Page 175 of Bone Year

“To bone years, you have survived your first year at Ashwell. Some of you will not survive your second. Some of you will. The difference between those two outcomes…”

His voice fades.

Draven guides us behind a tall column. We are out of the part of the hall that anyone is watching. The orchestra is between us and the dais now, and the wall of the side corridor is two steps away.

“Now,” he murmurs.

He pulls me, and I follow.

We move along the wall in a fast, unhurried stride that doesn’t read as fast to anyone watching, my hand still in his, his other hand at the door before I see him reach for it. The side door is propped open on a small iron hook — he prepared this — and he eases me through ahead of him, follows, and pulls the door closed behind us with the soft click.

The cold of the corridor outside the hall hits me, and I gasp.

He turns and walks me forward without saying anything. The corridor is empty. The lamps along the wall have been turned low. We pass a service alcove and a closed door marked for the kitchen, and at the end of the corridor is another door. He reaches past me and opens it.

The night air comes in. Snow is falling.

He leads me along the back of the building in the narrow strip of stone between the wall and the line of trimmed trumpet trees that frame the lawn, where the lamplight does not quite reach. The cold is profound and my dress was not made for this. My breath plumes in front of me, and the fabric of my skirt is already starting to drag in the powder snow, and I am suddenly grateful there’s no wind tonight. Adrenaline alone is going to get me through it without freezing to death.

“Draven.”

“Listen.”

He stops and turns me to face him, my back against the stone wall, and I have to look up to meet his eyes. Somewhere inside the building behind us I can hear, faint and muffled, Ashmoor’s voice.

“The headmaster’s cottage is at the eastern edge of campus past the stone wall by the cloister. Third building from the gate. The dark-green door.”

“I remember.”

“Say it back to me.”

“Eastern edge. Third building. Green door.”

His hand comes up and brushes my hair from my eyes and across my cheek. The motion is so gentle I almost flinch. “Your key will open the door. Hold it in your palm when you cross the threshold of the warded room. Don’t let go of it until you’re through. You have thirty minutes. If something goes wrong, get out. If you can’t get out the way you came in, the back of the cottage opens onto a service garden, and there’s a low wall along the eastern edge that you can climb.”

“In this dress?”

“In that dress.”

“Right.”

His thumb traces once along my jaw, the gentlest line.

He’s looking at me the way he looked at me in the hunters blind at Holloweir, the way he looked at me on the dance floor, the way he has been failing to not look at me for months. The snow is collecting on his shoulders and in his hair. His hand hasn’t left my face.

“No matter what you find out tonight,” he says quietly, “I want you to remember this moment.”

My breath catches.

“What do you mean?”

He leans in quickly and kisses me. His mouth is on mine, warm against my lips, and his wings come out and cocoon us against the wall, a barrier of warmth and protection as his hands move over me. One finds the back of my neck. The other is on my waist, pulling me tight against him.

His hot tongue presses into my mouth, and it tastes of sweet whiskey as he devours me.

I tangle my hands around his neck and in his hair, and the kiss is rough and uncontrolled. I’m so tight against his body I can feel the hardness of him pressed against me, and a groan slips out of me as I rub my body into his. His tongue presses against mine and explores my mouth, and then his teeth graze my lips, and he breathes me in.

Gods, I want this and so much more.