They looked different from here.
Beyond the north wall, a darker shape rose where the grounds should have ended.
At first I thought it was another part of Zenith Hall. Then the moon caught the edge of it: stone, narrow windows, a roofline too sharp to belong with the other academy buildings.
“What is that?”
Kieran followed my gaze.
I was expecting a joke. It didn’t arrive.
“Something you don’t want to talk about tonight.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he said. “It’s me trying very hard not to ruin the best part of your evening.”
“The best part?”
“You came looking for me. I’m trying not to waste it.”
I should have asked pressed him harder.
But then Kieran smiled, and the air still smelled like autumn apples, and I let the question go.
Kieran came up behind me.
“This is where I come,” he said.
“To do what?”
“Breathe.”
The wind moved over the roof and took a loose lock of his hair with it.
I had the sudden, almost irresistible urge to reach out and tuck it behind his ear, same as he’d done to me.
I kept my hands where they were.
“I talk too much downstairs,” he said suddenly.
“In the kitchen the other night, you mostly let Rev do the talking.”
“That is because Rev is the only person who talks more than me, which is why we get along so well.”
I looked at him.
The joke thinned before it became a smile.
“People expect it from me,” he said. “The talking. The apples. The part where I act like nothing matters and everything is a game.”
“And up here?”
His gaze moved over the roof, the open sky, the dark line of the school below us.
“Up here, no one needs me to be anything but what I am.”
That was the first honest thing he had said all night that didn’t come wrapped in charm.
