31. Fifth Rule
Fifth Rule
Desdemona
It’s the last day of the term—and my final chance to invite Elias over for the holidays.
Which is why I find myself leaning against the tiled walls of a science building corridor, my books propped against my thighs, staring out of the window.
The winter really is here now: the trees shed all their leaves without me even noticing. Now they seem to tremble, skeletal and bare, beneath a keen, piercing wind. The sky is a bleak, bleached grey, an absence of colour.
I was hoping to catch Elias coming out of his final class of the afternoon, physics, and ask him in the bustle of students, leaving no space whatsoever for any awkwardness, or, worse, intimacy.
But it’s been almost fifteen minutes since the students filed out.
On his way out, Gabriel North, the headmaster’s angel-faced son, casts me a small, private smile.
In contrast, Benjamin Montgomery, a second later, throws me a haughty look and shakes his head as he walks past. As if he can judge anyone after what happened with Emerald.
I don’t even bother acknowledging him and return my gaze to the window and the bleak landscape beyond it.
Finally, the door opens, and I hear a deep, warm male voice call out, “I mean it, Elias. You’ll give it a good think, won’t you?”
Elias’s voice precedes him as he walks out, light and amused, “Of course, sir, don’t you worry one bit.”
The door closes with a dry clack, and for a moment, Elias pauses in the corridor.
His old backpack is so heavily packed his shoulder sags beneath the weight.
His back is to me, and I watch as his posture stiffens, and he wipes a hand over his face in a curiously exhausted gesture.
My heart squeezes painfully at the sight.
“Think about what?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me.
I push off the wall as Elias whips around, startled, for once.
It’d be almost satisfying, to watch him be the one on the back foot, if I didn’t witness what happens next: Elias’s expression, clouded with thoughts, clear immediately, as if the clouds had been pushed away by a swift and impassive wind.
His eyes find me, settle, darken, eyelids low, gaze appreciative.
Pleasure blooms in the slow stretch of his smile, as artificial and beautiful as a hybrid tea rose.
And just like that, the real Elias is shoved aside, tucked away, and the seductive mask falls into place.
And knowing it, witnessing it, isn’t enough for it to fail, because I can practically feel the warmth flooding into my cheeks, the quickening of my too-eager heart. I must be so much weaker than I ever imagined: I know what he’s doing, I know his tricks, I know I want more.
I’m being truthful with you, why won’t you be truthful with me?
“Mazzati loves me,” Elias answers glibly.
“He’s keen on me doing this physics thing.
” He hoists his backpack higher. For someone who pretends not to care, it seems full fit to burst. I open my mouth to ask what ‘thing’ he’s talking about, but he’s already leaning closer, slipping back into that lazy, interested drawl he always uses when he’s deflecting. “Have you come to say goodbye?”
“Not quite,” I tell him. “What physics thing?”
His eyes flick away, a splinter of time, and there’s the faintest tightness in his jaw.
Both are gone in a second.
“Come on, love. A girl like you?” he says, stepping closer still, and I find myself pushed back against the wall, the pale tiles, a shiver tickling across my skin. “You think I’d ever want to bore a girl like you with schoolwork shit?”
“I happen to like schoolwork shit,” I tell him, refusing to take the bait. “You didn’t answer the question.”
But now he’s got me pressed into the wall, and I can smell him, his skin and his cheap cologne that makes me want to melt, and his dark eyes on me like a physical touch despite the fact there is currently zero physical contact between us.
The worst thing is that I know what he’s doing: he’s hiding something from me, and he’s using what happened in the observatory to do so. And this is something that matters to him. So why hide it? Because he thinks I’d use it against him?
Or because, unlike me, he still remembers that everything between us is still supposed to be just an act?
St Dominic wasn’t an act, though. No amount of lying or charm or invoking of rules or bargains could change that.
“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me, love?” Elias says. His voice has dropped a few octaves, grown velvety and caressing. “Too busy with schoolwork?”
“I’ve not been avoiding you,” I snap. Trust him to go on the offensive as a defensive move.
He tilts his head. “No? I’ve not seen so much as a glimpse of your golden hair in the past two weeks.”
“I’ve not seen you either,” I point out. “Maybe you were avoiding me.”
“Nothing stopping you from coming to see me, love,” Elias says. And, before I can even reply, he adds with a curling smirk, “After all, you know where my bedroom is, don’t you?”
The heat in my cheeks deepens, and I can practically feel the blush invading my skin.
“Girls aren’t allowed in the boys’ dormitory.”
“It’s not stopped you before.”
“That was different.”
“Because you needed me then and you don’t need me now?” he asks, low and almost needy.
And I know it’s an act he’s putting on, but the words sting, still.
“Isn’t it the other way round?” I raise an eyebrow. “You seem to be busy enough hanging out with all your shiny new Brotherhood buddies. Did they make you sacrifice a goat to get in?”
“Nah, they dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night, put a hood over my head and tossed me into the lake.”
For a moment, I can only stare at him, shock and sadness swirling in my belly, a sickening concoction.
“Please tell me that’s not true.”
He shrugs. “Eh, think of it as networking, love.” He grins. “A man’s gotta have connections, right?”
And just like that, without him even trying, the Pearsons are standing right there, in the corridor with us, their stiff smiles printed into my mind, a perfect echo of their faces in that The Times article about the gala.
St Dominic House was only a temporary patch on a gaping, urgent wound.
“Then you’re going to love this.” I straighten myself, my chest almost bumping into his, and he moves back ever so slightly, surprised.
“I’ve come here to ask if you’d like to come spend Christmas with me and my family.
” His eyes widen ever so slightly, and I gesture crisply.
“Your new best friends will be there, Dimitri and Blaise. Their whole families. You’ll get to meet my uncles, the future Lord Blackwood and the heir of the Montcroix estate.
” Now it’s my turn to smirk. “Plenty of fancy new connections to add to your Rolodex, without having to be thrown into any bodies of water.”
“Rolodex?” He scoffs. “What are you, eighty?”
“You want to come, yes or no? We set off tomorrow, and we’ll be at Blackwood Manor, so only two hours from here.”
He tilts his head, considers it. His eyes are pits—I can’t tell what he’s thinking at all. And then that familiar expression is back—the exact same one he had on his face at St Dominic House Observatory, after he told me his memories of me would be like the light of a dying star.
A look of such startling, unsettling affection I almost flinch from it.
Don’t.
“Does that mean I get to meet your parents?”
My heart skips a beat. Don’t, Elias.
I swallow and flash him a look.
“They won’t be the most famous people there, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He shakes his head. “Your parents, though,” he says, softly, almost wonderingly. “Isn’t that blurring the lines a little too much, love?”
I lick my lips nervously. He’s right—of course he is—and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop—what it’s going to be like, Elias meeting my parents.
My father, who will want to know everything about him.
My mother, if she manages to take the time off work.
I pray she doesn’t—because if she does, she’s going to take one look at us and immediately know the truth. A risk I can’t afford.
But if he meets Mum, the little voice in my head anxiously reminds me, she might help him if Birnam ever wakes up, if he’s ever arrested.
That won’t happen, I keep telling myself. And if it does, Mum can’t know. She can’t know what Austen and William did.
She can’t know what happened to Ophelia. On my watch.
“The lines are already blurred,” I tell Elias. I’m mortified to hear my own voice come out hoarse and broken. “Anyway, that was the whole point of our deal, wasn’t it? Not the dating itself, but what you can get out of it? So there you go. I’ve invited you. You can come or not, it’s up to you.”
He watches me, withstands the weight of my glare. And I don’t know what he sees—if he sees my fury, my wounded pride, my annoyance, or if he sees all the pain and terror hidden behind all those things.
Maybe he sees all of it. Maybe he’s thinking about St Dominic House, like me, thinking about it all the time, all the time.
Finally, he raises his hand, places a single finger under my chin, tilting it up. And then he leans down and brushes his lips over mine in the softest kiss.
My heart drops. The kiss is tender and warm and disastrous because it feels so real, and because the corridor is completely empty. I want to melt into him, to give him all of me and claim all of him in return. I’m worthless, I want to remind him, so love me.
But how could he, when we promised not to break the fifth rule? I close my eyes and my throat feels suddenly so tight I can barely swallow. I should never have invited him.
“Yes, love,” he says, low and sweet. “I’ll come.”