Rory Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

Luna took the first watch by the door that night. Rory left with Void at her heels and a folded note in her sleeve. The note named a place she and Kael had picked from her grandmother's map: a disused practice room behind the chapel wing, buried under years of dust. No windows. One door. Nothing Aphrodite could keep an eye on. Kael was already inside when she pushed the door shut. He sat on the edge of an old worktable, sleeves rolled, a single candle burning between them. Every shadow in the room leaned toward him. Void jumped up beside the candle and settled. "Show me what you brought," he said. She spread the map on the table. She had marked the sealed left wing, the third-floor office, the grove. She had drawn a line between them. "Three points," she said. "They form a triangle over the old chapel foundation. If Convergence needs a place, that's the place." Kael studied the line. "Then we go under. Not through the gate. Under." "How." "Shadow. I can hold a way open for a few minutes. Not longer." "When." "The night she stops watching. We'll know." Rory nodded. She rolled the map. Her hands would not stop moving. She reached for the candle to pinch it out and Kael caught her wrist. "Stop," he said. She pulled back on habit. He let go on habit. Then he didn't look away. "I need to say a thing," he said. "Once." Her stomach dropped. She reached for the shrug, the flat mouth, the bored eyes. All of it was right there. "Say it," she said. It came out sharp. It came out wrong. "I've never wanted to be near a person," he said. "I want to be near you. I don't know what to do with it." He stopped. He had said he would. Rory felt the armor lock into place. The smirk. The turn of the shoulder. The line already forming in her mouth about how he shouldn't say things like that in a room with one door. She didn't say it. She looked at him and let her face go. It cost more than the sigils cost. Her eyes filled and she did not wipe them. "I felt it in the hall," she said. "The first day. I've felt it every time since. I didn't tell you because I was scared you'd stop if I did." He didn't move for a second. Then he put his hand flat on the table between them, palm up. She put hers on top of it. Void's bright eyes watched them both. "Okay," Kael said. "Okay," she said. They stayed like that until the candle guttered. Then they made a plan for the night Aphrodite looked away. The night where there would be a full lunar eclipse. Rory walked back to her room with the map in her sleeve and something new under her ribs. It felt like a target. She kept it anyway.