“Do you want to wear it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s allowed. You don’t always have to know what you want.”
“Not according to anyone else.”
“Everyone else is downstairs. We don’t care about them up here.”
The clock tower felt taller when he said that. Farther removed from the rest of Zenith Hall.
I looked at the brooch again. Then at my coat. Then at his hand, waiting.
“Yes,” I said. “Put it on.”
He stepped close enough that the Pull reached my mouth before his hand reached my collar. Apples and wind so clean it almost hurt.
“Here?” he asked.
His knuckles hovered near the left side of my coat.
“There.”
He pinned the brooch slowly. The metal point slid through wool.
Halfway through, his breath caught against my cheek.
He shifted the work to his left hand and finished the clasp.
“Kieran?”
“It’s fine.”
“That’s what people say when it isn’t.”
“It’s fine for now. This is your moment of pain, I’ve had more than my share.”
He fastened the clasp and lowered his hand.
The brooch rested over my heart.
Poisoned gift. Mother’s relic. Warning. Inheritance.
On my coat, in the wind, under Kieran’s careful eyes, it became something else too.
Mine.
Kieran looked at it for one breath too long.
“There,” he said.
His voice had changed.
So had mine when I answered.
“Thanks.”
The Pull moved through me, warmer now, less like a hook than a hand I had not taken yet.
