Page 133 of Arcanist
Pierce rolls his eyes. “If you go to that dinner, you’re handing Mathias exactly what he wants.”
“I don’t intend to hand him anything.”
“You’re bound to the Arcanaeum,” Dakari reminds me. “You don’t know what he can do with that.”
“I’ll be careful, but I’d rather break her heart than lose her.” Then, like a coward, I knock. “Ó Rinn Manor.”
I don’t want to endure the old man, but I’m not strong enough to be alone in my present state of mind.
Thirty-Nine
Kyrith
They find me in the Astrology Room at midnight.
I don’t know why I’m working up here. Leo’s superstition has somehow become mine. Now his runeform—a behemoth that makes me nervous just looking at it—is spread across the table beneath me as I float above, star charts drifting around me. Westley gave up chasing the shadows they cast an hour ago, and now he’s asleep on the chair, paws twitching in slumber.
The sheer number of stars in this runeform has me convinced that it’s like the first layer—a combination of two constellations, or perhaps even more. I’ve already dismissed over a hundred of the more common ones.
“Lass?” Jasper murmurs. “Are you coming to bed?”
“No thank you,” I reply offhandedly, dismissing yet another constellation with a sigh.
I had hopes for that one. Several of the angles matched, but?—
A hand on my ankle turns me physical in a rush, and I flail, plummeting, before North catches me.
“You’re coming to bed,” he says.
“I’m busy.” I shove away from him, forcing myself to my ghost form again, only to be cut off.
It turns out, when two of them are touching me, I don’t get a choice about whether to remain physical or not.
Lambert’s gentle kiss to my temple is all it takes to pin me in place.
“Boss. You need to take a break.”
“I need less sleep than you. I’m not alive.”
“You feel alive to me.” North grunts as I elbow him in the abdomen in my attempts to escape. “Right. That’s it.”
The world goes topsy-turvy, and a second later a massive hand claps against my ass.
“Put me down this instant! I swear to magic, I am putting a new rule?—”
“Keep mouthing off at me, Ice Queen, you know where it’ll get you.”
“Now is hardly the time for?—”
“Actually, lass, I kinda agree with him. You’ve been shut up here every waking moment. And when you’re not, you’re in your office, still working. When was the last time you read one of your porn books?”
I strain my neck to glower at Jasper. “It’s not porn, it’s cliterature!”
His brown eyes light with mirth. “Either way, it’s your hobby. When was the last time you read something for fun?”
Okay, so it’s been a few weeks, but that does not excuse a kidnapping!
“I need to work. Sometimes there’s too much to do, and?—”
