Chapter 34 – — Cael Brannock, attributed #2
“I know what you want.”
“Then—”
“Not here.”
He raises my wrist to his mouth and presses a kiss to the inside of it, his lips lingering against the place where my pulse is hammering, and he closes his eyes for one beat as if he has to gather himself.
“Not like this.”
“Why?”
“If I don’t stop now, I won’t stop at all.”
I open my mouth to answer, and he beats me to it.
“Because you have a job to do tonight, and I will not be the reason you don’t do it.”
“Draven.”
“Rose.”
His hand finds the side of my face again, and he tilts my chin up to look at him.
“I will give you all of it, every last thing you are asking me for, when you walk back out of that cottage. Do you understand.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“When I walk back out.”
“Good girl.”
Then he steps back.
His wings disappear, and the cold of the courtyard rushes in to replace them.
“You need to go, Rose.”
I nod, still trying to catch my breath and never wanting this to end at the same time. “I know.”
His eyes narrow on me. The control is back mostly, except for the slight unsteadiness at the line of his jaw.
“Thirty minutes.”
Then he’s gone, running back toward the ball before I can say anything else, and I press my fingers to my swollen lips.
Gods, that kiss.
I touch the key at my throat. I need to get going.
I turn east. I start running toward the headmaster’s private quarters.
The cottage door is dark green, weathered, set into the stone wall of the third building from the eastern gate.
I can hear my own breathing.
I look back. The path is empty. The snow has been falling steadily for the last few minutes and is already covering my footprints, which is a small mercy I will count tonight.
The lamps along the cloister are turned low, their flames cupped in iron lanterns that sway gently in the wind.
The hall is far enough behind me that I can’t hear Ashmoor or the music anymore.
I lift the key from my throat.
It is warm in my hand. The metal hums faintly against my palm, a small steady vibration that I have never felt from it before, and I stop for one breath to register it.
The school knows what I’m doing.
Ashwell is helping me.
I close my eyes and slide the key into the lock.
Please.
I turn it. The lock clicks open, and I step inside.
Thank you.
I close the door behind me as quietly as I can and lean my back against it for one held second, my heart hammering so hard I’m sure he can hear it across the campus.
The cottage is dark.
A single oil lamp burns low on a table near the door, its flame guttering in the draft I let in. The rest of the room is shadow and shape, slowly resolving as my eyes adjust. There is a faint smell I cannot place, something dry and herbal, like the back room of an apothecary.
I take three steps in and stop.
The study is long and narrow. The walls are lined floor to ceiling with shelves, books packed so tight in some places that they bow the wood.
A leather chair faces the massive desk at the center of the room. Above the desk, on the wall, hangs a portrait.
I don’t have time to look at the portrait, not properly, but my eyes go to it before my mind decides to look at it, and I get a half second of impression before I force myself to look away.
A woman. Curly hair. Eyes I cannot make out from this distance.
The frame is plain dark wood, no plaque, no name.
The portrait has been hung at the eye level of someone sitting in the leather chair.
He looks at her every day.
I put the question away.
I’m not here for the portrait. I’m here for the mirror.
I cross the room. The bookcase on the right is taller than me.
The shelves are organized by subject, anatomy texts, fissure reports, what looks like a row of old journals bound in matching leather, a small collection of older books in a language I do not recognize.
I put my hand against the side of the bookcase and feel along the seam of the wood. There.
A small iron handle, recessed into the side, hidden unless you know to look for it.
I pull, and somewhere in the back of my mind I want to know how Draven knew all of this.
The bookcase swings inward on a hinge, exposing a narrow door behind it.
The wards hit me immediately.
I feel them before I see them. The air in front of the door has gone thick, and my breath catches in my throat. The hair on the back of my neck rises.
I close my hand around the key.
I close my fist tight enough that the edges bite into my palm.
I step forward.
The wards push back.
It’s not a physical pressure. It’s something deeper behind my eyes, a feeling of being seen by an intelligence that doesn’t have a body.
My ears ring. My pulse jumps in my throat.
I take another step and another, and the pressure builds, and I understand suddenly what Draven meant when he said not to let go of the key.
One more step.
The wards peel back.
I cross the threshold.
The pressure releases all at once, like a hand letting go of my throat, and I stumble forward two steps into the warded room and catch myself against the wall with my free hand. My breath comes ragged. I am sweating despite the cold.
I straighten and look up.
The mirror.
I know it is the mirror without lifting the cloth.
I can feel it.
The same low pulse I felt in the cavern at the Mirror Ceremony, the same slow heartbeat that is somehow not coming from a heart, the same listening presence that knew my name before I gave it to anyone. It’s here, waiting.
I stop in front of the cloth.
It knows I’m here.