Human lifetimes are fleeting compared to ours. Fragile. But fusing the circuit could change that for Maeve. It could change everything.
The thought feels like an anchor inside my chest, wanting to drag me down. I try to push it aside, to focus on anything else.
A stack of student essays waits for me, needing to be graded. Typically, I enjoy grading student work, encouragingthem to think in new and different ways, but lately, everything has felt dull and monotonous, like Maeve is my summer, and without her, I’m stuck in a perpetual dreary winter.
As if to solidify my point, rain lashes against the window with more vigor, and the fire dances in the wind swirling through the chimney.
I wonder if anyone else knows that the storm is Maeve’s doing. Rain during winter is a rarity here, and there’s only one storm witch on campus.
On my desk, I grab a student essay from the tidy stack, then uncap my inkwell and pick up my quill. My palm aches a bit at the contact, but somehow, it feels grounding.
Outside, thunder rumbles, and my chest goes tight at the exact same moment, as if my heart is tied to Maeve’s magic, to her storm.
And I know now that it is.
I stare down at the first essay, but my mind struggles to focus. All I see isher: windswept hair, violet eyes blazing with anger, lightning dancing along the steel of her sword. She was magnificent tonight, though I imagine she would’ve become even more irate with me if I’d told her that. And she has every reason to be upset. But I have to maintain this distance between us—for her own good. Someday, I hope she may understand.
Once more, I attempt to focus on the work in front of me. After a stretch of time in which I read an entire essay without absorbing a word, I put my quill down and stalk into my kitchen. I’ve not needed blood for some time, but right now, thirst is starting to claw up my throat.
I pour myself a glass. The sharp scent reaches me immediately, and I almost curl my lip at it.
It smells nothing like Maeve’s blood. In comparison, this blood smells stagnant, dead.
I drink it anyway.
The blood coats my tongue and throat without offering any relief from the dissatisfaction lingering inside me. Still, I force myself to drink.
Halfway through the glass, nausea stirs in my stomach, and I set the tumbler down with a clink, staring into the red liquid through narrowed eyes.
This should be enough. Thisusedto be enough.
Until I tasted her.
Now everything is bland, both tasteless and nauseating in equal measure.
I have the urge to fling the glass across my apartment, to hear it shatter against stone. But I stay my hand. I cannot allow myself to slip and lose control—not after fighting so hard to maintain it.
My chest and throat constrict. My hunger feels directed, as if my cells have finally been given what they’ve waited three centuries for. And they cry out for me to find her.
Maeve.
A sudden rush of sensation comes over me—the feeling of rain against my face, the wind in my hair, the thunder rumbling through my bones. And without needing to question or consider it, I know where the sensation came from.
She’s still out there, on the tower, in the storm. Waiting. For me.
I turn toward the window, and on the other side of the glass, lightning flashes, blinding me with its intense white light.
With a growl, I cross my apartment and yank the drapes closed, casting my space into deeper darkness, with only the fire to provide light.
I want to go to Maeve, to demand she get inside. I want to draw her a hot bath and run my fingers through her hair, to bathe every inch of her skin and then wrap her in a blanket and set her before the fire so that she can feel its warmth.
Without meaning to, I’m at the door. My fingers are wrapped around the knob, and the sting in my palm is the only thing that brings me back to reality, that stops me from rushing to her.
I can do no such thing.
Not without endangering her in a way I cannot bear to comprehend.
I release the doorknob and begin to pace. I move from the door to my desk, from my desk to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the hearth. But no number of circles around my apartment does anything to ease the anxiety sitting inside my chest.
