Across the wooden box.
Across the cuffs.
For a few seconds, I did nothing.
The ink found the seams first. It darkened the leather, filled the stamped Ashford line inside the cuff, and gathered at the place where my father’s thumb had pressed the morning he fastened them on me.
I should have moved them.
I didn’t.
The cuffs took the ink.
The letter took it.
The desk took it.
They drank it.
Outside, the quad stayed empty.
The clock tower kept its door shut.
I stayed at the window anyway.
Then I returned to the desk.
My hand was black with ink.
The cuffs were ruined.
The letter was no longer readable in full.
My Mark still burned.
I had been told she would be mine.
No one had told me she could choose someone else.
18
Ilasted until midnight before I took the brooch out of the drawer.
The room had become too small for me, and the wren in my palm had become too much like a question.
I thought of Rev first.
Then Juno.
Then Hale, which was a mistake I didn’t need to make twice in one day.
The clock tower came last.
Wind. Stone. Green apple. A boy who had once given me a place where the school seemed farther away than it had any right to be.
I didn’t wantanswers.
I wanted somewhere the brooch could belong to me for five minutes before Zenith put another meaning on it.
