“David!” I screamed.
The power went out of him all at once, and he sagged to the ground so suddenly that neither Ryan nor I had a chance to catch him. David fell in a heap, and all three of us moved forward, but I got to him first, resting my palm against his cheek. “David? David, wake up.”
His eyes slowly blinked open, still bright, but nowhere near as blinding, and without thinking, I gave a soft cry of relief and leaned forward to kiss his cheek.
“See?” I told him. “You’re fine, it’s all fine.”
But it wasn’t, and all four of us knew it. That much power . . . It felt like everything Saylor had warned me about, and I could see just how much it had taken out of David.
If I’d thought the ride to the golf course was awkward, that was nothing compared to the ride home. David sat on my left, his knees drawn up tight, his head resting against the window. I was holding his glasses, and he kept his eyes closed the whole way back. I could still see the light burning behind his eyelids, though, and his whole frame shook with occasional tremors.
“Should we take him to Alexander’s?” Ryan asked.
“No,” David replied. His voice sounded so thin and weak that it broke my heart. “I want to go home.”
“Fair enough,” Ryan said, and I reached over to hold David’s hand. He curled his fingers around mine again, but this time they felt cold and clammy, and all I could think of was him standing there on the grass, light and power pouring out of him.
• • •
David’s house was dark as I let us in, and even though he seemed a lot better than he had in the car, I kept my arm around his waist as we walked up the stairs. His room was, as usual, kind of a wreck, and I kicked clothes out of the way, clearing a path to his bed. That was also cluttered, but with books, and when I swept them all to the floor, David winced at the thump.
“Be careful with those, Pres,” he said, and I was happy to hear him call me that. Happy that he finally sounded like the David I knew and not some kind of mystical bigwig.
Now that we were alone, I had to ask. “David, what did you see tonight?”
When he turned to look at me, there were still dark circles underneath his eyes, and the hollows under his cheekbones seemed deeper. There were little pinpricks of light at the center of each of his pupils, and I had to try very hard not to shudder at that.
He shook his head, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “It wasn’t anything,” he said at last. “A jumble of stuff.” He glanced up at me, brows lifted. “Alexander’s spell must have worked in some way.”
He was lying.
There was no doubt in my mind. I had known David Stark most of my life, and I knew that look, knew from the way his lips twitched that he wasn’t telling the truth.
I didn’t press him—tonight had been rough enough on him—but I decided I would do a little truth-telling of my own.
“I had a vision, too, you know,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “The night of my second trial. I saw you like that, the way you were tonight. I . . . I saw me with you.” I couldn’t add the part about what I’d done to him in that vision. I wanted to, but the words were too awful, and I couldn’t seem to say them. Instead, I said, “The me I saw in the vision, she looked at me. She told me to choose.”
David blew out a very long breath, his shoulders sagging a little. “You’ve had a lot to choose between,” he said, reaching out with one hand and idly pushing his desk chair in a slow circle. “Your regular life, or life as my Paladin. Me as a person or me as an Oracle.” He glanced up then, the tiniest smile lifting one corner of his lips. “And of course the most important choice of all—plaid or paisley?”
I laughed, but it sounded a lot like a sob. “As if.”
Sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, I reached out and took David’s hand, pulling him closer to me. As soon as he did, he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in tight for a hug. He wasn’t shaking now, and I buried my face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in. I knew this was definitely not something we were supposed to do anymore—we were in boyfriend/ girlfriend territory for sure with this kind of hug—but it felt so nice, and I’d missed it so much that I couldn’t make myself stop. Not when every time I closed my eyes, I still saw him as the Oracle, not the boy.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out, and I let my hands drift up and down his back.
“Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything wrong tonight. We knew it might go like this, and—”
But he shook his head and pulled back. “No. I don’t mean for tonight. I mean, I am sorry for that. I know it was scary. But I’m sorry for all of it.” His hands came up to cup my face, fingers cold against my skin, but I leaned into him, resting my forehead against his.
“I’m sorry I told you we should take a break. I liked you for such a long time,” David continued, making me huff out a laugh even as I reached up to curl my fingers around his.
“Even when I was beating you in spelling bees?”
David closed his eyes, a smile lifting his lips. “Especially then,” he told me, his hand cupping the back of my neck. “And I feel like I finally got everything I ever wanted, and I screwed it up.”
“You didn’t,” I promised him. “I mean, it’s not like any relationship between the two of us was going to run smoothly. Making the shift from mortal enemy to boyfie was bound to be difficult.”
He huffed out a laugh, opening his eyes. “I told you not to call me—” he started.
I kissed him.
It was stupid, probably. I never wanted to admit that Alexander was right, but if David couldn’t be saved and he would eventually be that glowing, powerful creature all the time, I’d only get my heart broken.
But maybe it was too late for that, anyway.
“Pres,” David said softly when we parted. “Is this, like, the absolute worst time in the world to tell you I love you?”
I wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a sob welling up in my throat, but I nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“We suck at timing, don’t we?”
“We do.”
And then David smiled. “Good thing we’re so good at kissing.”
He kissed me again then, and again, sitting on the edge of his bed, our arms twined around each other.
After a long while, David lifted his head, his fingers playing along the back of my neck. “Choose,” he mused, and I shook my head, letting my hand rest on the back of his neck, too.
He sighed, his breath ruffling my hair, and I tightened my grip on him. “I choose you,” I whispered. “I choose you, David. No matter what.”
David wanted to argue. I knew him well enough to know that, to understand that that was why his mouth quirked down, why his eyebrows drew together, why he said “Pres” one more time.
But then I kissed him, really kissed him this time, and there was no more arguing.
There were hardly any more words at all.
Chapter 30
“ALEXANDER WANTS to see us.” I have to be honest, those were not exactly the words I wanted to hear from David after everything that had happened the night before, but when he came up and found me at lunch, that was what he blurted out.
I was eating in the library again, thinking that after a few more days like this I’d have to buy an all-black wardrobe and stop combing my hair, so when David suddenly appeared in the stacks, my cheeks flushed bright red, and I felt weirdly nervous.
As a result, it took a minute for what he was saying to sink in. When it did, I stood up, dusting my hands on my pants—I’d taken to wearing pants more often at school on the offhand chance that something Peirasmos related could happen—and crammed my half-empty water bottle back into my bag.
“Did he say what it was about?” I asked, and David gave me that look from underneath his brows. There were still little pinpricks of light in his eyes, glowing brighter in the dim library, and I noticed he still had sunglasses hanging from the collar of his shirt.
“Pretty
sure there’s only one thing it could be about, Pres. He has to know about last night.”
Again with the blushing. I knew David was referring to the vision at the golf course, but I remembered the way Alexander had looked at the two of us when he’d figured out what we were to each other. What if he wanted to talk about . . . the other thing that had happened yesterday?
The same idea had apparently occurred to David, because it was his turn to go pink, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I’ll meet you by your car after school?” he asked, and I nodded.
I could barely concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day, and when Bee found me as I made my way out to the parking lot after the last bell, she had to call my name more than once.
It was another beautiful sunny day, and Bee looked just as beautiful and sunny herself as she jogged toward me in a lime-green shirt and white jeans. “Hey,” she breathed when she caught up with me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said with a quick nod, even though I felt anything but. The weirdness between me and David, knowing that Alexander was waiting . . . It was a lot on my mind, almost too much for me to focus on the fact that things with me and Bee weren’t exactly the best right now. But then she reached out, laying a hand on my shoulder, and looked down into my face.
“Are we okay?”
Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. “Probably not?” And then I smiled, a little shakily. “But we will be.”
Now it was Bee’s turn to take a deep breath, but she smiled back at me, squeezing my shoulder. “Good. That’s . . . good.”
I wanted to stay and talk to her longer, but I could already see David standing by my car, so with a little wave at Bee, I made my way toward him.
• • •
“How?” It was the first thing Alexander had said to us when we walked in the door, and he seemed determined to repeat it now. We were in his office, but for once, he wasn’t sitting behind the desk. Instead, he was pacing, a hank of hair coming forward to fall over his forehead.
David and I stood on the rug like a couple of kids called to meet the principal, and I wondered why I felt so guilty. David could do whatever the heck he wanted with his visions, and while, yeah, it had gotten a little scary there for a second, it wasn’t like anyone had been hurt. Besides, he’d proven exactly how powerful he was, and that seemed like something we should actually be pretty pumped about.
“Was it from one of the books your Mage kept?” Alexander asked, almost frantic. His tie was loose, one cuff of his shirt unbuttoned where it peeked out from underneath his jacket sleeve. “A . . . a ritual or something that you found and decided to experiment with.”
“There wasn’t a book,” David told him, jamming his hands into his back pockets. “I just . . . I felt like if I tried, I could have a vision, and I did. It was cloudy and . . . I don’t know, murky. Like they used to be before Blythe did the ritual.”
Alexander stopped pacing, coming to stand in front of his desk with both hands braced on the edge. “But you did see something?”
David kept his hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans, his shoulders tight. After a moment, he nodded, and Alexander dropped his head with a deep sigh.
I’d never seen Alexander look anything besides 100 percent with-it and together, but now, he wiped a hand across his mouth, and I could swear he was shaking. There was also something about the way he was looking at David that I definitely did not like.
“It’s impossible,” he said. “Even with the ritual Blythe performed, there’s no way you should . . . No one has ever overcome the removal spell I did on you. Ever.”
Next to me, David gave a familiar shrug. “Well, I did.” He said it as a challenge, and as I watched, David pushed his shoulders back, meeting Alexander’s gaze head-on.
“What was it you saw?” Alexander asked, and David flexed his fingers. I was waiting for that answer myself, but if David wouldn’t tell me, I knew he wouldn’t tell Alexander. And sure enough, after a pause, he shook his head.
Alexander stood there, his hair still messy, his gaze fixed on David’s face, and while his expression didn’t change, it was like I could see the gears whirring in his head. I sometimes felt that with David, too, that I could sense all that was going on beneath the surface, and it was weird to have the same feeling watching Alexander.
Then he straightened up abruptly, fixing his tie and tugging at the unbuttoned cuff with a sniff. “The Peirasmos is cancelled,” he said in a tight voice, and I blinked, caught totally off guard.
“What?”
“There’s no need for it anymore,” Alexander continued, and when his eyes met mine, they were hard chips of pale green ice.
But I’d faced a lot of scarier things than one pissed-off snooty guy, so I met that cold gaze and asked, “Why? A few weeks ago, this was so important that if I didn’t do it, I’d die, and now you’re telling me, ‘oh, no big, totes cancelled, everyone go on your merry way!’”
Alexander stood ramrod straight, his fingers still on the cuff of his shirt. “I do not know what ‘totes’ means in this context, but I assure you, no one is ‘going on their merry way,’ Miss Price.”
With that, he crossed over to his desk, pulling open a drawer and yanking out an ancient-looking binder of some kind, the leather cracked and peeling. As he smacked it on top of his desk, he glanced up at the two of us.
“You may go now,” he said, lifting one long-fingered hand to more or less shoo us away.
I stayed right where I was, hands on my hips. “Um, I will not be shooed. What is going on here?”
“What is going on,” Alexander replied, bracing both hands on his desk to look up at me, “is that our Oracle is more powerful than I’d guessed, and now I have to rethink some things. Which I can do much better without you standing there yammering at me.”
I was pretty sure I’d never been accused of “yammering” in my life, and I was about to show Alexander what real yammering was, but David tugged my elbow, pulling me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, Pres.”
I followed him through the house, and as we got close to the front door, a loose board tripped me, the tip of my shoe catching its lip. David paused, but I gave him a little wave, saying, “I’m fine, no worries.” But as I looked back at the board, I noticed it wasn’t the only one that was loose. There were a couple that were warped and not fitting flush against the floor anymore. That was weird. As was how . . . unshiny the hardwood looked. And when I glanced at the wall, I could see wallpaper peeling in the corners. Even the paintings seemed less glowy than before.
Maybe whatever magic Alexander had used to make this place was fading. Or maybe it looked worse in the afternoon sun. I had no idea, and at the moment, my brain was so full of thoughts, I couldn’t stop to consider that.
We paused on the porch, David’s hands thrust into his pockets, my own dangling limply at my side. I had no idea what I wanted him to say. We weren’t fine. No matter what had happened last night, we weren’t back together, and none of the issues between us had been solved. I knew that, and from the slump in his shoulders, I think he must have, too.
“Guess you don’t have to do the pageant now,” he finally said. The afternoon light was turning his hair a dark gold, almost the same color as Alexander’s. I could hear the hum of insects, the soft whisper of the breeze through the tall grass, and all I wanted to do was step back into his arms like I had yesterday after the golf course.
But I stayed where I was on my side of the steps, watching David. “I guess I don’t,” I agreed, “but I might as well at this point. I think Sara Plumley might actually murder me if I dropped out.”
That made him smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and I felt a million unsaid words sitting between us.
“Pres, about last night—”
“If you say you’re sorry,” I interrupted, “I’ll murder you. Not that I can, of course, but I could try.”
This time, his smile was genuine, but there was something sad in it.
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say . . . Look, it’s not like I can say it didn’t change things, exactly, but . . .”
My chest hurt, but it had nothing to do with any Paladin powers.
“But it’s still easier when we’re not together,” I finished, and David sighed, his eyes searching the horizon.
“It’s not easier,” he said, and I heard the slight catch in his voice. “But it’s still the best thing we can do.”
He turned to look at me then, and I wasn’t sure if it was the sun on his glasses or that glow that still wasn’t going anywhere. “I meant everything I said last night. Every word. But—”
“We need to stay Paladin/Oracle and lose the whole boyfie/girlfie thing,” I said, and David’s lips twitched.
“Still the worst word.”
I smiled at him even though nothing in me felt all that smiley. He was right, I knew that. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
And then he turned to me, taking my hands in his and searching my face. “Even if the Peirasmos is over, that doesn’t suddenly make things right, you know? There could still be people wanting to take me, you’d still have to deal with Bee and her Paladin powers, I could turn into . . . Pres, look into my eyes.”
I knew he didn’t mean that in a romantic way, and sure enough when I looked closer, I could see the dots of light there in his pupils.
“That’s not going away,” he told me. “And I have a feeling that every time I have a vision, they’re going to get bigger and brighter. You keep saying you don’t want me to go with Alexander because he’ll turn me into a ‘thing,’ but . . . Harper, I think that’s going to happen anyway.”
“It’s not,” I said, shaking my head. “I know that if we—we work at it, and try to—”
“Harper.” He squeezed my fingers tighter. “It’s going to happen.”
Stupid as it was, I heard myself blurt out, “You can’t know that.”
But of course he could. Of course he did.
I stepped back, letting my hands fall from his. “That’s what you saw, isn’t it? Last night at the golf course.”