I stare at her, waiting. Anything to take my mind off the lies that continue to swirl through my mind. She pulls a pair of boxing gloves out of the cart and tosses them to me.
“What do you say to some magic-free sparring?”
I smile. This one is real because nothing has ever sounded better.
Chapter Seventeen
Each time I punch, Carter blocks me. It’s so infuriating! He won’t let me get a hit in. Low punch, block. Uppercut, block. I even pulled out some of my karate moves, but nothing. How can he anticipate every move I’m making? Ellore sits across the room, watching us. She hasn’t said anything since we started. I wonder what she knows.
I blow a piece of hair out of my face and move around the mat on my toes. Carter’s all sweaty, his white undershirt soaked through. It’s gross. I do a fake-out punch toward Carter’s face, and instead lift my leg for a roundhouse kick. He grabs my leg and pushes it away only a centimeter from his abdomen.
Damn. Thwarted again. He throws a punch at me too, but he doesn’t hit me at all. We’re evenly matched, which is probably why they paired us. That’s it. I need to make a move he won’t be expecting.
“Let’s take a break,” Ellore says, moving from her seat and making a beeline toward the bathroom. I drop my arms and Ellore flicks her wrist before she disappears through a door. Our gloves fall to the ground. Carter moves toward me, but I speed around him. I walk around the training room, hands on my hips. It’s really hot in here. I feel trapped by the walls, by myself, and by Carter.
“Pen,” he whispers, coming closer to me. I shake my head. I need to be angry with him or I won’t be able to function.
“Stop,” I say, as his fingers run across my skin. “I can’t.”
I turn away, but Carter snakes his arm around my waist and pulls me toward him. He doesn’t let me go this time. Carter’s mouth gets closer to my ear and his breath trails down my neck. “I never meant to hurt you, Penelope.”
I look up at him. “Well, you did.”
I try to move from his arms, but he doesn’t let go. He holds me tighter against him. The situation replays in my head. I try to think of something to say. All I can think about is punching him. My hands are trapped between our bodies, and that’s not happening.
“You ready to listen?” he asks.
I stare at him for a moment, and I almost say yes. Almost.
“No,” I say.
Before he can react I push away from him, raise my leg, and kick him in the shin. He shouts my name. I race back across the room toward the mats. That felt so good. I hope it hurts.
“Why would you do that?” Carter yells.
“You deserve a hell of a lot more,” I say.
Ellore stands next to me, her hand on my shoulder. When did she come back? Did she see me kick him? Now I’m more pissed at him. “I take it you two already know each other?”
Carter doesn’t respond.
“Most girls who kick him know him first. I used to do it all the time,” she says with a smile. I raise my eyebrow at her. “He’s my cousin.”
“What name do you call him?” I ask.
Ellore looks between the two of us. Everything is quiet for a couple of minutes, just the three of us sharing the same space and glances at one another. She crosses her arms.
“I’m going to leave you two for a while. Part of being a team is working it out, and if you can’t then you should quit now and stop wasting my time.” She turns on her heel and snaps her fingers so the cart follows her toward the door.
“Can’t I have a new partner?” I ask.
Ellore shakes her head. “You were Paired for a reason and you have no say in why or how.” She waves her hands around in the air and says an incantation in Latin. We both stare at her. “The door will unlock when the room feels like you’re ready. Tomorrow, I expect you’ll be more civil.”
The “…or don’t show up” is implied. Then she leaves.
Carter leans against the wall, studying me. I roll my eyes and plop down on the wooden bench in the corner. This is going to be a long afternoon.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when he walks over to where I’m sitting. Long enough for me to be starving, and long enough to realize I really liked Carter—pre-William era. Long enough for me to be curious about why he lied.
Not long enough for me to know how to forgive him.
Or to not want to kick him in the shin again.
He sighs heavily and hovers above me a second before he sits down a few inches away on the bench. I tug at my shirt, uncomfortably. Neither of us says anything at first.
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
William Carter Prescott taps his fingers on his leg. “For all of it. I should’ve told you. But Penelope, my name comes with expectations. I didn’t want you to expect those things before you knew me.”
“I don’t know you,” I say.
He leans into my space. “You do know me. You’re the only one who knows me. To everyone else, I’m William Prescott. Next in line to be the Triad leader, noble, rich, powerful. To you, I’m just me.”
“Just you? A boy who wears a leather jacket and hunts demons in his spare time?”
His eyes are steady. “Yes.”
“You didn’t even tell me your real name.”
“It’s Carter,” he says. “My name is Carter and you are Pen—”
“I’m not Pen—” I say over him.
“—and we are meant to be together.”
I clamp my mouth shut. Every cell I have inside me—magical and not magical—is on alert. Tingling. If I were one of those motion-sensor singing fish, you’d never get me to shut up.
I cross my arms. “Because the Triad put us together?”
“Not because of them, no. Because of us. There’s a reason our magic works together. I’ve told you from the beginning that there’s something about you, and it’s completely trapped me.”
He reaches out to touch my hand and the magic stirs in me again. It fills me, bubbles to the surface, and surges with his. At first, nothing else happens. I cock my eyebrow, because maybe we broke the spell we were under—or whatever the explanation is. But then there’s a flash of light and a shattering. The windows I tried to escape through earlier burst. We look at the empty space.
“You were taking the tests, too. The same time as me. That’s why you didn’t mind being here,” I say.
Carter nods. “I was already here.”
I look at him—really look at him. He is still the Carter I knew. He is. I mean, he feels so right that it has to be. What am I supposed to do here? He still lied. All of this that I’ve been feeling? It still sucks. That doesn’t go away. He leans in toward me and brushes his hand across my jaw, rests it there.
I know what he’s planning. My heart knows it, too. It races around inside my chest and pounds against my head. He’s going to kiss me, and I want him to. God, I want him to.
“Don’t,” I say. My voice is weak—I have no control over anything, obviously. But he stops moving, his hand still frozen on my face. “Not like this. I’m not sure.”
Carter drops his hand. “What do you want to do?”
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I’m so close. He has to understand that. If he doesn’t understand that, then why are we here?
“Why didn’t you just tell me that you were going to be an Enforcer? Why keep it a secret?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Honestly. I wanted to tell you—especially when you told me everything—but then I couldn’t. I was a coward. I didn’t want you look at me the way you are right now. I’m sorry.”
“Too late now,” I say. Yesterday everything made more sense. Yesterday I was not Paired with Carter. Yesterday I didn’t know he was lying to me. Majorly. Today? Nothing makes sense.