“You’re a professor. But she’s…” Lysander stared at Magenta as if for help.
“Wicked? Beautiful? Awfully good at chess?” Magenta offered.
Magenta didn’t seem as helpful to fae princes as she was to everybody else. But in the unwritten code between guys against witches, I mentally slapped myself again, before diving in to save the snooty bastard. I coughed loudly to distract Juni.
“I can’t feel my toes. It could be lack of circulation because the ropes are too tight or gangrene or frostbite or… Could I lose my foot? My beautiful, beautiful foot…” I wailed.
Midnight stared at me in amazement.
“Traditionally, whipping boys were gagged as well as bound.” Juni clicked her fingers, and the ropes loosened around my ankles. Wow, that was actually better, even though it’d only been a fictional problem. I wiggled my toes. Juni circled Lysander, running her hand over his shoulders. Then she leaned closer like she intended to tuck a stray strand of his hair behind his ear, but instead, she plucked it out, and he winced. “Hand out.” She laid the emerald hair like a thin snake on his palm. “Divination needs an offering. All magic is about give and take. Like all life, magic consumes. We devour energy from each other. What are you prepared to sacrifice for magic?” She glanced at Midnight. “What will your whipping boys drink without fuss?”
“We must have become invisible.” I frowned. Being treated like equipment was definitely not one of my kinks. “Hello, can anyone hear us? It’s the ghosts of whipping boys past. We’re here to haunt the prejudiced. I’d like a beer and my friend here would like…?”
“A chocolate ice cream milkshake with cherries but no extra cream,” Midnight flashed his fangs as he gave a small smile, “because I’m sweet enough.”
I snickered, and Midnight’s eyes lit with delighted surprise like he hadn’t joked with anyone for a long time. Before the Immortals, I’d had almost no one to share secret jokes with me, so I got the shy blush that now crept across his cheeks.
Juni’s mouth tightened. “What drink?” She repeated like Midnight and I hadn’t even spoken.
Lysander’s gaze darted to mine and then away. “The rules state that they’re only allowed water or juice, but it hardly would hurt to allow them this once…”
“Water it is.” Juni twirled, marching back to the center of the pentacle.
Lysander sighed. Why was he disappointed? I was the one who wouldn’t be getting my beer.
“Tea is merely infused water.” Magenta waltzed around the table, meeting the startled Juni in front of where I hung. The scent of yew trees wound around me, as comforting as the stroke of her hand, circling my hip. “I know that it’s decidedly the best thing for Divination if you’re intending to add that hair.”
“Do you now?” Juni’s expression had gentled, however, as she studied Magenta. When they stood close together, it was impossible to miss the family resemblance between them. “How many times have you woven its magic?”
Magenta looked down. “I believe that you and I were raised differently. When you’re the Blessedly Charmed who’s so unique that the creation of all nature around you relies on your power even as a babe, then you’re shut away and allowed only to read about magic, rather than trained and taught to freely use it. Rather a mistake, when you see how it turned out, wouldn’t you say?”
Juni blinked. “I can’t imagine a witch being treated like…a mage.” I flinched at the contempt in her tone. “You’re family. I don’t have anyone here. We could be like sisters.”
Magenta’s smile was sharp, “My dear, I’m your elder by many generations.”
Juni gaped for a moment, before regaining her composure. “But who’s the student and who the professor?”
Magenta inclined her head. “Well played.”
“Don’t think that I can change the rules for you. Mother has control in this academy, and I don’t even get to choose who I love.”
Magenta’s eyes widened, and to my shock, she clasped Juni into a hug.
Behind her, Sleipnir made gagging sounds.
At last, Magenta held Juni at arm’s length. “Under no circumstances pray to Hecate to save you,” she insisted, “because that bitch will screw you over.”
You tell her, girl.
I’d already been strangled, branded, and had my singing trolled by Hecate. I knew there was a reason that mages prayed to the god, Pan, instead.
Juni shook herself free of Magenta, straightening her dress. “I shall remember that. Now, did you order tea?”
A Wedgewood porcelain tea pot with cups and saucers in blue and white appeared on the Immortal’s side of the table. Magenta gasped, clapping her hands. So, that was what her face looked like when she orgasmed. I’d better remember that for the many, many multiple times that I intended to make her look just the same.
Magenta rushed to the set, tracing her fingers along the white birds that flew around the pot. “This was my dad’s,” she breathed. “He’d have afternoon tea with me in the Bird Turret.”
Midnight’s wing wrapped around me again, and I gave into my feline need to snuggle into its warmth because I couldn’t help shivering with the memory of all the times that my dad had sneaked my favorite lemonade to drink with me in the attic.
How could dad be gone?
Don’t think about Hartley and mum’s cold faces and the way that their gazes wouldn’t even meet mine in the sea of black suits on Saturday.
Pan above, he was truly gone, gone, gone…
Juni paced to face Magenta across the table; she rubbed the edge of a saucer. “The service has been in the family for years. Like you, I guess.”
When Magenta continued to trace the birds; her voice was dreamy and caught in the past. “I’d always follow the robins’ flight — round and round — but they never escaped the pot. They were trapped to service, just the same as every witch.” When she clasped her hands over the tea pot, Bask hissed in shock, leaping forward to pull her away, but Sleipnir held him back. Electrocuted and burned would’ve been a double whammy. My heart pounded. “You warmed the pot. I’m impressed.”
“And you’ll burn yourself to make a point. Consider me equally impressed.” Juni calmly took Magenta’s palms between hers, and her seared palms healed.
Magenta raised her eyebrow. “Does your mother know how much magic rests within you?”
“It’s much safer if she doesn’t.” Juni’s voice became sharper. “I can make things much harder for your Immortals if you tell. Now, doesn’t afternoon tea usually come with…?”
“Scones,” Magenta gasped, “buttered toast, cucumber sandwiches…oh, little Victorian sponge cakes!”
The food appeared, spreading out across the royal blue.
“Hey, don’t imply that we can’t feed our Prefect,” Sleipnir grumbled.
“She’s not a pet, Slippy.” Bask bounced on his tiptoes. “And if it pleases you, aye it does. We crave all the afternoon tea goodness.”
Bask dived on the feast of tiny sandwiches and cakes like only a starving incubus could who still made every move look both sexy and elegant. The way that he popped a cake into his mouth and then sucked the cream from his finger was sinful.
When my stomach grumbled, hungry for lunch, I groaned. Then I realized that Midnight had as well. His breath ghosted my neck
Okay, that’s what I got for being a clever foxy pants about my tasty blood.
Lysander’s voice shook with anger. “My uncle sent those treats for me, and on my wings, he’d never wish them to reward her.”