Chapter 182: It’s Technically Friday

The crack ran straight over her face and stopped.

Then the ice came apart.

A fist punched through in a spray of white, then a whole arm, sleeve and all, plunging down past her shoulder. Fingers closed on the collar of her coat. She was yanked upward so hard her teeth clicked, and her head broke the surface into air so cold it burned.

She was hauled across the jagged edge on her stomach and dropped on the ice.

Blair rolled onto her hands and knees, and the lake came out of her.

It didn’t stop. It poured from her mouth and nose in long, heaving rushes, more water than she would have believed a chest could hold. She retched until her ribs ached, and then she drew a breath, a real one, thin and shocking, and coughed up the rest.

Someone crouched in front of her.

Wet shoes. Dark trousers. The hem of a long coat in the slush.

She looked up.

Jasper’s hair was plastered to his face and shoulders, pearls tangled in it. Water ran off his chin. His right sleeve was soaked to the shoulder and torn at the cuff. He was breathing hard, and he wasn’t smiling.

"Hello, sweetheart," he said.

Blair stared at him. Her mouth opened, and more lake came out.

He waited until she’d finished. Then he took a square of notebook paper from his coat pocket and held it up between two fingers.

Come alone, or I won’t be there.

"You left it on your desk," he said. "I came to collect, and you weren’t home."

"It’s..." Her voice came out a croak. "It’s midnight."

"After midnight. Technically Friday." He tucked the note away. "I’m very punctual."

His eyes moved over her face slowly: her lips, her eyelids, the skin under her jaw. Then he pressed his palm flat to her chest, over her soaked sweater, and left it there.

Blair went rigid. His hand was cold. Under it her heart beat steady and slow, as if she’d been sitting in the library.

"How long were you down there?"

She thought about lying. She didn’t have one ready.

"Twenty minutes."

Jasper didn’t say anything.

He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then her throat. His skin was as cold as the lake. Hers wasn’t. ℓ.

"You’re warm," he said quietly.

She was cold, a little. Her coat was heavy and her hair dripped down her back. But her fingers moved when she told them to, and her teeth weren’t chattering, and she knew they should have been.

Her right hand throbbed. Her knuckles were red and swollen where the boot had come down.

Jasper picked up her hand and turned it toward the faint light. He traced one mark with his thumb: narrow, with a sharp point at the back where a heel had dug in.

"Who put you in?" he asked. He was still looking at her hand.

Blair took her hand back.

I won’t tell him. She had meant it on the jetty. She’d meant it right up until the ice broke.

She looked at the hole instead.

Jasper waited. When she still didn’t answer, something crossed his face she had never seen on it. No smile at all. Just stillness.

Then the smile came back. It spread slowly, wider than she had ever seen it, until it showed his teeth.

"Twenty minutes," he said. "Under the ice. And you’re not even blue." He laughed softly, as if she’d told a joke only he could appreciate. "Never mind who. I don’t care who."

He brushed a wet strand of hair off her forehead.

"Anyways..."

He tipped her face up with two fingers under her chin.

"It’s Friday," he said. "I came to collect."

He kissed her.

Blair went still. His mouth was cold and tasted of salt, and he didn’t hurry. He kissed her slowly, lazily, as if he had all night and she was something he’d already paid for. She kept her lips closed. Her hands stayed flat on the ice.

He didn’t seem to mind. He laughed against her mouth and slid one hand into her wet hair to hold her there. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, licking the lake off them. Then he caught her lower lip between his teeth and bit down.

A sharp sting. Copper.

Jasper sucked the drop away and made a small, pleased sound in his throat. Along the side of his neck, his scales rose, blue and silver and pink.

He drew back and looked at her mouth, then at her face.

"You could pretend," he said. "Just a little. It’s only polite."

Blair touched her lip. Her fingers came away red. She didn’t say anything.

She wanted to wipe her mouth. She didn’t, because he was watching to see if she would.

"Next time, then." He stood, shrugged off his coat and dropped it over her shoulders. It was dry inside.

"Stay," he said, and walked away across the ice toward the jetty.

The lantern was gone. At the end of the jetty, where it must have stood, lay a sheet of paper.

Jasper picked it up and almost dropped it again. A transfer form. A girl’s name, Ivy Marsh, which meant nothing to him.

Then he saw the box at the bottom marked Authorized By, and the ID inside it: LXRK309.

He knew that ID. He made a point of knowing anything about the prince that might be fun later.

He folded it in half and slid it into his trouser pocket.

Killian would hate that he had it. That was reason enough.

Then he went back for her.

Seven girls had sat at his table, and not one of them had lasted. This one had spent twenty minutes at the bottom of a lake and come up warm.

She was exactly where he’d left her, wrapped in his coat, small and wet and breathing. She looked up at him with lake water still dripping off her chin, and he felt the way he had as a boy, finding something shiny at the bottom of a river.

He scooped her up, coat and all.

She weighed almost nothing. She went stiff in his arms, which was even better.

"Come on, sweetheart," Jasper said. "Let’s find out what else you can’t die from."