Page 41 of Junk Magic

“You’re not in trouble, right?” she asked. “I mean, they’re not going to charge you with anything, are they? You were defending him—”

“No, it’s fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure that it was.

And I guess my unease came through in my voice, because her frown grew. “But we could tell them, even though they all saw—”

“It’s fine,” Cyrus said, more forcefully.

“How can you be so sure?” Sophie demanded. She’d taken down her ponytail, and her red hair was a staticky flame around her face. “We all know what the Corps is like. We’ve dealt with them enough.”

“Because this isn’t Corps business. A challenge was issued; a challenge was accepted; and one wolf lost. Even if Lia had chosen to end him, the Corps couldn’t bring charges. There is a treaty. And no Were court would convict her.”

“The Corps doesn’t have to convict her to kick her out. And then where will we be? I doubt there’s a lot of other trainers willing to take us on!”

“This isn’t just about us,” Jen said, frowning at her friend. “Lia could have been—”

“It’s about us if we get sent back. This is our chance, our one chance, and we only just—” she broke off, probably because the other students had started to look a little wide-eyed. But Caleb intervened before anything blew up—possibly literally.

“If Hargroves intended to make a big deal out of this, he’d have already done it,” he said in his brooks-no-discussion voice. “He was watching the whole thing.”

“Hargroves?” Aki asked.

“The big boss. The old guy in the snazzy suit.”

“The one who came to see us with Lia,” Sophie added, looking more subdued. She glanced at Kimmie, but the other girl was keeping it together today. In fact, if anything, she appeared more belligerent than scared.

“The Corps needs us, and we need Lia,” Kimmie said flatly. “And nobody died—”

“Kind of a close thing,” Aki murmured.

“—so they’re not going to do shit.”

Aki looked less than reassured, but he didn’t say anything else. I didn’t either, but mostly because I was focused on a different problem. “Hargroves was there?” I asked Caleb.

“You didn’t see him?”

“She was kind of busy,” Chris commented, eyeing me. It looked like there was at least one student who wasn’t sure he wanted to be trained by a crazed war mage who went for other people’s throats in a conflict.

Couldn’t exactly blame him there.

“He, uh, arrived about halfway through,” Caleb acknowledged.

“Halfway through?” I asked.

“About the time you went for the jugular.”

I felt my stomach clench, and a little more bile join the burning sensation in my throat. And I guess I wasn’t subtle, because Caleb decided to change the subject. “Come on,” he told the class. “We have stuff to do.”

Aki looked like he was going to object, and maybe Jen, too, who was still regarding me with concern. But people don’t generally argue with Caleb. The only thing that happened was the small group following him across the parking lot through the shimmering desert heat, although a few of them looked back at me over their shoulders.

“How’s he getting them back?” I croaked, watching them leave.

“No idea,” Cyrus said, and then his arms went around my waist from behind, and his face buried itself in my neck. “Thank you.”

It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to stop the tremors that had started spreading outward from my core. The feel of his body against mine, of his strong arms around me, of the steady beat of his heart helped, too. He was warm and solid and there in a way that I really needed right then. But the comment didn’t make sense.

“For what?”

“For protecting Jace. I put him in danger; you got him out.”

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