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One day, I hope to help her see these things, to recognize how much she’s changed my life for the better with her steady presence alone. But she is not ready, and I fear my affections may run her off, so I will wait.
Until tomorrow,
Alastair
Chapter 2
Two Weeks Until Christmas
Calista
Ever the masochist of the heart, I carry the hot coffees to Alastair’s office. As if being with him and knowing I can’t have him—not truly—isn’t painful enough. I continue to taunt myself, allowing him to take up every ounce of oxygen left in the space between us, seeking him out when I know I shouldn’t—aware the distance is of my own design.
My body buzzes with energy I’m desperate to expel, energy only he has ever been able to siphon out of me so that I may stand more solidly on my own two feet.
Using my hip to push the heavy door open, I stumble inside, righting myself with a smile meant to dazzle him, to mask the ache gnawing at me.
“Professor Ignatius, I’ve brought caffeine to fortify—” My face falls as my gaze lands on his empty desk, nothing but a scrap of paper remaining in his wake.
My brows scrunch as I pass the long rows of seats along the wall of well-loved books and head to his desk where the deep mahogany is illuminated by the faint glow of dreary daylight peering through the fog outside, the vibrant colors of the stained glass appearing dull in Alastair’s absence.
I set his coffee down, black like his soul, as he always says. He's wrong, though. If his soul were a coffee, it would be a warm latte with Madagascar vanilla and a dash of cream. Light, sweet, and delicious. Much like him.
I snag the note from his desk, skimming over its contents.
Calista,
I'm sorry to miss our coffee break, but Professor Chadwick did not make it to class today. I'm filling in for him.
I'll see you at dinner.
Yours,
A
Disappointment hums through me, threaded with a thin wire of concern for my old friend, Professor Chadwick. There is nothing I can do to soothe either feeling, so I retreat to the library, its garland-wrapped columns and handrails a cruelly festive contrast to the heaviness settled low in my chest. Cheer has no business here, not when my thoughts keep drifting back to a man who was never meant to occupy them so completely.
It isn’t that I rely on Alastair—at least, not in the way people warn you against. It is simply that I crave quiet routine while thriving in chaos, and his presence tempers the noise inside me. He steadies things. Grounds them. Where I am sharp edges and restless movement, he is something vast and patient.
I am the tides, and he is the moon.
I feel the pull even when he isn’t near, the subtle ache of gravity insisting itself whether I acknowledge it or not. When I need to be dragged beneath the surface—lost in the current, breathless and unmoored—he is there. And when the world grows too loud, too insistent, he brings me to still water, offering a place where I can sink just enough to let the noise blur into nothing.
It frightens me, how easily he quiets the parts of me I’ve spent years guarding.
I banish the thought and spend the remainder of my lunch break curled into a velvet armchair beside the fireplace, a tattered gothic romance open in my lap. Windswept cliffs. Ruined abbeys. Lovers doomed by timing and circumstance. I tell myself it’s only the book that makes my chest ache, but even as the fire crackles, I know better.
Chatter fills the dining hall, the sounds of laughter clattering off the tall ceilings in a cacophony around us. I lay my tray on the long wooden table, sliding into a seat across from Alastair and beside Ophelia, but it’s who’s seated beside my dear friend that draws my attention, and never for the best.
Professor Balor Dinwoodie’s presence drags me into a memory of my first month at Nocturne Frost, and it leaves soot in my mouth, like ashes of the dead.
A shadow falls across the page, blotting out the weak winter sunlight that filters through the library’s tall windows. I don’t need to look up to know who it is. The faint scent of mothballs and too-strong cologne gives him away before his voice ever does.
“Still hiding behind books, Ms. Ravenna?” Professor Dinwoodie’s tone drips with the same smugness I know all too well.
I close my novel with deliberate calm, lips curving into a polite, razor-edged smile. “Still lurking where you’re not wanted, Professor Dinwoodie?”
His mouth tightens, but the leer doesn’t leave his eyes as he storms off to lick his wounds.
