Prologue
Prologue
“Teaching you was a mistake.”
He jerked away from her, stepping further into the shop. Something grabbed hold of his insides and twisted. This wasn’t going according to plan. Why was the brat acting like this now? Unwilling to ponder the unwelcome, painful feeling much longer, Caelum turned from the baskets in an aborted gesture and wrapped his hand around her wrist.
He couldn’t afford wasting his time lurking around Tate’s every day after this. He had already wasted too much time. He had to talk to her. Scrunching his brows, he strengthened his hold. Plan B, it was.
“You don’t mean that,” his soft voice sounded all wrong. Like he was young and foolish again, looking for something from a mother who would never give it. Ironic, really, because that was what led his life to this very moment, if he thought about it. Barely keeping his customary sneer in place, he shifted his hold even as his fingers burned from the barely-restrained magic under the girl’s skin.
Harry stepped closer, pulling on the arm he held until their faces were mere inches away, and said, “I do. Now let go of me.”
In their current position, his back blocked Tate’s view. He could not have planned it better.
He dropped his expression and adopted another close to but not quite the perfectly blank one he had earlier when he denied brewing that wretched potion. His hand slipped down.
The girl’s unnatural green eyes widened by a fraction. They rose and searched his face, and for the first time in months, he felt seen by their intensity, just for a second. Then his senses detected her magic expand beyond her arms to less than a meter away from her body, enclosing them in a privacy ward.
“For the sake of what I thought was our friendship, I’m giving you the chance to tell me why I need to listen to a bigot like you a second longer.” Her jaw clenched ever so slightly as she whispered the words.
“Not now. Not here, Potter.” He flicked his eyes to the window where he had last seen the other boy and the auror tailing her to the back where Tate was, as she palmed the vial he had pushed against her fist. “Pour it on parchment. Drop the ward, quickly,” he said quietly.
The magic returned to its source immediately. The brat always did have abnormally perfect control.
“You should be careful when speaking to your betters.” His mouth twisted into its familiar sneer while his heart was wrought with a familiar discomfort. His words echoed their past conversations, for all that nothing was the same. He had been a fool to provoke her, as if they had not changed at all. “You might end up offending someone less magnanimous next time, and you won’t even need another scandal to be a felon on paper.”
She snatched her hand away from him, green eyes flickering with emotions he hardly ever saw when they bantered. Hurt. Confusion. But beyond that, they still shone with comprehension.
Message finally received, then. Stubborn chit.
The bell chimed as a middle-aged woman entered, and Harriet Potter was out of the door.
Caelum turned back to the shelves. He had brewing to do, and he fully intended on maximizing his funding while he had it. He was sick of seeing Tate, too. Though, looking at the shopkeeper’s carefully blank expression, he appreciated the man’s discretion as the auror entered and asked him about his conversation with Potter.
Sneer on his beautiful face, he spouted hateful pureblood drivel and used the backstabbing knife that was his last name as a shield from inquiry.
The auror backed off. Finally. He had brewing to do.
Leaving the shop, he ignored the gaze of the Aldermaster’s son and the girl sobbing in his arms. A quick spell as he lifted his hood later, and he made his way to his apartment in anonymity.