Chapter 19
NINETEEN
GWENNA
Sometime late Sunday night, or early Monday morning, I wake up all at once.
My eyes just flick open. Peacefully.
But I’m wide awake.
I roll over, and then again, tugging the comforter over me and wishing I had my weighted blanket. After a few more rounds of tossing and turning, I sigh, give up, and decide to get some water. Reset, maybe.
I’m still groggy enough when I pull open my door that I actually forget there’s someone out there. Until I almost trip over him.
“Ah!” I suck in a breath. “Sorry.”
Callahan’s head jerks up, his eyes wide. He’s sitting, but slumped, and for one panicked second, I think he might be hurt or something. But no. He’s just…
“Sorry,” I say again, whispering intently. “Were you…asleep?”
Callahan blinks behind his glasses. “What? I—no. No, I wasn’t.” He gets to his feet quickly. “No, I was just…”
But as he rises, and I peer into his eyes, he looks…tired.
As soon as he sees me, he looks at the floor. His ears are pink.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t mean to—it’s just been a long weekend.”
God, that’s right. The tournament. I’d been there—of course I’d been there, I wasn’t allowed to be anywhere else—and it looked exhausting.
Kai getting the black card. Lanz taking over for him.
Kingston and Callahan both barely catching their breath in between bouts, fighting for their lives against Mountstuart and Villa Loyola.
Again, I look up at Callahan. “Have you slept since then?”
He shakes his head.
“Cal,” I whisper. “Come on.”
“It’s not just…” He swallows. “Midterms. I’ve got this paper on the Hapsburgs I haven’t even started. And then next week is Lent, so…”
For the first time, it occurs to me how much this all is.
For them. For him.
For a nineteen-year-old.
“I won’t tell Kingston,” I say quickly. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
Callahan exhales. “Yeah. I mean, thank you. But no. It’s…” He hesitates. “If something happened to you on my watch, I’d never forgive myself.”
In the moonlight, I can see his expression tense, almost like he’s wincing. I have the strange impulse to reach up and stroke his cheek.
I don’t. But I could.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” I say softly.
“You don’t know that.” Callahan’s words are soft but fierce. “You never know that, Gwenna. You just don’t. No one does.”
His right hand starts to fidget—his thumb, stroking the rings that he wears on his first two fingers. Almost automatically, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.
I wait.
“My parents died,” Callahan says. “They were killed. Home invasion. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t—”
He doesn’t finish. Just closes his eyes, stills his hand.
Looks at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. Never mind. You just…” He gestures vaguely at the rest of the suite, breaking his gaze away from mine. I don’t even care about water anymore, but I want to…give him space, I don’t know. I slip over to the cupboard, pull out two glasses, fill them both.
“Here,” I say, returning to Callahan’s side. He takes it, but doesn’t drink.
“Thank you.”
I hold my own water to my chest, studying him.
I don’t want him to have to do this for me.
But I don’t think I can talk him out of it.
“You have to sleep, Cal,” I say gently. “You know that.”
Callahan stares into his glass of water.
“You…” I blow out a breath. Scan around the living area, my slightly-open bedroom door.
“Here.” I move to the door, push it open a few more inches.
Callahan freezes.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m saying it’s okay.”
Still, he doesn’t move.
“Cal,” I say, a bit more sharply. “Come here.”
That does something. His eyes flick wider, his lips part slightly, and he steps over the threshold and past me.
I slip behind him and gently press the door shut.
“Here.” I set my glass of water on my nightstand, take his and put it on the desk, and indicate the loveseat opposite my bed. “Sit.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He doesn’t move.
“Callahan,” I say, softer. “Come on. If someone…I don’t know, breaks through the window and tries to nab me, you’ll be right here.” I try a smile. “I’ll scream extra-loud and wake you up, promise. Now sit.”
The pink tinge in his ears deepens. But he sits.
“Okay,” I say. And suddenly realize that I now have to lie back down in my bed and attempt to sleep while Callahan O’Brian is barely five feet away from me.
But it’s too late. I’m committed. So I nod, reach under my bedside lamp to flick it off, and insert myself back under the bedclothes.
To my surprise, I’m actually tired. My body feels heavy and relaxed, like having someone to watch over me is an actual reassurance.
“Good night, Gwenna.”
I fall asleep so fast I’m not sure if I ever answer.
I arrive to Emrys’s class with my arms full.
“Julian of Norwich.” I ignore Kingston’s obligatory stand-as-I-enter and lay down the first volume on my desk.
“Mechthild of Magedburg. Marguerite Porete. Hildegard von Bingen.” I stack them awkwardly, the bound facsimiles all of differing sizes and conditions, some of the bindings so weak that they’re frayed and splintering, others tight with leather that hasn’t been cracked in years, maybe decades.
Satisfied that they’re stable, I take a step back. “To start, anyway.”
Kingston considers them. Looks to Emrys.
“Miss Vale,” Emrys explains, “thought it might be beneficial to expand the scope of our inquiry.”
“They’re all Christians,” I say. “For what it’s worth. These aren’t alchemical texts or romances or anything. It’s theology.”
“I know who Hildegard von Bingen is,” Kingston says.
“Good.” I pull the topmost book off the stack and all but shove it into his hands. “Then you can start with her.”
I’m not sure where all the forcefulness is coming from. Maybe it’s spillover from the Candlemas Ball, from giving back to Elena, to Kingston, to Kai, even. Maybe
Either way, Kingston doesn’t protest. He doesn’t say anything, actually, simply gets to work on the first lines of Hildegard’s Scivias, his fountain pen in hand.
It’s…surprising.
And even more surprising when he speaks up toward the end of class.
“Gwenna.”
The sound of my name almost startles me, and I nearly stab my pen through a page of Mechthild’s. I have to blink a few times to refocus my vision.
“What,” I say, distracted and almost confused. I look at the papers on my desk and his. “Did I take something you need? These aren't very well organized, and…”
“May I ask you a question?” Kingston says. “I'm sorry to interrupt.”
I press my lips together. You just did, I think, but there's no point in being sassy. “Fire away,” I say instead.
“Have you been eating anything?”
I don't know how to finish the sentence. “Yeah, sure,” I say. “Here and there. Morgan and I keep snacks in her room.”
A movement passes over Kingston's face that could almost be called a sneer, but he quashes it away too fast for me to tell. “I've seen the way she eats,” he says. “I wouldn't call it food.”
“Ha,” I say. “Well…” I chew my lip.
“You never go to the dining hall,” Kingston goes on. “I asked the other three.”
“I do,” I insist. “I mean, I did. Once or twice.”
“Once or twice,” Kingston repeats. “You’ve been for a few weeks now.”
I grimace. “Yeah, well, it's kind of…awkward,” I say, frustration seeping into my tone despite my resolution to be neutral.
“I have no friends, and if Morgan's not there, which she usually isn’t, I’m just walking around looking for a place to sit with my bodyguard, who isn't eating because he's got everything waiting for him back at Camlann.
And so I have people looking at me and looking at the person looking at me, who is also looking at me.
It doesn't…” I exhale sharply. “It kills my appetite, I guess.
I don't like doing it. I don't like being watched.”
“I understand,” Kingston says after a moment. “We'll figure something out.”
The next day, when Callahan drops me in class and I sit at my workstation, there's something new alongside all the stacks of papers and my scribbled notebook.
A brown paper bag. Like a literal lunch sack from a cartoon.
I throw a glance sideways at Kingston. His eyes are trained on the work in front of him, one broad hand holding down the facsimile as he transcribes in longhand, fountain pen in the other. I look back at the paper bag, then back at him.
“Is this…” I trail off.
“You said you didn't like people watching you,” he says evenly. “So I'm just going to keep working here.”
The back of my neck and my cheeks get hot.
I did say that, didn’t I? I blow out a breath and uncurl the top, reach inside, and retrieve a small glass container with neatly cut carrot sticks and something wrapped in wax paper that I peel back gingerly.
A sandwich, whole grain bread, and what looks like almond butter. And a carton of whole milk.
I look at Kingston again. He's still focused. And there’s a band-aid wrapped around the knuckle of his left index finger, I notice.
“I wasn't sure what you'd like,” he says, “or if you had any allergies, but—“
“I don't,” I say quickly, as if that's the issue here. As if what's weird about this is that he didn't bother to check if I was going to go into anaphylactic shock over something in this little sack lunch. No, the weird part is that he brought it to me. Is that…
I look at the sandwich, at the carrot sticks.
This isn't something private chef-y. The sandwich is cut on the diagonal, oozing a bit—what is it with this guy and almonds? I wonder—and the crusts are cut off. They carrots aren’t perfectly turned like carrots you'd see on a restaurant plate.
They're scrubbed, peeled, quartered, chopped imperfectly and a little unevenly.
My eyes dart back to the band-aid on his finger.
Kingston made me a sandwich. He cut me up carrot sticks.
The image flashes in my mind. Him in the Camlann House kitchen, finding a cutting board, a knife, carefully slicing off the peels and presumably cutting himself in the process, pouring them through his hands into this little Tupperware.
I can't even…
No. What? I don't know why I'm so overwhelmed. It's just a stupid sandwich.
And I am hungry.
I take a bite of one triangle corner. It’s…
fine. Nothing to write home about, honestly.
The kind of bread that's so chewy and dense it must have 300% of your daily fiber allotment.
The almond butter is unsweetened, too, and sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Guess that's what the milk is for. I pinch the top and pull out the spout.
He packed a straw, at least, so I don't have to drink out of it like a kindergartner.
I stab it in, take a sip, and clear my throat.
And I have to say, something about the old-school combination hits.
Because once that first bite is done, it's like my appetite comes back online all at once.
I scarf the second half, trying not to eat it too quickly, and work my way through the carrot sticks, chewing as quietly as I can, even though in the quiet of the classroom, I'm probably crunching like a Bugs Bunny cartoon on max volume.
When I'm done, I replace the container inside the bag and stare out into space. I can't really focus on work again, but I can't quite look at Kingston either. Like I need to explain something, say more.
“They would watch us,” I say suddenly, “At Renfrew.” I don't bother to look and see if he's listening, because if I do I'll probably lose my nerve.
So I rattle on the rest of what I have to say.
“A lot of the girls had eating disorders. Not me,” I clarify, “but I guess it was just easier to make sure everyone was eating than to single out the ones that were trying to hide it.
So they'd have counselors, every two girls, keeping an eye on us, just staring as we, like, cut up our food and chewed and swallowed. It was really…” I exhale sharply.
“I didn't like it. I know it was for a good reason, but…”
“You don't have to explain,” Kingston says. “I'm just glad we found something that worked for you.”
I nod, not that he's looking at me. And suddenly, it feels like the almond butter is stuck in my throat all over again.
“Thank you,” I say suddenly, because I realize I haven't yet.
“You're welcome,” Kingston says.
He returns to writing, and I look at what's under his pen. The notes he's been transcribing. Maybe it's just that my blood sugar's perked back up, but I notice something.
"Hang on," I say, tucking hair behind my ear and leaning over from my seat.
Kingston looks up. "What?"
"That's..." I hesitate, squinting. "That's wrong, what you have there."
Kingston bristles a little. "What?" He looks down at his notes.
"The translation, the notes you're making, look," I get up and point, "this word, viriditas."
"Yes," Kingston says. “Manliness, vigor, strength."
I shake my head. "No, no. It's not from vir or virtus for man. It's from viridis. Green. It's greenness."
Kingston's silent a second. "Oh," he says. "That changes things."
"Yes, it changes things," I say, half exasperated, half excited. "Here, just..." I grab the entire folio of pages from his desk, his notepaper and all. "Give me that."
Kingston doesn't refuse, just leans away a bit so I can clear it off his desk, then sits there, looking blank.
I don't care. I'm too excited to pick apart what's going on here.
Not least because it involves jumping on a very stupid etymological error made by Kingston, which is satisfying in its own right.
As I grab my pen, Kingston looks around. “What should I read now?”
"If I may?” Professor Emrys says from his desk. "We've yet to review many of the Grail legends proper in any depth. Perhaps you might look those over? I suspect that stories of chivalry might be more your…semantic field," he adds.
I snort as I go back to the Hildegard text, furiously scribbling and scratching things out. No wonder his translation made no sense—the idea that God’s manliness is giving life to all the Earth is…a stretch at best.
"All right.” Kingston accepts a second folio of papers from Emrys. Then he glances at me sideways. "I don't think I made that many mistakes," he says under his breath. "It was just one word."
I ignore him. Emrys doesn't.
"One word," he says sagely, "can make a world of difference, Mr. Pendragon.”