But here’s what Leo can’t seem to grasp. Our empathy, our vaunted humanity, is a weakness holding us back from achieving what is otherwise impossible within a single lifetime.
Leo sighs heavily. “They just want a clearance on record,” he says.
I shake my head, annoyance mounting. “Fuck, I already gave you that two years ago?—”
“Yes, but after the most recent incident,” he interrupts, “you have to appreciate my position here. It’s risk mitigation.” His voicesoftens a fraction as he says, “It’ll be handled internally. I am looking out for you, Rye. Just trying to keep you here.”
I glance at the brass orrery mounted beneath the platform, feeling that urgent tug with each mechanical orbit. The solar eclipse is only two months away, and I’ve been here all this time, waiting.
“Fine,” I relent, the bitter concession ground between my teeth. “One evaluation.”
Leo nods, looking relieved. “All right. Good.” He heads for the staircase, pausing at the landing to glance back. Shadows deepen the lines around his eyes. “It’s been six years,” he says quietly, his tone tinged with regret. “We’ve avoided it all this time, but… What happened to Emma—it was tragic. Horribly unfair and tragic. But it wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could’ve done to prevent it.”
The dome tilts around me, pitching me off balance. Old breaks throb with a sudden flare of pain as a faded memory ripples through. The panic in her voice. The crushing helplessness. The vicious twist of guilt as my body lay broken, useless beneath the stars.
I struggle to anchor myself, fighting back the dark tide roaring in my ears.
Leo exhales an exasperated breath. “What I’m saying is, you can’t punish yourself forever. Moving on doesn’t mean forgetting.”
“Forgetting,” I repeat in a bitter tone as I flex my fingers, aggravating the phantom ache of shattered bones. A painful reminder that refuses toletme forget.
He lingers for a moment longer, then gives a solemn nod before he descends the stairs, leaving me alone with my loathing.
And I’m thrust back to the day he extended a lifeline, offering me the chance to head my own Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stonehurst.
Leonard Banner knew me before I became a blight on the field, mocked for my theories, reputation smeared. Hell, he was even the one who encouraged me into the dark regions of my research, eyes alight with ambition.
Well, technically, that was more spite than Leo.
Nothing fuels the drive to succeed quite like spite.
Still, beneath my cold resolve, some shred of sentiment must remain, because I decide maybe I won’t strangle him with Prescott’s entrails. Just leave them lying around for him to trip over.
As if pulled by a gravitational force, I return to the panoramic glass, finding Collins still engaged with Eugene-fucking-Prescott.
The breeze picks up, carrying a soft chorus of thunderous waves. Collins shivers, and I wonder if it’s from the gusty autumn air or the predatory gaze she senses lingering on her skin.
Every day, I sense the shadow darkening my mind a little deeper. Drawing me further into the clutches of some sinister influence. Like the woman silhouetted in the archway, unknowingly inviting danger, I’ve attracted something menacing and overpowering.
I curl my hand into a fist against the windowpane, assaulted by the echo of her near-touch that first day. It rings against my skull with a deafening tune, an infection seeping into my bloodstream the more I worry it.
On impulse, I sink my hand into my pocket and touch the brass instrument there, feeling the coolness of it as the breeze drifts past the open shutter to douse some of the heat gathered beneath my flesh.
Collins looks up as though she can, in fact, sense the predator in her midst. She says something dismissive to Prescott, and he gives her the full, arrogant wattage of his smile before he reaches out and clasps her hand.
My nostrils flare, my focus drilling to a pinpoint on their joinedhands. A violence rips through my insides at the sight of his skin touching hers, my breath caught in the aching cavity of my chest until she breaks away and disappears into the depths of the colonnade to release me.
I expel a tense breath, rubbing the back of my neck.
“Fuck, this really isn’t healthy,” I mutter, bracing my palm against the window as I stare out over the campus.
Over the spires, starlings fly in rhythmic formation. Intricately timed murmurations roll like waves, each movement an echo of the ocean, traced across a twilight sky. Their pattern unfolds in flawless spirals and waveforms, as intimately related as the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence.
As if triggered, my fingers tap a compulsive count against the glass, innate as breath, easing the tension crawling beneath my flesh. Twelve beats to maintain some sense of balance and control.
From up here on the bluff, my observatory perched just below the highest spires, I feel like a god watching over his creation.
And Stonehurstismy creation.
