Page 43 of House of Hearts
Christ. Save me from myself.
“The one that killed my soulmate?” Headmistress Lockwell speaks plainly. “Yes.”
My mouth goes dry all at once, and I blurt out the most obvious question in my brain. “Why would you keep it?”
Sadie throws me a dark look, but it’s too late for me to discover tact in this situation. If Headmistress Lockwell is offended by my question, she doesn’t show it. She’s a careful portrait of restraint, her hands clasped cordially across the table. “For starters, everything Anastasia touched has a nasty habit of lingering. I could throw this blade away several hundred times and it would still find its way back to us. Secondly, it serves as a reminder of what I’ve lost and the life I’ve gained. I didn’t think I’d want to live after Isaac, but look at me now.”
I squint in response. She meets my eyes briefly before casting a wistful look back at the blade. “It taught me what is truly important. When you sacrifice love, you see the world more clearly for what it truly is—a chessboard game of kings and queens where you lose a pawn or two to scale ahead.”
My breath escapes me in a short, indignant burst. “You think Isaac was a pawn?”
Her veneer chips faintly. I see it in the quiver of her lips and the press of her nails to her palm. “He was the love of my life and my greatest heartbreak, make no mistake. I think of him every single day, and I have for the last twenty-five years. But through the grief, I realized what that loss afforded me. I’m one of the few people on this planet who can go through life with minimal distraction. If my husband is disloyal, it doesn’t destroy me in the slightest. I have a fulfilling career and three children I wouldn’t have had otherwise. In the place of love, I have so much more.”
“Two,” Calvin amends.
“Excuse me?”
He lifts his attention up from his sleeve to his mother’s desk. “You said you have three kids. Percy’s missing, so you really only have two.”
“I have three,” she snaps back. “He’ll be found. Last year still has a chance to be rectified.”
Calvin says nothing to that. With his chin resting in his palm, I recognize the beat of his finger tapping as the notes of the school anthem. It seems morbidly poignant at the moment, the lyrics floating through my skull like a missed warning.
Over a hundred years, our legacy kept alive
No matter what, we will survive.
Is this what survival looks like to them?
There’s not a discreet bone in Tripp’s body, but according to Sadie, we’re dragging him along in case he needs to rough up potential witnesses (aka any students who managed to sneak out past curfew).
“You’re right,” I say as we approach the tower entrance. “Nothingsays discretion like Theodore committing physical battery outside of a crime scene.”
Tripp blows his vape in my face, and I choke on the fumes. “Jesus, man, you sound like my mother. Don’t call me Theodore.”
“Call him Grizzly, he likes that one,” Ash tells me with a wink. “Griswold’s a hell of a last name.”
Ash is part of our merry band tonight: there’s him, Calvin, Sadie, Tripp, me, and Birdie. Mallory’s got a case of the sniffles, and Oliver’s got a case of his girlfriend being suspicious of him disappearing at night.
The tower looms Rapunzel high above us. If this were a fairy tale, this is the part where a long braid would tumble down the side and we’d scale our way up the limestone wall. Since it’s not one, Sadie quickly pulls out the skeleton key to let us in.
We disregard theTwo at a Timeplaque hanging outside the door in favor of cramming inside in a single file line. Sadie trembles in the front, her hand drifting along the spiral railing. There’s a chill to the air, courtesy of high winds blowing against the siding and a particularly gruesome draft. I’d probably be shivering, too, if my own paranoia wasn’t lighting matches underneath my skin. It begins as a tiny prick in my stomach but catches quicker than a house fire. Spreading up my arms and throat and settling hot in the back of my neck.
The view out of the window beside me is blotted out by a thick gauze of gray webbing. A spider sits in its funnel, its legs like sewing needles, its thorax a copper button. I think of Aurora and the cursed spindle, pricking her finger and sleeping forever.
Not now. Not here. Not again.
Cool fingers cover mine, Calvin’s presence stopping me before I burn myself down to the ground. His voice is gentle and low behind me.“Focus on breathing. Can you do that for me?” he whispers, his thumb caressing a soothing path along my skin. “We’ve already established I’ll catch you, but I don’t need a third trust fall. I’m too young and beautiful to throw out my back.”
I whip to face him. “You’re—”
“Incorrigible?”
I nod mutely, though I can’t admit that’s not at all what I was thinking. There’s one word coming to mind, and the realization is far worse than any panic attack.
Sweet.
It’s a bedroom.
