The kiss wasn’t careful this time.
It probably should have been. My mouth was split, and the first press of his lips broke the cut open again. I tasted blood.
I didn’t pull away.
Neither did he.
His left hand caught my wrist, pressing against the Mark. Mine found the front of his coat and held on hard enough to wrinkle it. The pain in my lip sharpened, then vanished under the hotter fact of him: his mouth, his breath, the low sound he made when I stepped into him instead of away.
One of us kicked the apple and it rolled across the stone somewhere near our feet.
Neither of us looked.
Kieran kissed me like he was trying to win something back and already knew he couldn’t.
Then his body seized.
He broke away with a sharp breath, his left hand still on my wrist, his right shoulder lit brilliant green-gold beneath his coat.
This time he couldn’t even try hide it.
I froze.
His Mark was burning through the cloth.
Not glowing. Burning.
Silver-green light leaked from the lines high on his shoulder, and for one awful second I thought I could see the shape of it eating into the skin beneath.
“Kieran…” I didn’t know where to go with the words.
His smile fell apart long enough for me to see what he had been holding behind it.
“I know,” he said.
“Know what?”
“That you deserve the truth.”
“Then give it to me.”
He looked toward the stair door and shook his head.
“Not here.”
I almost laughed.
The words had begun to feel like the school motto.
Then the basin call struck my wrist.
Not sound.
Pressure.
Silver-white light somewhere below, finding the Mark before the message found a basin.
Kieran felt it too. His hand tightened at my waist, then loosened.
