King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,20

handy, depending where life takes you.

Rose’s head felt overfull; she dreamed of verb conjugations and the periodic table. By dinnertime, she was drowsing over her plate, glazed and overwhelmed by the amount of information she’d consumed. But she was hungry, too. The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn.

Beck would quiz her in French at the table, and Kay would grumble about it. “It’s rude to talk about people right in front of them when they don’t even know what to defend themselves about.”

“Kay, what makes you think you’re an interesting topic of conversation?” Beck asked sweetly, and Rose stifled choking laughter into her napkin.

It was a routine in which Rose thrived. She was awake before the alarm in the morning, tossing the covers off with relish, no matter how exhausted she’d been the night before. She took the stairs two at a time, and found herself humming as she vacuumed and dusted. “What’s that?” Kay asked her one night as they did the dishes. She’d been whistling a bit of Bach, one of the old vinyls Beck had been playing during their lessons.

She noticed the physical changes in herself, too. One morning, she paused in front of the mirror, midway through combing out her hair. Hair that was fuller, shinier, bouncier. Her face had filled out, and the bags had gone from beneath her eyes. Her blue eyes had a sparkle to them. Her clothes, all the new, wonderful clothes that Beck had bought her, fit better; didn’t hang off her like she was an emaciated department store mannequin. She had color in her cheeks, and a softness to her skin, and she was healthy. Was getting an education, and was…

More useful. More ready to go out into the world on her own.

An oddly crushing realization.

“Rose, is everything alright?” Beck asked, cutting off partway through an explanation of the Pythagorean theorem. “You seem distracted.”

She’d been mindlessly tapping the end of her pen on her notebook page, and forced herself to still. Glanced up at him guiltily. “Sorry. Just thinking about something.”

He’d been pacing slowly back and forth beside their table – sometimes lecturing filled him with a restrained passion for the material that took him up out of his chair and across the room, like his wonder at the topic was too powerful to be channeled sitting down – and returned to his chair, forearms resting on the tabletop, head cocked. “Something troubling, it looks like.”

“Oh, no. It’s not.”

His brows went up.

“It’s just…” She sighed. “I guess I’m wondering if all of this” – she gestured to the books and notebooks between them – “is preparing me for a career. If I’m supposed to go out and find a job. My own place.” Her voice betrayed her on the last sentence, a slight quiver.

His face smoothed. “Is that what you want to happen?” he asked with what felt like a careful lack of inflection. Beck wasn’t a demonstrative sort, but she’d learned to read him, his little tics and the slight shifts in his voice and bearing. She could tell now that he intended to betray nothing of his own thoughts or feelings.

She didn’t want to answer.

“It’s like I told you once before,” he said, and she glimpsed the faintest sparking of emotion in his gaze, one quickly snuffed. “You can pretend if you want to,” he said, “but you don’t have to. I won’t ever think less of you. You can be honest with me, about this, about anything.”

She tried to take a breath, and couldn’t. Instead said, “No. No, I don’t want to leave.” Her voice shook and crackled; she didn’t even recognize it as her own. “But I will if you want me to. If that’s the plan. I won’t blame you. I won’t be mad.”

He inhaled sharply through his nose. “That’s not the plan.” His voice wasn’t entirely steady either, and the wavering sound of it eased some of her anxiety.

“It’s not?”

“No. There is no plan.” He exhaled, and settled some, the tension bleeding away. “I only thought you might like studying.”

“I do. I love it.”

“Besides, what we’re learning here would hardly prepare anyone for a lucrative career out there in the world the way it is now. Not much call for trivial knowledge of the past,” he said, more than a little wry. “But if you wanted to leave…”

“No.” Firmly, now. She’d known what she wanted all along, only been afraid to say it. It was a bold thing, saying you wanted