Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(61)

There were so many things she didn’t know. I could leave them behind when I came up here, but I doubted anyone else would do me the same favor.

For now, I might as well enjoy every bit of the grace I’d been granted. I kissed her forehead, inhaling the caramel-sweet scent that laced her skin and her silky hair. Rory scooted even closer to me and raised her head to catch my lips with hers. The kiss was soft and tender, but my cock did a whole lot more than just stir at that.

Dear God, I did hope we got to do this again after tonight.

“I should probably go,” she said, with enough regret in her voice that I couldn’t have taken it as any kind of rejection. “I’ve got an early class tomorrow, and I haven’t even eaten dinner yet.”

That should have been my cue to offer to go grab a bite with her. My stomach knotted.

She grabbed her clothes and carefully reassembled her outfit, her beautiful body disappearing piece by piece beneath layers of fabric. I sat up. The night air had cooled, and it raised goosebumps on my skin now that I’d lost her warmth.

“Sometime,” I said, “after I’ve had a chance to smooth things over, I’ll take you out to dinner in town.”

Her gaze snapped to me, startled. Then a smile that could have wrenched my heart in two and stitched the pieces back together spread across her face.

“I’d like that.”

I watched her go, slipping into the forest both wary and confident, comfortable in the dark. The image lingered in my mind after she’d disappeared from sight.

When she’d first stumbled on me up here, I hadn’t expected us to end up like this. My first instinct had been to scare her off from the spot I’d come to think of as mine. But she’d stood there so uncertain and yet defiant, not half as nervous as most of the people back at the party were of me while she asked my permission to stay a while, and it’d hit me that I could play a different part for once.

Whenever the scions had a problem, I was the automatic bad cop: the intimidator, the implicit and sometimes explicit threat. With Rory Bloodstone, Malcolm and Jude already seemed to have that role covered between them. Which left an opening for me to be the good cop. Put her at ease. Get her talking about her thoughts and feelings. Figure out how to lead her into the fold where she belonged. End the war without any more bloodshed.

That’d been the plan, anyway. Maybe it was a stretch for me, but I’d figured it was worth a shot.

The problem was, the more we’d talked, the more I just wanted to keep talking with her for the sake of getting to know her. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever known.

And she didn’t see me like anyone I’d known ever had.

I reached for my shirt and pulled it on, considering my best move with Malcolm. There had to be a way I could make him see he’d taken his campaign far enough. Wouldn’t it be better to have a fierce woman like Rory Bloodstone on our side, unbroken, than to keep battering away at her strength?

He was pissed off because he thought she’d attacked him first in an attempt to challenge our authority here. To him, this was a battle for dominance. But everything I’d seen and heard from Rory told me it wasn’t like that for her at all. She didn’t give a shit who ruled Blood U. She was fighting tooth and nail just to survive.

I knew what that kind of desperation tasted like.

The others didn’t. The three of them had been scion from the day they were born. I just had to figure out how to put it to Malcolm so he’d understand. I was still working on that part.

After I tugged on my pants, I touched the left pocket to make sure Rory’s dragon hadn’t fallen out. The feel of it under my fingers brought a smile to my face.

I texted Malcolm on my way down from the cliff, and he replied that he was in “the basement.” I headed to Ashgrave Hall.

Before we’d even been moved over to seniors, Malcolm had found out about the half-empty storage rooms under the library and demandingly cajoled Ms. Grimsworth into letting him turn one of them into a private lounge area just for the scions. When I came in, he and Jude were standing around the pool table, Jude bent over to take a shot. The leather couches at the other end of the room around the widescreen TV and video game systems were unoccupied.

Sometimes we brought down other students we were feeling friendly toward, but it was nice to have a space that was only ours.

Jude’s shot sunk two balls. He laughed at Malcolm’s disgruntled curse and turned to face me. “Conn! Cooled off sufficiently? Our Ice Queen headed your way not too long ago—I hope you didn’t take her head off.”

“As far as I know, it’s still attached to her neck,” I said in as mild a tone as I could manage, and went to the bar cabinet that the maintenance staff kept stocked for us.

I had to find the right way to explain myself soon or this mess would just keep getting bigger. I poured myself a scotch and tossed back a gulp that burned all the way down to my stomach.

Malcolm sank a ball with a clatter. He leaned against the pool table as Jude considered his options.

“Darksend was making noises about shipping you off to that tourney again,” Malcolm said. “The man doesn’t know when to quit. I reminded the administration how very important it is to the rest of the scions that we continue our education together.”

My stomach had dropped at the mention of the professor’s name. Since I’d been in his class two years ago, Professor Darksend had been campaigning to have me join an international tourney in Physicality that basically amounted to a magical MMA competition. “It’s only a couple of months away from your studies!” he’d go on. “An excellent opportunity to show off your skills and make a name for yourself.”