needed to banish the demonspawn, but he’d used his own suffering to power the spell. “Well, why didn’t you just put it that way in the first place?” I asked, allowing irritation to creep into my voice. “I thought you just wanted to boss us around.”
He staggered towards the kitchen, taking his empty whisky glass with him. “I’m a leader. Bossing idiots around is what I do and I don’t need to explain myself.”
Letting that insult slide by, I followed him as he collected a half-empty bottle and poured golden liquid into the glass. He swirled it around before downing the whole thing in one gulp.
I glowered at him. He was making me wait on purpose. “I came here because you know where Dante is, and you took something from him,” I said, trying to pick my words carefully. When he turned to glare at me, I stiffened. “His hand hasn’t grown back. Apparently it usually does.”
Hendrik poured another glass before raising it to his lips. This time he sipped leisurely at the contents. “The magic the hunter needed required a permanent sacrifice. It’ll take double the power to restore him, if that’s what you want.”
“Just tell me what to do,” I said without hesitation. Whatever Dante was up to, I knew it was because of me.I would fix this for him.
Hendrik raised an eyebrow. “You’re already in enough debt to me as it is,” he reminded me. He set his glass down and began counting off on his fingers. “Let’s see, enough blood to pay for a fledgling dark mage, which might have been impossible to take from you without any permanent damage, but now,” hetskedand counted off on another finger, “you also took three weeks of my own magic to banish the demonspawn you so carelessly summoned. Not to mention the damage to my own body.” He tested his weight on his leg and grunted. “My wounds will have to heal naturally, slowly, unless you provide the sacrifice needed to heal. I don’t want to take any further resources from my clan.”
I wasn’t sure where I was going to get enough sacrifice to cover that sort of debt, but I’d figure it out. “Like I said,” I said, digging my fingers into my arms, “just tell me what to do and it’ll be done.”
I didn’t like the grin that stretched across his handsome features, turning them sinister. “I have a few ideas, but you’re not going to like it.”
I shifted my weight onto my hip. “Well, go on, I’m listening.”
He sipped at his whisky again, delight crinkling his eyes as his gaze raked over me again. He smacked his lips with satisfaction. “Well, my allies have plenty of power they don’t always know how to part with. There’s Orion. His weakness is sex. Take that away from him for a period of time and that’ll cover at least a third of the sacrifice you need to recover your debt.”
I snorted on a laugh. “Really? Making a demigod abstain from sex is some great sacrifice?”
He nodded, gravely serious. “Greek myths hold a lot of truth to them. The gods divine their power released from sex and pleasure. It’s similar to the succubi, but they don’t feed on a person’s lifeforce that’s made vulnerable by passion. They’re able to extract the raw power from passion itself, like I am able to extract power from pain.”
