30. Event Horizon
Event Horizon
Desdemona
My favourite part of the year, every year since I can remember, is the week before Christmas.
Every year our whole family—Mum, Dad, me and Ophelia, the twins, Aunt Willow and Luca—fly out of the US to England, to spend the winter holiday at Blackwood Manor.
Blaise’s grandparents, Lord and Lady Blackwood, leave to celebrate Hogmanay in Scotland, and Blaise’s parents come to look after the house.
At first, all of Mum and Dad’s friends used to take turns going over to stay with them, but since Blaise, Dimitri and I were born, it’s become a yearly tradition for everyone to spend the holiday at the manor.
Over the years, the group’s become bigger and bigger. Dimitri, his parents, and his little sister Daria. Séverin Montcroix and his wife, Ana?s, and their daughter, Yuna. Us—the Sutton-Knight clan—and coming with us from the States, Aunt Willow and Uncle Luca.
Sometimes, other people join us, staying for a few days and adding to the chaos: like Mum’s best friends, Audrey, Araminta and Alice, or Yuna’s uncle, Noel, and his husband.
Dimitri’s godfather, Anton, used to come every year, before—well.
No wonder Dimitri is in such a weird dark place.
Maybe he’ll bring his fiancée. I hope he does.
Because the truth is that it doesn’t matter how many of us there are: there’s always space in the Blackwood mansion.
And when we’re all together like this, I have this weird feeling inside my chest, like all the worry and stress is suddenly magicked away, as if stepping foot inside Blackwood Manor casts a spell of protection over me that banishes all my fear.
Sometimes, when I’m standing in the kitchen watching my uncles, Iakov and Luca, laughing with Dad, or when I see Yuna with her parents, her mum showing her a way to wash her paintbrushes while her dad stares at them like they are the moon and all of the stars squeezed into two human bodies, my chest feels like it’s going to burst with this sensation of invincibility. Like nothing bad could happen, ever.
And with the exams looming after the holidays, and Birnam likely to wake up any day now, and Ophelia still avoiding me, and Elias’s destiny held in the balance like a horribly precious and fragile thing, I’ve never been more afraid.
I’m supervising a detention in the last week before Christmas when Austen and William burst in through the study hall doors.
I look up from the exam paper I’m working through with a glare and set aside my pen before stomping across the room towards the door.
The Year 10 students, who are silently working on their reflection essays, must sense my annoyance because they don’t even dare to look up.
“What?” I hiss when I reach them.
The twins are both wearing the correct uniform, and William’s dark hair is actually combed.
They’ve been on their best behaviour since the Halloween party, after receiving the most intense telling off of their lifetime, and narrowly avoiding being thrown into detention till the end of the year—clearly they don’t want a repeat of Year 8.
Since then, they’ve been staying out of trouble, attending all their classes on time, and even sending me occasional updates on Ophelia.
This usually consists of a screenshot of a text where she’s calling them idiot losers, or blurry photos of the two of them trying to hug her while she cringes away with a disgusted expression.
Even though those updates are better than nothing, it still hurts to see those pictures, because I would rather she be annoyed or disgusted with me than completely cut me off like she’s doing.
Still—whatever this is, it must be important enough for the twins to take the risk of displeasing me, so I cross my arms and wait.
“Is your boyfriend coming on holiday with us, yes or no?” Austen finally spits out. “You’ve not been answering our texts and Dad wants to know.”
My heart misses a beat. I blink twice, silent just long enough to recover.
“You’ve told Dad about Elias?” I say finally.
William lets out a half-stifled snort of laughter and Austen rolls his eyes.
“C’mon, Dess. Everyone and their grandma knows about you and Elias.”
“It made national news.”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Gossip blogs don’t count.”
“It was in The Times.”
Oh god. I’ve been so focused on the first round of mock exams, and on my head girl duties—and on avoiding Elias and thinking about him all the time and dreaming about St Dominic House Observatory, adds a hateful little voice in my head—that I’ve not even had time to catch up with the news.
“Gotta say, sis,” Austen says with an appreciative nod, “you don’t get a single detention in your life and then you go and piss off the future prime minister.”
“That’s why I like Elias,” William presses on, with an equally enthusiastic nod. “He’s a good influence on you.”
“Well, not good,” Austen corrects him. The two exchange a look. “He’s good for you is what we mean.”
“He brings out the cool edge that—”
“I’m sorry.” I cut him off coldly. “I don’t recall ever asking your opinion.”
“God, we’re just saying that we approve—”
“What makes you think I need your approval?”
William’s expression is a mix between a frown and a glare. “When you two get married, don’t you think—”
There’s an unpleasant lurch in my stomach.
Time to put an end to this.
“I happen to know that you both have an English exam tomorrow,” I hiss, cutting them both off as I physically start herding them away from the door.
“And I have a detention to supervise, so I suggest you both turn around, and make sure you know The Merchant of Venice like the back of your hands.” I glare at them.
“And don’t forget to check in on your sister. ”
Alarm registers on William’s face, his eyes widening to comical proportions. “The exam is on The Merchant of Venice?”
My expression must have given away my ire, because Austen hastily steps back, grabbing his brother’s arm.
“Of course it is, we knew that,” he says quickly.
“We were actually on our way to the library, Dess, swear to god, and we’re gonna check on Ophelia straight after.
” He waves and begins turning away. “Have fun with detention or whatever. See you next week at the Blackwoods!”
It’s not until they’re almost at the end of the corridor, and certain that I’m too far to throw something at them or respond without having to yell, that William turns around to call out his final words like a grenade tossed over his shoulder.
“We’ll just tell Dad you’re bringing Elias, then!”
The night of the gala, at St Dominic House, after Elias had pulled the straps of my dress gently back onto my shoulders and I’d finished straightening up my skirt, we’d both slumped back into our original seats, chests still heaving as we both tried to catch our breath.
“It’s stopped raining,” Elias had said, looking up in wonderment.
Above us, through the crack in the dome, the clouds, blown away by the wind we could hear howling outside, made way for a sky strewn with stars, tiny electric pinpricks.
“How many of those stars do you think are already dead?” I asked in a breath.
Elias let out a soft laugh, turned his head and looked at me.
“I think this is what it’ll feel like, you know, when all of this is said and done,” he’d said, low and soft. “The memory of you will be like the light of a star, shining bright, even after the moment itself is long dead.”
A lump had risen in my throat, and I’d tried hard to swallow it back, but failed. I’d turned to meet his gaze, finding it earnest, and I’d parried his words as best I could.
“You really just said that with a straight face?”
He’d let out another laugh and gazed at me. Instead of being annoyed or stung, there had been an expression of such impossible affection in his eyes that it had taken my breath away.
I’d remembered, all of a sudden, what Elias had once told me about love, about not deserving it. About how we’re all born worthless and unworthy of love. I’d never felt more worthless and hoped more desperately that he’d been right.
“Don’t forget rule five,” I’d murmured, throat thick, heart heating hard and fast, my entire body still hot and wet and sore from him. “You’re the one who insisted on it, remember?”
He’d nodded, completely serious, licked his bottom lip slowly, and bitten into it in a gesture that betrayed anxiety more than he realised, I think. Then he’d said, low and earnest and hoarse:
“Don’t fall for me, Desdemona Sutton-Knight, and I won’t fall for you.”
And I’d felt the sting of tears in my eyes and the knot in my throat closing tight, and I’d felt my heart shatter and harden, because I knew he was right—that he, like me, could see that we were on the verge of making a terrible mistake.
Love a black hole, pulling us in. Maybe it’s already too late, like light particles that have strayed too close to the event horizon, when falling into the black hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time.
I’d only been able to choke a single word out.
“Deal.”
We’ve not spoken since.