by Sara Wolf
Anybody can do anything they want to you, and if you love them, you’ll never even see it coming.
Loving someone means being weak. It means willingly putting on a blindfold. And not being able to see just makes running away a whole heullva lot harder. So even if I like Ciel, even if he doesn’t set off my body’s alarm bells, there’s no real point. It’ll never happen. I’m too far gone for that. Too fucked up, somewhere deep in my core processor. Maybe all these thoughts of dying after graduation, all these baseless convictions that I’m going to perish soon - maybe it’s just God’s warning being directly projected into my messed-up brain; Heads up, I’m coming to factory reset you. This you is doomed, but we can always try again with a new model, right?
Tonight, there’s no aurora. The sunset is just as pretty as it was yesterday, though - thick bands of gold and silver clouds rimming the world until orange and blue break them apart like gemstone blood seeping into pale cloth. The smell of fresh-cut grass and roasting meat catches my nose, but I can’t enjoy any of it. My feet drag me back to the dorm for a shower before dinner when I hear the voices.
“I’m sorry, Cecilia. I just don’t understand why it’s happening again so quickly.”
I stop in my tracks. Lionel? The voices are coming from above and to my left - the Knight Augustin building. They drift out of an ajar window one story up. I recognize the cheery, too-perfect lettuce on the windowsill - that’s Von Arx’s office. They’re talking again - him and her. I press myself against the ivy-covered wall and listen.
Von Arx inhales patiently. “The ash may have finally reached the point of no return. In my time there, the Archrose predicted the curse would reach a zenith - a critical mass, so to speak.”
I feel like I’m having a stroke, a concussion. All the words are English, but the order’s wrong. They don’t make sense. A curse? Like a…magic curse? Ash - the kind fire leaves behind? Archrose is the weirder word of the three, though. Is that a French term? Might be. Lionel says something in French. Von Arx says something back, and then halfway through she switches to English.
“ - I won’t let them take Alistair. On my grave, and my father’s grave before me, and on Julien’s empty grave, I swear to you, Lionel - I will not even let them consider Alistair an option.”
Von Arx’s voice sounds so different from when I first met her - bitter and sad. Like she’s cried all the tears she has, and now she’s just saying the words left at the bottom of an empty cup. Consider Alistair for what? Who is Julien? Why is his grave empty? And who is this ‘them’, and why does she say the word like it’s poisonous?
“You.”
I whirl around at the close, monotone voice only to come face-to-face with platinum bob Maria - her fine, doll-like features clearly displeased.
“Cook an egg on my sidewalk ass,” I wheeze. “You scared the shit outta me! Thankfully, I magic’d away the result from mine own pants.”
Maria stares right through me, cold and expressionless. If looks could kill I’d be hypothermic. Her green disciplinary badge sits there on her arm like a stoplight warning. Rafe is nowhere to be seen - this is the first time I’ve seen them apart. They’re usually connected at the hip.
“That’s…remember?” I break the awkward. “That’s what JK Rowling said wizards do - nevermind. Probably better you don’t know. She’s said some shitty things online. Turns out your childhood heroes don’t age well. And are TERFs. You don’t strike me as the Harry Potter type, anyway. Lemme guess -” I squint at her. “True crime?”
“Go.” She grunts, pointing.
“Right, sure.” I smile wanly and slap the chateau’s warm stone wall. “I was just resting. Whew! Takes a long time to walk up that field, you know? I shouldn’t complain, you probably have it way rougher than me considering how much less legroom you have -”
“Now.”
She means business - the bloody choppy butcher shop kind, not the soft felty craft store kind. No wonder she’s part of the disciplinary squad; she’s tiny, but she glares like the devil on the worst day of his period. She’s way scarier than any puffed-up mall cop with a midlife-crisis-induced bullying agenda. I scuttle away from Knight Augustin and back to Knight Lyon, feeling her eyes hurl icicle-knives into me the whole way.
In the quiet porcelain cloister of my hot shower, I watch the mud and grass slough off my ankles and spin helplessly down the drain as my brain spins equally helplessly.
Von Arx said ‘Julien’s empty grave’. She said his name like he meant something to her. Like he meant the whole world, once. Who is he? Was. People don’t talk about people like that unless they’re a ‘was’.
I’m a straight-C student who’s only ever gets brilliant in the shower.
I wrap my bod in a towel and trot over to my backpack in a puff of steam. I pull out the rulebook I’m supposed to be memorizing, letting the worn missing poster fall out of it. I flatten it, staring at the dark-haired boy’s steady, clear, immortal dark gaze.
Empty graves are only ever for the missing.
“Nice to meet you, Julien,” I whisper softly. “I’m Lilith.”
16
The Word (Or, How five letters can ruin it all)
Alistair Strickland unwraps the sweat-soaked shirt from his body carefully, and considers himself lucky. He can see the pooling purple bruise forming on his ribs. It’s not the worst, and he knows that because he knows by now the worst bruises take the longest time to show. Not purple, those ones. Those are deep black.
He thinks, idly, that if the swords had real edges and if Ciel had been serious, he’d be dead. Disemboweled cleanly.
Ciel wouldn’t kill him.
He knows that.
Their sparring was only ever a way for them to hone against each other - when they were younger it’d been pool noodles, willow branches, old canes, anything they could get their ambitious hands on. And then at school it’d become structured, with techniques and stances. Alistair hated sparring at first, hated the idea of more violence on top of his life, but Ciel begged him into playing knights every time, and because the little shit had a frustratingly golden smile no earthly being could resist, he agreed. Somewhere along the way, Alistair discovered it made him feel powerful in a way nothing else did in his young life. In control, when everything spiraled out of control at the smallest wrong word, the slightest wrong glance.
But they’re too old for knights, now.
And Alistair is too old to just play at control.
Lately, sparring doesn’t feel like play at all. It doesn’t even feel like friendship. It feels like a test, one set up specifically by Ciel, and one Alistair consistently fails, no matter what he does. It’s the darkness. That impenetrable seed of it. In the moments before their swords clash, every time - Ciel’s eyes darken the same way they did that day in the forest with his smile.
Magic.
A terrible word.
A pointless word.
A hair-trigger. A word he could never utter growing up, not once, or the wrath would be instant and all-consuming and leave him looking out of a swollen eye for a week. If he was lucky. A word he’d taught Rose to never say, desperate and hushed under the midnight covers.
Because for some irrational reason, that word made everything worse.
Alistair shakes himself out and turns the shower on, steam puffing over his serious face. He’s never known what Ciel’s thinking. Not really, anyway. That’s the way of Ciel Lautrec - put on a good front, a good smile, and get away with anything. Smile, but alone, frown. Smile, but alone, smash the vase on the mantle. Smile, but alone, disappear into Germany for the summer.
It’d been an ugly vase, Ciel assured him. It’d been for a sports camp, Ciel assured him.
But Alistair’s seen the powdered-white plastic bags in Ciel’s jean pockets. He’s seen the amateurishly stamped pills in all colors of the rainbow. He’s visited him in London, Milan, he’s seen the girls leaving his hotel room in a never-ending parade of use and discard.
He�
��s seen Ciel, curled up on a hotel armchair in the low lamplight like a lanky cat, disheveled from sex and exhausted by the drugs, reading tenderly aloud from a book of fairytales.
And that is, Alistair thinks, the only time he’s ever seen that impenetrable seed of darkness in Ciel’s eyes really and truly disappear.
He tries to wash the uncertainty off. The water embraces his body like a warm, trembling hug. He scrubs at his mud-smeared knee, hand freezing above the bone. Knees. A knee, wounded. Pierce. Those off-blue eyes, like fog at dawn. She’d been in the crowd. Watching. Watching him.
For a moment he goes hot all over, and his mouth tastes sweet, like chocolate.
17
The Moonlight (Or, How they’ll try to steal your light, all the good parts of you, and you will not let them.)
Not understanding things has never once stopped me.
Except that one time when I didn’t understand how the brakes on my brand new Christmas-morning bike worked and I went flying into twenty yards of wicker reindeer on the neighbor’s lawn. That definitely stopped me, and conveniently got rid of three of my remaining baby teeth. But that’s beside the point.
Not understanding things just makes me go faster, like a rolling snowball, getting bigger and faster and bigger and faster until it hits something strong enough to break it apart. Something like the truth. Or ten bodybuilders in a trench coat. I’m not picky.
My tomato bisque and little olive-leaf packages of ricey dolma would disagree - I pick at them relentlessly. Would it kill Signor Chef to melt some cheese on top of something every once in a while? Maybe offer a side of tater-tots? Like, I know Mediterranean food is good for your health and all, but I was born with a craving for hot garbage and it will not be sated with lentils and sardines. The professor at my table tonight is different from last night’s Huge Bitch, and thankfully she corrects my table manners minus the condescending attitude.
I watch Ciel and Alistair as closely as I can without being a creeper. Ciel looks so blatantly comfortable around Alistair, throwing bits of bread at his empty plate and smirking in retaliation to his glare. Rafe joins in at one point, pelting gluten at Alistair as Maria watches the three of them with faint amusement on her face. Von Arx is decidedly less amused; she’s dressed to the nines in a burgundy suit-dress, but the worry-wrinkles on her forehead are showing deep. Is it about what her and Lionel were talking about? Archrose and ash, or whatever. She makes an attempt at normalcy, though, and flashes smiles at Alistair when their eyes meet.
An empty plate. Again. He eats food like the rest of us, so why isn’t he eating The Good Shit™? Or is he one of those people who only eat, like, two things? One of which is droopy sandwiches?
I stuff a dolma in my mouth and chew like it owes me money. The only person I should be worrying about in this gilded pinball machine is me, myself, and I.
“Did they? Seriously?” A girl across from me giggles.
“Uh-huh.” Another girl sips her water with a cat-like smirk on her face. “Who knows if it’s actually going to happen.”
“What’s going to happen?” The third girl at my table leans in. They all shoot a look at me and the professor, but the professor only has eyes for her wine, and because I went to public high school for three years and forty-two days I’m painfully good at the ‘too bored to listen’ face.
“Apparently,” The first girl murmurs. “Coresung and Tellon Pharmaceuticals are considering a merger. The soft kind.”
“Oh,” The second girl’s eyes light up. “Oh. You mean, Choi and Riendeau?”
All three of them pivot subtly in their seats, not enough to be noticeable - heads tilting towards a raven-haired girl and a blond guy at the next table over.
“God,” The third girl sighs. “Can you imagine how beautiful that wedding’s going to be?”
The second girl frowns. “Arranged marriages are way too archaic. Practically medieval torture.”
“My cousin did one,” First girl muses. “It was really awkward at first, but now they’re best friends. It’s also really good for the stocks, or something. After the wedding, Papa bought this cute little apartment in New York for me when I go to university.”
New York? Pretty sure New York’s even worse than LA in terms of real estate prices. We’re talking hundreds of fuckin’ millions. Third girl is stuck permanently sighing dreamily into her water. Second girl is stuck looking at her dolma with mild disgust. I can’t hold it in anymore.
“Are you guys serious?”
All three of them look up at me with varying degrees of disbelief. Shock. Like they didn’t think I was actually here. First girl leans woodenly over to third girl and whispers;
“She can talk?”
I clear my throat. “You guys aren’t serious about that arranged marriage shit, right - ”
“Language,” The professor idly murmurs into her wineglass.
“- because that doesn’t happen in like, the real world.”
“Well,” Third girl’s disdain is tempered by her perfectly pink lipstain. “It happens in our world.”
Our world. Not mine. Definitely not mine.
“It doesn’t happen a lot,” First girl corrects her friend. “If the parents are the old-fashioned kind -”
“You mean the old-fascist kind,” Second girl scoffs.
“- but the nobility people do it way more. Way, way more. I kind of feel bad for them.”
“Nobility people.” I deadpan.
“Yeah. You know, people like…” She muses for a second. “Holgersson, Calvo-Navarro, Strickland. Those sorts.”
“Old family sorts. With titles they have to pass on,” First girl says imperiously.
“Titles,” I breathe. “Right.”
They pay even less attention to me after that. Aggressively. The bread basket never gets sent my way again, and I can forget about the fuckin’ butter. That butter’s in no-man’s-land surrounded by dragons. Dragons with very nice eyeshadow.
Strickland. Old family sorts. Does that mean Strickland’s gonna have an arranged marriage? I should feel, like, sorry for him, but all I got in my emotion tanks at the moment is pity for the poor girl who gets stuck with him, sarcastic little porcupine that he is. Okay. Maybe there’s a bit of pity for him. The idea of having such a huge choice stripped away scares the shit outta me. I mean, actual marriage. Does it scare him? It’s gotta. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t care. Prickland doesn’t strike me as the type to give a shit about love and romance - or about anything. He doesn’t care if dozens of people hate him, so why would he care if his family wants to choose someone to like him? Is ‘like’ even a requirement for arranged marriages? Probs not.
It’s all so tragic, so alien. But it’s not really any of my business, either. Seven months, and I don’t have to hear about any of this shit ever again.
After dinner, I stand in front of Ana’s door with my homework in my faintly-shaking hands. She’s nice. She’s just nice, and nothing else. I can rely on someone this once, right?
“Asking for help is fine,” I whisper encouragingly. “Normal people do it all the time, and they don’t die! Unless they ask for it from a horror-movie guy in a truck with deer carcasses in the back.”
“Lilith -”
“It’s okay to ask for help,” I coach myself. “As long as you’re really, really polite about it, and don’t take up all their time, and -”
“Lilith!” Cool hands wrap around mine, and I look up to see Ana grinning at me, her silk pajamas bright pink and her toes punctuated by sponges between her equally pink pedicure. “Are you coming in? Papa sent me beijinho - you have to try them.”
I marvel at the fuzzy bon-bon things she shoves at me the moment I walk in. Her room is nothing like mine - all the bare whiteness covered by pink; a pale pink bedspread with a cherry blossom pattern on it, pictures cut out of magazines of rose-blush sunrises and pink-draped fashion models mural’d up on every wall. Every last thing pink and fluffy, but also gorgeous and tasteful. Sil
vere taught me within the first two days good taste and money aren’t exclusive, but Ana’s interior decorating is a massive exception.
“You eat one of those,” Ana twirls and lands on her bed. “And let me handle the paperwork.”
She holds out her hand expectantly, and I inch over the homework like it contains all my approximate lifeforce.
“I should do this myself,” I start.
“Not necessarily.” She smiles sweetly. We have a fight over the paper for a rousing ten seconds, her yanking one end of the sheet and me the other until I finally relinquish my grip.
“Agh. Sorry,” I mutter into the coconut-y goodness of the beijinho.
“For what? Did you think I’d make fun of you for this? I won’t. I’m not a terrible person. The exception is Monopoly. Monopoly turns me ruthless.” Ana smiles ruefully up from her pen, and I make a wry smile back. I fiddle with her pink lace curtains as she scribbles madly.
“So, uh, what do you guys do for fun around here, anyway?” I ask. “Steal eclairs? TP an office with gold foil? Casual arson a pile of very expensive first-edition books, maybe? That’s always fun.”
She looks up from the homework. “Fun isn’t a word. You know what are words? International relations. University applications. Charity functions. Most everyone here has famous parents, in some way or another.”
“And? Does that mean you can’t get shitfaced once in a while?”
“It means,” She says slowly. “Fun is different for us than it is for other people. Some of us are…um. Watched more than other people.”