Click.She flicked her empty lighter between her fingers, the metal snapping in a restless rhythm.
She smelled faintly of smoke. Acrid, sharp.
When I’d returned to the room earlier, I’d found a pile of clothes in the corner—ash-stained, smudged, singed at the edges.
That was when it clicked.
Jess lit fires at night.
Little ones. Controlled. Hidden.
She did it so she wouldn’t sleep.
She led me into a room where a circle of chairs had been arranged like some kind of cult meeting. A woman sat in one of them, hair scraped into a severe bun, horn-rimmed glasses perched on her nose as she scribbled on a clipboard.
“We are actually doing a feelings circle?” I muttered.
“The key is to sayI feel,” Jess said dryly. “Like—‘I feel… that you had a crazy psycho sleeping in our suite last night.’” She shot me a look sharp enough to cut skin.
Click.
I winced. I hadn’t warned her about that. “I’m sorry. Did he bother you?”
“He scared the shit out of me when I got home! But no, he didn’thurtme,” she snapped. “What are you doing with Ash anyway?”
“He seems to have attached himself to me,” I said, shrugging. “And… I don’t know. I like it.”
I hesitated.
“I like him.”
Jess stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “You know he tortures people for fun, right?”
“Not in front of me.”
Her jaw dropped. “Seph, that’s not a defence!”
“It kind of is.”
“They say he broke two guards’ legs the other day chasing them around the Institute.”
“Probably true,” I admitted. “He has a certain way about him, for sure.”
Jess just looked at me like I was the dangerous one. “I just hope you know what you’re doing. People are also talking about you and K.”
I shrugged. “K… is another story.”
“What story?” she asked, spinning the empty lighter like a nervous tick.Click.
I pointed at it. “Are they really letting you take that in here?”
Click.“It’s empty. They won’t let me fill it anymore.” She scowled. “But don’t change the subject.”
People began filing into the room. Lyra was among them; when she spotted me, she glared.
“Okay, everyone take your seat!” Wendy Hart called.
I slunk into a chair. Jess took the one beside me. An empty seat remained on my other side.
