Page 119 of Architecti
Thirty Days Left
Ihand Lucy a hastily drawn scribble of the rune.She takes it and slips it into the boob cup of her dress.
“Thank you.But…”
“But?”I say, the air souring.
“We have to stop this,” Lucy says, adjusting her dress.
“You don’t want to,” I answer, inspecting the turret window for cracks.There are none, surprisingly.I think we got away with it.
“What I want is irrelevant.I… I told you at the start this could never be anything more… and what we’re doing…”
“It is more?”I say.
She turns away from me.
“So what?You’re breaking up with me after letting me fuck you?”
She kneads her temple.“Do you have to be so crass?”
“Do you have to be so cowardly?”
“Cowardly?Fuck you, Midnight.You have no concept at all of what will happen to me if I so much as utter words of confirmation.”
She’s right.To love her, all I have to do is fall; to love me, she has to sacrifice everything.
I’m just the idiot that fell first.
I need to get out of here.I need to leave and get my head in check and stop myself from falling any harder or faster.She was clear it could never be more.I chose not to listen.
I turn and walk out, leaving her in the turret alone and find my way back to Lex and Bastien.
Finis must recognise my growing reluctance.It is always with me.It follows me now, stalking me through the reflections in the windows, as I make my way downstairs.
Those flickering images, sometimes me, sometimes my parents, sometimes horrible lies and warped nightmares.An image of Lucy, dead and rotting floats like a gnarled watercolour in the window.I shudder as my name is chanted like a whisper on the breeze.Finis is impatient, and for the first time, I am afraid of what will happen.
I find Lex and Bastien, both already animated.
“It’s a bit cruel for them to post the results during the ball,” Lex whines.She’s recovered now, but she has a nasty scar over her shoulder blade.I left Lucy in the turret to clean herself up and adjust her dress so she didn’t look like she’d been fucked within an inch of her life.
“Says the girl at the top of their class,” Bastien scoffs.
I note that Aurelia is third in Lex’s primary subject.
Second in Bastien’s.
My teeth grind against each other.I’m not top three in anything I’ve checked so far.But what did I expect?Despite all my extra study, I spent the first half of the year at the bottom of the group.It’s thanks to Lucy I’ve crawled my way to the mid-ranks and higher.I frantically scan the papers hanging on the outside of Finis Tower searching for my name.
It seems I have made progress, for I’m in the top ten percent of every class I check.But that’s not enough progress to chase off the gnawing knowledge that I made a deal that will see me choose: Lucy’s soul or mine?And the longer I spend with Lucy, the more I struggle with the concept of reaping her.
I find the most important results, the Veilwalker scores, and torture myself by scanning from the bottom up.
My name isn’t there.What the hell?
I reach the middle of the class, and my name still hasn’t appeared.I scan back down to make sure I didn’t miss it.
Hope.
