Page 27

Then there was Cormac himself. He stood with his back to one of the windows, watching me as I entered the room. He wore a long dark robe that was open, showing the suit he wore underneath. It was expensive, I could tell just from the fabric. Aside from the expensive suit, the first thing I noticed about him was that he was wearing gloves. Indoors. The room was cold, sure, but it wasn’t that cold.

My gaze traveled from those gloves to his face, and I had a moment of wondering what they fed these guys. Everyone at this damn academy was attractive, but between Kit, Linden, and now Cormac I was starting to feel personally targeted. Cormac was beautiful in a locked-door way, with dark hair and pale skin and clean lines. He was older than me by probably only a handful of years. He was tall, elegantly built, with broad shoulders.

He was also letting me look my fill.

It was only when my stare drifted back to the gloves that he spoke. After all, nobody wore gloves indoors unless their hands were dangerous, damaged, or too important to touch the world directly.

“Miss Lane,” he grumbled.

There was no welcome in his tone, nothing to make the room any less harsh than it already was. He clearly wanted to be there about as much as I did, which is to say, he didn’t want to be there at all.

“Mister Vere,” I replied.

“It’s Adept. Adept Vere.”

“Apologies, Adept Vere,” I said with a little snark coloring my tone.

His gaze moved once over me from my hair to my hem. Unlike Pelham, he did not pretend not to inventory me. Unlike Vivienne, he did not enjoy it. He looked like a man confirming the condition of a specimen before deciding which instrument to use on it.

“Sit.”

I did. Slowly. Because slow was mine, and I knew from the way Pippa and Kit had talked about him that he was probably used to people falling over themselves to obey. That wasn’t me. He wanted control, but at that moment it was mine, and I didn’t want to give it up lightly.

He sat across from me and pulled a small black notebook from somewhere either in his robe or in his suit jacket. It was a slim volume as though he didn’t often need to write things down. He opened it and quickly flipped to a blank page before reaching into his robe once more and producing a pen.

I drew in a breath as the recognition finally hit me. He was the one who had stood outside the orientation lecture and had made notes about me asking questions.

When he looked at me once more, the pen uncapped and held loosely in his grip, I half expected him to jot something down, but he just waited a moment before speaking.

“Let us establish the terms of this,” he said. “I have been asked to determine whether you possess a classifiable aptitude. You will attempt to demonstrate one. I will document the attempt. The likeliest outcome, based on your record, is that you do not, and we will arrive at that conclusion efficiently. I am also to provide you with instruction should you show any kind of aptitude.”

I spoke before I could think better of it. “Good afternoon to you, too.”

He blinked at me, not surprised or amused, just assessing whether the humor had been meant as defiance or stupidity, and which would be more expensive to deal with. He seemed to settle on defiance. “Was I unclear?”

“No. You don’t want to be here.”

“No, I do not.” The pen twitched slightly in his hand as though he wanted to make note of my attitude and was restraining himself.

“Because this is beneath you.”

“Yes.”

His honesty should have offended me less than a lie, but it didn’t. Somehow it was worse to be a chore a man admitted to than a chore a man dressed up as an opportunity.

He set the pen down and folded his gloved hands on the table. “I have spent six years training a discipline that requires exceptional precision and control. My work is ordinarily not introductory remediation. You are nineteen, first-generation, undeclared, and by all accounts unable to perform even the most basic directed manifestation. Setting me to coax an Order out of you is a poor use of my time.”

“I don’t remember asking for it.”

“No. You were assigned.”

“So were you.” I leaned back until the wood chair creaked ominously. “Sounds like both of us are living the dream.”

The corner of his mouth moved in something akin to humor, but not. No, this was more along the lines of irritation. “How refreshing,” he said. “If you could keep your sarcasm in check, I would appreciate it.” His words carried weight, not volume.

Cormac didn’t raise his voice, instead he lowered it, and the sound settled into the room with a kind of pressure underneath it. He had a quiet authority that seemed designed to make my spine straighten and my mouth shut without either of us discussing it first.

I felt it, him, willing me to obey. But then the impulse just slid away, like the fire moving away from me before. It wasn’t because I had resisted, because that would have been impossible, there was nothing to push against, no hand on me to shove away.