Cal.
And the steadiness is gone from his expression. It's just…anguish, like he hates what he's seeing, like he feels as much pain as I do, maybe more. And the realization burns through my body like acid. The more I have her, the sooner I'll hurt him. But the less I have her, the more it'll hurt me, and that hurts him too, and her, and me, and…
"Let me go," I say and brush out of her grasp. "Just leave me alone."
"Lanz!" Cal and Gwenna say it at the same time, but I ignore them.
Somehow bolstered with that one brush of her skin, I get to my feet. To the door, the stairs, my room.
“What’s goingonwith him?” Kai asks.
“No idea.”
Cal.
I know what's happening. I've known since I was sixteen, since my father gasped his last breath in a hospital bed in Lyon and the doctors couldn't explain why a healthy forty-three-year-old man's heart just…stopped.
Dell'Acqua men love too much, he’d told me once.It's in our blood. A blessing and a curse.
I close the door behind me and half wish I could just never open it again.
EIGHT
GWENNA
The next day,after class, I can’t bring myself to go back to Camlann House right away. The air there feels tense, worried. From whatever happened with Lanz—to Lanz?—but also in general. Like everyone’s on edge. Too many…masculine egos clogging the air, or something.
So, instead, I bundle myself tighter in my scarf and head to Cornubia Hall.
“Well,” Morgan says, cracking open the door to her suite. “Look who’s out and about.” She’s wearing just a tiny baby-blue T-shirt and sweats, despite the fact that it’s close to freezing outside.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I come in?”
“Sure. Please.” She throws the door wide and beckons me in. The place is its usual colorful disarray, with the heat cranked to just about subtropical—explains the T-shirt—but the air smells slightly acrid instead of its usual sweet and perfumey. Something on the stove, I realize. Shedding my coat on the couch, and debating losing my sweater, too, I tiptoe over to peer at what’s bubbling: brown, thick, suspicious. I wrinkle my nose.
“Is that a…potion?” I ask.
“What? No.” I turn around to see Morgan’s face fall. “It’ssupposedto be lentil soup.” She scowls at the pot, pushes past me, and stabs at it with a wooden spoon. “I thought it was a soup kind of day.” She nods at the window, where sleet is lashing the glass and the campus lampposts have come on even though it’s only around 1 p.m.
“Oh,” I say hurriedly. “No, totally.”
Morgan fixes me with a look. “Gwenna, A, I’m not stupid, and B, you’re a bad actor. Goddess, thissmellslike indigestionfeels.” She snaps off the burner and shoves the pot back off the heat. Then shrugs. “Oh well. I have bread, at least. And fancy cheese. You want?”
“Sure.”
Morgan finds a paper plate and slaps together a rudimentary cheese board, which she drops on the coffee table along with a paper-wrapped baguette.
“So what’s going on?” she asks, curling her feet under herself on the couch. “How are you?”
“I’m…hanging in there,” I answer, taking the armchair opposite her. “For now.” And that is how I feel: like I’m dangling at the end of a rope. Like I’m holding on for dear life.
And maybe I am.
God, it really is hot in here. I have a T-shirt on under my sweater, but it’s low-cut. Not in a scandalous way; I don’t think it even shows any cleavage. But low-cut enough to show the edges of my scar. The one over my heart.
“Mm.” Morgan leans forward and rips a hunk off the baguette, which she throws at me. “Think fast,” she adds, too late, and the bread hits me square in the lap.
On the other hand, I think,it’s just Morgan.
