Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

“Why are you crying?” Noah asked.

“I’m not crying!”

“You’re sniffing.”

“It’s just allergies.”

He watched me with a solemn expression. “You get allergies a lot.”

“What are you, some kind of doctor?”

Annoyed, I ripped butter oak lettuce leaves, rocket, and romaine from the overgrown gardens. I wanted to put something in his food just to mess with him. When I laid the deep-fried chicken, French fries, and salad on the small patio table, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Come off it,” I said. “You’ve been watching me this whole time. You would know if I poisoned the food.”

“You could have done something magical.”

I slammed my fist onto the table, making the cutlery rattle. “You are highly sensitive to magic,” I grated. Thanks to his early childhood trauma, Noah was a sensate. His nose could pick up even the slightest hint of magic. Which was why he knew about the blood barrier even though he didn’t know what it was.

For the first time, the vein in his jaw clicked. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life on eggshells around you,” I said. “I’m sorry about what happened to your pack. I’ve been sorry about it my whole life. I’ll probably be sorry until the day I die. But why me? I have a whole family that’s just as connected to him. Why am I the only one you’re torturing?”

He leaned forward then, his tone unnervingly steady. “I think the question we should be asking is why you feel guilty even though you had nothing to do with it.”

“Maybe because you make me feel guilty.”

“How do I do that, Sophie? I’ve moved on with my life. I have a new pack. A new life.”

He reached over my curled fist and picked up a wing. Watching him bite into it, chew and swallow, the bile on my tongue turned to ash. He’d moved on. So why hadn’t I?

Because you’re just like him, that voice in my head said. And one day, you will break.

Noah’s head whipped up all of a sudden, his dark eyes scanning my face. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I thought I heard something.”

“That’s what tends to happen when you’re paranoid.”

We ate in silence. Even though I’d hardly eaten for days, I picked at my food. Yet somehow there wasn’t a scrap of it left when it was time to leave. I took it as a small victory.

Victorious was the last thing I felt as I made my way to the warded room where Magic Resistance was taught. “Why do this?” Noah asked. “You know she’s evil.”

It figured that he’d pored over my timetable just as closely as I had. Aside from the Arcane Magic classes that I had with Agatha along with everyone else, I was also assigned to take one-on-one lessons with her. In hindsight, stomping out of the earlier class probably wasn’t the best idea.

“Better the devil you know.”

“That’s the stupidest saying humans have come up with. If they’d ever met any kind of devil, they would know there are none that are better.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s not supposed to be taken so literally.”

“Why not put it plainly then?”

I didn’t have all the time in the world to explain it to him. Especially when I walked into the classroom to find that Agatha wasn’t alone. At the sound of our footsteps, they both looked up. My breath caught. Agatha always conjured up a primal sense of fear, but the man, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Eyes so deep blue they were almost violet. His hair was like silk strands framing a face that was all rugged lines but still managed to be delicate. It was almost sickening to behold.

Lex had this theory about supernatural beauty. If you punched it and it stayed the same, it was real. If not, it was probably a glamour. She did it once to a mage in Ravenhall after he made a joke about her and Kai during their big breakup.

The mating link snapped and snarled. I felt something tight bursting just over my third eye. When I blinked, my vision cleared. The man’s face remained the same but the unbearable allure of it was gone. Looking closer, I could see a resemblance between him and Agatha. They must be related. I couldn’t tell how old he was, so he could have been her son for all I knew.

Beside me, the coarse hairs on Noah’s forearms were standing straight up.

“You might wish to tell your dog to stand down,” the man said. I reconsidered the punching thing.

Stepping in front of Noah did very little to stop him advancing. Instead, he ended up kicking me in the shin. “Ow!”

Noah grabbed my arm before I tripped. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

“Because clearly I’m an idiot.” My ankle throbbed.

The man laughed. “Amusing. Maybe this won’t be such a waste of time. I’m Hugh. Agatha’s trusty sidekick and overshadowed baby brother.”

He held out his hand which neither Noah nor I accepted.

“Enough of this,” Agatha snapped. “I assume you’re done with your hissy fit?”

Still massaging my ankle, I shot her a dirty look. “I’ll be done just as soon as you’re done threatening my best friend.”

“I see.” She came to stand in front of me. “Is that what set you off?”

There was no way in hell we would ever understand each other. “Can we get this over with?”

She crossed her arms. “Certainly. Are you ready to murder someone to ingest their power?”

Noah was less of a hothead than the rest, but even he had a limit. The brutal snarl that ripped from his throat filled the room with a tense undercurrent.

“If he can’t behave then he can’t stay,” Agatha said, her tone bored. She raised a hand and purple light gathered at her fingertips. To counteract it, I threw a circle around Noah. She blinked at me. “You think you can challenge me?”

The aim wasn’t to challenge. It was to distract her for long enough that