Page 52 of Midwinter Night's Prince

She bit her lip, thinking about the dagger on the bedside table. Maybe she should hold on to it. She wouldn't actually hurt him, but someone ought to be able to stop him.

Right. Like he'd simply give it to her for keeps.

Sethknocked on the door. "Breakfast."

She was entirely covered in thick bubbles and the water was bright pink, so she invited him in.

Seth was holding a platter with fresh fruits, a pot of yogurt, a bowl filled with granola, and several small plates with pancakes, bacon, and eggs. "I don't know what you want to eat."

Her stomach grumbled, harder than it had the previous day if possible. "All of that, please."

* * *

She was blooming. They were surrounded by dusty books and filthy flasks filled with dubious liquids, and Blair looked right at home. She took a red leather-bound volumes from one of Alexius's shelves and brought it to a reading nook. "How many times I wished I had a copy of this during my travels!" she groaned. "Transfiguration charms are the pits. Alexius wrote this book when he was learning magic—it's like a guide for dummies."

"You're hardly a dummy." It drove him insane how she constantly put herself down when it came to her magic.

Seth didn't think he'd ever met any witch as versatile as Blair. She dabbled in several disciplines. She didn't excel in most of them, true, but knowing a bit of everything was just as valuable. And though it made her uncomfortable, her natural magic was potent.

"In transfiguration, I am. I tried to change your dagger into a pencil temporarily—it ended up being a dildo."

He chuckled with her. "I would have liked to see that."

"Where did you get it? The dagger. I thought we couldn’t get them on Earth."

Seth shrugged. "My mother gave it to me once I was old enough to hold it. She said my father entrusted her with it for me. It makes sense. Usually, the only threat to a demigod is another demigod, so I suppose all of us scions are given fyriron, just in case."

"Do you know how your parents met?" she wondered.

A fair question. He'd asked his mother so many times, all in vain. It was Drusilla who finally told him when he was older. "My matriarch sent virgin offerings to Olympus—all the girls born in my family were left alone on the mountain overnight, for centuries. At sixteen, first—then at twenty-one, when Drusilla wondered if the gods preferred actual women, I suppose." His stare was ice. "I made her swear she wouldn't send my sisters. She laughed. I said if she did, I'd leave the clan." Drusilla had been terrified to lose her pet scion. "Claudia and Cat have never been to Greece."

"Was your mom the first to have been taken?"

He nodded. "Yep, in over a thousand years. I'm not certain why. She doesn't seem to have any animosity toward either her mother or Zeus, so one must conclude she wasn't forced." The notion of virgin sacrifices still disgusted him. "She was gone for a year and came back with me. I suppose I must have spent some months on Olympus as a baby. I don't remember any of it."

Alexius walked in moments later, bringing the trip down memory lane to a close. "You're in trouble," he told Blair.

Seth stiffened.

"Varra was in the professor's lounge earlier. He mentioned you were supposed to be his TA this year."

Blair sighed. "I'll stop by his lair and apologize."

"He lets you in his lair?" Alexius blinked. "You know where it is?"

She shrugged. "I was supposed to be his TA, remember?"

Alexius grinned. "Right. So, you're fucking."

Blair rolled her eyes. "Pot, kettle? You fucked your way through the student body before Avani." She opened the red book and started to page it casually. "Seth told me you had to talk to me about my blood tests."

Alexius nodded. "Let me grab the samples. One second."

"You're fucking your teacher?" Seth was proud to say he sounded perfectly indifferent.

"Gods, no. But Alexius is way too twisted to believe a single woman can be friends with an attractive man." She flashed him a grin. "I came to the Institute to avoid the New York Academy. I didn't really have a plan. Fin Varra took one look at me and told me I'd be a great teacher one day. I think it's the first time anyone told me I could be good at anything."

So, she had a touch of a hero worship for the fae. If anything, that was worse than fucking.

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