Page 58 of The Spell Caster

“You brought me a cookie?” I said with possibly undue excitement.

“Thought you might want one.” He pushed his hair up in the back and glanced away in an endearing way that was almost bashful.

I flushed and couldn’t stop my smile as I held my prize to my chest.

Costi’s eyes darkened as he took in my reaction, and he leaned closer. “You’re easy to please.”

“You know what I like.” This conversation was tumbling rapidly off track. We didn’t seem to be able to focus well when we were around each other. I swallowed thickly. “Is there… somewhere private we could go?” I cringed. “To talk. I need to talk to you.”

With a slight smirk, Costi raised an eyebrow but said nothing, motioning me through the door.

Inside the barracks was a hall with rows of identical, evenly spaced doors. A sign on the wall directed visitors to numbered dorms. He led me to the end of one hall, past a computer lab, to a library that had been propped open. The small room filled with bookshelves and a stack of board games was unoccupied, and he shut the door. Light from the cloudy sky filtered through the windows. We left the overhead lights off.

Costi was still limping, favoring his right leg.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Better,” he said. Getting Costi to fess up to physical pain was impossible. I didn’t exactly know why he couldn’t stand to be seen as having a weakness, but I had my suspicions.

He sat in a plush armchair, the only concession to his injury he seemed willing to make.

I couldn’t sit. I blew a breath out noisily from trembling lips. “Hell is real,” I blurted. Five seconds with Costi made me entirely unable to keep my promise not to tell anyone.

“Fucking Grey,” he growled, as if the existence of such a place was Calamus’s fault. “What did he do?”

“His circle spell worked. We talked to a demon. But he didn’t look like a familiar, Costi—he looked… almost human. He had pointy ears and horns like some outsider’s idea of the devil.” I wrapped my arms around myself to keep it together and paced around the ornate rug in front of his chair. “What does it mean? Is every old story real? Are the angels gathering to impose Inperium?” Now that I admitted everything out loud, panic was starting to seep in.

“Layla,” Costi said, grounding me.

I paused and turned to him. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, trying to be calm. “My mother, my coven mentor, the councilors, they all seem… wrong.”

He made a rumbling sound of disgust. “They’re using the attack to make changes without agreement.”

“Calamus’s father warned me not to tell anyone about what happened today.”

Costi didn’t reply. His mouth was set seriously, his eyes narrowed in calculation as he looked into the distance, contemplating.

“We didn’t find out anything,” I murmured, drawing his attention back to me. “About me.”

He held out his hand. I put the cookie into it, and he gave me a faint half smile, setting my snack on an end table before reaching for me again.

I tentatively placed my hand into his, and he wrapped his fingers around it, pulling me to him until he could hook an arm around my waist and tumble me into his lap. I made a surprised squeak. He pushed his fingers up into my hair and held me against him.

“Tell me,” he said.

My throat tightened at his tender tone. He’d always been able to draw every hidden worry out of me.

I sank into his warm embrace, careful not to press his injured leg. We shouldn’t be doing this—not in public, and definitely not while he was in uniform and my crimson clothes marked me as off-limits. But I couldn’t move. I needed this badly.

“The… demon… said I wasn’t his.”

Costi considered my words quietly. “What does that mean? Is someone else… like him involved?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, leaning my head on his shoulder.

“Your magic was different,” he said after a quiet minute.

A vague memory of him mentioning that after the attack brushed through my mind. “What was different?”

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