Chapter Text
Right. Where were we?
Paris.
Though that makes it sound far more charming and far less complicated than it was. It was Paris, yes, but it was also her engagement, Anne’s laugh, Ominis being the only reasonable person in any room, and me trying very hard not to ruin things simply by wanting too much.
Still. Did you miss me?
Careful. Say yes too quickly and I’ll be unbearable about it. Worse than usual.
truthfully, though, I missed you.
Turns out I rather like having somewhere to put my thoughts before they turn ugly. Left to themselves, they pace. They bite. They wait until I start feeling almost comfortable, then come back wanting to be noticed.
What I’d have liked, honestly, was to tell you the sky wasn’t falling.
I know. Hilarious.
With us, it never really falls anyway. It goes to pieces all at once. Makes a dreadful mess. Leaves shards everywhere. And we, being who we are, step over them and call that coping. We’ve got rather good at that. Pretending things are fine. Pretending they’re manageable. Pretending it doesn’t count as damage if you keep moving.
But, that summer?
That summer the sky was limitless.
And I don’t mean it was kind. I mean for once it didn’t immediately try to take something from me. Which, in my experience, is about as close to kindness as the world tends to get.
And because I’m clearly not as clever as I like to think I am, I started to believe that might continue.
It didn’t, obviously.
Her engagement was still there, lurking about like an overdressed threat. Ugly thing. Official thing. And the Ministry, waiting somewhere beyond the windows with its polished floors and endless questions. Anne was still in hiding. My sister, alive when everyone had expected a corpse, kept out of sight while officials tried to decide who had taken her, who had cured her, and what sort of magic had been used to do it. You could not ignore that for long. It had a way of arriving in the middle of perfectly good moments and setting its cold hand on the back of your neck.
So I smiled. I laughed. I made myself charming, which is a dangerous state for me and everyone nearby. People always think charm means ease. It doesn’t. Half the time it means I’m trying not to set something on fire.
Paris helped. Not because cities are magical, though the French would no doubt love you to believe otherwise. It just made everything feel less sharp for a little while.
About a week in, the rage in me stopped trying to claw its way out through my teeth and settled for sulking, which was progress. Real progress, actually. Long enough for us to get used to the streets, the noise, the way the whole city seemed to look you in the eye and dare you to behave. Paris is very good at making rules feel like something that happens to other people.
We walked about with nowhere particular to be, mostly because every time we’d had a purpose lately, it had gone horribly. We sat for hours at café tables without anyone once asking what we were doing there, which I hadn’t realized I missed until it happened. We talked about the future in that careless sort of way people do when they want something badly enough to joke about it first. Easier that way. Safer. You can say all sorts of dangerous things if you’re smiling when you say them.
Anne laughed all the time.
That alone might have justified the whole trip.
Ominis listened. He always does. He’d let us build something ridiculous out of half a plan and wishful thinking, then quietly point out the bit that would collapse first. Very irritating habit in a man you’re trying to be dramatic in front of. Still, he was clever enough to leave some of it standing. Because sometimes the fantasy is the point. Sometimes you need something lovely and untrue to sit inside for an hour or two and pretend it’s sturdy.
And Aurelia.
Paris noticed her at once. Of course it did. Every window seemed pleased to catch her in it. Every stranger with eyes looked twice. None of them knew her name, or what had been arranged for her, or how much of her future had already been discussed in rooms she hadn’t been invited into. They only saw a girl in the sun acting like she had every right to be there.
Which is how we get to that afternoon.
Midday. The house warm with summer. Paris carrying on outside as if people weren’t forever ruining one another’s lives in perfectly lovely weather.
Aurelia was curled up in the chair by the window with a book in her lap and absolutely no intention of reading it. She’d been on the same page long enough to insult literature. One leg tucked beneath her, hair pinned up in that careless way that always looks accidental until you notice how unfairly well it suits her. Her cheeks were pink from too much sun and not nearly enough concern about it.
She looked peaceful.
I watched her longer than was polite. Then longer still. I didn’t make much effort to hide it. Somewhere behind me, Ominis moved through the hall, all soft footsteps and familiar sounds, and between the two of them the whole thing felt dangerously close to normal. Domestic, even. Which should have worried me more than it did.
I suppose that was the point sensible people start getting suspicious. The quiet bit before something goes wrong. The moment where anyone with self-preservation starts counting exits.
I leaned in the doorway instead and watched her sit there in the light as if the world hadn’t asked a single thing of her all day.
Nothing was settled.
Nothing was safe.
But she looked so peaceful.
And I, being both reckless and entirely predictable, decided I could live with that.
So I crossed the room.
Quietly, for once. The floorboards were warm beneath my feet, which felt either charming or deeply suspicious. Paris was good at that. Making comfort feel like something you’d have to pay for later. I bent and kissed the top of her head because I could. Because she let me. Because I was getting better at taking the things she gave me instead of waiting for the world to snatch them away first.
“What’re you reading, love?”
She tipped the book so I could see it. “Something from the library. Ominis’s aunt has alarming taste in books.” Her thumb kept her place as she looked up at me. “Myths. Legends. Different kinds of wishes.”
I grinned before I could help it. Sometimes my face forgets it’s meant to look troubled and mysterious.
“Djinn sort of wishes?”
She turned in the chair then, properly looking at me. “What do you know about djinn?”
“Please.” I put a hand to my chest, offended on principle. “Like I’m stupid.”
I took the book from her before she could stop me and flipped through it. “I read about them when I was looking into Anne’s curse. Thought, briefly, I might be able to wish the thing off her if I couldn’t break it.”
“But djinn are just as dangerous as their wishes,” Aurelia said, dry as ever, her eyes bright with the delight of being right, “and you are nowhere near as clever as you think you are.”
I shut the book and dropped it onto the table beside her.
That seemed enough reading for one afternoon.
Then I stepped closer.
Still not touching her. There was pleasure enough, sometimes, in letting the distance thin on its own. In letting her know I could.
She didn’t move.
“Is that right, Carrow?” I said, leaning down until my shadow fell over her shoulder. “You think you’re smarter than me.”
She tipped up her chin, eyes bright and entirely too pleased with herself.
“Maybe a little.”
I laughed under my breath. “You say that as though I’m known for taking that well.”
She scoffed and caught my collar in her fingers. Gave it one sharp tug, and I went easily enough. I’m not so proud I don’t know when I’m being invited closer. Her eyes were wicked, all warm light and trouble, and I let her pull me in until there was hardly room left for air between us.
“Itchin’ for a fight, Sallow?” she asked. “Haven’t had enough already?”
“Of you?” I said.
This time I didn’t bother pretending it was a joke.
“Never.”
Aurelia surged up and kissed me as though she’d lost patience with pretending to behave.
There was nothing careful about it. No hesitation. No testing. She just took what she wanted, teeth catching at my lower lip, fingers twisted in my collar, breath warm and sharp against my mouth. It had all the grace of a challenge and none of the mercy.
I answered the way I always do when she gets hold of me like that: thoroughly, greedily, with all the restraint of a match to dry paper.
I kissed her back hard enough to feel it, and my hands found her waist as if they’d known where they were going long before I did. Held there. Tight. Like I might keep the moment from slipping away if I was stupid enough to believe I could hold it still.
She made the softest sound into my mouth, pleased and a little surprised by it, and I came very close to making several unwise decisions in quick succession.
Then she pulled back.
The loss of her hit me harder than I care to admit. I followed without thinking, hands tightening at her waist as though momentum alone might persuade her to be sensible.
It didn’t.
She leaned away just far enough to breathe, lips thoroughly kissed, eyes bright with it.
“So,” she whispered, “prove it.”
I stared at her for a beat, still half-ruined by the kiss.
“Come again?”
“Take out your wand.”
For half a heartbeat, I just looked at her.
Then I grinned.
What can I say. I’m opportunistic by nature. My hands dropped straight to my belt, already reaching for the buckle as though I’d been given permission rather than challenged.
Her laugh broke out of her, bright and breathless, and she slapped at my hands.
“No. Not that wand, Sebastian.”
I laughed too, stepping back at once and putting on my most innocent face, which, admittedly, has never convinced anyone of anything.
“Right. Right. Worth a try.”
She rolled her eyes, blowing a curl out of her face. Her cheeks were pink, her gaze still bright with heat.
“Your wand, Sallow. I want to duel.”
That made me stop. I looked at her properly then, just to make sure the room hadn’t shifted and left me in some stranger, more interesting version of the afternoon.
“You what?”
“You heard me.” Her smile turned wicked. Familiar. Beloved. “It’s been far too long since I knocked you on your arse. Properly, I mean.”
I laughed, and this time there was nothing put on about it. No performance. No charm. Just the sound of it, easy and real.
And somewhere in the middle of that laugh, the truth arrived all at once.
This is why I love her.
Not despite the chaos.
Because of it.
“Alright,” I said, lifting my hands in surrender. “Fine. But we can’t do that here.” I tipped my head toward the hall. “Ballroom. More space for your humiliation.”
Her eyes lit at once.
There she was.
Game on.
── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
The ballroom looked exactly the way old money always wants to look: grand, pleased with itself, and fully expecting to be admired.
It was all polished floors and tall windows and the sort of light that makes everything seem more dramatic than it has any right to be. The room had a history to it, the heavy, expensive kind. You could feel it. Dances, rows, proposals, scandals dressed up as misunderstandings. The usual.
We took our places at opposite ends, and the space between us sharpened.
Not magic. Not yet.
Just anticipation.
Aurelia stood there with her wand loose in her hand, chin lifted, looking altogether too calm for someone about to lose. Sunlight caught her cheekbones and lingered there like it had chosen sides. She had that look about her, the one that always makes me want to kiss her or fight her, and usually both.
I rolled my shoulders and let the last of the earlier heat settle into something steadier. More useful. A smile found me anyway. It always does with her. She brings out the best and worst in me with such alarming ease I’ve long since stopped trying to sort one from the other.
“Feels a bit criminal,” I called across the room, “to put on a show like this without a proper incentive.”
Her brow lifted. “Incentive?”
“I was thinking a wager.” I gave my wand a lazy turn between my fingers. “Makes things more interesting.”
“And what,” she asked, “did you have in mind?”
I pretended to think about it, mostly for show.
“If I win,” I said, “I get you on my terms. Any room I like.”
She scoffed at once, all wicked disbelief and entirely justified suspicion. “Of course that’s what you’d say. You really think Ominis wants us ruining his aunt’s furniture over one of your wagers?”
I laughed. “First of all, I resent the suggestion that I lack refinement.”
I took a few slow steps forward, stopping well out of reach. No sense beginning a duel only to get dragged into a kiss before the opening spell.
“Secondly, have you seen this place? Half these rooms are crying out for a little scandal. It would be cruel not to oblige.”
My eyes flicked toward the corridor, then back to her.
“Which is why I’m very much hoping you lose.”
She tried not to smile.
Tried, and failed.
“And if I win?” she asked.
I didn’t even have to think.
“The same,” I said. “Only you get to choose.”
My smile sharpened. “And you’ll be in charge.”
That got her.
Her mouth curved, slow and dangerous, and she looked at me like she was already deciding exactly how she meant to collect.
“You’d better bring your best, Sallow,” she said. “Because I am taking that wager.”
We moved at the same time.
That was always the way with us. No count, no signal, no need. Just instinct. Just the old language.
She tipped her head in the barest excuse for a bow, elegant even when she was mocking me.
I returned it with all the courtesy of a man who had no intention whatsoever of behaving.
Then our heads came up and I did what I always do when I’m pretending to be polite.
I struck.
“Levioso.”
The spell left my wand neat and quick. A harmless little opening move. A courtesy, really. My way of letting her know I hadn’t come in here just to admire the windows.
Aurelia didn’t so much as blink.
Her shield flashed up a heartbeat later, pale and clean, and my spell broke against it in a scatter of sparks too embarrassed to call themselves an attempt.
She stepped through the fading light as if I’d done nothing worth noticing, blew a loose strand of hair from her face, and smiled.
“Always so predictable.”
I laughed through my nose and shifted my stance.
“What can I say? I do enjoy sweeping you off your feet.”
“Keep dreaming.”
Her wand snapped up.
“Depulso.”
I felt that one before I properly saw it. The force of it hit the air like a warning. Instinct got there before thought did, and I threw myself sideways, rolling hard across the polished floor, shoulder slamming marble hard enough to remind me I am not, in fact, invincible, however committed I may be to the impression.
The spell tore past where I’d been standing and hit the far wall with a crack that rang through the room.
I came up on one knee, hand braced to the floor, heart going hard for reasons that had very little to do with survival. I looked up at her grinning like she’d just offered me something expensive and ruinous.
“Merlin,” I said, catching my breath. “You always did know how to make an impression.”
She didn’t smile this time. That was how I knew the game had changed. Not anger. Not cruelty. Just focus. Clean and terrible and entirely hers. Her wand cut through the air.
“Flipendo.”
Fast. I barely got my shield up in time.
“Protego!”
The impact hit hard enough to shove me back half a step, my boots skidding against the floor, and before I’d even reset my footing she was already moving again.
“Glacius!”
The whole room seemed to recoil.
The spell hit my shield in a violent rush of silver light and frost, ice racing across the surface so quickly it looked alive. For one strained heartbeat it held.
The shield shattered with a sharp ringing crack, fragments bursting outward in a spray of ice and light. Shards rained down around me, beautiful if you ignored the part where they were trying to carve me up on the way past. I threw an arm over my face and ducked as they hit the floor in a clatter of frozen ruin.
When the last of it had skidded to a stop, I lowered my arm and blinked through the thin mist.
My hair was full of frost. My collar was damp.
My dignity was no longer a pressing concern.
I looked up at her, breath coming a little faster now, and grinned despite myself.
“Right,” I said. “Message received.”
I didn’t give her a second to enjoy it.
I came back at her hard, one spell after another, my wand working faster than good sense ever has. “Stupefy.” “Expulso.” One slicing curse I threw mostly to make a point. The ballroom lit up around us, magic cracking through the air, loud enough to drown thought.
She met every bit of it.
A turn of her shoulder. A clean duck. A flick of her wand. Counter after counter, quick as breath. She moved through it like the danger already belonged to her, as if the whole room had agreed, very sensibly, to arrange itself around her.
And the worst part was that she made it look effortless.
Not showy. Never that. Aurelia didn’t waste movement for the pleasure of being watched. Every choice meant something. Every spell landed exactly where she wanted it. Reckless, yes. But never careless. There’s a difference. She knew it. More annoyingly, she knew I knew it.
I laughed under my breath as I fought her, which was not, by any reasonable standard, the reaction of a man invested in winning.
But that was the trouble with her.
This was why I’d follow her anywhere.
Not because she was beautiful, though she was. Not because she kissed like she meant to ruin a man, though she did. Those were merely additional blessings. No, this was the reason: the way she came alive when something worthy pushed back. The focus of her. The hunger. The awful, dazzling certainty.
My magic met hers and, as usual, hers had better instincts.
I had known, of course, the moment I suggested the wager, that there was no dignified way this ended for me.
Oddly enough, I found that rather comforting.
A sharp burst of light flashed too close. I twisted aside a fraction too late. My boot slipped on the polished floor.
And then her magic changed.
Not from the wand. Not from any spell I knew. Something older. Wilder. The sort of power that didn’t ask permission before it moved.
For one heartbeat the whole room seemed to tilt toward her.
Ancient Magic.
It hit me all at once.
One moment I was upright, grinning like an idiot. The next I was airborne. I struck the wall hard enough to lose my breath, then the floor rose up and finished me off properly.
For a second, everything went still.
Then her footsteps.
“Sebastian, oh gods, are you all right?” She was beside me in an instant, dropping to her knees, hands hovering over me as if she couldn’t decide where it was safe to touch. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I just…”
I groaned, mostly for effect, and brushed dust from my coat as I propped myself up on an elbow.
“You cheated,” I said calmly.
She blinked. Straightened. “Did not.”
“Did so.”
“You can’t just…”
“And you can’t just,” I cut in, rising to my feet with the dignity of a man who has none left to preserve, “use an all-powerful, reality-bending source of magic that no one else has access to in order to win a duel you were about to lose.”
Her eyes flashed. “I was not losing.”
“Of course you weren’t,” I said, because it cost me nothing and irritated her beautifully.
She opened her mouth.
I kept going.
“By the sacred and entirely impartial laws of Sebastian Sallow’s Wager System…”
“Which you just invented.”
“…cheating is an admission of defeat.”
“It is not.”
“It is,” I said, stepping closer, voice dropping just enough to be felt. “And therefore I win.”
I stopped in front of her, close enough now that the air between us still felt touched by the kiss. My skin was still buzzing from her magic. My heart, traitor that it is, had not yet settled itself.
I held her gaze.
“That means,” I said, quieter now, “I get to have my way with you. Unless you mean to object.”
She didn’t answer at once.
Just looked at me.
And because I know her, because I have spent enough time wanting her to recognize the signs, I saw every bit of the argument passing over her face. Pride first. Always pride. Then the stubborn refusal to yield on principle. Then, worse, the equally stubborn desire to do exactly that if it got her what she wanted.
Me.
She shifted. Crossed her arms. Uncrossed them a second later. Her mouth parted, shut, then parted again as if she’d thought better of whatever she meant to say.
She was fighting with herself.
She was losing.
I left her to it. Interrupting her at a moment like that would have been idiotic, and I do try to ration my idiocy when possible.
At last she let out a breath, soft with resignation and something dangerously close to amusement, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders.
When she looked up at me again, there was a warmth in her expression that hit me harder than the wall had.
“Fine,” she said. “Which room did you have in mind?”
Something bright and stupid lit up in my chest at once.
I grinned, far too pleased with myself, and glanced toward the corridors beyond the ballroom.
“Oh,” I said lightly, offering her my arm like a gentleman who absolutely was not one, “I’ve been considering my options.”