Chapter 161: Way Down the Hall

Daemus didn’t let her off the stairs until she’d eaten.

He sat two steps below her, which put his face level with hers, and dug a roll out of the bottom of his bag. It was squashed flat. He tore off a piece and held it up to her mouth.

"I can feed myself," Blair whispered.

"You haven’t been."

Two beastwomen on the stairs slowed to stare.

Daemus didn’t lower his hand.

She leaned in and took the bite from his fingers. His thumb brushed her lower lip, very lightly, and his eyes stayed on her mouth while she chewed.

"Good," he said, low.

Her face went hot. He tore off another piece.

He fed her the whole roll like that, one piece at a time, while the stairwell filled and emptied around them. He told her about question seven, which had a minus sign he’d almost missed. He told her he’d drawn a little wolf in the margin when he finished, then rubbed it out in case it lost him points.

"It won’t lose you points," Blair said.

"You don’t know my math professor."

When the last piece was gone, he licked a crumb off his own thumb, looking right at her, and stood.

"Conditioning," he said, with real grief. "Eat dinner too. I’ll check."

Then he went to conditioning, and she went to her afternoon paper.

Killian was already at Desk 1 when she sat down. He didn’t look at her.

Halfway through the second hour, Blair’s pencil rolled off the edge of her desk. It clattered across the floor and stopped against his polished shoe.

Killian went still. Without looking anywhere near her, he set his foot on it.

Blair stared at the pencil. She could ask. Excuse me, Your Highness. Four words. He was waiting for them. She could tell by how still he’d gone.

She opened her bag, took out her spare, and went back to work.

The scratch of his pen stopped for a full ten seconds.

On her other side, Jasper made a soft, delighted sound into his sleeve.

Blair kept writing.

When the hourglass ran out, Killian capped his pen and left without a word. Her pencil was lying on the corner of her desk.

At ten to nine, Daemus was waiting at the bottom of the Dormitory G stairs with his hands in his pockets.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

They walked across the dark quad without talking. The East Wing was locked for the night except for a side door someone had propped open with a brick. The stairs went up and up. By the fourth floor, Blair’s legs ached, and Daemus hadn’t even started breathing hard.

At the top, he stopped beside a glass case of tarnished medals.

"This is me," he said.

Blair looked down the corridor. It was very long. At the far end, a sliver of lamplight showed under the last door.

"That’s very far down the hall," she whispered.

"I said way down." He bent to study the medals as if they fascinated him. "I’m a man of my word."

She should go. She didn’t move.

"Daemus."

"Mm."

"Why did you say okay? This morning."

He was quiet for a while. A muscle moved in his jaw.

"Because you told me," he said finally. "You didn’t have to. You could’ve said study group or whatever, and I’d have smelled him on you tomorrow, and..." He lifted one shoulder. "But you told me. So I walk you. That’s the deal."

Her throat went tight.

He straightened and looked at her then, silver eyes steady. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

Blair didn’t think. She reached up and took a fistful of his shirt.

He went very still. "Bunny?"

She nodded once, and pulled.

He bent the rest of the way himself. The kiss was soft and careful, as if he thought she might crack down the middle. Then, it wasn’t careful at all. His hand came up and cradled the back of her head, and she heard the low sound he made in his chest more than she heard it in her ears.

Blair’s back met the cool glass of the medal case. She didn’t remember moving. His other hand found her waist and stayed there, warm through her sweater, his thumb pressing once into the dip above her hip as if he were memorizing it.

She had missed this. She hadn’t let herself know how much until now.

She rose onto her toes to get closer. He made that sound again, rougher, and kissed her slower and deeper, until her fingers went slack in his shirt and the corridor tilted.

He was the one who broke it. He rested his forehead against hers, breathing hard now.

"Go," he said roughly. "Before I break my word."

Blair walked the whole length of the corridor knowing exactly how far a wolf could hear. Far enough to hear a heartbeat through a wall. Hers was going so hard he could probably count it.

The door opened before she could knock.

Jack had taken off his coat. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, and the room behind him smelled of smoke and espresso. His red eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there a moment.

Then he stepped aside. "Come in, Ms. Willows."

He shut the door behind her. He didn’t lock it. She noticed that, and then wished she hadn’t.

The office was small and bare, with one black window and a single lamp. His laptop sat open at the corner of the desk, the folder glowing on its screen. The rest of the desk was covered in paper. Transfer forms, printed out, dozens of them, laid in neat rows like a game of solitaire.

"You printed them," she whispered.

He nodded at his chair. "Sit."

She sat. The chair was still warm.

Jack came around behind her. He set one hand flat on the desk beside her left elbow, then the other beside her right, and leaned over her shoulder until his chest was nearly against her back. Nearly.

She stopped breathing altogether.

"Every one of these is a human from this academy," Jack said, low at her ear. "Every one is gone. And every one looks exactly like the others, which is the point of a form." His breath stirred the hair at her temple. "Tell me what doesn’t belong."

She made herself look.

Names. Dormitories. The blue crest. LXRK309, over and over, until it stopped looking like letters. Then the times.

2:40 AM. 3:05 AM. 3:12 AM, which was Heather’s. 1:55 AM. 3:30 AM.

Blair started moving them. She slid the forms into a new order, earliest hour to latest, and the rows drew tight into a narrow band between two and four in the morning. The dead middle of the night.

Except one.

8:14 AM.

She reached for the form.

Dormitory G. A name she had never learned. A date she knew.

"That one bothers me as well," Jack said. "The only one in daylight. I’ve never been able to make it fit."

The paper shook in her hand. She couldn’t make it stop.

She remembered using the phone in the dorm lobby. The cold receiver. Ten minutes, and a knock, and three bright, friendly smiles.

Don’t let them take me.

"Ms. Willows?"

"It was me," Blair whispered. "I called them."