Page 5 of Skyblossom
“Oh… I wish I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t want to see it either. Okay, no scrying,” she said. “I promise. Not this time, anyway. Just remember, snapbush is theonlybush you should be rummaging around underneath.”
“Ew.”
“Comeon.I’m starving. I want blueberry pancakes.”
Well, at least blueberry pancakes could save me fromthatconversation.
The campus got a little livelier as we made our way out from the dorms of Dragon House and got to the metropolitan center of the Citadel, and the Great Hall was alive with activity when we got inside, people talking and chatting and laughing all around us as we walked, students in the colors of each of the five houses.
I met a few familiar faces—I had a compulsive friend-making problem, where I was terminally curious about everybody around me, and I ended up chatting with half ofcampus until I knew more than I wanted about a million different people. Which meant that walking into the Great Hall was always an experience for me, stopping to greet people, hovering here and there for a chat, asking people I hadn’t seen in a week how their latest project was coming along, and Lumi broke off ahead of me to get her pancakes before she, quote,withered away to nothing and crumpled lifelessly to the cold, unfeeling earth.She’d live.
But maybe I should have taken after her a bit more, because by the time I got up to the serving tables, there was only one dragonberry cream muffin left on the shiny silver tray, and I hurried to grab it at the same time somebody else reached for it, and our hands met right over the muffin, and I looked over with startled surprise to where Cadence was looking at me with wide eyes, flushing a furious red.
“Oh… hey,” I said. “Good morning.”
“Hey—hi. Morning. Good morning, I mean,” she stammered. “Summer. Hi. It makes sense you’re a morning person, you seem, well… morning. Energetic. I don’t know.”
I laughed. “I’m absolutely not. I’m only an early person because my best friend is, and she’s very whiny when she doesn’t get what she wants. I had to get swatted awake,” I said, and she raised her eyebrows.
“Swatted?”
“Swatted.”
She nodded like she understood, but it soon wasn’t the most important thing going on: the snagweed she had coiled around her shoulder snaked suddenly down her arm, down to where our hands both rested over the muffin, and it lunged to coil around my wrist at the same time it held onto hers, locking our hands together, and Cadence gasped, tugging lightly on her hand. “Oh—Knot, no!”
I tried to tug my hand away, flustered. “What? Not no?”
“No—Knot!”
“Not no or no not?”
“Knot,” she insisted, tugging again.
“Oh,Knot.” I laughed, touching the snagweed with my other hand, relaxing. “Hey, Knot. Good morning.”
Cadence blushed furiously, ducking her head, hiding behind the curtains of long, chestnut-brown hair that fell over her face when she did. “I’m so sorry—you can have the muffin—”
“No—you can have it. I’m trying to do something to pay you back for your help today. The literal least I can do is not take your muffin.” I picked it up, moving my hand as much as I could with Knot, well, tying us up in a knot, and Cadence stiffened with a vaguely queasy look when a girl in Scorpion House colors came up to the table from the other side.
“Hey, Cadence,” she said, and she stopped, blinking fast at the scene before a massive smile broke out over her features. “Whoa. Am I interrupting something?”
“No—” Cadence said, tripping over herself to say it as fast as possible. I handed her the muffin, but as soon as I turned towards her, Knot tugged on my wrist, and I stumbled to the side, pitching off-balance with a gasp and falling against her. I fumbled, trying to catch myself, moving on instinct without considering how we were tied together, and I yanked Cadence’s hand towards me in the process, pulling her into me at the same time. I dropped the muffin and thumped into Cadence, and I reached for my wand trying to get out before something snaked around me, Knot wrapping around the both of us and pulling taut, pressing us into one another, and I heard Cadence’s quick draw of breath, leaning her head back looking at me with her eyes so wide it was almost comical, her blush a full-face peachy hue now.
“Oh, wow,” Cadence’s friend said. “I’ll leave you to it. Have fun!”
“No—it’s not that,” Cadence blurted. “I-I don’t know what’s—I swear he never does this—can younot,Knot?”
I laughed, even as I felt myself flushing with awareness too—Lumi wouldkillme if she saw me like this—and I maneuvered my arms as best I could to pat Knot without groping Cadence in the process. “Hey, Knot,” I laughed awkwardly. “It’s good to see you too! I love a hug, but there’s better ways to get one—”
“I am so sorry,” Cadence said, wriggling against the vine. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
I mean, some part of my brain didn’t mind being pressed up against a cute girl like this, but—that wasn’t the most productive thing to think right now. She was a little shorter than me, and I got the angle of her long, dark lashes fluttering out looking up at me, close enough I could see every one of the faint pinkish freckles over the tops of her cheeks, a cute little button nose and curtain bangs that gave her a dreamy, romantic sort of look.
But again—if Lumi knew I was checking her out from a distance of two inches, I’d be in big trouble.
“Do we think he wants the muffin?” I said, and she pouted.
