Page 14 of Wildfire

Hermes’s face screwed up. He shrugged his shoulders, tipping his hands back and forth like a scale. “Help? Eh.”

Lysandros rolled his eyes. “Yes,” he answered simply. “He is.”

Hermes still thought that was a stretch. He moved souls from one point to another. Sure, it was best for everyone if souls didn’t linger too long topside, but that wasn’t out of any special care or consideration on his own part.

“Well, you at least want to figure out what’s going on, right?” Theo continued, ever reasonable and patient.

At that, Hermes couldn’t help but shrug. Lysandros, at least, would know that was true. No doubt he’d told his precious professor all about it.

“And that’s twice now,” Theo continued, “that a dead student has turned up near Wilder. You think that’s a coincidence?”

Hermes looked the tall man over, cocking his brow. “Wait a second.” His gaze darted back to Theo, and a grin spread slowly on his own face. “You think it’s got something to do with Pratt? Like they’re looking for him, or maybe they’ll come after him next? Baby needs a bodyguard?”

Wilder turned his nose high in the air. “I donotneed a bodyguard.”

Gods, he was so imperious. Hermes could just imagine hooking his ankle around the man’s and knocking him over right there in the corridor. It was so damn tempting to take him down a peg.

“Sweetheart,” Hermes cooed instead. “You are so much more fragile than you know.”

A Real Dish

Wilder glared at the scoundrel calling him fragile.

Him!

Fragile!

He wanted to point out that if he were fragile, he’d have never escaped his childhood with his sanity intact. He wouldn’t have graduated from Banneker Magna Cum Laude. He wouldn’t...

Well, it didn’t really matter, did it?

Because Wilder’s accomplishments were all superficial, and no one was ever impressed with them. At their heart, they weren’t all that impressive. Anyone could work hard and graduate in the top ten percent of their class. Most of them just didn’t, because they had social lives and extracurricular activities and family holidays.

Wilder had one thing. He had the fire. He simply didn’t use it the way most people expected. Oh no, when the military had come calling, he’d given them a resounding, “thanks, but under no circumstances.” His mastery of fire was a skill hard won, and he would decide when it was necessary. He was not a weapon for someone else to wield.

Ward was talking, Wilder realized, and he’d been so focused on the infuriating golden imp before him that he’d entirely tuned him out. “While I agree that you’re not fragile,” he was saying, “neither were the students who were killed. So maybe taking precautions isn’t a bad idea.”

As much as he wanted to mock, to suggest that even if he needed protection, Hermes wasn’t the man for the job, he couldn’t help but remember the man’s speed. The strength in his hands when he’d stopped Wilder from attacking him. Hermes was small, yes, but he definitely was not weak.

It was irrelevant, though, and he shouldn’t be thinking about the man’s hands. “There’s nothing to take precautions for,” he insisted. “Two students have died. No one has attacked me. Why would they?”

“Two elementalists,” Ward pointed out. “They were both in your classes, weren’t they?”

“Matthew was,” Wilder agreed. “He was almost finished. But Rebekah had barely started, and she wasn’t all that promising.”

Ward flinched—of course he did. He wanted Wilder to coddle the students, dress up the facts to make them prettier than they were. The fact was that Rebekah Perry had thought herself a powerful air mage, boasted about her ability to anyone who would listen, but she’d been middling at best.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Hermes chuckled, then again, and a moment later, he was full-blown belly-laughing. “Oh man, I love this guy,” he told Lysandros. “He’s such an asshole.”

Wilder refused to respond to that. Yes, maybe he was a little too honest sometimes, but he told the truth. He didn’t make things up to make people feel better or worse. Was that so awful?

“That’s enough, Hermes,” Ward said, loud in the empty hallway, turning to glare at the man. “Maybe Wilder is a little blunt, but there’s no need for name-calling.”

“What name calling?” Hermes put a hand to his chest, eyes wide with false affront. “I was saying it’s awesome. I mean, seriously, with my dad? The whole family? Hell, the prince of darkness here is probably the most normal, well-adjusted person I’m related to.” He waved a hand at Lysandros’s chest as he said the last, and Wilder had to bite his lip and look at the floor to keep from smiling at the appellation.

“Anyway, if professor hot stuff needs a bodyguard, I can totally make time in my busy schedule to cross swords.” Hermes shoved himself between Theo and Wilder and grinned manically up at him. “Whadaya say, fireball, want a rematch?”

Wilder’s cheeks went hot at the open and rather public reminder of their encounter in the bathroom, and he couldn’t look up to meet Ward’s eye. The last thing he needed was his behavior at their prior meeting spread around his workplace. Not that Ward was the type to go spreading gossip, but it was still uncomfortable.

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