“Fuck,” he says with a sigh, looking around the large, bare room. “It’s worse than I thought it would be.” He drops his bag beside the desk across from Claudia.
“You’ve never been in here before?”
“Of course not. I’ve never been on anyone’s bad side until you came along.” He grabs his desk and pulls it far away from Claudia. Once satisfied with the distance, he sinks into his seat, relaxing against the chair’s tall back.
Claudia exhales sharply through her nose. “You cannot hold me solely responsible for being here.”
“Triche seems to think otherwise. That’s why I’m late. He was telling me to remember that every wave of sickening dread I’d experience in this room was because of you.”
“Well, he’s wrong.” She scoffs, pointing her finger at him. “You tricked me into becoming Iphigenia. You begged me to speak to Dolericym for you, and you agreed to go to the observatory with me. We’re equally to blame.”
“And yet this,” he says, gesturing to the room, “is your sole punishment, while mine is the loss of an entire future.”
If only he knew the truth. If only she could tell him. All she can say is “You have no idea what you’re talking about. That night cost me a lot, too.”
“Like what?”
She wrestles with what she should or shouldn’t say. “Let’s just say you’re not the only one who angered their mentor by breaking the rules.”
“Olivier?”
She nods even though she’s talking about Lamour. She has to let Cassius make assumptions. She can’t tell him the whole truth. “And, of course, now I have the High Sage looming over me, waiting to expel me if I make one wrong move.” She buries her face in her hands and releases a frustrated groan. Looking up at Cassius, she asks, “Triche truly isn’t going to help you break your curse anymore?”
His jaw clenches, his gaze fixed forward. “He said he would, under one condition.” Without moving his head, his eyes slide to Claudia.
“What’s the condition?”
“That I don’t speak to you anymore after today.”
Her heart slows. They stare at each other for a long time.
Claudia nervously fidgets with her fingernails. Her voice is quiet when she asks, “What are you going to do?”
He sighs, head rolling back. “I don’t know yet.” Rubbing his temples, Cassius says, “This room isn’t helping me figure it out. I feel like I’m dying.”
You are, she thinks, but she swallows down those words.
For half an hour, they don’t speak, and the tonic is already beginning to wane. She can feel seconds of her life falling away, gathering at the bottom of some cosmic hourglass. When she first met Alistair, he said that people have a limited number of breaths in this life, and they should not waste them.
He must’ve come up with that in here, sometime between entering and licking bones from the floor.
Claudia understands him now. When one is forced to acknowledge the fleeting and fragile nature of human existence, it inspires this bone-deep emotional urgency. Time is running out. Every action is important because everything is impermanent; they will die—Cassius first—and anything left undone or unsaid will be their own fault. Claudia yearns to unburden herself from all the secrets she’s been holding back. She wants Cassius to see her, to know all of her, and she wants the same from him before it’s too late.
But confessing everything to him would be its own surrender—an acceptance that she cannot save him. And despite this dread-stained room, there’s a deep-rooted, stubborn, relentless part of her that refuses to give up.
She looks over at Cassius to find that he’s already looking at her.
His lips part as their eyes meet. “How are you feeling?”
She clears her throat. “Like a complete and total fool who’s ruined everything good in life.”
Nodding knowingly, he says, “Well, we only have half an hour left. That’ll go away once we leave.”
She shakes her head, looking around at the walls of bones. “I felt that way before I came in here.” Looking at him sincerely, she says, “While I do feel that we’re both to blame, I am truly sorry for bringing you to the observatory and getting you in such big trouble with Triche. I feel awful.”
His gaze softens. “You’re right,” he says. “I know we’re both responsible. I’m sorry, too. It’s one thing for me to be watched closely by Triche—I’m used to it. But you shouldn’t have to deal with this scrutiny. You’ve more than proven yourself a worthy scholar, and I don’t like how he’s punishing you as a means to punish me.”
“It’s fine. I deserve to be punished.” It feels like all of this—everything bad—is her fault.
