Yes.
Remembering it, remembering the sincerity in his eyes when he said it, makes something inside me crack.
I lift my pieces of parchment off the table and press them to my chest, right where the connection to Severin still lives. It aches, and I swallow hard.
Didn’t I do everything right?
I chose this. I chose to walk away. So... why does it feel like I cut a piece of myself out in the process?
My shoulders are shaking before I realize I’m crying. Tears streak down my cheeks in the firelit library, and I quickly reach up to scrub them away; I can’t let them drip onto my essay and ruin it.
With a deep breath, I stop the tears and lower my essay to the table. Then I sit back in my chair with a weary sigh.
And I question, not for the first time, if I did the right thing by walking away from Severin. Because right now, it sure doesn’t feel that way.
Chapter 53
Maeve
SLEEP USED TO COME EASILY to me. I’d lie down, snuggle up next to Isis on my pillow, and immediately drift off. Now, though, it feels like it may never come easily to me again.
I toss and turn, shifting this way and that in bed, until Lyra hisses in a low whisper, “Maeve, I am going toend you.”
Shit. I’m probably waking everyone up with my rustling around.
With a sigh, I turn onto my back and stare up at the dark ceiling.
My cold has fully passed. My body feels better, my head is finally clear, and my strength has returned. But the ache in my chest remains, the frayed bond trying to tug me toward Severin, trying to prompt me to fix it.
I still haven’t spoken to him. And in class on Monday, he barely looked at me. Maybe he doesn’t want to fix this. Maybe he decided to walk away at the same moment I did.
The thought gives me so much anxiety that I throw my covers back and slip out of bed.
Isis slithers out from beneath the pillow and hisses, “Where are you going?”
“The spire,” I whisper back, already reaching for my boots where they’re propped beside my bed. “I need air.”
“Don’t cause another storm,” she says. “You barely survived the last one.” With that, she hides herself beneath the pillow again.
I grab my cloak from my bedpost and ease it over my shoulders before quietly descending the staircase from our loft, careful to avoid the squeaky stairs. After slipping into the stairwell, I draw my cloak tighter around my shoulders, using it to ward off the cold.
There’s no one in the halls this late, and I make it to the stairwell leading up to the Skyreach Spire without seeing anyone.
At the bottom, I pause, standing there in the partial darkness between flickering torches. My hand reaches out to touch the cold stone wall, and for a long moment, I listen to my breathing in the quiet, to the whisper of the flames burning in the sconces along the walls.
What am I doing?I wonder, my lips pulling into a frown in the darkness.
I should be asleep. This is finals week, and then I have my demonstration before the Arcanum Collective board. I can’t afford to lose my focus. And if I don’t get to sleep, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Still, something makes me take the first step into the stairwell, and before I can stop myself, I’m ascending the spiralstaircase, then stepping out onto the tower, taking a sharp breath against the bite of the cold winter air.
This is foolish. I know it. I just got over a cold, and now here I am, standing on a tower in the middle of the night. But whenever I lie down in bed, all I have is questions. And if I want to sleep another wink in my life, I need answers. And it feels like this is where I’ll find them.
The door to the stairwell clicks closed behind me, and then I cross the windy tower to stand in the center. The wind tugs at my long braid, and loose tendrils of hair tickle my cheeks. Tiny pinpricks of light glow against the deep darkness: torches along the stone wall that surrounds the academy.
And in the railing encircling the spire, there’s the thin fracture I caused all those many days ago, while showing Severin my energy sphere—back before I learned how to properly contain it.
Tipping my head back and staring up at the stars, I ask the sky, “What am I supposed to do now?”
