16. Chapter 16 #2
"I watched it happen," he says again, quieter.
"You understand that? I stood twenty feet away and watched it come up on your skin, and I knew — before Draeven said a word, before either of them moved — I knew exactly what it was and exactly what it meant.
And I've known since your first year what it means about me.
And I have spent every single day since deciding that it doesn't."
"And how's that going?"
"Badly," Ander says. "Obviously."
He puts his coat down.
"My whole life was already mapped out," he says.
"All of it. House Ardent. The years abroad, then the seat, then the work.
What I'd be doing at thirty. Who I'd be doing it with.
" He looks at me. "Linnea. Nobody ever sat me down and told me that.
Nobody had to. Our families have worked together for six generations, and she's the most competent person I've ever met, and it made sense, and everybody could see it coming from about a mile off. "
"And you wanted it."
"I don't know," Ander says.
He says it flatly, and it's the most honest thing I've ever heard out of his mouth.
"That's the real answer. I don't know, because nobody ever asked me, and I never had to ask myself." His hand goes out at nothing. "But it was mine. I'd had my entire life to make it mine. I knew what came next."
"Until me."
"Until this. "
And he catches it. I watch him catch it, half a second after he's said it, and he doesn't take it back.
"I've spent my whole life being told what House Ardent requires of me," he says. "I'm not handing that over to fate so it can start issuing a different set of orders."
And for a moment — genuinely, for about a second and a half — I understand him completely.
Oh.
And then the rest of it arrives, which is that he's still being an absolute arsehole about it.
"Right," I say. "So which orders am I?"
"What?"
"You just named two things that get to tell you what to do. Your House." I hold up a finger. "And fate."
"That's not—"
"And when you say fate , Ander, you're looking at me."
He goes very still.
"You keep talking about this like it's a demand, " I say. "Like there's a document. Like somebody's at your door with a form. And every single time you say it, you say it to my face. "
"Jessica—"
"So say the rest of it. Go on. Say what you actually mean, which is that I'm the thing that showed up and wrecked it."
"I didn't say—"
"Then stop acting like I'm the one who chose this."
The corridor is completely silent, somewhere a door shuts two floors down, and Ander Ardent stands there and does not have one single thing to say.
"I didn't choose it," I say. "Any of it.
Not the bond. Not the direwolf. Not a dead family from two hundred years ago.
Not a Council that meets about my blood.
Not Luke, not Torres, not Soren." I take a breath.
"And I definitely didn't choose whatever your family and hers decided about you when you were nine. "
"I know that."
"Then behave like it."
"I know that, " Ander says.
"And here's the part that's actually making me insane." I take a step. "I have never asked you for a single thing."
He looks up.
"Not once," I say. "Not one time in a year and a half.
I haven't asked you to kiss me. I haven't asked you to explain yourself.
I haven't asked you for a mark or a conversation or a seat next to me at dinner.
I have asked you for absolutely nothing, Ander — and you have still spent three days punishing me for it. "
Nothing.
"So it can't be about what I want," I say. "Because I've never told you what I want. Which leaves the other thing."
"Don't."
"Do you even want me?"
Ander doesn't answer.
The silence goes on about three seconds too long and I feel it curdle, and I hate that it hurts, and I pick my coat up off the windowsill where I'd put it down next to his.
"Right," I say. "That's what I thought."
"Jessica."
I stop with my hand on the door.
"Wanting you," Ander says, "has never been the problem."
I turn around.
And he hasn't moved, but everything about him has — both hands at his sides, jaw tight, looking at me the way he looked at me on the path outside the history building.
Two feet.
That's how far apart we are. I don't know when that happened. I can hear him breathing and I can feel the pull come up under my ribs like something being reeled in, and his eyes have gone to my mouth and stayed there.
"Then figure it out," I say.
"Jessica—"
"No, I mean it. Take as long as you like." My voice is not doing what I want it to do. "Take the year. Take the whole degree. Talk to your uncle and your father and Linnea, and work out what you want, and I won't say one word about it."
"That's—"
"But you don't get to make me pay for it," I say. "You don't get to be angry at me for something I didn't choose while you decide whether wanting me is convenient."
He doesn't say anything.
And I open the door and go, and this time I'm the one leaving, and it is nowhere near as satisfying as I expected.
I come back to the residence at about six and there's somebody standing at the corner of the building — not on the path, at the corner , in the dark, where the wall turns toward the bins and the service door.
I nearly take his head off.
"Miss Miller—"
"Why are you in the alley?"
"There's a security position here now." He's about fifty, in an academy coat. "Since Friday."
"Why?"
"Because you can stand in the gap between that wall and the hedge and see straight through the ground-floor corridor into the stairwell." He points. "Anyone coming down from your floor."
I stand in the dark and look at the gap.
He's right. You can see the whole corridor. You can see the door to the stairs. If you stood here for a week you'd know exactly when I come and go and exactly who walks me home.
"Who found that?"
"Came through the security review."
"Who found it?"
The man checks something on the tablet he's holding.
"Ardent flagged it," he says.
Right. Of course. Caspian's been on campus all week, and House Ardent has professionals, and they'd have—
"Caspian Ardent," I say.
The officer looks up.
"No," he says. "Ander Ardent. In writing, Thursday night. Sightlines and lighting. We had it covered by Friday morning."
I don't say anything for a second.
Thursday night.
Four hours after I walked out of a corridor and told him to stop punishing me, Ander Ardent went and stood in the dark by the bins behind my building, and worked out where somebody would have to stand to watch me, and wrote it down.
And hasn't said one single word about it since.
"Thank you," I say to the officer, and go in.
I see him on Monday.
I'm coming out of the residence at eight and he's across the courtyard, coming down the administration steps with his bag on his shoulder and Soren beside him, in the middle of a conversation, not looking at anything in particular.
And then he does it.
He glances at my window.
It's nothing. It takes half a second and he doesn't break stride and I don't think he knows he's doing it — his eyes go along the front up to the corner where the wall turns, to the man standing in the gap by the bins. Checks the position. Checks the door.
Checks me.
And stops. Because I'm standing right there on the path, twenty feet away, watching him do it.
Neither of us moves.
Soren says something to him and doesn't get an answer.
Ander looks at me across the courtyard for four seconds, five, with absolutely nothing on his face at all —
and then he looks away first.