Chapter 9
Rosabel La Rouge
2 years ago
On Sunday, I was exhausted before the day even ended because I’d gone out to explore the school, to see where the classes were, what we would be studying.
It was fascinating, all of it. First years had classes together, studying the very basics of chromatic magic, anchors and magical creatures. From the second year, students were divided into different schools depending on their color, which was always determined by the parents. Never had it happened for two people of the same color to conceive a child of a different color. Magic was inherited, and it had always been like that as far as we knew.
The third and senior year was for perfecting everything already taught in year two, and I was well within schedule if the program was anything to go by. Except here the classes were so much more spacious and colorful and full of objects and maps and everything we didn’t have at our fancy private tutoring back home. And their anchor supply was incredible. We couldn’t really use our own yet, but with the help of a teacher and a specifically designed anchor we could learn how to use magic as if we had our own.
They had a small woods somewhere behind the building, prohibited for students, but they kept most of the magical animals there like a private zoo. They would actually bring in those animals in Preternatural Beasts and Cryptozoology classes for us to study.
Not to mention the magic-proof cabin in the Spells and Sorcery class, which was one of the few classes that every kind of Iridian student used, where one could practice magic safely without hurting themselves or others in the classroom. And in Pre-Geography, the main wall of the classroom had a detailed drawing of what the world used to look like a millennia ago, how the lands and the seas had shifted, what creatures had lived where, and even what the weather was like back in those days, complete with an approximate number of Iridians who lived in every part of the globe.
They even covered the smaller disciplines in the last semester, though all of these were elective subjects, and I was about ready to sign up to half: Animal Language, Cloud Making, Light Manipulation, Destiny Weaving, which, according to the program, was basically reading stars and altering them to manifest your will into the world. The Drama Club focused on illusions. Art Class had actual living statues and self-playing music during lessons, and one of its branches was Aura Class, where you learned to capture a person’s aura either by painting or photography.
Fascinating, all of it, and I couldn’t even get enough. They went way beyond the basics here, and I couldn’t wait to see what I’d learn in the next six months.
But having walked for the better part of the day, I lay down on the bed with the painting in my hands and I stared at it for a long time. The girls were right—it was definitely what they called the third tower, even though the entire building was made out of four parts that were connected together, and none of them was an actual tower.
My dorm was in the fourth, but my window looked out at the other side and I couldn’t see the third from here. Didn’t matter, though—I’d been looking at it the whole day while I was out, but I never once saw a sign of Taland anywhere nor did I get another message.
My eyes drifted shut slowly while it was still daylight outside. I thought about everything I’d seen, the classes that started tomorrow, and the way his smile made my heart jump just a little. I thought about how disappointed I was that I hadn’t seen him in two days and tried not to be embarrassed that I’d been searching for him the whole day—because I had to keep an eye on him, learn his schedule, his every move. Not because I wanted to see him. Absolutely not.
I must have fallen asleep without realizing it because a tapping sound on the window woke me up what could have been only seconds later.
The window was on the wall over my head, just slightly to the right. My eyes opened and I tried to see as much as I could without moving, thinking maybe it was rain, but it wasn’t.
Instead, it was a raven standing right outside the window, tapping its big beak to the glass.
I sat up with a jolt, heart in my throat, and the painting fell on the floor, the sound of it scaring me even more. Dragging myself away from the window, I blinked and blinked, hoping it was only my imagination, but it wasn’t. The raven was right there, black and beautiful and scary as hell—and it had something hanging around its neck.
A note. A piece of paper as big as my index finger tied around its neck with leather.
One word was written on it, in bold black letters: NOW.
That’s all it said— now .
The raven spread its wings and flew away, disappearing from my sight completely within a second.
I went to the window, heart still galloping, and I pulled it open. It was still early—the sun hadn’t begun to set yet.
A smile tugged at my lips. Now , the raven said.
Taland wanted to have our date now.
Again, don’t ask me how I knew; I just felt it in my bones that it was him. And ten minutes later, I was outside the building and into the backyard. The weather was nice for mid-March, the air on the warmer side. Curfew was at ten p.m., so I had plenty of time before I needed to get back.
I looked up at the third tower, a mess of nerves, but I couldn’t see Taland anywhere. The lampposts around the benches went on at the same time when the sky began to darken, and other students were coming and going around me, minding their business, but no sign of him.
That’s why I decided to enter the building and see what I could find.
The third tower was mostly classrooms, plus a few chambers for the second-years as well. My hands were shaking as I made for the main stairway in the middle of the ground floor, and it was freaking ridiculous that I was so nervous.
Ridiculous, though it did make sense. I’d only ever kissed a guy once in freshman year—-Tobias who’d stayed with us for four months in tutoring before his parents moved to Switzerland to run the European IDD. We’d been sort-of friends until then, and the night his parents threw a goodbye party at their house, we attended with Madeline. He asked me if I wanted to see his room, and I said yes. We kissed for about fifteen minutes before one of the guards knocked on the door—Poppy had noticed I was gone. She also had noticed Tobias was gone, and she’d been half jealous and half concerned. So, she’d gone to Madeline about it and asked her to send the guards to find me.
It was okay, though. I had my kiss—my first-ever kiss, and that night I was convinced that I’d meet someone else I’d want to kiss before freshman year was over, but I didn’t. They were all stuck up, arrogant man-boys, those kids I was forced to spend time with.
I never kissed anybody again.
And now I felt like my stomach might come right out of my mouth as I climbed those stairs because I wanted to kiss Taland so badly I was imagining it in detail in my head. That fantasy was making my palms sweat, and now I wondered if I should have worn something else. I had a dress on, dark red and made of cotton, so it wasn’t too much. I had a thin jacket with me, too, just in case it got chilly, but I didn’t think I was going to need it. I was on fire, my blood rushing, my cheeks flushed— I should have put on some foundation, not just mascara and lipgloss!
Damn.
Maybe I should just go back and hide in my room. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here at all—it’s late, anyway. Maybe he isn’t as beautiful as I remember, and he doesn’t smile the way my memories insist that he did.
Maybe I just made it all up.
Maybe I should have ? —
The sound of someone running something made of metal onto the railings of the stairs made the train of thoughts in my head come to a halt. I was still walking up the stairs without aim, trying to gather the courage to turn around and go back to my room—but then I heard that sound and I looked up, and my heart almost jumped out of me.
Taland was two floors up, looking down at me as he ran those rings on the railings slowly.
He was smiling.
I was smiling, too—impossible to help it.
He then continued to walk up the stairs, touching the railings with his rings all the while, and I followed him all the way to the last floor, down a short corridor that was empty by the time I reached it.
A door was open at the very end. Behind it was the rooftop deck, and Taland was there, wearing all black like the color was made for him, resting against the ledge that rose all the way to his hips, with his arms crossed and that grin on his face, his dimples to die for.
A table for two set in the very middle of the wide space, but I didn’t even glance at it twice.
Goddess, the way he looked in the light of the dying sun at his back…
My memories were liars—he was more beautiful than I remembered, and his smile was twice as perfect, if there even was such a thing. I couldn’t move at all. I just stuck to the doorway and prayed that I looked okay, that my hair wasn’t a frizzy mess— I should have tied it in a pony tail, damn it! —and that my smile didn’t make me look like a goof.
Then Taland moved away from the ledge. “Rosabel Miller,” he said, and I’d never wanted to wear a foreign skin so badly, mold with it completely. I wanted to be Rosabel Miller forever. “Welcome to our date.”
Finally able to move, I stepped onto the concrete rooftop deck as the door slowly swung closed behind me, and I was no longer shaking as badly, though I was still nervous.
“Wow,” was all I could come up with at the moment.
“I hope you like pasta, and I hope you don’t like wine,” he said, and I chuckled.
“You don’t want me to like wine?” Because there was a bottle of it on that table.
I hadn’t really had wine often, but Poppy had stolen bottles from the kitchen a couple of times, and though I didn’t love the taste of it when she shared, it wasn’t too bad.
“I want you to hate it together with me while we drink it,” Taland said, and now I was laughing.
“They do say misery loves company,” I said, and he came closer and closer until we were face-to-face right at the side of the table.
It was small and square, set with a black tablecloth, three candles in a golden candle holder, two empty plates, a tray covered with a silver dome, a bottle of red wine, and two glasses turned upside down.
Simple. Clean. Perfect.
“I’ll be Misery if you’ll be Company , ” he said, reaching out his hand for mine, and I immediately put it over his palm. He brought it to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
He actually kissed my knuckles.
Not only my cheeks, but every inch of my skin flushed as red as my dress.
“You look beautiful, Rosabel,” he said. “I’m glad you came.”
Speak, speak, say something !
I cleared my throat. “Thank you. You, too,” I said, then wanted to smack myself in the face.
He really did look beautiful, though. Hair messy but in a stylish way and eyes bright, cheeks smooth and dimpled, lips shaped like a heart, and a black shirt with the sleeves cut off, just like the white one of his uniform.
“I didn’t…see you anywhere,” I said, when he continued to just look at me, analyze my face like that, and I about died.
“I was watching you,” he said—and he was unapologetic about it.
“You were watching me?” And why didn’t that sound as creepy as it should have?
“As much as I could,” he said with a nod. “Come on, let’s look at those colors first before we sit.” And he offered me his hand again.
I took it—there was no other option. I took his hand and let him walk me to the edge of the deck to look at the setting sun in the distance, and I was trying to make sure that all my instincts were intact, too—because he had just admitted to my face that he’d watched me, and I was intrigued. Not terrified, no— intrigued.
“This is my favorite time of day—thought you might like it,” he said, pointing at the sky, which had exploded into a million colors that merged together so beautifully.
“I do. It’s… wow. ” Now that I was looking at it with all of my focus, it could be the best sunset I’d ever seen in my life.
“It’s that time of day when the sun finally sets the world on fire—see that? See how he does it?” He pointed his finger at the mountains in the distance and how they were outlined with a fiery orange that indeed looked like flames. “Like he’s been waiting all day to do it, to burn everything down. Traveled across the entire sky to ignite those flames over those mountains.”
I turned to look at him, at the shape of his profile, that smile, the fire the sun burned in his eyes as well.
It must have been a dream.
“And then the dark comes…” Slowly, he turned to face me, too. “And the dark hides away most of what we feel in the day, doesn’t it?”
The sunlight, as if it heard his words, died and died, and the sky became black with night within the minute.
“It does?” I said breathlessly.
He stepped closer, his face transformed, so mischievous now with a different fire in his eyes. A black fire.
“Mhmm. Like when we met and I wanted to kiss you more than I wanted to breathe, but I was nervous and kind of shy and a little bit hesitant, but now the night’s here and all those silly things hide in it.”
His hand was on my face.
Move, damn it, move! my mind called.
I didn’t.
“See? They’re all gone now. It’s just you and me and everything we want.”
Iris, the night was so incredibly hot, like the sun was still over us, but it just wasn’t making any light.
“Taland,” I whispered, to say I don’t know you, or it’s too soon, or let’s eat first. Anything other than just stand there and hope and pray that he came closer and closer as he did.
“Yes, sweetness?”
I liked that. I liked that name a lot. I wasn’t Rosabel at all—not La Rouge, not Miller. Just sweetness.
“Are you…are you going to kiss me?” was all I managed to say.
Goddess, that sounded so lame, but I couldn’t keep the words inside when the intensity of his stare burned me like that. When it put so much pressure on me that he was close enough to touch my nose with his.
Taland smiled like he’d just had all his dreams come true. “Yes, I will. I’ll kiss every inch of your face by the night’s end, sweetness.” Closing his eyes, he touched his fingers to the bottom of my chin and slowly raised my head.
I was holding onto the jacket in my hands with all my strength, praying I didn’t fuck this up, because yes, do it, right now, kiss me until I can’t breathe!
“But first, we eat.”
Taland moved away. My knees shook but didn’t let go.
“ Oh,” I breathed, relieved and disappointed and a little bit floating about, not really touching the ground just now. He wasn’t going to kiss me right away.
So, I started to turn to the table, to sit down, and…
Suddenly he was in front of me again, grinning widely.
“I changed my mind.” And he kissed me.
It was…different.
His lips touched mine. I felt his warmth all the way down to my toes and my hands were on his chest and his heart beat against my palm.
Slowly, his hands closed around my cheeks, and his touch was just as gentle as his lips. My eyes were closed, but I saw the shape of him in my mind. I felt him in every fiber of my being.
We were connected, one.
And that was it.
He didn’t deepen the kiss. He didn’t take more. He simply tasted me and moved back, smoothed my hair behind my ears, traced his fingers on my beauty marks, then my freckles, and we just breathed there for a moment. A moment in which all my nervousness and embarrassment hid away in the dark, and then I was perfectly comfortable being there. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
We sat down to eat after that, and at first, we were both very confused, breathless, overwhelmed. The kiss had affected him just as much as it had me.
But soon his jokes had me laughing until I had tears in my eyes, and the pasta could have been disgusting but I couldn’t tell you for sure, and I pretended to hate the wine as I drank with him, though we barely got through half a glass. We were too busy talking to remember to take a sip.
I was too busy falling for him to remember what I was there for.
And that’s the night when the best and worst six months of my life truly began.