Chapter 18
Ilasted until midnight before I took the brooch out of the drawer.
The room had become too small for me, and the wren in my palm had become too much like a question.
I thought of Rev first.
Then Juno.
Then Hale, which was a mistake I didn’t need to make twice in one day.
The clock tower came last.
Wind. Stone. Green apple. A boy who had once given me a place where the school seemed farther away than it had any right to be.
I didn’t want answers.
I wanted somewhere the brooch could belong to me for five minutes before Zenith put another meaning on it.
So I put on my coat and went to the clock tower.
The tower door opened before I touched it.
Kieran stood on the other side.
“You opened the door before I knocked,” I said. “Almost like you were waiting for me.”
I meant it as a joke.
Kieran didn’t take it as one.
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” he said.
He stepped back and I went in.
The stairwell was narrow enough that my shoulder brushed stone when I turned. Above us, the roof door was propped open with the same carved wedge as before. Wind came down the stairs in thin, clean gusts.
Kieran saw the brooch in my hand, and his boyish smile turned into a frown.
“Quill gave you that?”
His gaze went to the silver wren.
“Verita,” he said, softer now.
“My mother’s.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“Selene?”
My fingers closed harder around the brooch.
“You knew her name?”
“I found it once,” he said. “In one of the books Aldric let me sign out. I wasn’t sure but…” He dropped off.
The brooch looked too small in my hand for the amount of history everyone else had put inside it.
“Did everyone know she was here but me?”
Kieran took a breath.
“Enough people knew to make it unforgivable that you didn’t.”
I should have turned around. I should have gone back to Room 114, put the brooch in the drawer, and slept badly in a room that at least belonged to me by assignment.
Instead, I climbed and Kieran followed behind me.
On the roof, the wind hit hard enough to make my eyes water before I could blame my own emotions for it. The roofs of Zenith spread below us, black slate and narrow walks and lit windows where a few people were still awake.
Kieran shut the roof door to keep the stairwell from swallowing our voices.
“You can tell me to leave if you want to be alone,” he said.
“It’s your tower.”
“Not tonight.”
I held the brooch tighter.
“They gave me my dead mother’s brooch and told me I should be grateful to stand beside Caspian Ashford in three weeks.”
Kieran looked toward the quad. No smart-ass response came to fill the silence.
“Quill told you.”
“Quill gave me Caspian. Juno gave me a word.”
“Untethered.”
“The Council word.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“Did she give you the other one?”
I looked at the brooch. The wren’s lifted wing caught the moonlight and held it.
“Star-Marked.”
Kieran stopped looking at the brooch and looked at me.
For once, the cleverness didn’t get there first.
“Who told you that?”
“Juno.”
“That sounds like Juno.”
“Is it bad?”
“Bad things are rarely that old.”
“You’re dodging.”
“A little.”
The wind moved between us.
Kieran looked out over the quad. I followed his gaze and saw one dark window lit across the way.
“Ashford’s window is lit,” Kieran said.
“Good.”
That brought Kieran’s eyes back to me.
“Good?”
“Let him wonder what I do when no one is holding a basin under my hand.”
Kieran’s laugh came short and surprised. It warmed the space between us for exactly one second before the cold took it back.
“You didn’t come here to talk about Ashford,” he said.
“No.”
He looked at me carefully.
“Did you come here for me?”
“So humble, Marsh.”
“I’m suffering through a new experience tonight, forgive me.”
I should have had a clever answer ready. I usually did with Kieran.
Nothing came.
I looked down at the brooch.
“I didn’t want to be alone with it.”
Kieran stepped closer.
“Then don’t be.”
I swallowed.
“Careful,” I said. “You’re coming dangerously close to saying the right thing again.”
“I apologize.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Not even a little.”
He drew nearer, slowly enough that I could refuse every inch of it. When I didn’t, he stopped in front of me and held out his left hand.
“May I?”
“May you what?”
“Hold it.”
I put the brooch in his palm.
It looked even smaller there than it had in my hand. Not less important. Only easier to see. A silver wren with one wing lifted, ridiculous and proud and too delicate to have survived when my mother didn’t.
Kieran touched the raised wing with his thumb.
“Your mother had good taste.”
“She told me the bird looked braver than real ones.”
“Was she right?”
I looked at it.
“I don’t know what real brave looks like.”
“Yes, you do.”
The wind pulled at my coat. My fingers had gone stiff from cold or anger or the effort of not crying. Maybe all three. I reached for the brooch, but my hand shook before I touched it.
Kieran saw the tremor.
“Do you want to wear it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s allowed. You don’t always have to know what you want.”
“Not according to anyone else.”
“Everyone else is downstairs. We don’t care about them up here.”
The clock tower felt taller when he said that. Farther removed from the rest of Zenith Hall.
I looked at the brooch again. Then at my coat. Then at his hand, waiting.
“Yes,” I said. “Put it on.”
He stepped close enough that the Pull reached my mouth before his hand reached my collar. Apples and wind so clean it almost hurt.
“Here?” he asked.
His knuckles hovered near the left side of my coat.
“There.”
He pinned the brooch slowly. The metal point slid through wool.
Halfway through, his breath caught against my cheek.
He shifted the work to his left hand and finished the clasp.
“Kieran?”
“It’s fine.”
“That’s what people say when it isn’t.”
“It’s fine for now. This is your moment of pain, I’ve had more than my share.”
He fastened the clasp and lowered his hand.
The brooch rested over my heart.
Poisoned gift. Mother’s relic. Warning. Inheritance.
On my coat, in the wind, under Kieran’s careful eyes, it became something else too.
Mine.
Kieran looked at it for one breath too long.
“There,” he said.
His voice had changed.
So had mine when I answered.
“Thanks.”
The Pull moved through me, warmer now, less like a hook than a hand I had not taken yet.
Kieran’s eyes went to my mouth.
His hand rose, then stopped before touching my face.
“Still allowed?” he asked.
The question landed low in me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He kissed me carefully.
For about one second.
Then I caught the front of his coat and pulled him closer.
Careful shattered.
Kieran made a sound against my mouth, low and surprised, and his left hand came to my waist like he had been told he could have this one thing this one time and meant to take it while he still could. His fingers gripped me heard through the wool of my coat.
His right hand stayed close to his side.
Held back by pain or discipline or both.
That restraint did something worse to me than being touched would have.
I opened my mouth under his.
The Pull flared green and bright at the back of my throat, apple-sharp, wind-cold, threaded with the heat of his mouth. The brooch pressed between us. My mother’s wren. Quill’s trap. Mine now, hard against my chest while Kieran kissed me like he was trying not to ask for more and failing.
The roof stayed under my feet.
Barely.
When he drew back, he did it slowly, his forehead almost touching mine.
I let him.
Reluctantly.
“I hate that they used it that way.”
“So do I.”
“I’m glad you brought it here.”
“Don’t make me regret that.”
“I won’t.”
He said it too quickly. Too seriously.
For a second, I felt the shape of something behind the answer.
A locked door with his back against it.
Then the clock above us struck.
The sound moved through the roof, through the stone, through the brooch at my chest.
Kieran closed his eyes.
When he opened them, whatever pain he had been hiding was back where he kept it.
“You should go down before you and me and the tower becomes a story someone else gets to tell.”
“And you?”
“I’m already a story people tell.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“You have no idea.”
“I might, actually.”
His smile came back, but only at one corner.
“Yes,” he said. “You might.”
I went to the roof door.
At the top of the stair, I turned.
Kieran was still by the rail, wind blowing his locks back away from his face, left hand braced on the stone, right shoulder held stiff under his coat, a faint ring of green dampening it.
I wanted to ask again about that but I didn’t.
Tonight wasn’t the night.
“Good night, Kieran,” I said.
“Good night, Astra.”
I went down with the brooch over my heart and the roof wind still inside my lungs.