Chapter 19
Fuck Landon and fuck Teddy.
I knew it!
I knew when they snuck off from the party, they were up to no good.
And of course the night that they chose to blow the entire academy full of the blackout dust is a night I’m out of the dorms.
Churning clouds of thick, dusty darkness roll over me.
The chalky taste floods my lungs and I choke against the intrusion.
Cringed against the banister, I bury my face into the crook of my elbow.
I wait it out, the rapid tumbling of dust clouds to fill the hallways, the corridors, the foyers, the staircases, the classrooms.
Every nook and cranny of this academy will be submerged.
The density of the blackout pushes down on me—pins me to the hard wooden step of the staircase, the dress bunched and cold against my ass.
I should move.
I should start feeling my way down the staircase, maybe slide down on my bottom, then flail my hands in the dark, feeling around for the corridor to the Living Quarter.
Nope.
Immediately, I don’t like that idea.
My bones cringe at the thought.
I could walk right into Mildred…
Not that she would know it’s me.
I can’t speak in the blackout dust.
Well, I can, it’s just that no one will hear me, not even myself.
I could throw my head back right now and scream at the top of my lungs—and not hear a thing.
I would feel it. No one else would.
That should offer me a bit of comfort.
I’m invisible in the dark.
Can’t be heard, can’t be seen.
But if I bump into someone, I better pray to the gods it’s someone decent.
I can’t stick to the banister forever.
My bum is planted on the top step of the staircase, and someone could run into me any second now, crush me with their steps, tumble me down the stairs.
Someone could be rushing by me now, in the dark, and neither of us know the other is there.
The blindness of it all prickles my skin.
The darkness does something to people.
I need to get moving.
It’ll take all night for the dust to fade.
There’s no reversing it.
It needs to eat away at itself, lose its own power, reach its own limit before it’s gone.
The breath I loosen is silent, but thick. It’s strange to not hear it, like my ears are submerged underwater, padded with wool, all noise blocked—and it’s nothing less than disorientating.
I scoot down the stairs, one solid step at a time.
The thuds send jolts up my spine, all the way to my throat where my breaths are jutting out of me.
I feel them.
Don’t hear them.
The strappy heels on my feet clatter on the wooden floorboards—and I outstretch them, fumble them around, because the banister finally ends, and I think I’ve reached the atrium.
Now the hard part.
My mouth circles around a steadying breath.
My heart doesn’t pound in my chest, it slows, as though to beat too hard and rapidly means to alert hidden threats around me that I’m here.
My insides are ice, ice spreading through my chest, trickling along my bones.
A violent shudder wracks me before I push up onto my heels, hands splayed against the dark.
I reach out in front of me—and feel nothing.
I take a tentative step.
Nothing obstructs me.
I take another, sliding the sole of the strappy sandal along the floorboards, a direct shot across the atrium.
And another, over and over, my gut worming, because the atrium and the corridor across it should be the busiest areas in the blackout.
I should be getting close to the corridor now.
Hands outstretched, my slow sliding steps drag me across the atrium—but it feels like it’s taking forever, and I’m out in the middle of open darkness, exposed.
I suck in a sharp breath.
The prints of my fingertips graze something—and I clammer back a step.
Tingles reach all the way through my wavering fingers, my breaths warm and choppy at my parted lips.
My throat juts with a harsh swallow.
I tilt forward, reaching my hand out, feeling around for whatever is in my way.
Maybe a wall, maybe a podium, a pillar.
Maybe I’ve gone off track and wound up at the second corridor, the one that leads directly to the basement level.
I touch it again.
Solid, but not a wall, because it’s soft, too.
Like…
Like a sweater on a muscular chest.
I jerk back with a shout.
The heels scuffle under me—then a pair of hands come through the dark and grab me by the shoulders.
My scream is swallowed by the dark. It strangles my throat as I tumble back from the solid figure, but the noise doesn’t reach my ears.
I’m wholly encased by darkness, someone’s hands on my shoulders, and I can’t so much as scream for help.
The hands tighten, then loosen.
A squeeze.
A message.
My breath shudders in my throat.
In my chest, my heart is pounding. But slowly, I stop fighting the grip—and that’s when I notice it.
The blackout dust swallows sight and sound.
But not smell.
And I smell it.
Blue, rippling waters.
I know that scent.
It lures me in a step closer.
I take a sniff of the air, as though to double check, to make sure it’s really the same one I picked out.
It is.
The fragrance—the cologne—is the very same I chose at ROJA.
I didn’t just pick a bottle off the shelf.
This cologne is one of a kind. It was made in the shop, a lovely blend crafted by the perfumers.
No other like it.
And I gifted it to Eric.
It’s Eric.
He holds me by the shoulders.
I just can’t see him.
The breath that loosens from my lips is soft.
I don’t know how quickly he had to move in the blackout, since I was just talking to him up in the corridor. But he must have run off to find the cologne, dab it onto the collar and wrists of his sweater, then come find me.
Was that his first thought?
The blackout came billowing through the corridors, and he immediately reacted to my being out here, in the open.
Maybe he had it on him, the cologne, or in a faculty room nearby. And he put it on so I would recognise him.
The only way to recognise him in the dark.
I’ve never had anyone do anything like that for me before. To go so far out of their way to keep me safe.
The sweetness of it softens me.
My shoulders relax in his hands.
Eric has Asta to concern himself with—but he shirks his responsibilities, he snubs the order of our world, just to make sure I get back to the dorm safe.
I might have underestimated him.
Or maybe I’m just too many margaritas in—and Asta letting Mildred tamper with my bed is a hidden motivator, to get back at her.
Could be all of it, threading together, that staggers me closer to Eric.
I make a point of recognising him.
My toes press into the floor as I push my weight onto them.
I lean up as far as I can reach.
In the dark, my senses are alight.
The graze of his jaw along my soft lips, the brush of his nose that caresses over mine, like he turns his gaze to me, to watch me, but of course he can’t see me.
We can only feel each other, smell each other.
Tingles are fast to tickle through my body.
I graze my nose over his cheek.
He turns closer to me, as though he chases my touch.
The flutter of his lashes tickles my brow, and I guess he closes his eyes.
My chest swells with the inhale.
I know who you are. I know that cologne.
That’s what I hope I’m telling him, what he reads on my movements in the dark.
Before I can loosen the breath I drew in, his mouth finds mine.
And pauses.
Our lips barely touch—but tingles dance over my lips all the same.
I taste him, the sharpness of a spearmint breath.
Time hangs between us, a pause that lingers, and still, our mouths don’t connect.
In the darkness, secrets stir around us.
The weight of his hand lifts from my shoulder.
A heartbeat after, I feel the threading of his fingers in my hair. His hand forms a loose fist.
Gentle, he tugs my head back.
Tingles spiral down my insides, roping down my body, all the way to my curling toes.
My lips brush over his, parting for his kiss.
His mouth presses against mine.
Then he stills.
I blink, feeling the flutter of my lashes against his.
I think…
I think he hesitates.
Waiting, maybe, to see how I react. If I want this, if I’ll pull away—if I will reject him, even in the shadows.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
Not after his eyes shut when I touched him, like I affected him.
Eric has never made me feel seen before, adored in secret little moments, needed—but that’s all changed in the blackout.
His breath on my lips, his commanding grip in my hair, the hesitation that steals him, it feels so different to moments we have shared before.
It feels like I could unravel him.
And it’s a fucking rush.
Tilted into him, my weight lifted on the tip of my toes, I part my lips.
I accept him.
He mirrors me, a reflection of my every move, and the moment my tongue rolls over his, something in him snaps.
Darkness billows around me.
I’m spun until my back hits a wall, and his body follows mine, pushing up against me.
I gasp on the choked breath.
He is fast to devour it.
His mouth comes down on mine, and the fresh flavour of spearmint invades me.
The warmth of his soft tongue slips over mine.
I arch into him.
His hand glides up the nape of my neck to my hair, where fingers find the clasps pinning strands in place, then ease them out.
If the blackout didn’t swallow us, I would hear the clasps clanging to the floorboards one by one.
But I’m encased in darkness, tormented by the sweet suffering of his slow, tender kiss, the gradual lick of his tongue over mine, the softness of his lips brushing over mine.
I melt.
All the clasped strands are free now.
Hair falls onto my shoulders, tickling me in the secrecy of the silent darkness.
And still, his kiss lingers.
Fingers thread through my hair, the gentle stroke of his thumb caressing me—but his other hand leaves my waist… it glides along the shape of my body, up the silk of the dress—
My breath hitches.
His hand grazes, a whisper of a touch, over my breast. But it passes over my pebbled nipple, then glides along the smooth skin of my neck.
Wainscotting digs into the bones of my back.
Ribs and spine aching, I arch into him just that bit more, a push for more.