She wonders what he’ll think of her after she goes through with it.
If he’ll even think of her at all.
Setting the tin onto the bed, he rises to go. He makes it nearly to the door before she asks the question battering at her chest.
“Are you mad at me? About Ellie?”
He turns back to face her. “Areyoumad at me?”
“I don’t want to be.”
“Then let’s start over.”
Relief blooms, petal thin, in her belly. “How do we do that?”
His eyes drop to the cross around her neck—to the ring beside it, plated silver hammered over a mandrel. Another promise unmet. Another bridge uncrossed.
It feels as if she’s set a torch to it.
“We could go back to how things used to be.” He’s being too nice. Too similar to the old Asher, before the garrison carved away everything that made him familiar. It feels like a front. “You can pretend like you’re annoyed with me, and I can pretend I don’t notice.”
When she only stares, reluctant, he adds, “You can make a hurtful joke about my feet.”
“That was one time. And you’ve grown into them very nicely.”
His smile is too easy. She doesn’t trust it. Not really. It doesn’t stop her from smiling back. She’s lost too many people already. She doesn’t think her heart can handle losing anyone else. Even this new, alien version of Asher.
“Where’s Poppy?” she asks, desperate to change the subject.
“Three doors down. I’m pretty sure she’s asleep.”
“Sleep sounds nice.”
“It’s been a long twenty-four hours,” he agrees. She expects him to leave it there, but he doesn’t. He lingers, restless, rapping the back of a knuckle against the doorframe. Finally—quietly—he says, “I wrote you letters, too.”
“Oh.” Everything inside her shuts up tight. “Why didn’t you send them?”
His honey-dark gaze kicks to hers. “Why didn’t you?”
He leaves her there to ponder the question alone, the tin full of letters leering up at her. Door shut, she stares at the wood veneer until her eyes blur. For the third time that night, she thinks about Turning. About swallowing the Rot and letting it case her heart like solid Teflon.
Maybe then everything would stop feeling so sharp. Maybe she’d stop nicking herself on the edges of all that she’s broken. Shoving the tin under a heap of pillows, she tiptoes out into the hall.
Tristan is there, dozing in a windowless nook, his head tucked into the curve of his elbow. She creeps past as quietly as she knows how, stopping at the third door down and rapping lightly against the frame. If there’s movement on the other side, she doesn’t hear it. She knocks again, a little more urgently than before, casting a furtive glance toward Tristan’s sleeping form.
She’s about to give up and leave when the door pulls wide to reveal a bleary-eyed Poppy. She takes one look at Shea standing there and pads silently back toward her bed, climbing in and lifting the sheets in invitation. With a swell of relief, Shea clambers in after her. The room is bathed in a cranberry glow, the sky outside the window awash in color. Her feet are ice, Poppy’s warm. There’s a lump at the foot of the bed she’s almost certain is some sort of creature. She doesn’t investigate. Instead, she pulls the sheets over her head and lies flat, breathing in the smell of cotton.
Beneath, the lighting is Thulian pink—like they’re wrapped inside a cocoon. It makes her think of the blanket forts they’d make whenever Mari Thorley hung the laundry out to dry. They’d spend their afternoons playing at being witches, mashing rose petals into paste and brewing love potions out of twigs and grass and pale white bunchberry, squabbling until the fireflies winked awake and Camellia’s father came out to gripe about the mess and send them home.
The pang in her chest is strong enough to make her want to weep.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” she whispers.
“That’s okay.” Poppy’s voice is thick with sleep. “I don’t mind.”
“But—” Shea rolls to face her. “What do you mean? How can you not? You were accepted to Humboldt. Just a few more months, and then you were finally going to get out of Little Hill. You were going to do something important.”
“Iamdoing something important,” says Poppy. “I’m looking for Ellie.”
