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THISTLE
The rest of the afternoon went by slowly.
There was a TV in my room, but I didn’t want to go back there, the fading echo of a shitty nest and a touchless night making my stomach turn.
So, I hung out on the balcony at the end of the north wing hall, slowly picking leaves from the vines that wove around the balusters.
I arranged them into shapes on the ground, one by one: a flower, a lightning strike, the wonky shape of a face as I tried to picture what Rogue would look like, a little heart with ‘T+R’ in the middle.
All the while I murmured the words‘I hate Knox’to different tunes. If I couldn’t find Rogue to consolidate that fact, I’d have to jam it into my brain another way.
But when I finally returned to my room, dejected and frustrated, it was to stumble upon the first piece of good luck I’d had here.
Upon my pillow was a heavy iron key, and a note that read:
Don’t lose this one, don’t have more spares, not that anyone would mind if he was stuck down there forever. Hope you get your cuddles.
From V
I stared between the note and the key.
“Downthere?”
Rogue was in the basement?
This… This wasit.
I gathered what I needed, which involved a risky sneak into Knox’s room that paid off. I shoved the key into the pocket in Bunny’s back, then stuffed my gift into a little pouch made up of a spare t-shirt.
It took a clumsy climb down from the balcony, and a short, painful fall onto my ass to get to the garden below, but I made it.
Hugging Bunny and my pouch close, I peered around in the setting sun. We were in the garden, before the outdoor bar we’d been at last night.
I spotted the pillar Knox had pinned me to when he’d kissed me, and I shivered, shoving the memory away.
I’d rarely been kissed like that before…
But it was okay.
If our cuddle assessment was right, and Knox was competing, and might mean Rogue was amazing at kissing, too.
I stalled for a moment.
How would Knox know that?
I narrowed my eyes, then bundled the all too logical challenge right off a cliff.
Roguewasa kissing champion.
And a cuddle champion.
Knox would just know from his Alpha tingle that he was outmatched. Or something like that.
I rushed around the garden in a hurry, searching for a door that looked like it led downwards, feeling a rising frustration as none appeared until?—
Aha!
There it was. A set of stone steps all the way into darkness.
