By the time Alice and I got back to our dorm, exhaustion tugged not just at my eyes and limbs, but also at my heart. I felt emotionally wrung out from the mortal fear I’d held for Alice, and from my experience with Sister Maria. The adrenaline from the Dacre discovery and the burn from the ruby noose around my neck were all that kept me awake, kept me rooted in reality.
‘What a day,’ Alice mumbled, tossing her coat over the back of her desk chair.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘What a day.’
She turned to face me, leaning back against her bunk. ‘What now?’
‘Honestly?’ I swallowed hard. ‘Sleep. Sleep is what now. The rest we’ll figure out in the morning.’
She studied my face, her gaze flitting from my eyes to my lips to my choker and back again. ‘You know what I loved?’
‘What’s that?’ No part of the night we’d just endured seemed an appropriate guess.
She bit her lip, her front teeth nibbling into her scar, and then said, ‘Forget it.’
‘No, what?’
A half-laugh, then a shake of the head. ‘You’ll think I’m soft.’
I pulled my hoodie over my head and tossed it to the ground. ‘There are worse things to think.’
‘Not for me.’
I sighed and rolled my eyes, but there was no tension in it. ‘I promise not to think you’re soft, Alice.’
Alice looked at my newly bare arms, my hands, my choker once again. Finally, my eyes. Hers shone in the lamplight. ‘That night I shared your bed. It was just . . . it was nice. It didn’t really feel weird. I don’t often feel comfortable with people.’
My stomach did a funny twist. She hadn’t said ‘it was nice’, at first. She’d said she loved it. The knowledge stoked those unfamiliar embers deep in my belly. I had the sudden urge to cross over to her, to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her neck. To find that kind of warm physical comfort again. But I didn’t. Because it was Alice, and I might get stabbed.
‘I felt the same,’ I admitted carefully. For some reason, this conversation felt more vulnerable than any of the trauma we’d been dragged through hand in hand. ‘Despite the fact I’d just given you my blood as part of a sinister soul ritual and then listened through a door as you carved into yourself with a knife. Maybe I just don’t scare easily.’
Alice smiled. ‘You don’t. It’s impressive. The way you’ve handled this whole thing . . . it’s like you have no fear.’
I gave a little snort-laugh. ‘I was scared of you, to begin with.’ ‘Good.’ She nodded. ‘That was my intention.’
As charged with emotion as the conversation was, one thing kept stealing my attention – the searing rubies around my neck. I knew I had to show her.
‘And I’m scared . . . I’m scared of this.’ I reached my hands behind my neck and undid the delicate silver clasp.
As it fell away, Alice gasped, clutching a hand to her mouth. Then she closed the gap between us, so her face was right up close to mine. I could smell the late-night whisky on her breath. She dropped her hand from her lips, and traced a finger along the brutal necklace. I managed to suppress the shiver, but felt an awkward lump bobbing in my throat.
She pulled away again, looking like she might cry. ‘I . . . I feel like this is all because of me. You’re hurt because of me.’
‘No,’ I said fiercely. ‘This started happening before you and I got close.’
She raised an eyebrow, still every inch the cartoon villain. ‘You and I are close?’
‘Oh, piss off.’ I pushed her playfully backwards, my hand on her clavicle. ‘You know we are.’
She started to laugh, but it died on her tongue. Instead she gazed out of the loose-framed window at the tower that had tortured us both. Then she looked back to me with a look of urgency, and something else, something softer, something gentler. Something shimmering and ephemeral. Something that carried a magnetic charge.
‘Lottie . . .’ she whispered, and for a split second, I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. That she might close the distance between us. That maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the only one feeling the burn of those embers. She’d hated me on sight, all those weeks ago, but surely she felt this too. Something rich and soft knotting between us.
But instead, the black shutters went down behind her eyes with a dangerous flash, and she rasped, ‘Help.’
No, I found myself almost praying.Please, no. Not now.
Alice nearly sank to her knees, but managed to clamber up on to the bunk before her back started to arch with the agony. She handed me her pale wrists to restrain at the same time as a long, ear-shattering scream tore out of her chest.