Page 198 of The Blairville Legacies

“As long as I do the required work, there shouldn’t be any problems, should there?” I returned impatiently, and he raised his eyebrows again, but this time...with interest.

“You seem to have a lot of confidence in your performance.”

He stepped closer. And inwardly I trembled because of his statue.

This man was tall, three heads taller than me.

I wanted to take a deep breath to calm down inside, which was a mistake, because a pleasant citrus scent floated toward me, mixed with male pheromones that could only have come from him.

Something in my traitorous stomach began to tingle. And I stepped backward.

Something sharp pricked my waist and as I turned around, I saw one of the piles of papers that the professor must have placed on the edge drop to the floor and scatter behind his desk.

For heaven’s sake...

I quickly bent down to clear up the mess I had made and grabbed the first few sheets of paper.

I saw him bend down as well and sped up.

“I’m...” I paused as I spotted the black ink rune on the parchment in front of me, and memories flashed through my mind. Memories I wished Gloria had erased. “...sorry.”

I couldn’t help but stare at the rune. A jagged, serpentine mark with three rounds of circles, decorated with splashes of ink.

The last time I had seen a mark like this, it had been in a forbidden book. The woman who had owned it had been robbed of her memory in front of the Circle and the Councils, and the book had been burned. The reason:Umbra. Shadow magic. Magic, I didn’t know much about simply because we werenot allowedto know anything about it, let alone mention it at all.

I spotted another mark.

Suddenly, his warm hand brushed mine as the professor reached for the paper, and only now I noticed the simple golden double ring on his finger.

Without removing my hand from his paper, I looked up.

His bright green eyes sparkled with indecision, eyeing mine.

“Julie...” he whispered, tugging at the paper and I finally loosened my grip.

“I’m sorry...” I replied just as quietly, realizing too late what he had just called me...and how forbidden good it had sounded...and how forbidden those marks there on that sheet were.

I stared at him while he tidied up the rest of the papers with a working jaw. I shook my head absentmindedly and reached for the pieces of paper under my feet.

As I handed them to him, his gaze lingered on my wrist.

My gray wool sweater had ridden up a bit, revealing my forearm...or rather, the thirty-seven faded scars and the two new ones.

He stared directly at it, his features tense.

My fingers began to tingle with a traitorous coolness.

I shot upwards.

He did, too.

Our eyes met...

That was too much.

“I’m really sorry,” I pressed out somehow, brushing a strand of hair behind my ears and turning around.

Before my insecurity could express itself inanyway, I ran back to my seat and sat down, glad that none of the other students had noticed.

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