Page 78 of Carousel

“Riss,” I say, carefully, standing up for the third time. “Are you annoyed at me?”

“Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m going to wake up entirely blue?”

Her lip quivers. “I trusted you,” she says. “I thought you were kind of okay. But, last night⁠—”

“If you’re talking about the conversation I had with Drake, I understood it about as much as you must have done.”

“He thinks you have blood magic.”

“I don’t. He’s wrong.”

She reflects on that.

“I don’t know. There’s something going on between you and Drake. And I don’t like it. Especially this our-hands-spark-when-we-touch thing⁠—”

“Riss!” I gasp. Luckily, the others in the Training Room seem engrossed in what they’re doing, and it’s fairly loud from the sound of the equipment many of them are using.

She doesn’t flinch. “Well?” she probes. “What’s your answer to that? You had one for everything else.”

“I don’t have an answer to that,” I whisper-yell. “Like I said, I’m just as confused as you are.” I bite my lip. “Please don’t tell Dezeeves.”

“Dezeeves?” Riss snorts with a spike of a laugh. “What about Cosmer?”

I’m confused.

“What does Cosmer have to do with this?”

Her smile falters.

“Cosmos. You really have no idea, do you?”

I look at her blankly.

She drags in her thin mouth. “Okay. Let me put it this way. Cosmer – who is one of my favourite people in the whole world, if you didn’t know – is not going to be happy that your hands go all, I don’t know, magic⁠—”

I take another urgent look around. “Don’t use that word!”

“—when you touch Drake’s. So, if I were you – and thank Cosmos I’m not, because your life seems kind of a mess⁠—”

“Excuse me?”

“If I were you,” she begins again, “I would start thinking very carefully about how I was going to break that wonderful news to him.”

Her words sink in.

Gravity seems to increase. I feel heavy. Planted.

“Are you saying…?”

“You know what I’m saying,” she snaps. “You basically defused a bomb yesterday, at the dinner table, just with your words. You’re way smarter than you come across.”

“You know, for a compliment, that actually sounds like an insult.”

She softens, like she’s been warmed up. “He’s amazing, you know.”

“Cosmer?”