Rawlins lowered himself into a chair at Max’s bedside, his eyes fixating on the bandages. “Do you like it?” Max said, limply lifting his wrists. “I thought I would try a new look for autumn. They say red is very in this year.”
“I just…I don’t understand,” Rawlins said. “You’reweeksout from your first parole hearing.”
Max rolled his eyes. “From my paroledenial,you mean.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to support your case,” Rawlins said. “And your mother…I think I can get her to be a bit more helpful than she was during the trial.”
Max snorted and turned away. “Good luck. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Greywall and everyone like him…you know what they think about the arcane arts. That it’s elitist and dangerous. That it shouldallbe banned. And I get to be the poster child for that whole way of thinking. The perfect cautionary tale for everything they stand for. Am I wrong?”
He wasn’t wrong. Max’s case was still cited in nearly every political effort to curtail the scope of legal arcane practice, and nearly every time the government denied public funding for an expansion of education in arcane mechanicals.
“You’re not wrong,” Rawlins said, and then he straightened, trying to summon a tone of inspiration, even though he felt tapped out himself. “But you still have tofight.A parole review, even if the odds are against you the first time around, it’s a chance to tell your story.”
“You really want me to tell thewholestory?” Max said, a threatening tone in his voice.
Rawlins’s chest tightened; he knew that Max, during the investigation trial, had never fully disclosed just how much his teacher had recklessly taught him, and Rawlins was grateful for the boy’s loyaltyand discretion. But seeing him now, he could not bear the thought that he was being protected at the boy’s expense. “If you think it will help, then yes, absolutely. I’ll back up whatever you have to say.”
Max snorted, skeptical. “Doesn’t matter anyway. They’ve all made up their minds for a generation to come. I’m a monster, and nothing I say will change that.”
“You’re not a monster,” Rawlins said quickly. “You were so young. It was a mistake.”
“Yes, it was, and I’ll suffer for it for the rest of my life,” Max snapped, then nodded toward his wounds. “So excuse me for wanting that suffering to be shortened a bit.”
Rawlins put a hand on Max’s shoulder, so desperate to get through to the boy he nearly shook him. “You can’t think like that…as long as there’s a parole possibility, there’shope,at least.”
“Hope iscruel,” Max said dismissively, shrugging away Rawlins’s touch. He settled into his pillows, looking like a teenager again, so impossibly small that Rawlins had to clench his hands into fists to resist the urge to embrace him. “I’m not going to put myself through that again. And try tojustifymy existence. Get all dressed up so I can listen to people go on and on about how awful I am. All so I can get sent back into a hole and forgotten.”
The intensity of Max’s despair was like a blade driven into Rawlins’s belly. He remembered the boy’s eyes gleaming with excitement at the possibility of arcane study. Rawlins had been drawn to that light, had fed it more and more with each meeting and study session, offering texts and lessons, continually dangling the carrot of new knowledge to drive his pupil forward.
But now that light was gone. Replaced by the steely glare of a young man who knew he had been cosmically wronged.
It was not just the system that had wronged him.It was Rawlins.A teacher whom Max should have been able to trust. Rawlins had not only provided forbidden arcane knowledge but also stoked a dangerous fire inside the boy. Rawlins had sought to impart courage to challenge dogma, and conviction to overturn accepted norms—the traits of a great scholar. But in Max, a young man without life experience to dampen his ambition, the result had been disastrous. A belief that he could do anything, that the rules did not apply to him, thatprohibitions on dangerous arcane practice were for lesser minds. Rawlins’s own hubris had trickled down and infected the mind of his student.
If Max was a monster, as the state had decreed, Rawlins was his creator. And now Max was paying with his life, his verysoul,for the recklessness of his teacher, who should have known better.
It was unfair. Unacceptable, in fact—Rawlins could not bring himself to accept it. He refused.
“Just try to hang in there for a little while longer,” he told Max. “No matter what, we have a chance. Think about what you’re going to tell the parole board.” Max started to shake his head, but Rawlins continued. “Humility is the key. Try to apologize, even if it’s not easy. I’ll help you draft the statement if you’d like.”
“Greywall is never going to change his mind,” Max said. The boy’s mouth drew into a hard line as he turned his eyes away from his former mentor. Rawlins reached out to hold Max’s hand, but Max pulled away and looked past him toward the CO. “I’m done now.”
The words were spoken with a cold finality that eviscerated Rawlins. He nodded and stood, forcing himself to look one last time at Max’s bloody gauze wrappings before he turned and left him.
The image of Max inhis hospital bed came back to Rawlins at strange times over the next few days. One moment Rawlins would be looking at his undergrad lecture students, eagerly taking notes—then suddenly, he would catch a glimpse of a freshman boy with shaggy shoulder-length hair, and Rawlins would be back in the hospital room, trying to break down the walls of a hardened, miserable young man who was desperate to end his own life.
He tried to set aside those troubling recollections—but they inevitably intertwined with theothermemories from that night, leading him back to thoughts of Ellsbeth. He wanted to disentangle the two, but they bled into each other. His guilt about Max crossed over and intruded upon his desire for Ellsbeth, so the two feelings mixed darkly in his mind. The painful experience with Max cautioned him away from getting too involved with a student, while another voice answered,This is different.Sheis different.
No matter how much he tried to stop dwelling on her, Ellsbeth lingered at the periphery of every thought, every sensation, every moment—waiting for her turn to step onstage and fill his mind. Every time he checked his email, his brain skipped back to her unexpected message—to the image of her standing nervously at his front door—to the feeling of her body pressing against his. The memories taunted him. Their interrupted encounter could not have been more perfectly calibrated to stoke the embers of desire that had been smoldering all semester.
In idle moments, he would refresh his inbox, ignoring messages that actually needed a reply in the hope that something would land from Ellsbeth. After the way he had left, the onus to reach out was most certainly on him, but he wasn’t sure what to say, so he kept hoping she would break the seal and let him off the hook.
He still hadn’t heard from her, or figured out how to behave around her, when his graduate lecture rolled around. In previous classes, Ellsbeth had always been eager to take a seat near the front. This time, however, she sat off to one side and farther back, right on the aisle, as though she might need to get up and leave halfway through. She wore a checked skirt that fell just above her knees and crossed her legs as she settled into her seat. Was she daring him not to stare at the glimpse of her thigh that it afforded? Or was he reading too much into every detail, primed by hours of thoughts returning endlessly, obsessively, to her?
He met her gaze for a moment as she took her seat. She raised her eyebrows almost imperceptibly, but didn’t give anything away in her expression. He watched as she settled into her seat with a deep breath—and though of course he couldn’t hear her exhale from across the auditorium, he recalled with crisp clarity the sound of her breath in his ear, tinged with the shuddering charge of pleasure as she ground herself against him. He could practically feel the warmth of the air from her lungs, and he had to look away to break the spell.
It took everything in him to focus on his lecture, and still he repeatedly lost his place. If Ellsbeth was similarly distracted by their last encounter, she refused to show it; she answered questions confidently and intellectually sparred with her peers, appearing toenjoyherself in class.
It aggravated him.Sheshould be the one with her stomachfluttering, not him—a professor renowned for his stoic rigor. Was she really so unbothered? Or was she merely hiding it remarkably well? If her performance of nonchalance wasintendedto get under his skin, to make him second-guess himself and wonder if he was losing his mind over a girl who had moved on and could not care less about him, then she was doing a remarkable job.
