Chapter 51: _ I Blame The Venom!

Raice Ignis-Dominus [Son of the Fae Princess~High Rector Maddox]

He was going to burn the world down.

Or at least his desk.

He stood in the center of his quarters, pacing a groove directly into the floorboards, clutching his hair so tightly he was fairly certain several strands were coming out at the root. The venom was still humming through his bloodstream, a hot, greasy pulse in his forearm, but it was nothing compared to the apocalyptic meltdown currently occurring inside his chest.

What in the nine hells had he just done?

"I am a warrior," he snarled at the empty air. "I am the son of High-Rector Maddox. I am a purger of the Borrowed. I am a master of steel."

"You are a groper of first-years!" Cedric wailed, swooping down from the ceiling with his ghostly hands clutched over his heart. "Oh, the scandal! The absolute, unmitigated depravity! I died defending the Honor of the Red Shield at Oakhaven, and now my eternal soul is bound to a twenty-year-old who loses his mind against a hallway wall!"

"I didn’t lose my mind!" he yelled, spinning around to glare at the floating shade. "I was poisoned! I was under the influence of a dark, neurotoxic beast-sap! It compromised my higher brain functions!"

"Right. And I suppose the neurotoxin was also responsible for sliding your hand right up her dress? Because from where I was hovering, that looked surprisingly deliberate, master!" Maeve squeaked, floating upside down right beside his left ear, her face split into a grin.

"Shut up, Maeve!"

"No, no, let’s analyze the mechanics!" Maeve giggled, doing a backflip through his chandelier. "The way you grabbed her waist... Masterclass. The way you lifted her onto the stone ledge? Impeccable leverage! But the accusation at the end? ’You bewitched me, you little leech!’—oh, absolute poetry! Ten out of ten for dramatic exit!"

He slammed his fist against the edge of the washbasin. The stone groaned, a thin crack spider-webbing across its surface.

He hated himself. He despised every single cell currently occupying his physical body.

Because no matter how many times he told himself it was the venom, his mind kept traitorously replaying the exact texture of her skin. The wild, intoxicating scent of lilies and crushed rain. The way her breath had hitched... that needy little sound that had vibrated straight down his spine and turned his knees into absolute lead.

She hadn’t just tolerated it; she had kissed him back. She had tangled her small, warm fingers in his hair, pulled him closer, and begged him to give her whatever she could.

Why? Why?!

Were the Borrowed inside the academy finally realizing that he was onto them? Was Elira a flesh-puppet deployed specifically to weaponize his own suppressed urges against him? Was she trying to dismantle his mental fortitude by turning his brain into a mushy, pathetic pile of desire?

And why, by all the dark gods of the First Courts, had he enjoyed it so much?

He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his palms against his throbbing temples. Ever since his mother dragged him out of the Fae Realm to hide him in this bureaucratic cesspool of a fortress, he had maintained a strict vow.

He had left Antanasia behind in the silver forests of the Fae Realm. He had promised himself... sworn on the grave of his own sanity, that he would never be intimate with any woman until he returned to claim her.

Yet five minutes in a dark corridor with a dragonless, markless, arrogant little lowborn, and he was ready to throw his ancestral title into an incinerator just to taste her tongue again.

It was the poison. It had to be the poison. A

He spun around toward the far corner of the room, where Wight was hovering motionless over a massive, mildewed tome resting on an iron stand.

"Wight!" he barked, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "Tell me you found it. Tell me the rot-sap induces violent, uncontrollable erotic desires!"

Wight didn’t look up from the yellowed parchment. His hollow sockets flickered with twin pinpricks of icy white light as his skeletal finger traced a line of ancient runes.

"I am still cross-referencing the beast’s classification, Raice. Do not rush the lexicon of the ancient beasts. That is exactly why you found yourself in this exact situation. Precision takes time." The entity rasped.

Sometimes, Wight’s calmness had a way of making his head spin. Especially when his head was spinning!

"I don’t have time! I am losing my mind!" he shrieked, kicking a heavy wooden stool across the room. It shattered against the stone wall.

"Oh, calm down, you dramatic infant," Maeve floated down, landing on his shoulder—or rather, passing through it, sending a shuddering chill down his spine. "If you’re worried about Prince Ivar seeing you, don’t be. The Wolf Prince isn’t going to ruin your reputation with it."

He froze, turning his head slowly to glare at her ghostly visage. "What does Ivar have to do with this?"

"Well, he saw you, didn’t he?" Maeve shrugged, floating in a lazy circle around his head. "He was standing right at the end of the corridor when you sprinted away like a scolded puppy. But honestly, he can’t say a word. He kissed her too, remember?"

"To hell with that uncouth wolf, Maeve. I don’t care what he does," he dismissed.

Maeve clapped her hands together, her eyes sparkling with gossipy delight. "Hm... doesn’t change the fact that you two are practically matching! Though, to be fair, you went much further. He gave her a polite royal peck, and you tried to eat her alive against a load-bearing wall."

It was typical of Maeve to wait for his rare vulnerable moments to get back at him for the times when he yelled or dismissed her.

"I did not try to eat her!" he roared, his face burning so hot he thought his skin was going to melt off his skull. "I was inspecting a threat!"

"By tasting her neck?" Cedric asked, hovering upside down directly in front of his face with an expression of profound disgust. "Is that how the Fae Court conducts security auditions now? ’Halt, villain! Let me sample the curve of your breast through silk to ensure you carry no illegal contraband!’ Truly, the art of warfare has evolved in my absence."

"Shut up, Cedric!" he snapped, shoving his hand through his translucent stomach, which accomplished nothing except making his fingers feel damp and freezing.

He turned back to Maeve, his brain churning through the chaotic puzzle pieces at breakneck speed. "Wait. Repeat what you told me earlier about the gala. Are you absolutely certain Ajax picked her for his first dance?"

"Positive!" Maeve squeaked, floating onto the iron lamp. "The Lion Prince himself singled her out among a sea of noble seniors and first-year ladies swooning over him! And then—get this—she completely disrupted Prince Remus’s stroll and then caused a multi-tiered explosion with a Heartstone! Then she spent twenty minutes making aggressive eyes at Prince Zev across the court, and then she publicly screamed at Prince Ivar in front of the entire gallery, accusing him of being a monster!"

He stood frozen in the center of the room. The pieces were locking together. The grand design was revealing itself.

The fact that in just three days, she had managed to interact with the four ruling princes of the Academies, that she had caused the biggest anomaly in the history of the realm by making the sacred Heartstone malfunction gave him a clarity... one clearer than anything else in his entire life...