Chapter 6
Matteo
Two days since I kissed her, and I still taste the sin. I’m fucked.
I shouldn’t have done it; I knew it the second I walked away from her. Leaving her pinned to the wall, her lips swollen, her eyes wide. I could feel the echo of her breath burning in my lungs. My hand still remembers the curve of her throat, the way it trembled under my touch.
I enjoyed the feeling of her neck in my hand.
And still, here I am. Midnight walking through the gardens like I’m some ghost looking for the reason I’ve lost my mind.
The air is damp, fog coils through the hedges, dragging whispers in with it. Even the trees seem to lean in closer, like they want to hear my confessions, or tell me I’m a fucking idiot.
I’m not proud of it. But I’m not sorry either.
That’s the real problem; I’m not fucking sorry about kissing her. It’s been the only thing I can think about since I blew smoke into her mouth on the cliff. What her lips would taste like and they tasted like fucking heaven.
She’s been avoiding me. I’ve watched her from every damn corner of this place. She walks tense, tight shoulders hunched when her cousins are around, flinching as if she’s waiting for a war to break out in her own bloodline. Her smiles are fake, but she’s still beautiful.
And I still want her.
Even knowing I shouldn’t.
Even when every reason in the world says I should walk the other way and forget the feeling of her mouth against mine.
I drag my fingers through my hair and turn toward the far edge of the garden path, boots crunching over damp stone. The moon hangs low behind a sheet of clouds. The lighthouse flashes out in the distance, steadfast, merciless.
Just like her eyes when she looked up at me that night.
There’s movement ahead. Laughter. Smoke.
I already know who it is before seeing them. Marco and Milo lean against a marble column, cigarettes glowing red in the dark.
“Look who crawled out of his brooding hole.” Marco smirks. He’s an asshole by choice.
“Didn’t know ghosts made footprints,” Milo adds, and I tell him to fuck off.
“How is Rosa?” I ask Marco more than Milo, and he sticks his finger up at me.
I grunt and grab Marco’s lighter off the stone wall, lighting a cigarette of my own. I exhale smoke, looking at the shadowy night.
“You good?” Marco asks, raising a brow.
I know what he’s asking about, and I shrug. “Classes are shit. Waste of time.” Not answering the question in the way he wanted me to.
“Tell that to Milo. He nearly got detention for calling the politics professor a ‘wannabe CIA reject.’” I laugh at Marco telling me what happened, as I missed that class, because I didn’t want to go.
“Wasn’t wrong.” Milo grins. “He still thinks the Cold War is the peak of strategic warfare.”
Marco snorts, but then his smirk curls wider. “So, you kissed the Irish girl.”
They already know. I wasn’t going to hide it from the two people who probably know me better than I do. I’ve been dodging the talk because I don’t know what to say.
“You stare at her like she’s the desert and you’re,” Milo says, making Marco laugh.
“Don’t be dramatic,” I mutter, taking in a deep drag of my smoke, and letting it settle in my lungs before exhaling.
“Oh, we’re past dramatic,” Marco says. “You kissed the only girl in school whose family wants to see our blood in the gutters.”
Marco’s words hit me, because I’ve been thinking the same thing, from all the girls who could have been on the cliff, from all the girls who grabbed my attention, it had to be the fucking enemy.
“There are nations of girls here.” Milo laughs. “And you pick the one dipped in Irish whiskey and wrapped in knives.”
“Because she’s fire.” The words slip out before I can stop them.
What the hell is happening?
They both go quiet and that silence is worse than the teasing.
“She’s not for you,” Marco says finally.
“I know,” I agree. He’s right, she’s not for me. She has a fucking ring on her finger, and the blood in her veins is poison.
“Doesn’t mean you’ll stop, though,” Milo says, and I look at him as he smiles. “You’re not wired that way.”
“No,” I agree. “I’m not.” Looking out at the garden, seeing some of the other students walking around talking, not really hearing what they’re saying. A few of the girls look this way, and smile, and Milo tells them not to go too far. Already knowing he will be having some fun with one of them.
We stand there a while, watching the mist shift over the gardens. Then Marco nods toward the library board where a new sign is pinned under the lantern light.
“Masquerade Ball,” he reads. “A chance to dance with demons.”
“I already know what mask I’m wearing,” I say. I had the idea soon as I saw the leaflet two days ago.
“Let me guess, something sinful?” Marco asks.
“Something honest,” I reply.
Milo chuckles. “Are we going dark and elegant or loud and threatening?”
“Elegant. Terrifying.” I flick ash. “Let them guess what we’re hiding.”
I finish my cigarette and crush it under my boot. “I need air,” I say walking away from them.
“You’re already outside,” Milo calls after me.
But I don’t answer. I just keep walking, to a place I know I will be alone, to think.
The roof of the west tower is the only place they won’t follow.
The stairs twist like ribs around a spine, narrow and dark. The silence at the top is worth it.
From here, I can see everything.
The academy as a whole. The cliffs. The wild ocean slamming itself into the rocks like it’s trying to climb to heaven. The lighthouse stands firm against it all. Stoic. Alone.
I sit on the ledge, knees up, arms draped over them, breath ghosting in front of my face. The only light is from the cigarette in my hand.
Here I can think. Here the weight of what I’ve done doesn’t crush me flat.
There’s movement behind me. I don’t turn. I already know who it is.
I feel her like a shift in the tide.
She walks slowly, every step silent. But I know it’s her; she seems to have burned herself into me now. Her scent, her movements, just her.
The air shifts. Electricity hums. I still don’t look.
Instead, I say softly, without turning, “If you’re going to jump, little lamb, at least make it interesting this time.”
There’s silence. No witty comeback. Just the sound of the water crashing against the stones down below.
I feel her moving closer to me, but yet I still don’t look at her. She sits an arm’s length away from me, and we sit in silence, the kind that carries storms and hunger and unspoken rules. The kind of silence that might end in fire, or blood.
And I wonder if she hears the same thing I do when the waves crash below.
Not danger.
Not fear.
But something calling.
Something ancient.
Something that sounds a hell of a lot like fate.
She doesn’t say a word. Not one, but she stays.
The wind biting our skin as it hits us, the waves below echoing everything we’re not saying. The silence between us isn’t soft. It’s thick. It’s heavy. It bruises.
I keep my eyes on the lighthouse, the steady blink of its warning light like a heartbeat in the dark.
Eventually, I speak. “You always find the highest places to pretend you’re not drowning.”
Still nothing.
I glance sideways. Her arms are wrapped around her legs. Her chin on her knees. Watching me, or not. I can’t tell. That’s the problem with her. You never know if she’s about to run or destroy me. Again.
“You should stay away from me,” I say finally, my voice quiet but edged.
She shifts until our shadows merge on the wall, two long forms tangled.
But she still doesn’t speak, and maybe that’s the answer.
Maybe silence is all she can offer me, and maybe it’s all I deserve.
I push to my feet and walk past her. As I reach the door, I pause, just long enough for her to hear it.
“You’re going to make this very hard, little lamb.” Then I leave.
She’s going to make it hard, her eyes are begging to be saved from what, I have no idea. Yet, I don’t know if she’s making it hard, or if I am.
No matter how many times I tell myself she’s an O'Brien, it doesn’t change the pull I have toward her. No matter how many times I tell myself we should kill them for what they did, I want to taste her more.
And that’s when I know it’s not her who’s going to make this hard, but me.
By the time I get back to my dorm, Marco's sprawled across the bed, my bed, laptop glowing on his lap, and Milo is leaning half-asleep against the wall with a book that’s definitely not for class.
“Thought you ghosted us,” Marco says without looking up.
“Didn’t think you’d survive ten minutes without trying to kill something,” Milo yawns.
I toss myself into the chair and stretch my legs, boots hitting the black coffee table I have on one side of the room.
“Are you still brooding over the Irish girl?” Marco finally looks at me, and the stare is serious, he’s not joking around now.
“Is that going to be your only topic for the rest of the semester?” I ask.
“Until you fuck her or bury her,” he says.
I roll my eyes.
“That’s grim,” Milo says, flipping a page. “But accurate.”
I lean my head back against the leather and close my eyes. “She showed up again.”
Silence.
“On the rooftop?” Milo asks in shock. He knows the rooftop I go to. “Did you talk?”
I exhale. “Didn’t need to.”
“Jesus,” Marco mutters. “It’s always the silent ones.”
“She didn’t even yell?” Milo asks.
Why would she yell? She kissed me back.
“No. She didn’t move. We sat. That’s it.”
But that wasn’t it; I felt it again. That pull. That war.
Her silence is worse than her screams.
I turn to them both staring at me and then see the case on the bed. “What’s that?”
“Father sent a few different masks for us to pick from.” I get up and walk over to the bed and open the case. “There are a lot in there.” Milo sits up and pulls out a few. “We haven’t picked ours yet.”
All styles. All shapes. All sins.
My eyes stop on one. I reach out, fingers ghosting over a sharp onyx mask carved with scaled leather. It looks like dragon wings, curling over the eyes. Horns rise from the sides, sleek and proud.
It’s not a mask. It’s a threat.
I pick it up, and it feels like me.
Power. Rage. Fire. Desire. Control.
“I’ve found my mask.” Let them guess what monster I am.
Let her guess.
But it makes me wonder what kind of mask she’ll wear.
I wonder what version of Aoife O’Brien she’ll let the world see that night. The one the family is locking away, or the one who is itching to come out and play.
But the thing about masks?
Masks reveal more than they hide. I’ll find her secrets.