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She leaves the door open for me and goes in. I stay a moment longer with my hand on the cold rail and the dark sea lapping beneath a burgundy sky and think over what she said.

He’s not what he seems.

And I can’t help but answer now.

I know. He might be worse.

Chapter

Twelve

BAZ

Idon’t remember crossing the room or stepping around Hetch’s chair or taking the long way out through the servants’ passage behind the kitchens, but I’m in the lower east corridor now with the sound of the dinner behind me muted and my pulse is still high enough that I can feel it in the backs of my hands.

I keep walking, fast. There’s no reason, but I can’t stay still and I can’t be back in that room with her. I have to keep walking, go somewhere. Disappear.

It had been simple. The plan had been to let her know I’d known, to say the word so she’d know I’d said it, to let the one syllable do all the work and release all I’ve been trying not to say since school began. Just the word, one acknowledgment, so it didn’t have to be the dragon in the room, in every single room we stepped into.

That had been the plan when I’d stepped onto the terrace. That had been the plan when I’d walked up to the rail. That had been the plan when I’d stood an arm’s length from her and watched her chest rise and fall under a tight velvet bodice and told her I was afraid of her.

The plan had held until my hand came up to her face.

Until I touched her.

I don’t know when I’d decided to do that. I don’t know whether I’d decided at all or if my body now operates without my consent, the bastard. One moment my hands had been at my sides and the next the warm silk of her skin had been under my palm, her hair at the nape of her neck sliding between my fingers, and the whole of her had been tilted up toward me with her mouth parted, lips full and wet, and her eyes beckoning me on in.

I had leaned down. I wanted to kiss her. If she saw any dark and terrible truths inside me like she had in Bone Work, I couldn’t tell because all her big blue eyes were saying was for me to keep going.

But I said witch against her ear because at the last minute my professional discipline had risen back up and reasserted itself.

The word had come out while my hand was still in her hair.

And it turns out that calling her a witch wasn’t closing a chapter.

No, it was starting a new one.

And had that door not opened, had Caine not seen us, my lips would have found hers and I would have made perhaps the biggest mistake of my career.

But what a beautiful mistake that might have been.

I recall Saturna’s eyes still on my mouth, her lips still parted, her brows pinched together like she caught herself wanting something she shouldn’t. That image will be enough to drive me mad until the day I die.

I keep going through the halls, snaking through the school until I find myself at the teacher’s quarters.

I go into the first room and sit on the edge of the bed and try to breathe, my head in my hands, my eyes closed. I try to think, but all my thoughts go to her and images dance inside my mind. The first thing I see is the pulse in her throat under the lamplight, and the second is her eyes going half-lidded under my hand, and the third is only what my imagination can bring me. She was so terribly soft to touch, and she must be terribly soft everywhere.

I open my eyes and sit up again. If I don’t leave this place, I’m going to end up pleasuring myself to thoughts of her without that velvet dress on.

The last ferry leaves in forty minutes. If I move now I can be on it, be away from the temptation that lurks in this school. If she’s not still at the dinner, then she’s probably back in her room, and there’s enough wine and unfinished business coursing through me that might put me on her path.

I head back out. Sometimes the ferry commute is a blessing. I feel the need to put miles of dark, deep cold water between us.

The corridors are empty. The dinner’s still running, I can tell by the thin wafts of music from the hall and by the fact that no servants are in the passage.

Good. I don’t want to be seen.

I take the chapel staircase down and go out through the servants’ gate behind the kitchens, and the cold hits me the moment I step onto the quay. The last ferry out is at the end of the pier with its lights twinkling and the captain already in the wheelhouse. He raises one hand to me without taking the pipe out of his mouth. That is the warmest greeting I have ever had from him, and I’m taking it as an omen.