No. Had they told her that?
“I mean, I don’t know for sure,” she was saying shakily, “but your sister said—”
“That’s not what they’re doing.” It came out harsh, dredged in the guilt of a boy who had never gotten over being forced to watch a woman slain at his feet.
“But—”
“Whatever they told you to do,” he said fiercely, “don’t do it.”
“L-like wear a dress for dinner?” She sounded fearful. “That’s what your sister said.”
“No.” Relief trickled through him, its icy fingers indiscriminate from the residual chill of the poorly ventilated room. They hadn’t been preparing her for the festival, after all—not yet. “Not like that.”
“Then what—”
“You should leave,” he said. This, too, surprised him, because that was not what he had intended to have come out of his mouth. The words sat between them like stone blocks, immobile and solid. “I’m sorry to say it, but fuck your sister. Fuck the festival. Fuck everything and just leave.”
She flinched back from him but he was still holding onto her hand, and the recoil of that gesture was like a small slap. “W-what? Leave? But I thought—”
Nadine blinked. When she looked at him again, her eyes were shiny.
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“But that’s what you’re doing.” Tears slid down her face. He watched them, fascinated and appalled in equal measure by his own inaction when she began to sob. “Youusedme. And now—what, it’s notconvenientanymore to have your family know?”
“This isn’t about them.”
It sounded like the lie it was.
She looked at him in disgust. “But it is. You act strange when they’re around, Cal. Like you can barely stand to be seen with me.”
He should have let her believe that. But somehow, that felt like a cruelty too far.
He wanted her.
But his wanting would be her undoing. And his.
“Goddamn it.” The word left his lips on an explosive burst. “Fuck. This is why I don’t sleep with sparrows.”
Thunder rattled the windows with a loud boom that made Nadine jump. He saw the terror on her face lit up in bas-relief as lightning cracked through the gloom like a lash.
“What did you just say?”
“Nothing. Forget I said it.”
“No!” she said. “Noelle mentioned sparrows. So did Odessa and Ben. So didyou. What the fuck is a sparrow, Cal?”
He took a step closer, no longer caring if it looked predatory. It was, and so was he, and when he gripped her by her other arm to cage her into an embrace she could not break free from, he saw her fear of him eclipse her confusion and desire until it was all he could see of himself in her eyes.
“If you know what’s good for you, Nadine—” his fingers bit into her shirt like talons “—you’ll never ask that again.”
“You’re hurting me.”
It was the tone of someone who had never been hurt before. She sounded stunned. That he would want to. That someone even could.
He released her quickly, putting space between them. He thought his hands might be shaking. They were buzzing, as if some of the lightning from outside had gotten into his fingers and burned there still.
