Chapter 26
Iwaited for something to happen until waiting began to feel like another form of obedience.
The basin stayed dark.
No one knocked.
No message came.
Eventually I gave up, opened the door, and found the apple.
Bruised at one side. Skin split under a thumb. Set close enough for me to find and far enough away that no one could call it a gift.
Kieran, then.
I picked it up and shoved it into my coat pocket because I couldn’t just leave it there.
It felt wrong.
The corridor outside Room 114 was empty. It would not stay that way, because Zenith Hall had a talent for producing witnesses the moment a girl made a decision, so I moved before the building could get organized.
I considered going to the east kitchen but decided against it.
Rev would ask what happened in the ring, then what happened after it, and at least one of those questions would be about Caspian or Hale, not the assessment.
I wasn’t ready to answer any of them, so I went to the clock tower instead.
The stair was even colder than the last time. Or I was. At the roof door, the little carved wedge held its place, grinning with the confidence I wished I could feel for just one second.
When I pushed the door open, wind came in first.
Then green apple.
Kieran Marsh sat on the low wall with one knee drawn up. His right hand rested carefully in his lap.
I took out the apple out of my coat pocket and tossed it to him.
He moved to catch it with his right hand.
Then froze.
Green-gold light seeped through the shoulder of his coat, thin at first, then bright enough to make the dark fabric look wet.
The apple hit the stone between us and rolled toward his boot.
Kieran didn’t make a joke quickly enough to cover for himself.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Poor reflexes.”
“That was more than poor reflexes.”
“Well,” he said, looking down at the apple. “It was certainly a poor catch.”
I stepped onto the roof and let the door close behind me.
Kieran’s gaze moved to the cut at my mouth. Caspian had cleaned the blood, but the split still pulled when I spoke.
The look on Kieran’s face changed before he could charm it into something easier.
“Does that hurt?”
“More when people remind me of it.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“Then I’ll make an effort to be less concerned with your mouth.”
“That sounds difficult for you.”
“You have no idea.”
The wind wove between us.
So did the Pull: a bright clean rush that should have felt like mischief and did not.
Under it was pain.
Not mine.
His.
Kieran noticed me noticing and shifted his weight.
“Don’t,” he said.
One word. No flourish.
That frightened me more than the green light had.
I stopped beside the wall but didn’t sit.
Below us, the academy went on pretending to be made of stone and not listening.
“You were outside my door.”
“Near your door.”
“You were watching Caspian.”
The word did what I thought it would.
His smile stayed, but the boy under it tensed.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I meant to be the one waiting for you when you got out of there. And I wasn’t.”
The honesty hurt more than another joke would have.
“You could have come down.”
“I could have.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looked past me, over the roof, toward the dark shape of the west grounds.
“Because he brought a cloth.” Kieran laughed once, without humor. “I had another apple. Very symbolic. Very charming. Completely useless for cleaning up blood.”
“Kieran.”
“He had what you needed. He saw the blood and thought of the cloth.”
For once, he did not sound jealous because he wanted to win.
He sounded jealous because someone else had been kind in a way he had not known how to be.
That was much harder to defend against.
The apple sat between us on the stone.
Neither of us picked it up.
“Was that why you left it? So I’d know you came?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“So you’d know I came.”
“I knew.”
Kieran’s breath quickened.
The Pull answered, quick and bright, and for a second the roof smelled like autumn and rain-wet stone.
He stood.
Too fast.
Pain crossed his face, sharp enough to break through whatever mask he had meant to wear. His right hand went halfway to his shoulder before he forced it down.
“Stop doing that,” I said.
“Standing?”
“Pretending I didn’t see.”
“You are inconveniently observant.”
I stepped closer.
“What’s wrong with your Mark?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then away.
It wasn’t flirtation this time. It was escape.
“There are things I want from you,” he said. “One of them is ugly enough that I’m trying very hard not to put it in your hands.”
“I hate sentences that start like that.”
“Exactly why I won’t tell you what I want.”
“Kieran. You can’t say that and then refuse to explain.”
“That’s all I can give you without becoming a worse man than I would like to be.”
The wind pressed cold through my coat.
I should have stepped back.
Instead I said, “And what kind of man would you like to be?”
His eyes held mine.
Green, and too bright with pain to be careless.
“The kind who does not ask a girl to save him before she has decided whether she loves him.”
The roof went quiet around us.
I heard the flag rope knock once against the pole below. A bell somewhere inside the school. My own breath, suddenly too loud.
“Save you from what?”
Kieran looked at the apple in my hand.
“Not today,” he said again, but this time the words sounded less like refusal and more like pleading.
I did step back then.
Only one pace.
It felt like more.
Without the smile, Kieran looked younger. And worse, more frightened.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t asked about his Mark.
“Did he kiss you?”
The question came out of nowhere before he could polish it.
I stared at him.
“Caspian?”
“Unless Aldric has become much more interesting since breakfast. Although I suppose the question applies to Hale as well.”
“No.”
His relief was immediate and he failed completely at hiding it.
“He cleaned blood off my mouth,” I said. “That’s all.”
“I saw that part.”
“And you wanted to hate him for it.”
“Very much.”
“But?”
Kieran’s mouth twisted.
“But he did it well. And I couldn’t quite bring myself to hate him as much as I wanted to.”
I squinted at him.
“Kieran Marsh, you’re jealous.”
“Terribly.”
“And you’re admitting it.”
“I’m hoping novelty will distract you from the unbecoming part of it.”
I moved closer again.
“It isn’t working.”
“No?”
“I noticed the unbecoming part immediately.”
“And?”
His voice had changed on the single word.
Lower.
The Pull tightened between us.
My Mark moved under my sleeve, choosing Kieran with a bright, hungry pull threaded through with a pain I could not separate from his.
I should have been afraid of that.
I was.
I also wanted him to touch me.
“And,” I said, “I’m still here anyway.”
Kieran went terribly still.
He was good at moving. Too good. Jokes, hands, glances, turns of phrase, all of him designed to keep a room from seeing anything that could actually hurt him.
Stillness looked dangerous on him.
“Still allowed?” he asked.
The question hit low in my body. I knew exactly where it was going.
“Yes.”
He crossed the space between us like the answer had cut the last thread holding him back.
The kiss wasn’t careful this time.
It probably should have been. My mouth was split, and the first press of his lips broke the cut open again. I tasted blood.
I didn’t pull away.
Neither did he.
His left hand caught my wrist, pressing against the Mark. Mine found the front of his coat and held on hard enough to wrinkle it. The pain in my lip sharpened, then vanished under the hotter fact of him: his mouth, his breath, the low sound he made when I stepped into him instead of away.
One of us kicked the apple and it rolled across the stone somewhere near our feet.
Neither of us looked.
Kieran kissed me like he was trying to win something back and already knew he couldn’t.
Then his body seized.
He broke away with a sharp breath, his left hand still on my wrist, his right shoulder lit brilliant green-gold beneath his coat.
This time he couldn’t even try hide it.
I froze.
His Mark was burning through the cloth.
Not glowing. Burning.
Silver-green light leaked from the lines high on his shoulder, and for one awful second I thought I could see the shape of it eating into the skin beneath.
“Kieran…” I didn’t know where to go with the words.
His smile fell apart long enough for me to see what he had been holding behind it.
“I know,” he said.
“Know what?”
“That you deserve the truth.”
“Then give it to me.”
He looked toward the stair door and shook his head.
“Not here.”
I almost laughed.
The words had begun to feel like the school motto.
Then the basin call struck my wrist.
Not sound.
Pressure.
Silver-white light somewhere below, finding the Mark before the message found a basin.
Kieran felt it too. His hand tightened at my waist, then loosened.
“Juno,” I said.
“Now?”
I nodded.
“Then go.”
He bent, picked up the apple, and put it back in my hand.
His fingers lingered against mine for half a breath.
“If Juno sends you anywhere tonight,” he said, “don’t go alone.”
“Is that advice or prophecy?”
“Experience.”
I tucked the apple back into my pocket.
“You still owe me the truth.”
“Yes.”
“Soon.”
No smile to hide the pain this time.
“Soon,” he said.
I left him on the roof with the wind and the pain he would not name.
By the time I reached Room 114, the basin was already lit.
Silver-white light gathered under the water, thinner than a summons and steadier than a warning.
Three words formed.
Juno. Now. Alone.
Then, beneath them:
Do not be seen.
I looked at the apple in my pocket.
Then at the door.
“Of course,” I said to the basin. “Now you have timing.”