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“Good night,” Fia snipped, and she meant to leave him alone in the doorway with nothing but the single quiet word, but Finnick—with a flick of his traitorous tail—sauntered past them both into Penbrook’s room, ruining her exit.
The night made an even hastier retreat.
Fia bolted upright the next morning, jarred awake by what seemed to be the chiming of a thousand bells. Some rang high and clear. Others tolled low and deep like a death knell. All of them resounded just out of sync with the others.
Throwing back the covers, she bounded out of bed. The ruckus was coming from inside the apartment. It was even louder in the hallway, spilling out from her mother’s room.
Penbrook’s room.
He’d left the door wide open, so she had only to stand at the threshold to see inside. The space looked exactly as it always did—except, was it larger? Had he illusioned the ceiling higher and pressed back the walls?
Somehow those things were not as strange as seeing the lump of Penbrook under the blankets—and the clocks left on every surface. There was one on the night table with the face of the moon, and three on the dresser cast in bronze. Some rested on the floor, gathered up beside the bed, a half-dozen bells trilling so determinedly that Fia could feel the vibrations through the soles of her feet.
And Penbrook slept through them all.
Just as he’d left his door ajar, he’d kept the curtains open too, so dawn’s champagne light gentled into the room, falling across his face. Or, where his face would be if he hadn’t slung an arm across it. Fia could just make out his wide-open mouth.
“Penbrook.” She hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to cross the invisible line into the room. But when her voice didn’t rouse him, and with the clocks so loudly ringing, she finally marched forward, appropriate or not. “Madbury!”
His hand shot out, likely reaching for the clock on the night table, but Fia stood closer, and his fingertips grazed her thigh instead. Her cheeks rose with heat, and she swatted him away, stumbling backward over the clocks on the floor and making a horrible clatter.
Penbrook pushed himself up on his elbows, a mess of hair falling across his brow. “What… Oh, bother!”
In a whirlwind, he flew out of bed, slapping the clocks quiet one by one until the room fell silent again.
And it was enormously awkward when their gazes met. How the sudden quiet held them in place.
Penbrook breathed heavily, as if he’d just fought a battle with time itself, his sleeping pants hitched up on one calf, his shirt loose and low at the neckline, his feet bare. Somehow, he looked so vulnerable.
But then, Fia’s feet were bare too. And she hadn’t thought to grab a robe, so she stood there in only a thin nightgown—suddenly feeling a little shaky.
She crossed her arms, her voice coming too sharp. “Were you trying to wake the entire neighborhood? Why do you need that many clocks?”
“I… can’t wake without them,” he said helplessly.
“You did yesterday.”
“Only thanks to Finnick,” he said, and then apologized. “I thought, well, I’d hoped to shut them off before they disturbed you.”
He looked so flustered, so drawn and tired, her frustration fizzled right out of her. In its place, a knot of worry tightened in her stomach. Every time she’d caught him half asleep on his feet, she’d figured his use of magic had drained him. This morning’s too-deep sleep and all these clocks hinted at something more, but she hadn’t the slightest idea what it could be.
Without the armor of his suit, without any attention to his hair, without his polka-dot socks, he seemed so completely undone.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” he said unconvincingly.
“Penbrook.”
“In truth—”
“Penn,” she said more softly.
He looked down at her, a pale violet smudged beneath his eyes, and her heart skipped a beat as he said, “I’m cursed, and sleep will be the death of me.”
CHAPTER 11
The untouchable Madbury was cursed.
