“This conversation is over.” I was halfway to the door when he stopped me.
“Let go of me, Casimir?—”
But he didn’t let go.
“Hold on to your anger, Farrow,” he said. “It might just be the thing that saves you.”
Shock rippled through me, melting away the fury.Hold on to my anger?
My temper was, and would always be, the worst thing about me. That “dash of mercurial fire,” as my father called it. If you were to ask my mother, she’d be the first to say I was born into the world a stubborn, insolent girl, quick to anger and even quicker to tears. Was Casimir really trying to convince me that my anger could be a strength? Strangely, and in spite of all that August had said to make me distrust Casimir, part of me wanted to believe in him. Maybe it was because I’d grown up tasting the lies of all the adults around me; maybe that made me unbelievably, pitifully desperate to place my trust in someone worthy of it. Maybe I was desperate enough that I wanted that person to be Casimir.
I thought about him, and everything else that had happened in the Labyrinth long after I crawled into bed and was once more cloaked in darkness.
11
“Arden? Arden!” Gwen hissed at me from across the classroom, earning a glower from Professor Skinner, who eyed the pair of us beadily from behind wiry spectacles. From his perch at the lectern, he looked like some tropical bird of prey in a ghastly puce-green sweater. Not wanting to give Skinner an excuse to dole out the punishment I knew he was all too keen to bestow, I hastily trained my eyes back on my textbook.
My distraction was born of last night’s unexpected run-in with August. Running over the encounter in my mind, I had completely forgotten I was supposed to finish mapping out Alexander the Great’s conquests in Babylonia before the end of the period. Like nearly all of Skinner’s assignments, this one was dull to the point of inducing somnolence. I darted a grimace toward Gwen and tried to refocus on the words on the page in front of me. The text claimed that Alexander’s empire ultimately fell due to his paranoia over imagined threats to his reign, executing nobles over mere suspicions.
Alexander had major trust issues, and who could blame him? Being the ruler of such a vast and enviable empire would make anyonelook over their shoulder. Trust was a fragile thing. Exquisite, rare, and all too breakable. And yet Alexander’s inability to trust anyone had been the thing that unraveled him and destroyed the empire he’d fought so hard to build. After everything that had happened over the last few weeks, I couldn’t help but empathize with the former King of Macedonia. August’s warnings reverberated around my skull.
You shouldn’t trust him.
Who’s to say he won’t destroy you in the process?
To suggest that Casimir was not only untrustworthy, but also callous enough to let me die in order to achieve his own ends regarding Devereaux was disturbing, to say the least. But after the way August treated me this past year, after all of the lies and secret liaisons, how could I place my trust in him? And then there was Casimir with his shadowy evasiveness, the small yet unmistakable signs of deception in his expression; the way he held himself, his shoulders stiff and stony, as if afraid that releasing them would cause the secrets to spill from his skin.
You are the last person who should go anywhere near the Bloodthorn Order.
Casimir knew more than he was letting on—that I was almost sure of. Whether he was prevaricating for my benefit or for his own was to be determined. Like Alexander, sooner or later I’d have to decide who to trust.
One weekafter my run-in with August, I returned to Ash Hall after class to find a note tucked into the brass letter slot on my door. I stared at the parchment for a moment and then unfolded it to read a message scrawled in a slender, elegant hand.
No more slacking off. We need to train. Name the time and place.
—C
Well, I supposed his leaving notes was preferable to him popping up unexpectedly at my usual haunts. I crumpled up the message and shoved it into my pocket.Fuckthat. I had no desire to repeat last week’s disastrous training session. But the next evening when I returned to my dormitory, exhausted and drenched from trudging across the grounds in the sleeting rain, I found a second note waiting for me.
Giving me the silent treatment, huh? I guess you just lost your choosing privileges.
Friday, seven-thirty p.m.
Obscurus Room One, The Labyrinth. Don’t be late.
My temper getting the best of me, I scrawled out an obscene reply on the back of the note and shoved it back into the slot. I slammed the door shut behind me, not caring if the noise disturbed my hall mates. Who was he to command me like some petulant schoolgirl?Choosing privileges.What an utter ass.
Friday arrived. For the whole afternoon, I was embroiled between two warring desires. Part of me wanted to stand him up. Just picturing the furious expression on his face the moment he realized I wasn’t showing up brought a devious smile to my lips. But as much as it humiliated me to admit it, I also felt an irrepressible, niggling desire to see Casimir again. Everything about his seductive smiles and potent glamours spelled trouble, but an irresistible part of me wanted to give in to my impulsive curiosity; he was a lure and I was caught on his hook.
You’re just curious to find out what was going on with the Order,I told myself.
Evening approached, and I set myself up in a quiet section of the stacks and began plodding my way through a mountain of homework. As the third hour of the Babylonian wars approached and my eyelids began to weigh heavily, I became desperate for a distraction. A dark pulse shot through me at the thought of seeing Casimir again. With a resigned sigh, I shot up two flights of stairs and headed toward the Obscurus Room, where Casimir was already lounging in an armchair.
“You’re late again,” he announced as I took my seat. Tonight, he wore his usual dark jeans and black leather jacket, though he’d opted for a charcoal gray T-shirt instead of a black one.
To prove that I didn’t give a toss about being late, I kicked my feet up onto the table and leveled him with an icy look. “I don’t appreciate being summoned.”
He eyed me warily, probably analyzing my foul mood and determining how best to circumvent a tantrum. Something in my demeanor must’ve told him not to take my attitude too seriously, because he gave an unconcerned shrug of his shoulders.