Page 68 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

I turn my head on the slate and look at him, and then I reach over and put my hand on the back of his neck, warm under all that cold, and leave it there.

He goes still under my hand. Then he breathes out, long and slow, and his eyes close.

The rain starts to slow. He isn't doing it on purpose. I know, because he lifts his head off the slate and scowls up at the clouds as they thin out over the chimneys, and the first star comes out over Concordia.

"Oh, great," he tells it. "Now you listen."

22

REN

It's a few nights after Nell is taken, and I still can't sleep.

I'm lying on the mattress on the floor of the little room at the back of the second floor, where I've slept since we came back to Concordia. It must have been a maid's room once. The ceiling slopes down over the bed, the one window looks out on the garden, and the radiator under it knocks whenever the boiler comes on.

Up on the roof there's no rain on the slate tonight, and Atlas's heart has finally slowed. Down the hall, Brittany has fallen asleep in Nell's bed with Loki across her feet, her heart gone soft for the first time in days.

And Everly's heart is coming down the hall towards my door.

I'd know it anywhere, quick and a little uneven. It stops outside my door and stays there.

She knocks. She never knocks.

"It's open," I call, keeping my voice low.

She comes in, closes the door, and stands with her back against it. She's wearing one of my sweaters, the grey one with the hole in the cuff. It comes down past her hands, and she's holding the ends of the sleeves in her fists. Her hair is down, her feet bare on the floorboards.

"I can't sleep."

"Me either," I tell her. "I've been lying here listening to the radiator and everyone's hearts, and none of them are doing anything I can help with."

"Can I stay?" She tugs at one sleeve. "Your sweater smells like you, which isn't really helping."

I lift the edge of the blanket.

She crosses the room, gets under it, and lies down facing me, close enough that her knees press against mine. Her feet find my shins under the covers—they're freezing, but I don't move away. She's shivering. I can feel it in her blood before I feel it in the mattress, little shudders going through her.

We lie there while the radiator knocks and goes quiet. Now that she's here, her heart slows down a little, and I listen to it slow.

"You picked me up," she says.

I knew she'd say it sooner or later. Every time she's looked at me across the kitchen since the amphitheater, her heart has given a hard little kick of anger that isn't about Nell.

"I did," I say.

"In front of the whole school, like a bag of laundry." She isn't joking. "I had my hands on it, Ren. I had the end of the rune, and it was coming loose. If you'd given me a little longer, none of those kids would have it in them right now."

"If I'd given you a little longer, every warden on that front row would have had a stylus in you." I keep my voice down, even though Brittany is the only one in this house who's asleep. "Your breath was fogging, and Callum's shadows were coming apart. I could hear your heart. You were sure you had it, and they were already standing up."

"I was sure because I did have it." She starts to pull her feet away, then puts them right back on my shins.

"Maybe you did," I say. "And maybe I'd have carried you up those steps with a stylus in your back instead. I couldn't hear the difference from where I was standing. I could only hear your heart."

I don't know how to make the next part kind, so I just say it.

"I'd do it again."

Her feet go still on my shins.