I’m selling myself to you? I thought you understood me, Jess. I thought you understood how I felt!”
He held up both hands in a plea for peace. “I meant only that it doesn’t have to end with you settling for something you don’t really want. Even if I want it.”
“You’re an idiot!” She grabbed a pillow from the bed and flung it at him.
He caught it. “Apparently!”
“I’m not going to sleep with you just to get out of being matched in the Tower, if that’s what you’re thinking!”
There was a ringing moment of silence after that, and he stared into her suddenly wide eyes.
“Would that work?” he asked her. “If you did, would it—”
“Get out!” she yelled at him, and picked up another pillow.
“Morgan, it’s my room—”
“Out!”
He was too angry, too hurt, too full of stupid pride, to argue with her.
And he slammed the door behind him on the way out and went to Thomas’s room.
Thomas was standing in his doorway, and with one look at Jess, stepped back and let him inside.
“I propose chess,” he said. “There’s a board in the room.”
That was nearly as perfect an answer to his problems as Jess could imagine.
EPHEMERA
From the personal journal of Morgan Hault
I’ve done everything wrong. Everything. It’s all coming apart. It’s all my fault. I thought I could make everyone safe, and I thought that Jess . . . that we could patch our differences and find each other again. Even if most of that separation was from me, because I was afraid to be hurt again.
But he doesn’t understand me at all. And I hurt Sybilla. I left her behind when I’d promised to help her, too. I ran without even thinking about what that would mean for her. I ran to Jess, and then I didn’t dare get close to him, and now . . . now everything is in ruins.
I’ll be trapped here. Maybe I should accept what fate writes down for me. Maybe Dominic will be a kind partner to me. Maybe one day I’ll be as contented and bland as Rosa, and believe every lie shoveled into my face.
I hope they kill me before I become just another broodmare for the Library’s futile attempt to cling to its past.
Damn you, Jess, for making me hope it could be any different.
And thank you, too.
I still love you. As unwise as that is.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Mate,” Thomas said, and moved his knight into position. Jess groaned and tipped his king. It was his third straight game lost, but he at least felt somewhat steadier and a good deal more levelheaded.
“Let’s not use that term anymore,” Jess said. “Just say, I win.”
Thomas raised his eyebrows and smiled a little—the best that Jess had seen from his friend since finding him in that cell. “All right. You know, as much as I enjoy this strange new feeling of winning against you, you should go back and talk to Morgan.”
“Not yet,” Jess said. “She’d only throw another pillow at me. Or something more damaging.”
“I understand why she’s angry. What are you angry about?”
What was it, exactly? He didn’t know, except that he was angry at everything suddenly. Angry for Morgan, but angry at her, too. Stupidly. It didn’t even make sense. “She thinks I’m taking advantage.”
Thomas’s eyebrows rose to a ridiculous level, wrinkling his forehead like an old man’s. “Are you, Jess?”
“How can you even ask me?”
“Your motives are completely pure, then?”
Jess glared at him. “Set the board, Thomas.”
“You sound like Dario just now, you know.”
“Are you trying to insult me?”
“Only a little.” He outright grinned this time, and Jess smiled back. With months of grime washed down the drain and his hair drying to puffball brightness, Thomas looked almost like his old self. He had some spark back in his eyes. But the grin faded too quickly. “She’s trapped here. I know how that feels. Now you begin to see it, too, how being helpless twists us around.”
“It didn’t twist you,” Jess said. “You’ve done very well.”
Thomas’s expression didn’t alter. “It seems so, maybe. But I’m not the same. She’s not. Her confinement isn’t like mine, but don’t let the soft bars fool you. Taking someone’s will, someone’s freedom . . . it kills the heart and then the soul.”
“It didn’t kill yours.”
Thomas said nothing this time. He set up the board, white and black, and waited for Jess to make a move.
Jess didn’t have a chance, because a knock came at the door. He was hoping for Morgan, but when