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“We should have gone through the back way,” muttered Will.
“You’re going up to the stones, aren’t you?” she said. “Is it because of the Jupiter Pluto conjunction? It is a perfect night for it. I’ll come too, wait for me.”
Will and I looked at each other. It was bad enough to have uninvited company, but she had also attracted unwanted attention.
“Malphia!” Aleks called from the staff table.
Summoned again, we approached the table to explain where we were going and endure exclamations about the weather and the dark.
“It’ll be wild,” declared Will, looking at Pasha.
“Let’s see if Holly will give us some food to take,” I suggested, keen to be off and away.
“Vanilla pie, maybe,” said Will.
A dimple appeared between Pasha’s eyebrows, and he looked up as if remembering something.
“Can you please not say things like that?” I said to Will, once we were in the kitchen.
“Somebody needs to tell him.”
“No, they don’t. There is to be no telling, or weird references to pies. Or I won’t be able to confide in you ever again.”
“Something is wrong?” Aleks had followed.
“I need to get out for a bit,” I told him. “Sit in the circle.”
“You need space, time with your friends,” he said, frowning as if he knew he was missing something. “I don’t like these days when I don’t see you.”
It was the only day timetabled that way, but the lack of a private lesson had actually felt like a reprieve this time, and that was all wrong. I hugged him briefly before Sun arrived and the three of us headed out into the smoke-scented night.
Chilled and damp after an hour of meditative contemplation and torch-lit soup eating, things were much clearer. I knew what had been bothering me and what had to be addressed.
“I have to talk to Aleks.”
“Openness and honesty are the cornerstones of a healthy relationship,” said Sun as if spouting from a book, but meaning well, though she didn’t know the details of what had happened. “You’ve been looking happier than I’ve seen you in ages; don’t let a misunderstanding spoil it.”
Back in the castle, the atmosphere was excited. Bekah ran up to us in the great hall. “Oh, my God! It was so—” She considered her wording as she looked at me. “Terrible. Mr. Zolotov and Pasha were fighting!”
“What?” I said.
“Shouting at each other in the office,” she explained. “We could hear it all the way through here.”
For the second night in a row, I took the stairs two at a time.
He was sitting on my bed holding the pink cable-knit cardigan. “I was thinking you should have wear this. Not be cold.”
The bleak time when he’d given me the cardigan, and what had led to it, had to be revisited now. But how to phrase it?
He exchanged the knitwear for me, taking me in his arms gently as if I might break, again somehow reminiscent of that week. “You are thinking how to extricate yourself from this degenerate man?” he said.
“I have to ask you something.”
“Malphia, he is telling me what he is suggesting to you. You must know I would never be considering such a thing. You have not been think this?”
“Not really. Not for long anyway. He talked about the past when you were wild and free, before you were shackled to me.”
“Is complete rubbish!”
