“You’re going to the library now?”
“I’ve already wasted enough time lying around with you two.”
“Gee, thanks,” Fly says.
“I’m going to go and check on Damian too. He didn’t have such a great trial,” she tells me.
“Oh shit, Clare,” I say. “You didn’t say anything.”
“He’s okay,” Clare tells me, “just a little bit shook up. He was resting last time I went and checked on him. I’d better go and see if he’s okay. I’ll see you at dinner.”
She pads across the room, and then we listen to her close the door behind her and jog down the stairs.
“I think she may be in love too,” Fly says.
“Yep.”
“It’s sickening,” he says, “enough to make you vomit.”
“You’re just jealous,” I say, pinching him.
“Cupcake,” he says, “if love involves traipsing out to the demon wastelands and being torn apart by monsters, then I am definitely not jealous.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That bit’s not quite so good.”
I doze off after that, and when I wake, Fly is still lying beside me, reading a book he’s found from somewhere.
“Shit,” I say. “What time is it?”
“Dinner time,” he says. “I’m so hungry.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“And face the wrath of Beaufort Lincoln? No thanks. Do you think those boys of yours would conjure us up some food?”
I plump up the cushions behind me and shuffle up to sitting, running my hands through the loose bits of hair that have fallen free from my bun and tucking them back into the elastic band.
“Actually,” I tell him, “do you think they’re still serving at the canteen?”
“There’s no way that boy of yours is going to let you leave the tower to go to the canteen. Besides,” he says, pulling a face, “isn’t the food in this place far superior to the shit they serve down at the canteen?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “But I want to know what’s going on, don’t you? I mean, the Madame has fled. I wonder what that means. You think the Head will come back now?”
“No one knows where the Head is, Cupcake,” Fly reminds me.
I chew on my lip, then make up my mind, dragging my best friend from the bed, finding a jacket, and yanking him down the stairs.
The Princes must hear me come because all of them are waiting in the hallway for us.
“Where are you going?” Beaufort says. “You’re meant to be resting.”
“I have been resting,” I say.
“She even slept,” Fly points out.
“And now we’re going to the canteen to get some food.”
“We can make you food,” Dray says.
