She leaves his room in a quiet surrender.
No more silent considerations. No more nightmares of killing. No more dreams of godhood.
Cassius is going to live.
Claudia is going to die.
Claudia dangles a mouse by its tail like a pendulum. “Come on, Bishop. You have to eat.” He’s been refusing food for almost two weeks now. Claudia thinks it’s because he knows something is wrong with her, and he misses Alistair. Alistair always brought the best meals.
Bishop flicks his tongue and turns his head, uninterested. Claudia leaves the mouse in the corner of his enclosure and hopes he’ll eat when she’s not watching.
She sits at her vanity and stares at herself in the mirror. She looks worse than she did when she left Kulden—tired, sunken eyes; dull, dry skin; unbrushed hair; unkempt robes. With a tight blink, she pulls a piece of paper from her nearby bag, plucks a quill from the table, and dips it into an open inkwell. It’s time to do something she’s been dreading: writing out the care instructions for Bishop. Someone is going to have to take him in once she’s gone.
This feels like the final surrender. She thought she would cry during this, but as she writes, she doesn’t feel anything at all. She’s accepted it. She’s resigned to it. She’s already dead.
Alistair, please take Bishop. He loves you as much as I do.
•Feed him one big meal a week, or two small ones. He does well with live or dead food.
•Do not waste your time giving him any snails or slugs. He’s picky and he hates anything too squishy.
While she’s at it, she writes out all her final wishes.
•Marcherie, you can have all my clothes. You’ll wear them better than I ever did.
•Cassius, take this to heart: I love you, and I will keep loving you from wherever I go once I die. Also, you can have all my books. That’s the bright side to all this: We no longer have to share. (That was meant to make you laugh. I hope it at least made you smirk.)
It was worth it, you know.
“The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.”—Plato
POETRY
Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
Aristotle,On Poetics
Claudia can’t remember the last time she experienced a deep, uninterrupted, restful sleep. Days? Weeks? Time doesn’t feel real anymore. Muscle memory carries her to Professor Lamour’s class where she feels heavy in her seat at her desk. Cassius sits across the room and makes no effort to hide the fact that he’s staring at her. She can barely keep her eyes open. All she wants to do is leave. Ever since her lessons with Lamour ended, she’s hated being in his class. She can’t look her professor in the eye. Shame keeps her head down and her mouth shut. Lamour hasn’t spoken a single word to her since their last night in the observatory, which is why Claudia is so surprised when he approaches her desk.
He lays down a stack of papers. “Congratulations, Miss Jolicoeur. Your dialogue was excellent. You’ve earned the highest grade in the class.”
She turns the paper over to find it marked up in green. A perfect grade is penciled in the upper right-hand corner. “Thank you,” she says without looking up, her voice hollow.
“A blessing may be in your future,” he says. Still, she does not look up.
He sighs. “As further reward, you’re dismissed for the day. Go to your room and rest.”
“I don’t want to,” she says, a biting whisper. She just wants what’s left of her life to be as normal as possible. She needs her routine to keep the impending fatalistic spiral at bay.
“You’re exhausted.” He closes the book before her—Plato’sIon—and gives her a soft smile. “Go on, dear. Go get some sleep.”
Another student walks by her desk. She waits for them to walk out of earshot before she says, “What do you see in your nightmares, Lamour?”
Eyes softening, he says, “Ghosts.”
Ghosts? She almost laughs. That’s nothing. That’s a fucking bedtime story.
Claudia sees the devil.
