CHAPTER 19
IT WAS HEAT AND PAIN and a white-hot agony, and her scream broke off in a gasping cry. Briony kicked her feet and tried to push the fox off, but her muscles were still too weak.
The fox unlatched its teeth and snarled at her again, its jaw glistening red in the moonlight. It reared back to attack again, and Briony cast up her arms,
protecting her face.
Teeth slashed at her forearm.
“Vesper.”
The room shook with the word that sounded like a command, and Briony peeked through her arms to see Toven in the center of the room in only his pajama bottoms. His eyes were wild but concentrated on the fox that had turned over its shoulder to growl at him.
“Vesper,” he repeated. “No.”
Briony momentarily forgot the gashes to her neck and the hot sensation of life leaving her. She could only watch as Toven stood perfectly still, commanding the animal as if he was its master.
Was he its master?
The gray fox huffed, and Briony saw her blood fly from its jaw, speckling her sheets. It turned its head back to her, baring its teeth. And then it lifted its paw from her chest, and Briony rolled to the side as quickly as she could. The
room spun as she tumbled off the bed and pushed herself flat against the wall, watching in anticipation as the gray fox turned to face Toven again.
His hands were at his side, as if he wasn’t afraid for his own safety at all.
They stared each other down, Toven standing half naked in the moonlight, and the bloody fox on the bed.
And without knowing what passed between them, Briony watched the fox hop from the bed and trot out the door.
Adrenaline drained from her body, and her vision spotted black. She tried to put pressure on the bite, but the collar was in the way. She felt the wall behind her moving sideways. She braced for hitting the ground, but it never
came.
“Rosewood.”
She opened her eyes, finding herself horizontal and staring up into Toven Hearst’s gaze.
Her consciousness dripped in and out of the present. There was a burning in her neck. Maybe less a burning than a humming.
She faded into the blackness again, and when she came out of it, Toven’s mouth was pressed into a tense line. She stared up at his lips, pondering the poison that could drip from them. She felt her neck stitch back together as his fingers twisted through difficult patterns, skimming gently over her skin, pulling the edges of her wound together.
It had been so long since she’d been touched in anything other than force or imprisonment, and she tried to stop her whole body shuddering with pleasure. A sugary thumb brushing over her lip burst across her memory, but she was too weak to place it.
Her body was draped over his lap, her limbs twisted at odd angles and her head against his thigh. His torso gleamed in the moonlight. She ached to trace her fingers over his chest, to feel the softness of his skin against the firm muscle. She imagined her hand floating up, her fingertips slowly placed over his heart, and the shivers that would follow her movements—the gooseflesh she could incite in him. As in their race to the willow tree.
One of his hands moved to cradle her skull, and the firm pressure of his fingers sent a soft sigh cascading from her lips. His other hand reached for
hers where it was trailing over his ribs, and he turned her forearm to work on the bites dripping blood down her elbow.
Her neck was sticky with dried blood, but she could feel herself getting stronger.
She tried memorizing his face, his tight jaw, the pale skin of his collarbones that was brushed with color. She lifted her eyes and found him looking down on her.
Briony was vulnerable in only a nightgown. He made no motion to move her, so she still lay across his thighs, with one arm supporting her and the other resting softly over her heart.
His gaze traveled over her throat and chest, and she wondered how soaked with blood the cotton was.
See? My blood isn’t gold, she wanted to say.
The cool air over her skin and his attention made her nipples pebble, but she didn’t have the energy to cover herself. She could tell the moment he saw the peaks of her breasts calling for attention under her nightgown.
“The bleeding stopped,” he said perfunctorily, gaze coming back to her face. “We’ll get you some elixirs for the blood loss. You should bathe and rest.”
He didn’t move. She felt the warmth of his fingertips on her collarbones, his heavy palm over her sternum, as if he was counting her heartbeats.
“Sleep here?” she croaked. “After this?”
“She won’t be back,” he said.
She watched his face, waiting for an explanation, and finally her addled mind found one.
“She’s your familiar,” Briony whispered.
Toven seemed to glare at the doorway. “We’re still...working it out.”
A hollow laugh burst out of her chest. It was such a casual sentence.
Something couples would say. He turned his glare down to her.
“Shouldn’t familiars do the magician’s bidding?”
He pursed his lips. “I suppose I’ve never sought anyone who obeys easily.”
His eyes turned to her, as if he just realized what he’d said. Briony felt
another shiver crest over her skin. And his eyes dropped to her breasts again.
“Why did she want to kill me?” she asked. “Doesn’t she know I’m here by your wishes?”
“She’s...a jealous creature. We both can be.”
Briony watched his throat bob as he swallowed. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to call his attention away from her body. She’d felt his gaze on her body before, but never when she was so exposed, so undressed.
The way Toven’s arms held her, the way his palm was inches from the swell of her breast, the way his eyes lingered in all the places she’d dreamed of his mouth kissing...
Did he want to touch her? Would he touch her? All he had to do was shift his hand and he’d be cupping her breast. Did he know she was aching for it?
His eyes were so soft and his arms warm, and she didn’t know how to reconcile the man who had hunted her with the man who now held her so
tenderly.
“Jealous of what?” she whispered.
His eyes slid up to hers again. “She understands that you are the new magic source.”
Her mind was foggy with blood loss and the torture of his touch, but she tried to make sense of his words. “But heart magicians can have a familiar and a heartspring, can’t they? Multiple sources?”
Toven nodded. “They can, but because of your power, your Rosewood blood, I wouldn’t have need for more.” He swallowed, his eyes flicking over her clavicles and lower. “She would become obsolete if I were to use you as a
heartspring.”
If I were...
Her eyes drifted across his face, wondering if he was aware of his admission.
He hadn’t bonded to her yet. She assumed something had been done already without her knowledge, but Katrina had said it was a ceremony of sorts. Whatever that bonding ceremony entailed, they hadn’t completed it, and Mallow had requested it over a week ago.
“Very jealous, then,” Briony said, trying to think of anything else to keep
him, but she was too slow.
His muscles moved under her, his hand lifted off her sternum, and before she could help by sitting up herself, he had unfolded himself to standing, with her in his arms.
She instinctively draped an arm around his neck, and he moved with her to her bathroom. He flicked his fingers and turned on the hot water in the tub.
When he set her on her feet, she looked up at his mouth, his eyes—but his expression was firm and cold again. The open gaze over her body had disappeared. Her body unwound from his, and her fingers trailed over his stomach one last time as he stood from bending.
“Clean yourself up. Get some rest,” he said.
He didn’t look at her again as he left.
Briony watched the tub fill, wondering at how he’d come so quickly when she screamed.
And wondering at the heat she felt behind his eyes as she lay in his lap in thin, blood-wetted cotton.
* * *
Briony woke the next morning, feeling completely wrung out. She stared off for hours, reliving the fox’s breath on her face, the sound of her skin tearing.
And then piecing together what she remembered of Toven. Seemingly appearing from nowhere, still as stone as his familiar left the room, and then suddenly holding her, healing her.
And the most perplexing thing of all: Toven Hearst was not using her as a heartspring. Her mind drifted through all the possible reasons why not, but she couldn’t come to a clear conclusion.
Elixirs appeared with her breakfast, and she didn’t hesitate to take them.
The pain in her neck and forearm was unbearable.
She slept on and off throughout the day, letting her dreams alternate between snapping, blood-wet jaws and bare skin and hungry eyes.
* * *
Toven did not come back to check on her. Briony was too exhausted with her injuries to try another hunger strike, but even with the door locked again, she had Mind Barriers for Beginners to read.
Three days after the attack, Briony was on her sixth reread and finding it very difficult to memorize theories and techniques without the practical application. There were certain meditation techniques that could be practiced without magic, however, that were interesting enough.
Meditate on a cool blue lake with still waters, stretching out past the horizon. There are depths below, but a still and tranquil surface.
Briony imagined the lake at the Eversun school and her favorite willow tree kissing the water.
Or sometimes the task was to focus on a moving target, blurring the edges of everything else. For this, she’d found a large seabird that flew in lazy circles around Hearst Hall, but even as she tried to focus on the albatross and blur the rest, her mind wandered, trying to guess why a seabird would be found in the mountains. One day a large hawk joined the white bird, dancing and diving. She’d meditated on the two of them for hours before realizing she recognized the large hawk. It was Orion Hearst’s familiar. Her chest had squeezed tight in anxiety with the knowledge that the man himself was at home at that very second. She stuck to the image of a lake with still waters after that.
The beginning theories were familiar due to her studies in cloaking and blending, the abilities to change form or become unseen, but without a thread of magic behind her eyes to tug on, Briony didn’t know what to do with the meditations. Her hand reached up for her neck, fingers running over the healing fox bite as she tapped the cold metal. She needed to get back to the library and research a way around these collars, but what if Mallow was going to read her mind again? Mallow would see her research if Briony couldn’t shield it from her.
Briony was sitting in her armchair, staring out the window at the grounds and imagining the Eversun lake in the place of the front gates, when a knock came. She blinked. The intrusion brought her mind back to the present.
She stood, and when no one pushed their way in, she said, “Come in.”
Toven opened the door, and her breath caught in her throat. She flushed at the memory of the last time she’d seen him, when he had been wearing hardly anything.
He stood in the doorway as if there was a spell keeping him out. She watched his eyes drift down to her throat. “You’re healing well?”
She nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
He said nothing else, just stepped into the room and looked over the furnishings. She eyed him, waiting for the purpose of his visit to become clear.
He stared at her bookshelves, his fingers playing with the ring on his right hand. It looked like it could be onyx, but there was also a green tint in certain
lights.
Orion had a similar one.
“Is that a Hearst family ring?” she asked, taking advantage of the unrushed nature of the conversation.
He looked down, splaying his hand. “No. It’s a symbol of the line.”
Briony hummed, a thought coming to her. “Del Burkin is dead. How will that affect the line?”
He quirked his brow. “I see the Journal page has been informative,” he said. “Burkin was Cohle’s successor. Cohle will need to choose a new one now.”
Riann Cohle was first in line to the Seat, should anything happen to Mallow. Briony crossed her arms.
“That’s what I never understood. Burkin is not a blood relative of Cohle’s, but he was chosen to succeed him?”
“Yes. Not everyone on the line chooses their firstborn to be their successor. Some align themselves with other influential families by giving them a place.” He gave her a pointed look. “Blood doesn’t matter to us in Bomard.”
She scoffed. “Says the man who will inherit his father’s place in line—”
“My father and all Hearsts before him have chosen to pass the position to the firstborn,” he interrupted. “It is predetermined, yes, but it is a choice. The hall and the Hearst wealth follow similar inheritance laws.”
“Isn’t that odd then?” she asked. “When Cohle does name his successor, that completely random person could now supersede your father in the line should anything happen to Cohle?”
His lips curved. “Yes. But the politics of the line only matter to the line at the moment. Mistress Mallow will live for a very, very long time with the bond from her dragon, and there will be no need to plan for succession. The line is nothing but a symbol now.”
Briony’s brow furrowed as she tried to pivot the conversation somewhere useful. When he gave no further clue as to the purpose of his visit, she decided to be direct.
“I was wondering when I might have another visit to the library,” she said.
He pressed his lips together, irritation clear on his face. “Were you?”
Glancing down innocently, she said, “I find that I need to keep my mind occupied, after being viciously attacked in my bedroom.”
He sighed, and she looked up at him as he ran a hand over his face.
“And what of your other books?” he asked.
“I’ve finished them.”
He leveled his gaze on her and hummed. “And you think you’ve learned all you can...about agriculture?”
Briony’s skin tightened, and her stomach flipped over.
He glanced down to the mind barriers book on the side table near her hip.
The one covered in a slipcase for a book about agriculture.
She was caught. Would he punish her for hiding the book from him? Her heart was in her throat when his eyes returned to her, but there was an intensity in them that stopped her. As if he was asking her an entirely different question.
But he had to know, surely, that there was little she could accomplish without access to her mind magic.
“I’ve learned quite a bit about agriculture,” she said softly, testing. “But I find I lack the tools for a practical application.”
They stared at each other, unblinking. Finally, Toven slipped his hands into his pockets.
“You think you are ready for a practical application?”
The room grew hotter, and the walls felt closer. They were dancing on the edge of knife.
“Yes. I learned the basics years ago,” she said, and then as an afterthought: “Of agriculture.” Her lips twitched.
Toven nodded slowly. Then he spun on his heel and said, “Come with me.”
Briony stood frozen before jerking forward to follow. Her pulse raced as quickly as her thoughts. She’d all but asked for her magic back, and this was his response?
He led her down the stairs, and instead of turning toward the library, they crossed the entry hall to the other wing. Was he taking her to the kitchen? For the Journal? She almost asked, but then he stopped in front of a familiar door next to the tapestry of the Ash Wood forest.
Toven’s face was guarded as he reached for the handle, and Briony realized it was the door Serena had carefully closed on their walk. He let her into the room, and her gasp echoed off the bare walls inside.
The room was small and completely empty but for a plain white chair.
There were no windows and no other doors. The walls were pearly white.
It was a meditation chamber. It had to be. Finola had used one just like it.
The last time Briony had been inside a mediation chamber like this, she’d panicked at the blankness of the room and couldn’t use it.
Briony stepped backward in dread, and her back met Toven’s chest in the
doorway.
“No—”
“You said you lacked the proper tools,” he said. His hands took her shoulders and moved her forward.
She spun, eyes wide. “I don’t want to go in.”
His face was a mask, but his eyebrow lifted in derision. “You do know
what this is?”
“Yes, but—I—”
He scoffed. “What did you expect, Rosewood? You bat your lashes at me, and I give you back your magic?”
He stood on the threshold, blocking her exit. Briony turned back to the
white room, looking it over and wondering if it could truly help her with mind barriers.
She stepped inside the room slowly. The door shut behind her, and the wall swallowed it up. There was no doorknob, just a blank wall. The only sound was her heartbeat hammering in her ears.
She sat in the chair, trying to conjure Finola’s instructions while staring at the vast emptiness of the blank walls.
The white walls help you empty your mind.
The world outside falls away. Your body falls away.
It is just your mind.
Briony swallowed, feeling the same tightness in her chest from years ago.
The room was simultaneously too small and too wide. She stood from the chair, her legs shaking, and whipped around to find the door.
White in every direction.
Her heart raced as she pressed her hands along the wall, desperate to find the way out. Tears pricked her eyes as her breath shivered in her lungs.
“Please,” she whimpered, fingernails scrabbling for any seam she could find. “Please!”
He’d left her in here. She’d never get out. He was punishing her for taking
the mind barriers book.
“Toven! Please!”
The doorknob appeared at her request. Briony tumbled out into warm arms. Dragging in deep breaths, she pressed her forehead against Toven’s chest and stifled her sobs.
“Don’t lock me in, please,” she begged, clutching him.
He pushed her to step back, and she refused to meet his gaze. She took a shuddering inhale and prepared an apology for wanting to learn mind barriers —for presuming he would return her magic to do so.
His voice rumbled first. “There are other techniques. Meditation chambers are not for everyone.”
He dropped his hands from where he’d curled them around her upper arms. She stood so close to him she could feel his breath on her forehead.
The air between them pulled tight, vibrating like a string.
Toven turned and led her back the way they came, taking her to her room.
Briony relaxed the farther she walked from the room. Her mind whirred with ideas that the panic hadn’t let her consider before.
Someone at Hearst Hall used a meditation chamber. Someone at Hearst Hall practiced mind magic, though it had been outlawed in Bomard for five years.
The advanced mind magic skills—cloaking, blending, and mind reading —all began with meditation and a clear mind. Toven had shown an interest in mind magic in school. She’d caught him using it a few times. But Orion would also see benefits in mind reading as Mallow’s favored soldier. And what had Toven said?
Don’t show your hand when you’re bartering with information, Rosewood. What’s in your mind can be taken from you.
When they arrived at her bedroom, Briony had more questions than when she’d left it.
She moved through the door and turned to ask some of them directly.
Just then, every candle in the room flamed to twice its size. Briony jumped as the corridor behind Toven seemed to ignite. And just as soon as it began, it was over.
Briony knew this system, as her father had used a similar one. The leader of the realm was demanding the immediate presence of the inhabitants of Hearst Hall.
Toven stood still for a moment, staring at the candles. “I have to go.”
Briony’s pulse accelerated as she was abruptly reminded that Toven was one of Mallow’s skilled soldiers. Underneath his warm hands and his mercurial eyes, he could be as ruthless as his father in battle. He was a killer.
She’d seen that firsthand.
“All right,” she said.
He glanced at her one last time, as if he wished to say something, but then spun to leave. The door locked behind him.
Briony dropped into her chair, staring at the mind barriers book and pondering the last ten minutes with a racing heart.
* * *
She woke late the next morning. It was past nine when her stomach rumbled, used to a prompt breakfast tray delivery.
It seemed the house was behind schedule.
Briony bathed and dressed, but there was still no breakfast tray on her side
table. Instead, there was a note.
Miss Rosewood,
I have gone on an emergency. Toven is injured. I don’t know when we’ll be back.
The house may have trouble, but just ask for what you need.
Serena Briony’s fingers trembled around the paper.
Toven was injured. And it was serious enough that Serena had left to be with him.
She wondered at the small kindness of leaving a note for her. Serena could have left her completely in dark, but she hadn’t.
Briony stared at her bedroom door, wondering what would happen to her if Toven died. Would the tattoo alert her somehow?
A sudden, inexplicable terror seized her ribs, the pressure so overwhelming she found herself gasping for air. She screwed her eyes shut and drew on the meditation she’d been practicing until it passed.
If Toven died, would she go back to Reighven?
She forced herself to breathe.
Briony ran for the door, hoping against all odds— The handle turned under her fingers. She cried out in relief, hurrying out of the room that had started to press in on her.
She stood in the middle of the corridor, her fingers over her mouth and Serena’s note in the other hand.
“Hello?” she called out like a child. She had to be sure she was alone.
There was no response.
Briony moved slowly toward the stairs, piecing together what she knew.
Mallow had called for Toven yesterday, and now he was injured. Did that
mean there was a confrontation? Had Sammy or Finola or Velicity or Didion done something to Toven?
She tried, but failed, to find a scrap of joy that maybe there had been a victory against Mallow.
Gasping, she remembered the Journal page in the kitchen. She raced down the stairs and flew down the corridor. She ran into the kitchen and skidding to a stop, the headline numbing everything inside of her.
REBELLION SQUASHED AT CASTLE JAVIS:ANOTHER ROSEWOOD SLAIN There was ice in her veins and a cold wind between her ears.
Finola was dead.
