Page 112 of Architecti
Wasted.
And I have never felt more pathetically mortal than I do now, wallowing in my bitterness and failure.
It’s one of many reasons I’ve avoided Midnight.It’s been three long days.I know she’s hurt because on the second night she left a letter under my door with five words scrawled in her messy script.
What did I do wrong?
My chest caves in reading it, the script blurring as I trace her scrawl.She didn’t do anything.That’s the problem.She’s always been respectful and supportive.I’m the one failing to keep my boundaries.I was clear we could never be more.But my brain and body are refusing to listen.Perhaps Father and the Corvines were right all these years.Mortals are dangerous and they don’t realise why.
It is the ultimate reason why we can’t be together.
She’s too young, too human, too ‘student’.
No matter what I want, the truth remains the same, that if I utter those words to her, my power will siphon and bury itself in her soul.
When we were in the Celestial Library, I swear my crystalline heart cracked.I thought I was too late to stop it.That it was going to shatter and leave me there, helpless, in an abandoned, banished library.But I buried the feelings, and that is why I’ve had to avoid her, even though it feels like I’m tearing out chunks of myself in order to stay away.
But tonight, there’s a celebration ball.The students had their practice exams, in preparation for the finals next month.The results will be posted shortly.I’m just hoping the training we’ve been doing has paid off for Midnight.I’m certain it will.She’s improved beyond all measure.Has she improved enough, though?We’ll have to see because the other students are ruthless.
I rest against one of Finis Tower’s circular turret windows and peer down at the moat.Maintenance have laid glass over it, making a dance floor between the Great Library and Finis Tower.It’s enormous.They’ve hung twinkling fairy lights from the tower’s turrets all the way down to the library roof.It resembles a starlit sky, even from up here.A band plays on the porch of one of the towers, and all five years of students congregate and mingle around the base.Alcohol flows freely this evening; one of the rare occasions the staff and faculty turn a blind eye.Booze and magic aren’t the best mixture.
We’re guaranteed to have at least five students in the medical wing by morning, no one will turn up on time to class tomorrow and I’m betting there will be at least one Veil tear.
Midnight walks through the library arch and onto the circular dance floor.
I grip the window frame; it creaks under the pressure.She must sense me, for her eyes track the area and then scan up.
The moment she sees me, the corner of her lip twitches.
She bids Bastien and Lex goodbye and heads straight into Finis Tower.
I consider leaving.Finding another room, hiding away from her, but what’s the point?I should confess.I wore this dress for her.
I shouldn’t have, not when it just opens up the pathway for more.
We can never be more.
We are purely transactional.I keep telling myself this.
And yet…
Before she reaches me, I inhale vetiver and grapefruit, a scent that makes my body hot and my nipples tight.
And yet…
When she walks through the turret doorway, my heart betrays me.A hitch and a beat that thuds like another crack of crystal.
I swear my stomach dances like callow moths.
And yet…
Even though the light haloes her, making it hard to see more than her silhouette, I can tell it’s her.
The way her body moves through time and space has carved a path through my mind.I smile because I have memorised the way she stalks the campus halls.She doesn’t stroll like the privileged elite who don’t fear failing.And before turning to face her, I know her fists will ball instead of her sharing the fact she’s pissed at me, hurt by me.
I keep all of this tucked away because I shouldn’t know any of it.Because I shouldn’t lov?—
My heart splinters, and I lean forward against the glass and push the feelings away, down, down, down into a vault where I can never reach them.
