35. Lucy
Lucy
L ex survives her brush with the wraith and spends thirty-six hours in the medical ward before losing her shit about missing lectures and discharges herself.
She had a transfusion for the blood loss.
The wraith punctured through her chest, somehow missing every vital organ.
She was incredibly lucky, all things considered.
Father, thankfully, accepted the lie that it was because of a Veil tear and that we’d been close by to intervene.
I pull my contract out of the drawer, the contract I have coveted for forty long years, only to shove it away and slam my fist on the desk.
What a fool. Hope surged through me the night we found it. I thought this was it, that I’d be able to read it, dissect it and find a loophole.
Except it’s written in a celestial language. I can’t fucking read it any better than I can see the runes on my neck.
Useless.
But I didn’t want to tell them. Not when Lex risked her life for me. Was injured because of me, and for what? A fucking useless document.
Wasted.
And I have never felt more pathetically mortal than I do now, wallowing in my bitterness and failure.
It’s one of many reasons I’ve avoided Midnight. It’s been three long days. I know she’s hurt because on the second night she left a letter under my door with five words scrawled in her messy script.
What did I do wrong?
My chest caves in reading it, the script blurring as I trace her scrawl.
She didn’t do anything. That’s the problem.
She’s always been respectful and supportive.
I’m the one failing to keep my boundaries.
I was clear we could never be more. But my brain and body are refusing to listen.
Perhaps Father and the Corvines were right all these years.
Mortals are dangerous and they don’t realise why.
It is the ultimate reason why we can’t be together.
She’s too young, too human, too ‘student’.
No matter what I want, the truth remains the same, that if I utter those words to her, my power will siphon and bury itself in her soul.
When we were in the Celestial Library, I swear my crystalline heart cracked.
I thought I was too late to stop it. That it was going to shatter and leave me there, helpless, in an abandoned, banished library.
But I buried the feelings, and that is why I’ve had to avoid her, even though it feels like I’m tearing out chunks of myself in order to stay away.
But tonight, there’s a celebration ball.
The students had their practice exams, in preparation for the finals next month.
The results will be posted shortly. I’m just hoping the training we’ve been doing has paid off for Midnight.
I’m certain it will. She’s improved beyond all measure.
Has she improved enough, though? We’ll have to see because the other students are ruthless.
I rest against one of Finis Tower’s circular turret windows and peer down at the moat.
Maintenance have laid glass over it, making a dance floor between the Great Library and Finis Tower.
It’s enormous. They’ve hung twinkling fairy lights from the tower’s turrets all the way down to the library roof.
It resembles a starlit sky, even from up here.
A band plays on the porch of one of the towers, and all five years of students congregate and mingle around the base.
Alcohol flows freely this evening; one of the rare occasions the staff and faculty turn a blind eye.
Booze and magic aren’t the best mixture.
We’re guaranteed to have at least five students in the medical wing by morning, no one will turn up on time to class tomorrow and I’m betting there will be at least one Veil tear.
Midnight walks through the library arch and onto the circular dance floor.
I grip the window frame; it creaks under the pressure. She must sense me, for her eyes track the area and then scan up.
The moment she sees me, the corner of her lip twitches.
She bids Bastien and Lex goodbye and heads straight into Finis Tower.
I consider leaving. Finding another room, hiding away from her, but what’s the point? I should confess. I wore this dress for her.
I shouldn’t have, not when it just opens up the pathway for more.
We can never be more.
We are purely transactional. I keep telling myself this.
And yet…
Before she reaches me, I inhale vetiver and grapefruit, a scent that makes my body hot and my nipples tight.
And yet…
When she walks through the turret doorway, my heart betrays me. A hitch and a beat that thuds like another crack of crystal.
I swear my stomach dances like callow moths.
And yet…
Even though the light haloes her, making it hard to see more than her silhouette, I can tell it’s her.
The way her body moves through time and space has carved a path through my mind.
I smile because I have memorised the way she stalks the campus halls.
She doesn’t stroll like the privileged elite who don’t fear failing.
And before turning to face her, I know her fists will ball instead of her sharing the fact she’s pissed at me, hurt by me.
I keep all of this tucked away because I shouldn’t know any of it. Because I shouldn’t lov?—
My heart splinters, and I lean forward against the glass and push the feelings away, down, down, down into a vault where I can never reach them.
The searing heat in my chest eases, my breathing returning to normal.
“Professor Corvine,” she says, and I almost melt on the spot as I face her.
Her mouth parts, her fists clench and relax at her sides and a small smile kisses the corner of my mouth.
Her attention lingers on my dress, trailing from hem to collar.
It’s black, mostly, with a slit cut all the way to my upper thigh.
A set of deep red rubies decorate one breast and climb into a peak on my décolletage.
The dress cinches at the waist and trails behind me.
It’s extravagant, elegant and deeply sexy.
Not something I often feel in my forties, nor when I was in my thirties, come to think of it.
When did I stop dressing up to feel good? When did I stop going out and living life? When did work become my main focus instead of living?
Tonight is for living. And, apparently, for taking extreme risks.
I find myself gawping at her. She’s wearing an all-black suit, boots and a black shirt that’s only buttoned halfway. I am uncomfortably certain that she’s not wearing a bra. The bulge of her ample breasts teases the line of buttons. A long string necklace plunges into the gap between them.
I swallow, hard.
Her hair is freshly shaved on the sides, the impeccable neatness of a barber’s blade evident from the sharp lines sculpting her face.
The rest of her hair is gelled into a wet look and slicked up and back.
But it’s her bright blue eyes that undo me.
That make me want to strip the skin from my bones and hand her my soul on a platter.
“You’re beautiful,” I say without meaning to. My fingertips brush my traitorous lips, surprised at their confession.
“Have you looked in the mirror?”
This. It’s these comments that ruin me, blast through all my barriers and fuck me up. How am I supposed to keep her at arm’s length?
The music kicks up a notch outside, the volume growing sufficiently loud enough that we can hear the thudding base beat through the turret windows and the melody lilting on top.
“I, umm,” Midnight starts, and pulls a hand through her hair. “Are you still pissed at me?”
I tear my gaze away from her. “I was never upset with you. I was trying to protect this…”
I point at my heart, and her jaw flexes, one curt nod.
“Figured. I can leave.”
She turns.
“No,” I shriek. Too fast, too desperate. I have to get a grip.
“No?” Her brow furrows.
“I’m sorry I ignored you. That was wrong of me. I just got up in my emotions, and I’m struggling to keep control of them. We have to ignore each other out there. But if you’re not mad, I’d like to have at least one dance with you in here?” I ask.
Every cell in my body pleads with her to say no, to push me away and tell me we can’t. But I’m the one holding back. I always have been.
“Or has fate decided I’m not to be so lucky this evening?” I say.
“I’d take your hand and dance with you till the coals of hell burned my heels and crumbled my bones to ash.”
Yeah, I am fucked.
Her eyes glimmer. “I thought you didn’t believe in fate,” she says.
“I don’t, but if it’s on my side, I’m not going to say no.”
Midnight holds out her hand and bows. I step forward and then continue pushing her all the way to the door and lock it behind us.
She walks me into the middle of the room and slides her hand around my waist and then leads me in slow circles around the room. I lower my head to her shoulder and just breathe.
“There have been so few quiet moments this year,” I say into her shoulder.
Midnight kisses my forehead. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m imagining all the things that can never be,” I whisper.
Her hand strokes my back, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same. There are barely thirty days left and still so much to do.
“The demon and the reaper, hey?” She huffs against the top of my head.
“Something like that.”
“I want you to tell me all of the futures,” she says.
I sigh as she spins me around and we slide to another section of the turret room.
“I’m thinking about all the campus walks in misty mornings that we can never have.”
Her movements speed up, I’m not sure if I’ve pissed her off, until she says, “Or the lazy mornings in bed, where I bring you coffee and those god-awful eggy circles you like.”
“You mean a pancake?”
“Yeah, fucking awful things.”
I laugh against her shoulder and then stop suddenly, my voice cracking. “I’m thinking about how we’ll never grow old together, wrinkled hands that won’t carve calluses in each other’s palms.”