Page 30 of Research with Rivals
Ambrose took a sip of his drink and swallowed as if bracing for terrible news. That’s what this was to him.
I sighed. This whole thing was uncomfortable, but it was blood magic. Sometimes, I felt like this particular magic reveled in discomfort.
No use stopping now. I continued recounting the morning.
“Then I felt … led—I think that’s the right word, led—to the woods where I ran into you.”
“How so?” he asked.
I was so excited to talk about anything other than my magical obsession with Ambrose, I didn’t think about my following words. “My shift. It’s new, and it was quite insistent this morning in my journey to you.”
When I realized what I’d said, I pressed my lips together tightly as if to keep any more information from slipping free. It was too late.
Ambrose’s eyes widened. “Your shift is new?”
He did not seem surprised that I had a shift, more so that it was a recent change. I guessed I couldn’t blame him for assuming after this morning. My cover story was weak.
“Yes,” I said, and grabbed my glass again for a steadying sip.
I’m not sure when it had happened, but at some point in the last exchange, his notepad and quill had made their way back into his hand. As I shook my head, I decided this, at least, was promising.
“When did the shift begin?” His pencil was poised to take notes. I should have been affronted, given everything going on between us at the moment—this magic, the research project, ourgeneral differences in opinion—that he wanted to study me and my shift.
The worst part was that I wanted to answer him. I had wanted to talk to another Vesten about this for months. But that wasn’t why we were here.
While in most situations, Ambrose was an academic first, in this particular scenario, I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t use my shift against me. The fact that I couldn’t control it was easy evidence that I was unqualified for the Vesten historian position.
“We’re getting off track.”
He set the pencil down and ran his hand through his hair. “Right.”
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, all afternoon, I could sense where you were in the library. It was uncomfortable when you left the room?—”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I did, eventually.”
“What took you so long?” he pressed.
“I didn’t see you asking about it earlier. What have you been experiencing, by the way? Maybe it’s time you shared.”
That straightened his spine almost like a slap across the face. “You said you were sure that this was evidence of a magical connection. What made you so certain?”
He was evading my question. Heat flooded my body, and I reached for my glass. Maybe his symptoms weren’t as bad as mine. Maybe he didn’t feel anything at all. How would I explain this if it was one-sided?
No, he hadn’t hesitated when he said he’d been looking for me. He admitted it was abnormal. Why else would he admit something like that unless magic was involved?
“Lord Arctos confirmed it.”
That finally reassured him. He’d probably been raised with a reverent respect for the Vesten God. He probably acceptedeverything the god said as fact. Although … that wasn’t quite right. He had challenged Lord Arctos in Gabriel’s office on my behalf.
I shook my head. That was beside the point.
Some part of me was waiting for Ambrose to jump in like he did on every other project I hadn’t asked his opinion on. I wanted him to press for every detail I knew and challenge every fact I stated.
He didn’t, and I found it incredibly disappointing.
This whole thing was a lot, I understood that, but I hadn’t thought anything could stop Ambrose Yarrow from his methods. Maybe I’d broken him.
