Page 98 of The Bargain

“I didn’t want to risk it—after what happened with the Pearsons.”

She watches me, utterly still for a moment. Invoking the Pearsons is pure manipulation, but I’ve fallen too far for shame. What’s one more sin when you’re already hellbound?

Desdemona lets out a short, sharp breath. “Fine.”

She turns around, without another word, her fortresses high and mighty around her, and she strides away without hesitation, without faltering, without so much as a glance back.

I look down, opening my fist. The letter in my hand is a crumpled ball of paper that turns to mush in the slush. I let it drop to the ground where it falls without a splash.

And then I, too, walk away.

@spearcrestinquisitor

Three months since the boy wonder awoke.

Two hundred rooms searched.

One item confiscated.

One arrest to be made.

Fortune favours no one but it would seem it favours one person least of all.

38

Ugly Truth

Desdemona

The winter has long ended, but my hands are cold.

It’s the morning before my first exam—I’ve not slept a full night through for days now, and I threw up my entire breakfast hours earlier. Now, I sit in a corner of the library, my sleeves pulled down over my hands, which are still cold. At the same time, the inside of my stomach feels hot and hollow, a dug-out pit lined with searing acid.

Each time I blink, my eyelids feel as if they’re scraping over my arid eyes.

“Dess?”

A whisper startles me out of my thoughts and I look sluggishly up. I frown when the voice repeats my name—I recognised it instantly but wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.

It’s Ophelia.

I cringe back into my seat, lowering my laptop screen to hide its light, praying desperately that she won’t see me.

After spending half a year doing everything and anything to get her to talk to me, I find myself dreading the idea more than anything else.

Not now, I think, deep in the empty pit of my heart. I don’t have the strength.

I don’t want to see you.

“Dess!”

Please. Not now.

But I feel her before I see her: she brings the outside frost with her, and her perfume, which is rich and sweet and reminds me of Mum, and that aura of hers, like a whirlpool, drawing attention irresistibly towards her. I swallow, and hope and pray that no matter what I do or say, I don’t cry in front of her.

Because I would rather die than do that.

“Dess, Dess, have you heard? I—” She rushes over to me, her eyes bloodshot like she’s also not been sleeping, wide with panic. “I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry, I’ve messed up⁠—”