Page 22 of At The End There Was You

He almost…almost sneered. “She will today. Actually, you’re dismissed from here, go visit the healer.”

“We can’t,” Winter said. “Not unless it is utmost necessary for us to waste resources.” How bitter that sentence tasted in her mouth.

Almost as if he’d tasted it, too, his jaw twitched. “I’ll have a word with your High Priestess.” He pushed from the door. “She won’t have much use for those resources if all perishes in three more days.”

Winter gave Clara a nod and then followed after him towards the library. “I didn't mean to stay so long.”

“It is good that you came to your friend.”

“Good for what?”

“Comfort.”

“I-I didn’t come to get comfort.”

“Your way of getting comfort is by giving it. Odd, but there isn’t anything ordinary about you, Winter.”

She stopped walking, dazed by the fact that he knew her better than what she chose to know herself, or acknowledge. “I’m very ordinary.”

He stopped a few feet away ahead and slightly turned to her. “If you insist.”

When she made to step past him, he blocked the door entirely, her chest bumping on his.

He caught her before she fell, his hand planted firmly on her waist. “You’re done for today.”

She couldn’t form a single thought. Not when he was touching her. “It is only five in the afternoon.”

Very slowly, he pulled his hand away from her, his fingers lingering a little over her body. “Spend it with your friend. Spend it in the rain, smiling or sulking at it, whichever you want. You look pretty while sulking, too.”

Winter’s lips parted as if to say something, but she only sucked in a sharp breath and closed them as she stared at him. “And you?”

“I’ll finish early, too. If I am lucky, I might get to see you sulk or smile at the rain.”

It had not rained. There had been no sun either to smile or sulk at it. But Winter wanted to do neither and watch neither. Not when Azriel was watching her from the massive library window as she and her friends laid on the ground. She wanted to smile and sulk at him instead. She would have looked in his direction and done both, but Miriam was watching her and her friends like a hawk as they bathed in the chilly autumnal air, laying on a pile of fallen leaves and staring above at the clouds, trying to make out the most outrageous shapes out of them.

Clara had found some bird and animal shapes. Alyssa had made out an object or two, but all Winter could see in the clouds was…clouds. It was odd. Winter could almost always force her mind to make something up, to imagine. Not today. She tried and tried even after her friends had gone inside, even after the skies were no longer visible under the dark night.

She’d just closed her eyes when she felt a shadow falling over her. When she opened them, a pair of black eyes were looking down at her. Night was looking down at her. The darkest night. Starless. Moonless. But the most entrancing one she’d ever seen.

Without helping it, she smiled up at him while he frowned even deeper and looked up at the skies as if searching for the reason of her sudden joy there.

“You finished early,” she said.

He looked back down at her. Night did. “Your eyes were closed.”

“There is no sun or rain, I had to imagine it, but I wasn't doing a very good job.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“Not exactly sure.”

“Tell me when you figure it out.”

“Alright.” Before he turned to leave, she asked, “Why did you come out?”

“I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

She smiled again. “Were you going to come and smother me?”