Defensive Magic
Chapter 42: The Monster that Kisses You First

WINTER TERM - February 2nd (Continued)

I thought Aries’s room was bad. It was still bad, but Aisling’s wasn’t terribly better. Her room overlooked the greenhouses, and she’d clearly started her own above the covered radiator under the window with a row of little potted plants. I tried to touch one- a yellowing leaf.

“Don’t,” she warned. “All poisonous.”

I drew my hand away quickly.

She invited me over to work on the witch ball, Aries came too. No one asked why Ripley was there. He sat at the foot of Aisling’s bed- which had notably been made, huddled in a threadbare cardigan as though trying not to take up too much space. He looked a bit more disheveled, the blue streaks in his hair fading.

Whim was half visible - a strange shadow climbing up a mostly folded pile of laundry.

“Rip, you mind grabbing her?” Aisling asked. “Yinuo keeps accusing me of stealing her bras.” She glanced at me next. “Whim likes to chew on the padding. Haven’t had the heart to break it to her that I’ve had to toss them out.”

I heard Whim’s wet cat yowl as Ripley plucked up something invisible and wrestled it into his shirt with a half laugh. Aisling had already found bottles and twine from various places around the room, but now was looking for something that might work as beads.

“You said it’s called a witch ball?” Ripley asked.

“Sort of a home security charm against witches,” I said. We didn’t really need to go into it.

“So, you know a lot of witches then?” I get that he was just trying to make conversation. It was still the wrong one. He was half-wrestling Whim between his arms on the bed.

“One bad one was more than enough,” I said. “But Aisling said you might be summoning a familiar.”

Ripley brightened. It was a better change of topic. “Yeah, might even get to see it show its face before the end of term. Heard both of yours took awhile…”

“Yeah, you’d think Whisper had to walk all the way up from hell for all the time he took,” I said. “Marblebrook said that was long for any familiar summoning. For all we know yours could come faster.”

“Might even be already housebroken too,” Aries added.

Aisling finally gave up on whatever she was looking for and instead pulled out a box of chickpea pasta. “This’ll do. Just sit on the bed,” Aisling said. “The beads are metaphorically loaded, so it doesn’t really matter what it is that you use for them, so pasta should be enough, it’s just the spell and the memory.”

I sat down on the bed next to Ripley. I felt a little clawed hand grab onto my knee before Ripley pulled Whim back and held her back behind his crossed arms.

“You have your memories?” Aries asked. I’d already told him he didn’t need to be here for this, but he was anyway. Even if the only thing he could really do was to hold my hand through it and rub circles across my back.

“Most of them anyway,” I said. In the last batch of memories, I’d shown her all her cruelty, her callousness. Victims I couldn’t even remember the names of. It hadn’t been enough. This time around I wanted things that hurt. Actually hurt.

I held up one of the chickpea noodles. Kelyn had used a wooden bead. It couldn’t have been terribly different. Besides, Aisling would tell me if the magic looked off. I cast the spell– the gesture came back to me easily enough.

Then, the first memory.

Mira Lyndel, the poison dealer’s daughter. Leaning against the wall in a second-hand dress, wearing heels she couldn’t quite walk in, watching pairs of vampires twirl across the dance floor with steps they’d learned before either of us were born. She was a year older than me– eighteen. That felt like a chasm at the time.

I wanted to ask her to dance. I was seventeen and awkward, pretending I had somewhere better to be.

She caught Ianthe winking at me from across the room and said, “Now that one wants to eat you alive.”

I laughed it off. “Good thing I’m here with you then.”

She didn’t laugh back.

We didn’t dance, but we kissed at sunrise– on the grass, beyond the veranda, mouths sticky with sweat and stolen wine. I didn’t tell her it was my first kiss. I didn’t have to. She kissed me like she already knew, like she didn’t mind.

A year later, when Ianthe kissed me for the first time, slow and deep, with both hands cupping my jaw, she asked, “You’ve never been kissed, have you?”

Her nails on my cheek were sharp, threatening to bite.

I said no. It was the answer she wanted.

It was a lie.

I passed the chickpea noodle off to Aisling quickly to string. Aries shoved it into the bottle and then I grabbed the next one.

The next memory.

Etienne Vallan. A fencing tournament– Ianthe insisted I compete. I fucking hated it.

Three matches in, I faced Vallan. He was built like a prize-fighter, square jaw, short-cropped hair, shoulders made to knock you flat. He was fast too. He slashed hard and lunged like he knew he’d win the whole competition—and he did.

His foil glanced off my cheekbone. I might’ve only landed one successful parry– just enough to piss him off. I didn’t feel the sting until afterward. Didn’t even notice I was bleeding until Ianthe appeared to fuss over it. She ran her thumb over the cut, then licked the blood away.

“Hold still, darling, you’ll smear.”

Then, Vallan came forward, with an apology. “I hate to ruin a pretty face.” And offered to make it up to me after the tournament with a hotel matchbook—room number scribbled inside.

He was shameless. I’d expected Ianthe to intervene. Say something. Bite his head off. But she waited, watched, and after, whispered, “Maybe he can teach you something. I’d really love it if you weren’t such a virgin.”

I shouldn’t have gone. Vallan had been aggressive on the piste. He was rougher off it. He liked leaving marks. Wanted to see how much I could take. I cried in the shower and pretended it was just from the bruises.

And when I finally did limp back to Ianthe, aching, ego-wounded, looking like a kicked puppy, she said, “I didn’t send you out to come back to me more pathetic.”

For a second, I already hated her. It passed.

I told myself it hadn’t been that bad. I stayed. Because that was what I did.

I put out a hand for the next noodle, ready to keep going. Aries grabbed my arm. His brow was furrowed, staring a little hard.

“I’m fine,” I said. He gave me the noodle for the next one, but kept staring.

The third memory. Sebastien Quill—because Ianthe would hate it. She loathed him, really. Loud, fussy, aging out of his vanity, and above all, mortal. A hanger-on at the Stag’s Court, rich enough to keep getting invited back, deluded enough to think he was one good party away from immortality.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

There were dozens like him. But Quill had a thing for me.

I don’t know when it started—only that whenever he hovered near, Ianthe would mutter, “Zephyr, darling. Be a dear and distract Quill. No one else has the patience.”

It wasn’t that I liked him. I didn’t. He wore too much cologne, always sweated through his cuffs, and talked too much about his future fangs. But he liked to pet my hair, called me “darling boy,” and shoved hard ginger candy into my pockets as though they were tips. It was easier to let him kiss me than to endure his poetry.

Once, he tried to bite my neck. I shoved him off. I figured he’d be furious, but instead, he knelt before me, clasped my hands, and begged forgiveness. He wanted to make it up to me.

I let him blow me in the coat closet. And after, he cried.

We hooked up a few more times. Usually, I dragged him off to Ianthe’s flat. Once even in her bed. Better to tire him out quickly and get it over with. He came on her sheets. I didn’t clean it up. He thanked me after.

I never told Ianthe. She’d have hated it– Quill, clumsy with my buttons, begging to be turned. I wanted her to know. I wanted her seething.

The fourth memory came quickly.

My mother on the day I told her I was seeing Ianthe.

I’d never seen her like before, or since. Headscarf askew, red eyes narrowed in rage, the sharp slip of her canine teeth over her lips. Absolutely terrifying. I can’t remember what I’d said. That I was an adult and could date who I wanted? Probably.

I was eighteen, still living at home. I must have brought up my age, because she snapped, “You want to talk about age? Ianthe’s not twenty-two. She’s a vampire—she’s almost as old as I am!”

I don’t know of another time she’d raised her voice to me. There might not be one. I still shot back with, “I don’t care. I love her.”

“So what?” She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t have to think about it. “She’s a vampire. She’ll fall in and out of love and it won’t mean a thing.”

I didn’t know what to say to that then. I still don’t.

She went on, “Is it that you want her to turn you? That you want to be a vampire? If that’s the reason, Zephyr–”

“That’s not it,” I said. “Of course not.”

It was a gut reaction. Automatic and involuntary. “I would never want to be a vampire,” I said. It was the truth. Not even Ianthe could change my mind on that.

“Good,” my mother said. “At least that’s something.”

I held out a hand for another noodle. Aries handed one to me and kissed my forehead. I didn’t realize I was sweating until I felt the cool press of his lips. I mumbled something about just a few more to go. I had another already lined up.

The fifth memory.

My birthday. September 10th. I told Ianthe, “I’m twenty-two today. We’re finally the same age.” I meant it teasingly, expecting a laugh. I laughed. She didn’t.

There was a moment of quiet just long enough that I was already trying to find a way to take it back when she said, “You know what? I have the perfect birthday present.”

She acted like she’d planned a surprise. Instead, she led me to her room. Her handmaid Edie was sprawled across her silk sheets. Even in the low candlelight, there was still the obvious bitemark on her bare breast. I mostly expected it. If it wasn’t me, it was someone else. Ianthe never slept alone.

“Edie, my sweet,” she said, brushing her hair back. “Wake up. It’s Zephyr’s birthday—we’re going to show him a good time.”

Edie was her current obsession. Full lips, doll-eyed, a little plump. She had dark hair cut to chin-length that curled where she’d slept on it. There was always a girl that looked like her. Edie wasn’t going to last. The handmaids never did.

Ianthe started undressing me. Had Edie help.

I didn’t know what we were doing until we already were. Ianthe told me where to touch, how to move. She wanted to watch me to fuck her new favorite while she lapped at the open wound at Edie’s throat. Edie played into the attention, acted like this was fun. The show was for Ianthe. We both knew it.

I couldn’t finish.

I was still trying when Edie went limp on the bed. She’d fainted– tends to happen with blood loss.

I pulled back.

Ianthe grabbed my hip, nails sharp. “Keep going,” she said. “It’s not like she’s dead.”

She wasn’t. Not yet. But with bloodloss, they didn’t always wake up.

“No.” I scrambled for my pants. I didn’t care if she made me bleed for it.

As I left, I looked back once.

Ianthe sat on the edge of the bed, jaw clenched.

“Happy fucking birthday, I guess.”

I grabbed another noodle. Five was enough, but I wanted one more.

A sixth memory.

Aries.

His hair slicked sideways with sweat. Panting hard into my mouth. His skin flushed all over. The way I braced a hand on the headboard—and he reached up and held it, not for leverage, just to hold it.

That she’d have to see him like I see him.

Like he was made of sunlight.

I cut myself off when I realized what I was doing. That was meant to be private.

But Aries grabbed the noodle from my hand. His eyes went wide and it slipped from his hands as though it burned. Aisling and Ripley scrambled for it on the floor.

“My eyes,” Aisling gasped. Ripley burst into laughter, before quickly threading it onto the twine and shoving it into the bottle.

Aries had readied the wax and poured it over to seal before I even had a chance to say, not that one.

I hadn’t had the chance to say it because just as the thought occurred to me, I realized in real time, they knew. I didn’t know how they knew, but they’d touched the noodle and–

Fuck.

“I didn’t actually mean to put that last one in the bottle,” I said.

“Too late,” Aisling said. “You’re not doing that again.” I knew she was right. Between the memories and the spell work, I was drained, exhausted, and a little feverish.

Aries was flustered, avoiding eye contact. “What did that one have to do with any of the others? You don’t think of me like that, do you?”

“What? Like-” It took me a second to even hear the question. It made no sense to me. How could he even think he was anything like them? He was the opposite.

“Aries, I wanted to make her jealous. It was petty and stupid. I shouldn’t have done it. I love you— you’re nothing like any of those others. It was meant to be private.”

“You’re serious?” he asked.

I sighed.

“You really think she’d be jealous?”

“Is that really the sticking point? Yeah. She’ll fucking hate it.”

Aries chewed his lip. “Good. Then you’re keeping it in there.”

But there was still the problem of the other memories.

“How much did you see?” I asked. Aisling and Ripley had a hard time looking me in the eye. Aries, at least, had put his hand on my back.

“Too much,” Aisling said. “I’m sorry, Zeph. I didn’t know it was like that.”

“You shouldn’t be sorry. I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”

Ripley spoke next. “But all that wasn’t okay. You know that, right? She groomed you.”

I flinched. “What? No. It was a bad relationship, but it’s not like I didn’t want it.”

Aries forced me to sit down on Aisling’s bed. They were all looking at me like I was something broken. I didn’t know how to get them to stop.

“You don’t-” I started, but stopped. I tried again. “But–”

“You might have loved her,” Ripley said. “That doesn’t make it less wrong. That’s on her, not you.”

Fuck.

I felt a quick surge of panic. My chest tightened. The wolf rose up somewhere deep within me, begging to run. And I wanted to let it.

I breathed with my head between my knees for a few minutes, waited for the wolf to settle, my breath to slow, only to realize Aries was still rubbing my back.

Ripley and Aisling pretended they weren’t watching a breakdown in slow motion. Aries hugged me. His crushing weight was enough to make me feel grounded.

“We’ll figure this out, alright?” he said. “We’re going to make this okay.”