She narrows her eyes at me. “Usually sleeping.” She sounds exhausted.
I brush a stray hair away from her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be awake?”
“I’m sick.” Her eyes flutter shut under my touch. “With a cold or something…”
“You’ve been working too hard.”
She shrugs a shoulder. “I see you here almost every night,” she whispers. “I was wondering…”
“What?” I ask.
“If you’d ever wake up.” She turns her eyes on me. “And if you did, if you’d speak to me.”
“Of course I would.”
“But you left me,” she counters in a half whisper.
“Don’t say it like that.” I try to take her chin between my thumb and forefinger, but it’s impossible to hold her. Her skin slips through my fingers like smoke.
She closes her eyes, leaning toward my ghostly touch. Her humanness—the thrum and pulse of her blood, the aroma herhair holds—is gone. “Fine. It wasn’t exactly like that. But I didn’t think you’d just stop speaking to me.”
I drop my hand back to my side. “I didn’t know you cared so much.”
“Of course I do.” She hits me with a severe look, brows puckered and eyes vicious. “I trusted you.”
“I didn’t realize…” My throat is dry, and these words catch. I try to speak again, but suddenly my throat constricts. The room begins to fade, darkness creeping in from the edges.
It’s like I’m falling backward into oblivion, my voice disappearing with me.
I startle awake.
I’m in the Paquet Manor library again.
Why?
Diantha is sitting in the wingback chair beside the fire, a small black kitten in her lap. She strokes the creature, kisses its head, then sets it down on the floor.
“A new friend?” I ask.
She smiles and nods, getting to her feet.
Time begins to move strangely again—I notice a blanket over my body. Then, the blanket is on the floor. Diantha is kneeling beside me. I smell her. I feel her arms around me. Her limbs are tangled with mine. Her head is a heavy, warm weight against my chest. I weave my fingers in her hair and tell her there’s nothing to worry about.
Do I believe this?
She tells me something about Asteria. Her voice flickers like a candle.
Suddenly, the room is empty and the sun is high and hot in the sky. I stand behind the captain’s desk, watching it, weak and milky, break through the clouds and fall over the university’s grounds.
She crosses the room toward me, black curls pulled over her bare shoulder. She wears nothing but a black chemise, the fabric inching higher and higher up her thighs with each step she takes.
A fire burns in the hearth at my shoulders, casting her in golden light. The flames dance in her dark eyes. I settle deeper into my chair, relaxing into the soft material.
“What took you so long?”
I raise a brow. “Did you wear that to bed?”
Diantha looks down at herself, confused. “I don’t…think so.”
