Page 17 of Cardinal House
“Your eyes are like a real wolf’s,” she whispers, that plump pout of hers actually brushing mine, my lips tingle like they’ve been shocked with electricity. “I think about them sometimes.” My heart hammers harder and harder, blood rushing around like it’s a race inside my body. “They’re really pretty.”
Trying not to think too hard about the fact she thinks about me too, I say again, “Come to dinner with me.” Wetting my lips with the tip of my tongue, catching hers as I do, she doesn’t flinch back. “Come to dinner with me,” I repeat, her fingertips pressing firmer against my clavicle.
She exhales, gently pushing herself away from me. She steps back, just out of reach, because that’s what I want to do. Reach for her. Earn her trust. Get her to tell me what’s wrong. But she looks at me with big eyes, the blue crystal clear, and offers me a sad smile, a gentle shake to her head.
“I’m sorry, Wolf, I can’t.”
And then she turns away from me, crossing the room, nothing but the swoosh of the swinging doors left in her wake.
She’s all I think about as I try to stay awake for when she has to come in again to check on me, but it’s another nurse instead, and I realise with a new bloom of pain in my chest that she swapped with someone to avoid seeing me again.
I try hard not to think too much about what’s clearly wrong with her tonight. The way she moved, the sad look in her eye. Whatever it is, it’s well hidden.
Well practised.
And that just makes me all the more concerned.
Chapter 8
Luna
No one’s ever asked me to dinner before, and Wolf’s asked me on two occasions now, it’s all I can think about on my walk home.
It feels odd that someone would want to take me anywhere.
Especially someone like him, when I’m someone like me.
It’s too confusing. The feeling that swelled inside me was new, and it felt… good, that makes it dangerous, and I can’t afford to get myself into any more trouble. It doesn’t matter that no one can see me when I’m at the hospital. My uncle’s guards do not follow me there, it’s my only moments of freedom, of being unwatched, but I refuse to let myself latch onto the feeling Wolf Blackwell invokes in me. It won’t do me any good to be thinking about him.
The sun’s coming up earlier and earlier now, what with summer well and truly here. It's nice, for me, because it’s the only time of the year I get to see the sun and not be scolded for it.
Still, I don’t dawdle, because despite the pain etched into my bones, I won’t get given any grace when it comes to the amount of time it takes me to get home. If I’m too slow I’ll lose my walking privileges.
The early morning sun is hot against my black hair, warming me all the way down to my toes where it burns into the top of my head. I breathe in deep, even though there’s not many pleasant scents to smell, but it’s just nice to breathe air that’s not contaminated with cigars.
I’ve never dreaded going home before. Not really. But this week, I find myself more and more reluctant to make it there. I wonder if death has been shadowing me for so long because it’s been waiting for it to be my turn. Perhaps, by Wolf Blackwell surviving, because I left the room, I owe the grim reaper someone else in return.
Me.
He asked me to dinner.
My heart thumps, I think of his eyes again, and I can see them perfectly inside my mind, it’s as though they’re seared into the inside of my skull and I haven’t even had that long to study them. I guess because of their unusual colour, they’re just easy to remember.
Maybe I just really like them, so it’s easy to be consumed, even if it is only inside my head.
I often imagine another pair of eyes, nothing else of a face, just the eyes. These ones are blue though, exactly like mine, and they’re always warm, creased around the outer corners, like they’re happy when they see me. I wonder sometimes if they’re my own, and I’m just wishing mine were that joyful.
The big house comes into view and dread burrows its way back inside my marrow like an infection I catch whenever I step within the property boundary.
It’s not until later that afternoon, when I finally start feeling myself relax, that I realise I shouldn’t. I’m just nodding off in the chair in front of the fireplace, unlit and full of ash, my legs pulled up in a curl beneath me, that the door opens.
I sit up with a start, eyes wide, heart pounding, a tightness in my throat that feels like a boa constrictor is coiled around my neck.
“You were late home,” Uncle Nolan says.
He’s standing a few feet from me, the open door at his back, two guards stepping through to join the two that were already stationed in here when I made it home. I can feel the look on my face, more than my usual careful, blank mask, confusion twisting my features. I want to argue, for the first time in my life, I want to disagree, stand my ground, I definitely wasn’t late home. I know I wasn’t.
“I was informed you arrived home this morning at precisely five-thirty-three.”