“By someone. But it turned out I had to climb down on my own.” I spread out the silks. “You must have dozens of these. Why did you keep asking Baldbeak for them?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “You have a gift. Besides the magical ones, I mean.” He traced one of the patterns lightly. “Even if these had no magical worth at all, they would be beautiful.”
He looked up, more meaning in his hazel eyes than I was ready for. He had kissed me once before, on Plaguenight, and I had been trying very hard not to think about it since then. But the thing about a kiss is that, when you’ve done it once, the possibility of another one is always hovering between you. I would say like a butterfly, something fragile and beautiful,but if you are desperately tryingnotto think about kissing the other person, it is more like a mosquito with an unignorable, insistent whine.
And I had too much else to think about.
The moment hung suspended; and then I looked away, and he dropped his gaze.
“Do you want them back?” he asked, keeping his voice light. “As you can see, I have taken great care of them.”
“No,” I said. I lowered the lid, shutting them away again. “I can make more.”
“Well,” he said, and sighed. “At least let me walk you back to your rooms.”
“I am not going back,” I said.
“You’re leaving right now?”
“I think I must.” Before any number of things happened that could delay me or persuade me to abandon my plan altogether.
“Then let me walk you to your … horrifying skeletal steed.”
“That I can do,” I said.
We made our way up to the highest floor of the palace, to the door that led out to a rooftop garden. The battlements were quiet, save for the soft wind and the faint creak of bone. The bird waited, motionless as a sculpture but somehow unmistakably alive, her great ribbed wings folded and her skull turned slightly towards me. Below, guards walked the courtyard, their cloaks floating behind them as if they had wings of their own.
“I will never get used to that thing,” Patrick muttered.
He looked out across the ramparts. His posture was easy, his hands clasped behind his back, but there was something rigid about the set of his jaw. The wind had disarranged his hair slightly, and I had the strange urge to reach out and brush it back. I didn’t.
“How does it feel? Finally having your revenge on Milady?” I said. “I don’t think you could have beaten her any more thoroughly.”
A soft breeze lifted his cloak.
“Empty,” he said. “It feels empty.”
“I thought it was what you wanted.”
“So did I.”
Something about the set of his jaw made my throat ache.
“So this is it, then?” he said lightly, though there was a bitter twist to his voice. “You go your way, I go mine?”
“For now,” I said.
Patrick turned to look at me fully then, studying my face, as if committing it to memory.
“I can’t say I approve,” he murmured, tilting his head. “But you’ve never cared much for my approval, have you?”
I huffed a quiet laugh. “Not particularly.”
More silence. The wind whistled low through the eyeholes of the bone bird.
There was too much between us now. Too much deception; too much truth. I thought about sayingthank you, orI can’t forgive you yet, orcome with me.
Instead, I stepped towards him, and there it was again: that flicker of something almost gentle behind his eyes. I don’t know what made me do it. The awful quiet of it all? Or maybe just the thought of leaving without knowing—without at least trying to know. I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. He startled—just slightly—and then he kissed me back.
