Page 87 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"I had my arm around you in that water when Nell let go, Ev. I felt the Well pulling on you. It wanted you so fucking bad I could feel it through my arm, and I was pulling as hard as I've ever pulled on anything in my life, and I still wasn't sure I was going to win." I can feel how scared he is through the bond. "I'm not standing on the steps watching someone else try to hold on to you while it does that again. If it takes you, it's taking me with you."

I get up and go to him. The kitchen is very quiet behind me. I put my hands flat on his chest, where his heart is going hard under his T-shirt, and the static off him stings my palms. I don't move them.

"I love you," I tell him.

He goes completely still.

"I should have said it on the roof," I tell him. "I love you, Atlas. I loved you before the roof, and I wanted you to hear it from me before we go down there."

For a second he just looks at me. Then he puts both hands on my face, rough and careful at the same time, and kisses me right there by the sink in front of everyone, and the light over the table flickers so hard that Herbert scuttles into the corner of his tank.

"Okay," he says against my mouth, and his voice has gone rough. "Then you don't get to stay down there. You hear me? When I pull you out, you say it again."

27

FELIX

Awarden is wandering towards the boathouse again, so I flip the nickel.

It comes down heads on the back of my hand, and halfway across the grass the warden stops, pats his coat pockets, and turns back towards the faculty houses, frowning, suddenly sure he left the stove on.

It's a good trick, honestly, and I'm proud of it. It's also the kind of trick you'd do at a kid's birthday party, somewhere between the balloon animals and the cake, and these days it's my entire contribution. I stand under the oak by the library with my hands in my blazer pockets, while back at the house everyone else holds the world up and Everly does the impossible thing over and over until she can't feel her hands.

I've been quiet since enrollment, and they've all felt it.

I know they have, because I can feel them feeling it—that's the shitty part of a bond. You can't even sulk in private. Ren keeps checking my heart when he thinks I won't notice, a warm little touch at the edge of my pulse, there and gone, like a nurse taking it while you sleep.

Atlas keeps handing me coffee I didn't ask for, then standing over me until I drink some, glaring as if I'm a houseplant he's kind of worried about. Every single time I walk into the kitchen, Callum looks up from his black notebook, looks back down, and doesn't say a word, which from Callum is practically a hug.

Everly keeps sending a little warmth down the bond towards me, careful, like a knock on a door. Hey. You in there?

I keep not answering.

And my sight is fucking useless.

It comes in sideways, and I never know what I've seen until it's already happened.

I saw Nell alone in that courtyard the night before enrollment. Ev and I sat up on the roof under one blanket. She said if Nell was on her own, no one had hold of her—no wardens, no Catalina—so I said yeah, I guess that's what it means and went back to shuffling. We decided it was good news. She was alone because Catalina was waiting for her there.

The night before we go down to the water, Ren finds me on the back step after supper.

It's my step. I've sat on it most nights since enrollment, with my deck in my lap and the garden going black in front of me, and everyone else has learned to leave me there. Ren never has. He comes out with two mugs of the peppermint tea Ev drinks when she can't sleep, hands me one, and sits down next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch.

Then he takes my wrist, turns it over, and puts two fingers on the inside of it.

"You can hear it from the kitchen," I tell him. "You do it all day anyway."

"I like to be sure." He doesn't let go. "You said you'd tell me if it changed. The twelve percent."

I look out at the garden. The roses along the back wall have gone brown at the edges, and somewhere in the weeds a cricket is still going, even though it's much too cold for it.

"It changed." I turn the mug around in my hands. "That's all you're getting. You know I don't say those out loud."

The twelve percent is the future where I die. It's been in my sight since before the gates, and the hill didn't get rid of it. Since we decided to go down to the water, it's come closer, and now it's sitting on those stairs, by the lamp.

His fingers stay where they are. He doesn't need me to say it. He's been listening to my heart all week, and it does the same stupid thing every time someone mentions the stairs.

"It's down there," he says. "Isn't it."