Chapter 40
Caspian’s rooms were larger than mine in every direction a room could be larger.
That was the first thing I noticed after he closed the door.
The second was that he didn’t lock it.
A black marble basin stood beneath the narrow window, covered with a heavy cloth pinned at four corners with silver weights.
No water showed.
“Can it hear us?” I asked.
“No.”
“Can it hear that you covered it?”
“Probably.”
“Will anyone come because of it?”
“No.”
“You sound certain.”
“I paid for certainty.”
I looked toward the door.
“No one enters without my permission.”
“Because you are Caspian Ashford.”
“Because the school assumes my father has already done the watching.”
“Does he?”
“Not in here.”
“How do you know?”
His gaze went to the covered basin, then back to me.
“Because I made certain.”
The room smelled faintly of the clean bitter soap used in the upper corridors. There were books on the desk, a coat thrown over one chair with a carelessness so unexpected from him that I looked at it twice, and a wooden box near the basin.
The box was closed.
He saw me see it.
“My father’s cuffs,” he said.
“I hadn’t asked.”
“You were going to.”
“I was deciding whether I wanted the answer.”
“I’m not wearing them tomorrow.”
I looked at his wrists.
Bare.
The skin there seemed too intimate, which was ridiculous. I had seen wrists before. I had two of my own. They had not previously caused me trouble.
Well, until the Mark.
Caspian’s Mark showed on his right forearm: dark lines, settled and severe, the kind of Mark that looked as if it had been trained to stand straight.
Mine pulled under my sleeve.
His answered.
The dark lines shifted toward me by a fraction, and Caspian stepped back as if the movement had tugged him with it.
“No,” I said.
He froze.
“If our Marks are too close, the bond may start before you mean it to.”
“Then say that.”
His eyes met mine.
Dark gray, tinged with blue brighter than I’d ever seen it before when he looked at me.
“I’m trying to keep that from happening.”
“By moving away from me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m getting tired of ‘safe’ meaning everyone else decides where I stand.”
“What did Quill say?” he asked.
“To be ready for the formal.”
“I know that much.”
“The sleeves are coming off the dress.”
His gaze moved to my wrist.
“Good.”
“Cosima is doing it.”
“Better.”
“He said choosing incorrectly has been historically dramatic.”
“He said that?”
I nodded.
For a moment, Caspian looked younger than he ever had in the dining hall. The line between his brows eased. His mouth lost its careful set. With his collar crooked and his blond hair loose at his temple, he suddenly looked more like the boy he was, not the man he was expected to be.
“My father arrives before nightfall,” he said.
“Everyone’s coming to my party.”
“He will expect me to stand beside you tomorrow.”
“So will everyone else.”
“Not just stand with you,” he said. “Perform my role.”
The room went quiet around the admission.
I took Caspian’s note from my boot.
It was folded smaller now, warm from being carried under my heel all the way to Quill’s office and out again. I held it out to him.
“Keep it,” he said.
“It’s evidence.”
“That is why you should keep it.”
“You just gave me evidence against you.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“I wanted you to have something I had chosen to risk.”
That was the sentence that got past the last guarded thing in me. Something gave way in my chest, in the place where I had been holding the whole poisoned day.
I put the note on his desk.
Then I took off my coat.
Caspian watched it slide from my shoulders.
His hand opened once at his side, then closed again.
“You don’t have to do this because of Quill,” he said.
“I know.”
“Or because of tomorrow.”
“I know that too.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“Then tell me why.”
“You,” I said.
The word changed his breathing.
“You,” I said. “Because I want you. Because I feel safe here. Because I need one thing today to belong to me.”
I unfastened the top button of my shirt.
Caspian watched my hands, not my wrist.
“If this starts the bond,” I said.
“We stop.”
“Even if I don’t want to stop?”
“You decide, Astra.”
“And if it hurts because of the others?”
He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Then we stop.”
“You hate thinking about that.”
“I hate thinking about them, but I hate thinking about you in pain even more.”
“Good.”
The word got out before I could stop it.
“You should not reward me for jealousy.”
“I’m rewarding you for letting me choose.”
He crossed the room.
Slowly enough that I could have changed my mind three times before he reached me.
I stayed where I was.
He stopped in front of me, and his Pull found all the places Quill’s office had left feeling empty inside. Cool stone beneath my tongue, sugar darkening at the back of my throat, the clean warmth of linen against skin.
My Mark answered so sharply my breath caught and hitched.
His darkened on his forearm.
The space between us tightened until standing apart felt like a choice both of us were incapable of making.
Caspian lifted one hand and waited.
I stepped into it.
His palm came to the side of my face.
The contact went through me so fast I forgot to be embarrassed by it.
Wrist, throat, stomach.
The Mark on his forearm brightened under my hand, and mine pulled toward it with a hunger that did not feel borrowed from anyone else.
Caspian felt it.
His eyes dropped shut for half a second.
When he opened them, careful had become costly.
His thumb touched the corner of my mouth where Marcus had cut me days ago, just a sliver of a scar remaining now, gentle enough that the memory didn’t hurt.
“Still feel it?” he asked.
“Barely.”
“I should have killed him.”
“That would have made the dining hall awkward.”
“I do not care about lunch.”
“That’s how I know you were upset.”
His lips quirked up, but before he could smile, I rose onto my toes and kissed him.
For half a second, Caspian let me lead.
Then restraint left him in a single breath.
His hand slid into my hair. The other caught my waist, and the Pull struck between us hard enough that we both stopped breathing, cool and sweet in my mouth as his Mark dragged toward mine beneath the inch of air between our wrists.
I had thought kissing Caspian would be cold because so much of him had been. I had been wrong.
He kissed like a man who had spent years learning control and had just discovered control could be spent.
I made a sound into his mouth.
He stopped at once.
“No,” I said, and caught the front of his coat. “That was not a stop sound.”
His forehead pressed against mine.
“I am trying to be careful.”
“Stop trying.”
That made him smile.
Only for a second.
Long enough.
Then he kissed me again, and careful became something else.
His coat came off first because I made an impatient fist in the wrong button and he gave a low, startled laugh against my mouth.
“You dressed yourself poorly,” I said.
“I was distracted.”
“By what?”
“By waiting outside Quill’s office and imagining every way he might make you come out looking like…” He dropped off.
“Like what?”
His answer was his hand at my cheek again.
His thumb under my eye.
“Alone. Sad. Lost.”
Those words undid me more than anything else. I was those things. I had been most of my life.
I kissed him before he could see it.
Or because he already had.
The bed was close enough that he reached it in three cautious steps, giving me every chance to stop. I wanted the choice and resented having to feel myself make it.
At the edge of the bed, my knees touched the coverlet.
He drew back.
“Still your choice?” he asked.
His voice had gone rough.
I stared at him.
Then I understood.
Not permission once, given and forgotten.
This choice. This room. This body that had spent weeks being spoken over, measured, summoned, watched.
“Mine,” I said.
He nodded. Then he knelt.
Caspian Ashford, on his knees in front of me, hands at my waist, looking up as if obedience had finally found somewhere better to go.
“Tell me if I am wrong,” he said.
“You’ll know.”
“Then tell me what’s right.”
So I did.
Not right away.
There were too many fastenings, too much fabric, too many places our bodies had to learn they were allowed to want.
Caspian started with the buttons at my throat.
Careful. Exact. Terrible.
By the third button, I caught his wrist.
“If you take any longer, I’m going to assume this is a punishment Quill set you to and leave.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“I’m trying not to rush you.”
“I noticed. The formal will have come and gone and I’ll still be wearing half my clothes at this rate.”
That got the smallest breath out of him. Somewhere between a laugh and an apology.
His thumb slid down my throat to the hollow of my collarbone.
I put his hand where I wanted it.
For one second, he only looked at me.
Then his fingers curled.
Careful ended there.
He kissed down my throat and stopped at every place my breath changed, as if he had been given a map and was dedicated to following it.
Every pause made it worse.
Every permission made him less polished.
By the time his mouth reached my bare shoulder, the blond hair at his temple was sweaty, his breathing uneven, his Mark glowing dark and luminescent on his forearm.
My shirt finally went to the floor.
His followed.
The sight of his bare forearms did something in my core that was almost embarrassing.
Everything tightened.
Ready.
Almost incapable of waiting.
His Mark went even darker as I touched it, the severe lines pulling toward my fingers like they had been waiting longer than either of us had admitted.
Mine answered so sharply I bent over it.
For one second, it was all him: cool stone, dark sugar, the hard pull of his Mark toward mine.
Then green apple cut across it.
Then leather.
I gasped.
Caspian stopped.
“Pain?”
“No.”
“Astra.”
I looked at our hands, at his Mark reaching for mine and the two other directions opening under my skin.
“Not only yours,” I said.