“Just let me—”

“You’re right, Tori.” He turned away, breathing hard through his nose. “I don’t even know you anymore, so I guess those guys are your family now. Have a nice Christmas.”

“Justin, wait!”

He was already across the room, his boots thumping up the stairs. The door at the top slammed shut.

I stood beside the breakfast bar, my hand stretched toward him. Slumping back onto my stool, I stared at the gift he’d brought me. I hadn’t had a chance to give him his.

With a shimmer of air, Hoshi reappeared. Her small paws touched my shoulder and she nudged her cool muzzle against my cheek.

Eyes stinging with forbidden tears, I stroked the sylph’s smooth neck. What would I have said to Justin anyway? I had killed again, and there was no way my explanation about how I’d had no choice but to stab an unresisting, injured man in the back would fly with my protector-of-justice brother.

I had no time to fix this. We were leaving first thing in the morning, meaning Justin would have two whole weeks to stew about how his sister was a bona fide hit woman in a magic gang.

“No!” Twiggy burst out in a broken-hearted wail. “Margaret died! I knew she would die! This is the worst show ever!”

I sighed. At least I’d get a break from my roommate drama over the holidays.

Chapter Four

“It’s colder than a witch’s britches out here!” Sin complained, tugging her jacket tighter around herself. Her breath puffed white and the icy wind whipped the mist away from her lips.

“This is tradition,” Aaron replied, leaning against the deck’s railing.

The ferry’s stern jutted out beyond the rail. Churning water flowed away from the stern, the choppy gray ocean stretching toward the shadow of the terminal from which we’d set sail. Heavy white clouds hugged the coast, obscuring any view of the land.

“Is that snow?” Sin pointed accusingly at the sky. “I just saw a snowflake.”

“It’s winter. Snow happens occasionally,” Kai, standing on Aaron’s left, told her. Ezra was beside him, gazing across the iron sea.

“But we don’t need to stand in it, do we?”

Aaron put his back against the railing, the wind mussing his copper hair. “You’re cheerful. Who spat in your coffee this morning?”

“Ew.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just … you know …”

“Nervous?” I guessed, burying my numb fingers in my coat pockets.

She grimaced.

“What are you nervous about?” Aaron asked. “You’ll get to see your sister and hang out at the academy for a week, and we’ll be around the whole time too.”

Sin and I exchanged knowing looks. Aaron and Kai were rich kids with rich parents—even if Kai had ditched his family at seventeen. He’d promptly moved into Aaron’s home, so did that even count? They had no concept of what it was like to visit a famous academy as two nobodies.

I angled my head to look around Kai. “Ezra, when did you first visit the Sinclair Academy?”

He straightened off the railing and turned, his mismatched eyes thoughtful. My gaze skittered down and lingered on his jawline. To my surprise, he’d shown up this morning clean-shaven for the first time I’d ever seen. Normally, dark scruff accentuated his lower face—more than a five o’clock shadow, but not enough to call it a beard.

It was sexy as hell, but freshly shaven was just as good. It showed off the strong, clean lines of his jaw.

“Hmm,” he mused. “This will be my sixth Christmas at the academy, but Aaron and Kai are right. You don’t need to worry. Just stay away from the moat and you’ll be fine.”

“The … moat?” I repeated blankly.

“Aaron’s family lives in a castle, you know.”

I peered at his grave expression, then snorted loudly. “Nice try, Ezra.”

He widened his eyes innocently. “I’m serious.”

Aaron laughed.

Sin gave up on enduring the cold, and Aaron and Kai followed her into the ferry’s warm interior. Ezra, however, didn’t move, so I turned to watch the frothing water tumble away from the ferry’s stern. The engines growled noisily and cloying fumes mixed with the briny ocean scent on the breeze.

“Should we be worried?” I asked him, propping my elbows on the railing. “For real?”

“Aaron’s parents will welcome you with open arms,” he assured me. That didn’t mesh with the tiny bit I knew about Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair—mainly, that they didn’t approve of anything their son did. They didn’t like his guild, his career choices, or his girlfriends. “Aside from them, the academy has three types of mythic: the students, the staff, and the non-staff guild members.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Sinclair Academy is a school and a guild. When students graduate at eighteen, they can join the Sinclair guild or move on to a different one, like Aaron and Kai did. If they join the Sinclair guild, they continue with advanced training and might eventually take a staff position.”

I studied the shadow in his eyes that meant he was holding back his true thoughts.

“The staff are professional,” he murmured, choosing his words carefully, “but the older students and the members in advanced training can be …”

“Rich snobs?” I suggested. “Arrogant twits? Condescending snowflakes?”

“Judgmental,” he finished with a laugh. “I’d call them judgmental. Nearly all the mages at the academy are gifted, and in their eyes, everyone else is lesser.”

“You aren’t lesser,” I snapped, firing up immediately. “You’re stronger than Aaron or Kai and you—”

“As an aeromage, I have below-average power,” he interrupted matter-of-factly. “I don’t care what they think, but be prepared for some attitude from the academy alumni.”

Huffing, I folded my arms. “Good thing Aaron isn’t an arrogant, judgmental twit.”

Ezra made a noncommittal noise and absently ran his thumb over his chin, then paused as though surprised to find it clean-shaven. As I watched his hand drop, my pulse did an odd, twitchy patter. I reached up and stroked my fingertips across his smooth jaw. He blinked, his gaze darting to mine.

“What’s with the new look?” I asked, my tone light and teasing.

“Aaron’s mom prefers it. She can’t stand ‘half a beard.’”

I bit the inside of my cheek, then blurted, “You shouldn’t change your appearance just because she doesn’t like it.”

“It wasn’t any trouble. It took less than five minutes.”

“But—”

He swept his arm around my waist and scooped me against his side. “Let’s find the others. I can’t feel my ears anymore.”

I gulped as he pulled me through the door. He held me casually close as we walked past rows of blue-cushioned seats on steel frames bolted to the floor. Panoramic windows offered an endless view of steely water, the faint silhouette of land in the distance.

Ezra didn’t lower his arm until we’d reached Aaron, Kai, and Sin, who were lounging on seats. I scooted past their legs and took the spot beside Sin. Ezra slid in after me and sat on my other side. Stifling a yawn with one hand, he slouched on the cushions and let his head fall back.

My heart tumbled all over itself as I exhaled an entire lungful of air. I whipped out my phone and started scrolling, pretending to be absorbed in my third cousin’s baby-daddy drama.

So … I maybe had a small problem.

Aaron, Kai, and Ezra were my best friends. Like family. I’d dated Aaron for a couple of months before the relationship fizzled out, but our friendship had solidified in the aftermath and was stronger than ever. Kai was mouthwateringly gorgeous, but he was also a playboy—sort of a playboy—and that alone would’ve been all the “no” I needed had he ever shown interest in me. Besides that, he was in love with someone else.

Then there was Ezra. He was my sweetheart of a terrifying demon mage. Thoughtful, generous, always had a smile for me no matter what was going on. He could make me laugh with the perfectly timed arch of his eyebrow. His buttery smooth voice soothed my worries, and his touch …

His touch, his embrace—they used to calm me.

Hunched in my seat, I glared at my phone. It was all Aaron’s fault. At the end of our first workout together, he’d made me sit on Ezra during competitive pushups to sabotage the aeromage’s victory. The combination of hot exertion, flexing muscles, and the motion itself had triggered something in my horny brain, and I could. Not. Stop. Thinking. About. It.

For six freaking weeks!

Every time Ezra got close to me, the memories all came rushing back. His body radiating heat, his skin slick and steaming, his breathing heavy. Hard muscles bunching and flexing under my thighs.

My breath whooshed out of my lungs. Sin glanced at me, then resumed her conversation with Aaron. I slid down in my seat, guilty and flushed.

Beside me, Ezra’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed. Maybe I couldn’t get past the pushups thing because I hadn’t seen him enough lately to … desensitize … or whatever. Yeah. That was probably it.

Probably. If it wasn’t, I didn’t know what the hell I would do.

Aaron’s SUV wound along the twisting road. Trees crowded the pavement, barren branches reaching toward the gray sky. Monstrous evergreens and spruces stood proudly among their leafless cousins, thick boughs dusted with crisp white snow—rare for this climate. Usually, it rained nonstop.

“How much farther?” I asked, leaning over the center console to peer through the windshield. Ezra was in the passenger seat, head bowed forward as he napped.

“Almost there,” Aaron replied, watching the road as flakes twirled down and melted on the wet pavement. “We entered the academy grounds at the last turn.”

“When was that?” I muttered, trying to remember a turn.