Chapter 243: Eye Contact
"I had assumed Nicolas Flamel's student would be entirely devoted to Alchemy."
Like her warning before, Fleur said this in English, with a noticeable French accent that gave her voice a slight husky quality.
The moment the words landed, Leonardo's first instinct was to wonder if she was picking a fight. She had just been considerate enough to warn him about the Abraxans.
He activated the Eye of Arcane Perception, sharpening his sight. A faint swirl surfaced in his dark green eyes. He looked at her — and found the same earnest expression, the same sincerity in her gaze. She appeared to be genuinely just asking.
Right. Probably not a fight, then.
He recalled something Nicolas had mentioned. If their paths hadn't crossed, the old alchemist might well have taken Fleur as a student instead.
Having a fair idea of what was behind the question, Leonardo replied:
"I manage well enough. I pick things up quickly, and I have some aptitude in a number of areas."
He said it in French — clean pronunciation, easy fluency — and Fleur couldn't find a single flaw in it.
The directness of the answer gave her a moment's pause, though. She was a proud person herself and straightforward by nature, but openly stating one's own talents like that was not something she came across often.
Since he spoke French and spoke it that well, she switched back to her mother tongue.
"I am simply curious," she said. "What kind of genius does it take to earn Nicolas Flamel's recognition?"
She moved toward him across the snow, closing the distance.
As she drew nearer, her features came into sharper focus. The faint silver radiance around her caught the white of the snow, and once again Leonardo felt his heartbeat quicken.
He knew exactly what it was — the Veela blood in her veins.
Veelas were intelligent humanoid magical creatures of remarkable beauty. Their skin was always suffused with a soft, moonlike silver glow, and their hair moved as though in a breeze that wasn't there. For men in particular, their allure was difficult to resist — compelling enough to bring a man to the point of obsession.
When angered, however, a Veela transformed into something altogether more terrifying: a bird-like creature with a bird's head and scaled, feathered wings erupting from the shoulders, capable of hurling fireballs at enemies.
Fleur was part-Veela—a quarter, inherited through her grandmother. The beauty and the magnetism, she had clearly kept.
Leonardo looked at her with a more analytical eye. Beyond the outward effects, he found himself wondering: did she carry any other qualities specific to the Veela bloodline? Could she transform into the bird-headed form like a full-blooded Veela? Could she access magic unique to that lineage?
He was still turning the question over when a pair of vivid blue eyes met his directly, a subtle silver light within them carrying a pull that touched something deep.
Meeting Fleur's gaze at close range, Leonardo felt his thoughts stall for just a moment.
The sensation was unfamiliar and deeply unwelcome.
Magic surged almost involuntarily, the dark swirl in his pupils expanding in an instant, deepening until it seemed to have no bottom.
But the Eye of Arcane Perception, having been enhanced and reshaped through the fusion with the basilisk's eyes, now carried a paralysing effect on any living creature that met it directly.
And Fleur had become the first human being to look straight into those eyes.
Unlike the sharp cold of the wind and snow around her, what Fleur felt was something else entirely — a chill that seemed to reach into the soul itself, spreading outward from her eyes, turning both body and spirit rigid.