“Whatever you do, make it quick. I need an answer. I need asolution.” He nodded in dismissal, and I pushed out of the car.
In the commonroom that night, revelry unfolded in the form of spewing champagne bottles, riotous laughter, and rowdy games of spades and poker.
Vanya, who’d been giggling at something Prescott said, whirled around from her seat in a chair by the fire and waved me over. “I wondered where you went. Play cards with us!”
I did not want to play cards.
I played cards.
I lost, barely paying attention to the hands I was dealt. A little while later, it was finally time for bed. Vanya blushed as Prescott wished her a happy Rending.
“May your darkest night have stars,” Vanya replied, her cheeks darkening to a plum color.
On the way up the stairs, she grabbed my arm. “Did I say it right? Your Rending blessing?”
“Yes.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her most people our age didn’t use the formal blessing. Instead, I elbowed her. “Prescott?”
She swatted my arm. “I’m not allowed to like anyone, remember?”
My brows lifted. “Have you told him that?”
To my horror, she pressed her hands to her face and leaned back against the stone wall. “No,” she wailed between her fingers. “No one else knows what I am.”
“A princess?”
“Arejectedprincess.”
With my hand on her back, she started to ascend the stairs once more.
“One rejection can’t define the rest of your life.”
“In my culture, to be rejected by your betrothed is worse than death. Itisdeath. No one can marry me now. What?” she added, eyeing my expression.
“Your father sent you here, away from your culture. The rules are different there.” I shrugged. I really didn’t know much about her culture at all, closed off as it was from our own.
She let out a quiet guffaw. “My father was mortified. He sent me here as banishment. As punishment.” A sob burst from her lips. “But it’s been the most fun I’ve had in my entire life, and I feel guilty about that.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders as we peeled off into our hall. At our dormitory door, I looked her in the eye. “We all believe things we were taught from birth,” I said, recalling the laws of dragons and riders I’d always believed. “And finding out they aren’t true is earth-shattering. But it’s better to live in a broken world than one that is a lie.”
She blinked at me through tears. “Profound, Ari.” A half smile. “You sound like Enplencourt.” She swept her handforward and strode into our room, imitating our professor’s walk.
I snorted, pushing into the room.
Under my pillow, beneath the bent card, was a note that saidMidnight, same place.
When Vanya was asleep, I crept from the room. My thickest winter coat was not enough to stave off the frigid air seeping in at the collar and the wrists as I marched to the lair. The lantern I carried squeaked as it wavered back and forth in my unsteady hand.
Inside the lair, moonlight fell in from the oculus above, lending just enough light for me to see Rush’s faint outline waiting on the other side of the massive rotunda.
“Our ride is waiting right over here,” he said, peeling away from the wall.
“We’reflying? But there are two of us.”
“I bet your father is proud of your math skills.”
“He’s dead.”
Rush stopped so abruptly that I knocked into him, hands on his back. I jerked away like I’d touched a hot stove.
