Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
GWENNA
Darkness.
Not dense cloud cover. Not fog or pollution. We wake up one morning surrounded by just…lightlessness, the gray sky stuck in permanent twilight and only a glimmering edge of pale gold at the very edge of the trees.
The sun did not rise.
Classes are cancelled for the day. The power is out, campus-wide, everyone assuming some kind of weather event, a freak eclipse, atmospheric shifts, and the mood on campus is humming, almost giddy.
It’s fun. Or people act like it’s fun—the energy of a snow day.
Freebie downtime. Students scream and laugh like middle-schoolers, playing flashlight tag across the quads, carrying candles around with fake seriousness, taking moody flash-on selfies in front of campus buildings that they can upload whenever the cell towers come back online.
Hours pass, and the giddiness curdles.
By hour sixteen, no one’s laughing. Campus quiets, people retreat to dorm rooms, their candles melted to stubs and their phone batteries waning. Eventually everyone seems to give up and go to sleep, as if things will just reset when we all open our eyes and a new day dawns.
But it doesn’t dawn.
The second day comes and there is no sun.
It’s dark, just as dark, but colder—fifteen degrees and falling, reads an old mercury thermometer outside one of the science buildings.
The dining hall’s on generators, paper meal boxes handed out in silence.
People cross campus in groups, no one wanting to be alone.
I leave Camlann House midmorning just to see, to walk through the quads at what should be high noon and have nothing but blackness greet me at every turn.
I pass a bench where a girl is quietly sobbing into her friend’s shoulder, hysterical.
After that, I hurry back.
By the evening, the chapel is standing room only.
Later, that second night, there’s a knock at my door.
“Gwenna?”
I’ve been in here since I got back from the quads.
Trying to read. Failing. Lighting candles and watching them melt to nothing.
Staring at the wall. Layering on sweaters and double socks as it gets colder and colder.
I don’t know exactly how long it’s been or where anyone else is—all of Camlann House seemed to have retreated to our individual cells, like we’re hibernating.
Or hiding.
“Come in,” I say from the bed, where I’m sitting with my knees to my chest. Because I know who it is. Kingston. I know who it is and why he’s here and I’m…relieved, maybe. That some part of routine is still rolling on even as the rest of the world stands still.
He does, and the flames of my bumpy, stumpy candles flutter as he shuts the door behind him.
“Come in,” I say again, because he’s just standing, waiting for an invitation, even though I know we both know what we’re about to do.
“Hi,” he says. Takes a step forward.
“Hi.” I let go of myself, unfold my legs, stand up on my knees as he approaches and let him pull me the rest of the way into him, still on the bed.
His mouth is hot. Desperate. Good. I feel the familiar flood of sensation over my body—hormones or endorphins or whatever it is—and clutch him tighter, closer, suddenly very greedy in this chilly, candlelit cell of a room. Kingston obliges, eager, gentle.
I lose one sweater, then the other sweater, then my T-shirt. He strips off his own, then cradles my face into his and presses his body against mine, and I’m waiting, needing, him to lay me back on the mattress when he stops.
His forehead against my collarbone. His breath racing and uneven.
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs after a moment, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t.”
Oh.
I swallow, mentally switching gears. Fair. Completely fair. We’re exhausted. Stressed. Going on forty-eight hours with no sunlight and no idea why. And I’m just about to tell him as much, that it’s fine, when—
“I killed my father, Gwenna.”
The words land in the dark between us.
“I know,” I say at last. Because I do.
Kingston lifts his head, stares up at me, the barely-there light of the candles dancing in his golden-brown eyes.
“And I’m not sorry.” His voice is rough. “I’m not. I’d do it again.”
I don’t answer.
Instead, I pull him back into me, cradle his head against my chest as his shaking hands grip my waist and hold me tight, almost too tight. I lower my chin to his head and just…hold on.
Hold on in the darkness. To him. To all of him.
I don’t know how long we stay like that. Long enough for the fluttering candlelight to get dimmer and dimmer, for the wind outside to die down a little.
Then Kingston pulls back. Blinks. Rubs his eyes. Nods. Retreats, stands, shoulders back, composure settling in again.
“Thank you.” He bends for his clothes, then steps back, towards my door. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Dismay cuts through me. “Why?”
Kingston pauses.
“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
He strides back to my bedside, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me again.
Different. Deeper.
Across the room, my last candle fizzles out.