Defensive Magic
Chapter 40: The Softest Piece

WINTER TERM - February 2nd

I didn’t know what had woken me.

It was still dark, still night. My room, as always, was darker than Aries’s. The curtains drawn shut. Aries lay beside me on the bed, hot to the touch, still bare. Comforting, close, mine. I should have noticed that I couldn’t hear his snoring.

I wasn’t thinking.

I was far more focused on the heat of him, his body, how he’d kicked the sheets, and I’d taken to curling around him to warm me instead.

It didn’t even occur to me until I heard her voice that we weren’t alone.

“Miss me, love?”

A whisper, right beside my ear. I felt the hiss of her breath.

Ianthe.

I tried to sit up, only for her pale hand to press me back down onto the bed.

“Shh… You’ll wake him if you’re not careful.” She dragged her nails down my bare chest. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Her hands drifted, avoiding Aries and she stepped closer to the foot of the bed.

I’m in a dream. I knew this. It didn’t make her less real. It didn’t make the thought of her touching Aries less sickening.

“What’s a girl to think, pet? All those memories of me… Sometimes I even think of you too.” she said.

I could see her now - the long white hair, the red eyes dark and wet in the blackness of the room. Another nightgown, this one shear, lace - she might as well have been naked for all it left to the imagination.

I watched, terror-stricken, as she turned on the ball of her bare foot, past the baseboard.

“So, where are we now…? Other than still fucking the fat prince.”

I growled, more in my head than out loud. I tried to sit up. It took everything in me to raise my head and shoulders up from the bed. It was as though the air was made of sand - it had texture. It had too much weight.

“Did someone fire the maid?” Ianthe tsked. She scanned the room. It wasn’t the bare, tomb of a space it had been even a few weeks ago. Aries had left a mark. Socks on the floor, sigil textbooks piled on the nightstand, a few dirty mugs stacked on the dresser, dog treats on the desk.

“Messy,” she said, lifting Aries’s cloak with one delicate hand. “So this is who you are without me?” It was wrong in her grip. I wanted to scream, but the sound died in my throat. “What would your mother say?”

For a second, I caught my breath. It wasn’t my doing– the dream rippled. As though Ianthe had lost her grip. It didn’t last. She clenched harder. The force of dream nearly knocked me back down into my pillow.

“Right… Your mother’s opinion never really mattered, did it?”

She’d hated my mother. She probably still did.

Ianthe dropped Aries’s cloak. “Oh, love, he knows you don’t really belong to him. Though isn’t it darling how he tries? You were mine first. And you still remember.

“Does he scream your name like I used to?”

I shivered. I could hardly move but the shiver rolled through me anyway. And in that moment I was able to grumble through gritted teeth. “Fuck. Off.”

The words were hard. An ugly sound, cracked, pitiful. But still, I’d said them.

Ianthe laughed - too light, too sweet. A fake laugh, a cruel one.

“And this?” Her eyes raked up Aries’s body. It was cruel that she was able to see him at all. “This is what does it for you now?”

I wanted to scream. I was already screaming inside my head, but the sound couldn’t reach my throat. She didn’t deserve to look at him. Not like this. Especially like this– asleep, exposed, defenseless. Not when he felt rawer than the softest piece of me.

“You know what? Don’t answer that. You’ve been terribly desperate,” Ianthe said. “I went to Fel… Never been to a city that smells more like wet dog. Met the princes. The other ones anyway. You could have picked a cute one. And yet?”

She rounded the bed so that she was up close on Aries’s side now. I still couldn’t move. Her gaze flicked over the nightstand– his sigil books, a cover embossed with runes. She didn’t need to know magic to know what this was.

“Instead you picked a runt, the weak little princeling who cried at his brother’s funeral, Alden’s fifth disappointment. How poetic.”

I heaved myself up onto my elbows. I never could have lunged at her, but I wanted to. But who am I kidding? I was fighting against the dream just to look her in the eye.

“Don’t insult us both by pretending he’s a match for you.” Her tone swerved like a knife, suddenly sharp.

“Is this what I didn’t give you? Sloppy kisses and a fat little cock? A warm body who wants to suck you off? Call it what it is, my sweet. It’s not love.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The room was too heavy. I rose up anyway through sheer force of will. It wasn’t much but now, sitting, I was nearly at the level of her eye.

“Love is seeing your potential, the things you could be, and painstakingly, patiently guiding you through the years. Not weeks, not months, years, Zephyr. I fucking made you.”

My stomach twisted. I wanted to spit in her face. But in the moment I wasn’t sure I could even feel my tongue.

“Don’t you remember how I found you? So young. So lost. I had to show you everything—how to hold a lover, how to touch. The fact that you’re even half-decent in bed? That’s my work. You know it.”

She’s not really here.

I knew this already. This was a dream. This was in my head. It was her, but I needed to wake up. I tried to bite the inside of my cheek, my tongue, something.

I couldn’t even tell if it was working. I felt pain behind my eyes. Physical pain? It was hard to tell where it hurt only that the hurt was soft-edged, hard, all too familiar. It wasn’t the kind that could pull me out of this nightmare.

“You’re really so much like him sometimes,” she said. “Isn’t that funny how that works? You never even met and here you are— that same wounded look, that same righteous little temper. You even hold your jaw the same when you’re about to cry.”

At least now she wasn’t talking about Aries. It was back to Fletch- the old boyfriend who ran away and stayed gone. The only one who’d ever really hurt her.

Good.

She deserved a little hurt. I didn’t care. I cared about finding a way out. To wake up. There has to be something.

And then she said, “How quaint, someone teaching the little prince to read? And magic too. So serious. Too bad his little spells aren’t going to save him.”

The floor dropped out from under me. I could feel myself falling away. She knows where we are.

It was the last defense I thought I’d still had. That we were across an ocean and she didn’t even know it. But that wasn’t true. Not now.

There were a handful of magic universities. Fewer that allowed students from Caburh to even attend. And more than that, it told me this. I wasn’t Fletch… not yet. I was the one she was still looking for.

“A little birdie told me your boy’s been obsessed with the idea of becoming a mage. Isn’t that funny? The Midnight Court, was it? It explains so much. As though a couple little spells make up for all this.”

There was nothing I could say. The only real defense I thought I still had was suddenly ripped back.

Then came a growl. Low, deep. Not mine.

But it wasn’t hers either.

It caught us both a little off guard. The texture of the dream rippled again. Not a break, but something faltered. She had faltered.

Whisper lunged from out of shadow. I hadn’t seen him. Didn’t know he could even be here. But he leapt at her, white teeth bared. He looked so much bigger than the hellhound puppy sprawled across the loveseat.

He barked and the dream cracked. He bit and it split open.

Ianthe didn’t scream, not really. She gaped. Her red eyes went wide as I finally found the leverage to pull myself free.

I woke like I’d been thrown. Breathless, sobbing, stunned. Whisper lay with his head across my chest, eyes shut in sleep, still growling. He was locked in a dream still happening. Somewhere some part of me hadn’t let go.

“Zeph?” I’d woken up Aries. I hadn’t meant to but he’d sat up, blinked, yawned.

I was never safe. I knew that now. She was going to hunt me across the world if she had to. But for now, in this second, I was alright. This wasn’t going to last.

“Was it a nightmare?” He slurred, more asleep than awake. “Was it—“ he cut himself off too quickly.

I had never been more tempted to lie, say I was fine, just to rub my nose into his hair and wrap my arms up around him. To let him sleep.

Ianthe didn’t get it. She never would. That he was the best thing I had. Even when he made me want to pull my hair out. But also, he’d sock me in the gut for lying. So I didn’t.

I told him quickly, “Ianthe’s dreamwalking tonight. She knows we’re at the Midnight Court. I think Whisper bit her.” To all of which, he struggled to parse. It was late and he was groggy. He tried to put an arm across my shoulders and felt me flinch, but didn’t pull away. I didn’t want pity. I didn’t even want comfort. Not much of it anyway. But hell, I wanted something. I wanted her banished from my skull. I wanted a night where I didn’t have to worry about her still prying eyes. I wanted him in a bed that was safe, back to sleep again, and somewhere her gaze couldn’t follow.

I made up my mind that we'd be sleeping in Aries’s room. There were protection sigils. We’d use the witch ball too once I could make a new one. Aries didn’t question the change, only stood up without even bothering to dress and cast shadow step to slip quietly from my room back to his.

It was only a few doors away. The room was warm—the furnace somewhere in the bowels of the dormitory running hot—but it didn’t matter. Aries piled on blankets. I threw on some underwear, socks, clutched Whisper to my chest like a lifeline. He’d stopped growling and gone back to tired puppy grumbles like nothing in the last hour had even mattered. I almost envied him for that. He hadn’t been the one frozen in place. He hadn’t let her touch him.

Aries kept looking at me like he was waiting for me to break again, but this time I didn’t need it. I didn’t even really want it. It wasn’t because I wasn’t shaking. I was. I know that I was.

I might have been rattled, but more than that, I was enraged.

She was in my head.

But she’d looked at him. Mocked him. Touched him.

And that—more than anything—made me want to rip her apart.

“Come back to sleep, Zeph,” Aries said. “It was a nightmare. You’re safe now.”

None of those things were true. He knew that. I didn’t need to correct him. I let him curl up against me and try to doze. We had a moment of peace—better he take it. I wanted him to. Even as I waited up, still in bed, beside him, with Aries’s head resting against my ribcage. Whisper lay beside my leg, a silent, red-eyed sentinel.

She would be back. And next time I needed to be ready.