by May Dawson
Airren touches the small of my back, steering me to the left, toward his room. Once I’m in his neat, spartan room, with Airren closing the door firmly behind us, I finally draw a full breath.
I should have gone to my own room—I don’t know why I’m even in here—but I sit heavily on the edge of his bed. “Picking up freshman from the police station seems to be above-and-beyond the call of RA duty.”
Airren sits beside me on the bed, knitting his scarred fists together, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees. “Freshmen are always trouble. I was prepared.”
My stomach drops as I think about why Airren brought me here. No one out in that hallway seemed to want me there; I saw familiar faces, but no friendly ones. “Is Stelly…”
“What about Stelly?” He cocks his head to one side.
“Also above and beyond the call of roommate duty,” I say.
His kind gaze reminds me of the conversation I just had—this is about pity—and then he asks, “Did your brain break earlier tonight? Did you lose the ability to speak in full sentences?”
My lips part in irritation. The faintest twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips makes his high cheekbones round in a way that is entirely adorable. I am far too conscious of his broad shoulders so close to mine, his handsome face and casual, protective competence.
“Since glitching on day one,” Airren tells me, “Stelly has been a good roommate. And also, she was with you in Casting. She knows there’s no way you have the magic to set up a fake alibi.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Airren shakes his head. “Can’t make you happy.”
I bump my shoulder into his. But what I’m going to say next dies on my lips as there’s a hesitant knock on the door.
Airren’s on his feet in a second. His wand is in his hand, although he moved so fast I never saw him draw it; he crosses the room on silent feet.
“It’s Stelly.”
Airren checks the peep hole before he steps to one side. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to check on my roomie.” She flashes me one of those bright Stelly grins, like nothing untoward has happened lately.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep alone?” Airren asks her.
“I’ll be okay,” she says. It’s a flash of the big-brother-little-sister dynamic between them that always makes me feel jealous. “I came to check on Tera.”
“Really?” My voice comes out impatient, and I don’t know why. It’s sweet that she came to check on me.
“Really,” she says, her voice equally tart. She sits down on the bed beside me, taking Airren’s spot—he crosses his arms, alone in the middle of the room—and throws an arm over my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“I am not,” I say. “But I’m better than the man in the ruins.”
“Luca Gibbs,” she says. “He’s a sophomore. Was a sophomore.”
My lips part in surprise. The sweet boy we met, who offered me half his chocolate bar? What was a corpse I glimpsed from a distance is now a boy with a quick smile, his hand holding out a foil-wrapped package. My imagination spins away from me, imagining those bright eyes clouding over in death.
“What are people saying out there?” Airren demands. He flashes me an apologetic look as if he knows the answer won’t be a good one, but his gaze returns to Stelly.
“No one knows what’s going on,” she says bluntly. “People are scared. There are supposed to be extra security patrols tonight, but the overall feeling is still… not good.”
Airren’s eyes are still intent on her face.
She adds, “There are people talking about Tera. I mean she’s been here three days and we’ve got a corpse…”
“Every freshman’s been here three days,” Airren says.
“I wouldn’t say logic is a strength of a crowd, Airren,” she says.
“Do you think you’re safe sleeping in your room tonight?”
She hesitates. “I think I am.”
I glance between them before I realize they plan on me sleeping in Airren’s room tonight. Fear twists in my stomach, imagining those dark things of the night creeping into my room…but I never said I was scared. Why would they assume I’d be willing to sleep here?
“Why not Mycroft’s room?”
“Believe me, you do not want to sleep in there,” she says. “Three’s a crowd.”
I don’t know what to make of that.
There’s another quick knock on the door. “It’s us.”
“All right,” Airren calls back. The lock slides open, the doorknob turning on its own; Cax and Mycroft are in the doorway.
“I like to think that in every possible world that split off from Earthside, there’s pizza!” Cax comes in carrying an enormous, grease-soaked white cardboard box. He throws it on Airren’s bed beside me.
“You’re my hero,” I tell Cax, looking up at him with a smile.
When he winks at me, a wayward curl of blond hair falling into his eyes.
Airren hurries to pick the pizza up, rescuing his bedspread, and moves it to his desk. Mycroft unpacks salad, stuffed mushrooms, and a glass jug of lemonade. If it weren’t for the silence in the room as we eat—and the dour mystery that hangs over us—it would feel like a party.
I’m practically falling asleep on my feet. But I know tonight will be rough; I usually wake up in the morning hours of the morning, plagued by the worries I can ignore during the day, and that’s without the nightmare I walked into today.
Mycroft and Airren exchange a look. I’ve caught the end of some magic mind-meld or something, because Mycroft stands and gathers the leftover pizza. “I’ll walk you to your room, Stelly.”
Has Mycroft ever made a request instead of issuing an order in his life?
“Oh!” Stelly says. “I have your toothbrush and… stuff.”
“You packed me a bag? I live down the hall.” I stare at her as she hands over one of her own bags, a brass-studded brown leather tote bag.
“Just take it for tonight,” she says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It seems they don’t even think I should go out in the hall. A chill settles over me.
“Thanks.” I take the bag from her.
She studies my face. I expect her to say something snarky about how I finally thanked her for something—damn, I never thanked her for that bagel this morning—but she lunges forward and hugs me.
I pull back, alarmed by how fast she moves, and she wraps her arms around me anyway. “I’m so glad you’re okay! When I heard there was a body, at first I thought…Of course it’s awful about Luca. I don’t mean. But I’m glad you’re okay.”
I pat her back awkwardly. I’m deeply uncomfortable but also warmed at the same time; I don’t know how to process those two thoughts.
“Thanks,” I repeat as if I’m glitching myself.
As soon as the three of them leave, Airren nods at his dresser. “I don’t know what Stelly packed. Feel free to help yourself to any of my clothes.”
“I don’t think they’ll fit.” That was probably another good time to say thank you. Instead, I slip into the bathroom, which is small, windowless, and ancient, with white-and-black tile that I’m pretty sure is a hundred years old. I feel better when I’ve taken a quick shower, using his sandalwood-scented soap that makes me smell like him, and brushed my teeth.
I step back into his room. He’s unrolled a dark green sleeping bag across the hardwood floor.
“You don’t have to give up your bed to me,” I say.
“Are you trying to be polite? Don’t start now.” He picks up one of the two pillows on the bed and throws it onto the sleeping bag. “I don’t mind. I’ve slept in worse conditions.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, one leg folded beneath me. I’m reluctant to lie down and close my eyes, even though they ache. “I’m missing out on a lot of history.”
“Good thing you’re literally taking a class on that.” He ambles across the room to the bathroom.
I say to h
is broad shoulders, “I mean recent history. The kind I don’t enjoy learning in class.”
He turns back, impatience written across his face. “What do you want, Tera?”
“I want to catch up,” I said. “I heard there’s a book about me…that’s a weird feeling.”
“Eighteen-year-old girls are self-absorbed enough, I don’t think you need to read any books about yourself.”
“Wouldn’t you feel weird if there was stuff like that about you?”
“Yes,” he says. “But there isn’t. Because I’m just an ordinary dumb Divide Marine.”
Dumb? Airren might be ridiculously handsome and built like a god, but he’s a long way from any stereotype about dumb Marines. Those keen blue eyes don’t seem to miss anything. But maybe he prefers people to believe he’s not as sharp as he is. “You were Intel.”
He gives me a long, dangerous look—like I shouldn’t know that—and then goes into the bathroom.
I turn out the lights and slide under the covers. His bed is comfortable, and the pillow smells like his soap and aftershave. I turn my face, breathing in that scent while he can’t see. If he catches me sniffing him, I’ll never live down the embarrassment.
When he comes back in, he says, “I am not the one to teach you about history, Tera. Try Cax.”
“Why?”
“Because history is a miserable thing for me too.” He settles down in his sleeping bag and turns his back to me. There’s a sudden pounding of feet as someone runs down the hall, a call and a laugh—and when the noise fades away, his soft breathing is audible in the deep quiet. Belatedly, he adds, “Good night, Tera.”
“Good night.”
When I close my eyes, the ruins spring up around me. Luca on the sundial. Now, I can clearly imagine his face, although I hadn’t recognized him then. His skin had been grayish, his limbs and spine taut, as if he had already begun to age into death. My father always broke the spine. There’s powerful magic in a backbone
I squeeze my eyes tighter shut, but the room feels like it spins around me. It feels like I’m spinning back in time.
The first time I saw my father kill a man, he told me the victim was a child-molester. I’d thought my father was a righteous man, even when I covered my ears to block out the screams.
I’m not sure if Airren is asleep already or not, but he needs to know this. Someone needs to know this, in case something bad happens to me before I talk to Cutter again. I didn’t think of it until now.
“That was a bad copy of my father’s magic,” I whisper.
Airren sits up in bed, wrapping one muscled arm around his knees. “How do you know?”
“Anyone who was there for my father’s rituals would know he never left the spine intact.”
Airren takes this thought in with a marked lack of emotion, as if his mind is processing. “Maybe they ran out of time.”
“The spine was almost always first. So they couldn’t run.”
Airren touches his mouth with the back of his hand.
I’m surprised the thought’s impacted him. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it? I shouldn’t have come back.” The room is dark, and that makes it too easy to talk out loud. At least this time when I squeeze my eyes shut, it keeps my tears from spilling onto my cheeks. “I need to know who brought me back here, Airren.”
Radner can say it was an act of belated compassion and justice, but I don’t believe her.
He hesitates. “We’ll find out.”
“I’m not going dark-side,” I say.
Saying it out loud does not make me feel more confident.
Maybe Airren hears the quick hitch in my chest. He gets up slowly as if he doesn’t know what to do next. The bed indents as he puts his knee onto the mattress beside me, and my weight shifts toward him. When he lies down, I can barely make out his face in the dark, even though we’re almost nose-to-nose.
“It’s all right.” He brushes the back of his hand over my cheek, smearing damp between us. I guess those tears leaked out anyway. “You don’t have to be anyone but who you want to be, Tera. Books be damned.”
Even without magic, having him close to me stills the spin of memory enough for me to fall asleep.
Chapter 19
For a few hours I sleep like the dead, and then I wake up with a start. I stare up at the ceiling, grateful for the weight of Airren’s arm over my waist, anchoring me to reality. I don’t know when his arm wrapped around me, when he drew my body against his, but it’s a small spark of joy in the middle of the merciless hours. For six years now, my sleep at night has been empty, and my wakings too full.
When my thoughts start to spiral, I ground myself by recording physical details around me. Airren left the windows cracked open, and a cool early morning breeze drifts through the room. The sheets are crisp, and they smell like laundry soap. Like Avalon laundry soap, hand-made and scented with lavender; I’ve gotten used to Tide. This scent is one more bit of home that I’ve forgotten. I’ll lose this tiny memory again if I’m cast back out of Avalon… No, too much feeling there; I need to focus on how things smell and taste and sound in the moment.
I run my hand over Airren’s quilt, and then my thumb follows the pattern of tiny, handmade stitches that run in loopy patterns across the brightly-colored squares. Airren sleeps under a quilt that looks like it was made when he was a boy. I think it means something that, after his time as a Divide Marine, he unfolded this quilt from wherever it was stored and shook it over his bed in Corum.
I twist in the bed to look at him. This close up, I can see a faint scar that slashes across the end of one eyebrow. His cheeks are ruddy, his lips faintly parted, which gives his face a softness it lacks during the day. Stelly says he’s a good man, and I believe her. For some reason, I’m struck with a deep sense of loss as I stare at that face, as if I’m nostalgic for something I haven’t even lost yet. I’m already feeling a sense of loss for something I haven’t had.
Airren’s dark eyelashes flutter. The second he opens his eyes, he is completely awake, his cool blue eyes clear. “What is it?”
When I don’t answer, he rises on his elbow. His eyes are intent on nothing, and I can tell he’s listening for some sound, worried that something woke me.
His watchfulness makes me anxious. I wrap my fingers around his broad shoulder and tug him down toward me. He doesn’t move. Only his eyes flicker down to meet mine.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I whisper.
“Nothing woke you?”
My lips part slightly in a bitter smile. “Nothing but my own thoughts.”
He nods as if he understands. When he settles back, our bodies separated by a cool expanse of air, I breathe in the scent of his body, a faint warm masculine muskiness, and his sandalwood soap.
“Go back to sleep, Tera. You’re safe tonight.”
“It’s not tonight that keeps me awake.”
He turns over onto his back. The movement pulls the quilt away from me. Before I can complain, he twitches it back to cover me. When he smooths the quilt over the rise of my hip and the curve of my waist, even through two layers of fabric and batting, his touch makes my nerves tingle.
“What is it you really want?” He stares at the ceiling. “You never told me.”
“I told you I wanted to be normal. And I meant it.”
“You’ve never going to be normal.”
“Maybe I could start over,” I say. “A new name, a new life somewhere else in Avalon where no one knows my face. Like Witness Protection.”
“The name is not why you can’t be normal.”
I pull a face.
“But you could do extraordinary things if you chose to. Since you can’t be normal. Might as well.” Even lying down, his big shoulders manage to shrug.
“I don’t even have spoon magic anymore.”
“Yeah, it’s too bad.” His voice is gruff as he rolls back over onto his elbow, fixing me with those vivid eyes. “No
magic and a bad attitude.”
“I don’t have a bad attitude.” I poke him in the chest. “I have a realistic attitude. Also, are you really sure you want to use up today’s lecture quota before sunrise?”
“There’s no quota,” he promises me. “I can lecture you all day.”
“But I won’t listen.” My tone is light. I don’t know when that happened.
He growls playfully, grabbing me around the waist, and I surprise myself when a grin breaks across my face. “I’ll make you listen.”
His grip around my arm draws me closer, his touch rough and yet comforting. His lips are almost a true red, touched by the sun like his cheeks. His upper lip is thin, but his lower lip is broad and has a petulant cast. I can’t imagine him pouting, though.
It seems like a waste to leave those lips unkissed. Airren gazes down at me with softness in his eyes, as if he’d kiss me back. That might be a trick of the thin silver moonlight that fills the room. But maybe it’s not.
I close the distance between us and press my lips tentatively against his.
Airren’s eyes widen slightly, but that’s his only response. My cheeks blaze with humiliation. I start to pull away, but his arm tightens around my waist.
He nuzzles the corner of my mouth, and I turn my face back into his. When his lips press against mine, they are as soft and tender as I imagined.
Our mouths press together over and over, chaste close-lipped kisses that carry more passion than I would have imagined. He yanks me tight against his body. When I throw one leg over his waist, his abs brush against mine, every hard-ridged edge distinct, even through his t-shirt. His hand slides under my shirt, his big, warm palm wrapping around my waist. He touches me as if he’s been holding himself back until now.
My palm finds his jaw, my fingers resting on his stubbled cheek; the faint shadow of his night-time beard is rough against my hand. It’s a contrast with the Airren I know during the day, clean-shaven and clean-cut and cool.
When he kisses the corner of my mouth, I look up into his warm and heavy-lidded eyes. Bedroom eyes. For the first time, I know exactly what that phrase means. No one’s ever looked at me the way Airren’s looking at me now, with a mix of affection and lust.
