Skye
“You didn’t have to do this.” I cup my hands around the warm paper coffee cup and meet Alex’s eyes. “I can buy a coffee.”
“I invited you to my lab and wasn’t able to follow through.”
“We can reschedule. It’s not like you’re going to find the Goddess particle tomorrow and turn me obsolete.”
He frowns at me, taking my little jab at face value. He’s smart. I mean, of course he is. He’s a paleomicrobiologist, for Goddess’ sake. But he’s also sharp and cunning, able to read my often confusing facial expressions like an open book. “I don’t like going against my word.”
Random lines of chatter take up the space between us in the little open cafe near the library. “You had a perfectly acceptable reason.” I risk a small smile, which he inspects, but then his sharp expression falters, the lines of worry between his brows smoothing, making him look far younger than usual.
I can’t help myself when I ask, “How old are you?”
He inhales, wraps his hand around the coffee he hasn’t so much as sipped, and replies, “Thirty-three.”
“I thought you were older than that.”
“Because I look like it?” he asks a bit wryly, but his tone is still strained.
I chuckle, and it's a natural sound, not forced–for once. “No, I mean, you’re heading a lab.”
“You’re also young to be leading a lab, which you do.”
“I’m twenty-eight. I wouldn’t consider that especially young.”
“You’re still very young. I don’t know why you don’t think so.”
“Well, seeing as most of the women in my family are mated and settled down by the time they’re twenty-five, I do feel rather old and unsettled sometimes.”
A beat of silence settles over the round white table separating us. He leans back in his chair, but again, doesn’t touch his coffee. The coffee he paid for. The coffee growing tepid with each minute that passes. He watches the ebb and flow of the crowd for a few moments, and the silence between us is surprisingly comforting. He’s not giving me any need to carry on a conversation neither of us cares about. I’ve found that a lot of the time I’m roped into long, sometimes unending conversations about my experiments and studies. I don’t like talking about what I do. It’s complicated, and I hate the glazed look in people’s eyes when I’ve gone too far.
I have only a handful of people in my life that I can truly talk to, who know me. My family. Abby…. Well, I suppose that’s it. Even when I was young, I had few friends who really knew what the inside of my mind was like. That little boy from my visions? He knew. We used to talk all the time.
“How are you related to the royal family?” he asks.
The question catches me off guard. I glance at him before looking down at my coffee cup. He’s not looking at me. He’s more invested in something out on the ice–a group of wolves sprinting around several stories below us in the frigid cold.
“Do you really want to know, or are you asking because you think I’m only where I am because of my ties?”
“I actually want to know. I’m curious.” He meets my gaze, all blue eyes and sharp lines. His accent is so strange, and sometimes I find myself caught up on the way he rolls his vowels and bites each consonant. I’ve never heard it before, even in Eastonia, where the dialect changes rapidly as one moves from Veiled Valley through Moonrise and into the Roguelands, the Deadlands, and Tarsian. Even Crescent City has a dialect–sharper, quicker.
His is… foreign. I suppose, if I tell him the truth, he owes me an answer to a question as well. It’s only fair.
“My father is Prince Blake of Crescent Falls. He was the heir to my grandfather, Sydney’s, throne… of Crescent Falls. Grandpa Sydney is the Alpha King of that kingdom.” I twist my coffee cup in a circle before picking it up and taking a sip. “My mom…” I smile, hit directly in the chest by a pang of homesickness I pray doesn’t show on my face. “She’s a violinist. She’s brilliant. I didn’t inherit any of her gifts of music. I’m more like my dad.”
“Why is he no longer in line for the throne?”
“He chose not to be.” But oh, there’s so much more to it than that. His powers, my powers, the danger of us, of what he could have been. It’s so complicated. And it's not the time or place to explain this to Alex, who still feels like a stranger to me.
Even if his presence is doing weird things to my brain and body.
“But you’re from Moonrise.”
“I am. Kind of. I grew up there. Why is that not making sense to you?”
His smile is soft and secret, like he doesn’t know the corners of his mouth are lifting just a touch. “I’ve never been to either place, and I can’t pretend that I keep up with the royal family in any way. There have been rumors you’re somehow attached to the Firestone Queen.”
“Yeah, Maeve. She’s technically a cousin, if we’re being strict about genealogical lines, but I’ve always considered her more like an aunt. I spent a great deal of time with her and her mate, Soren. My dad is her second in command–almost like a king when she’s traveling or dealing with kingdom business outside of Moonrise. But he’s also an architect. He loves it. It’s his calling. I think, if he’d been given the choice to choose to be–” I cut myself off before the word “normal” slips off my tongue and shut my mouth tight.
Alex tilts his head, scanning my face like he’s reading between the lines and realizing I had more to say, but then he looks up over the top of my head and winces.
I have a single second to turn around before Maisie floats into view, beaming at us in pleasant surprise.
“Well! It just tickles me pink to see two professors from rival departments getting along! The two of you have just made my day!”
“Maisie,” Alex says gruffly in greeting.
She ignores him, turning to me instead. “I have great news. Your condo in The Pillars is ready! I have the keys in my pocket! Do you have time to go see it right now? I’m supposed to give you a full tour of the condo and the neighborhood. Oh, and Alex, you’ll be her neighbor! You should come as well!”
He shakes his head. “I’m well-versed in the community and layout of the condos, seeing as I’ve lived there for years–”
“Oh, don’t be silly. Everyone is always so curious about everyone else's living spaces. Come on, both of you! It’ll be fun! I never get to have two professors at once.”
Maisie, oblivious to the connotation behind her words, smiles and motions for us to stand, but I catch Alex’s eyes, and he looks just as startled as I do.
But then, he smiles at me, and I give him a pitiful smile in return.
A few minutes later, standing in front of a set of wide, frosted glass double doors, four stories above the surface of the ice, I find myself beside Alex, who has become Maisie’s stunt double, essentially. “See how Dr. Scarlett just has to scan his badge here? That’s all you have to do, and you’ll have full access to the neighborhood. See?”
Alex grits his teeth in annoyance and fishes his badge out of his jacket, which he wears on a lanyard around his neck. He presses the badge to the scanner and stares hard at Maisie in the process, who hasn’t noticed how annoyed he is in the slightest. The doors slide open, revealing a wide hallway of glass with a view of the ice on one side and the campus on the other.
“There’s a small lounge here with a gym, which has a steam room and sauna, but the steam room is currently out of commission. Maintenance is working on it!” Maisie hops down the hallway. I keep pace with Alex, who has a long gait but is unhurried.
“This is the grocery store,” she says excitedly, motioning to an archway with a single room of well-stocked shelves and coolers, and a bored-looking attendant slumped over the checkout counter with his laptop open. He gives Maisie the most half-assed smile I’ve ever seen, but again, Maisie has only two emotional functions–glee, and super glee.
“Josh is normally here during the day. He’s a psych graduate student! You’ll love him!”
Alex makes a low grunt in reply, tucking his hands inside his pockets, and the tour continues.
After the grocery store, the hallway widens even further, curving into the half-moon shape The Pillars are known for, and the condos come into view. It’s a strange kind of architecture–two- to three-story condos suspended on thick pillars of glass, their front entrances connected to the hallway-like-skybridge. Most of the front doors are decorated in some way. Some doors even have potted plants and doormats. And beyond, and above? The aurora dances and weaves between the stars, and the campus around us gleams like a beacon of light against a wash of darkness so thick, so unending, it’s like being in space.
Like I’m close enough to the stars that I can touch them.
“This is where Dr. Scarlett lives,” Maisie says, motioning to a door with no decorations and a simple black doormat.
Alex just stares at Maisie, one brow arched in silent challenge, like Maisie half expects him to open his door and give me a tour of his personal space, but she moves on.
“And this is you,” she says with a beaming smile, four doors down and across the hallway. “There’s a keypad, and you’ll have to change the code. I sent you an email this morning with instructions on how to do it, but for now, it’s just four zeros. Go ahead!”
I glance at Alex. He shrugs, and I punch in the numbers.
A rush of warm, clean air greets us. The condo is wide at the base, with a nice kitchen with an island, a living room with a view of the icy landscape and stars, and a staircase leading to a loft. I step into the center of the living room, which is furnished tastefully.
“Upstairs is the smaller bedroom, right off the loft. Down this hallway is the main bedroom and bathroom. If you need anything big, like a TV or new furniture, you’ll need to talk to the supply department.” Maisie’s phone rings. She giggles, excusing herself, and steps outside the condo, shutting the door behind her.
Alex moves through the kitchen, his fingertips dusting over the smooth countertop.
I’m grateful he’s here. This is hitting me in full force, to say the least.
“I’ve never lived on my own before,” I admit thickly. “I’ve always had a roommate.”
“You might enjoy the privacy. It’s nice sometimes.” He sighs heavily and comes to stand at my side at the window, to look out over the view. “You have a much better view than I do. I have the campus side.”
We stand in silence for what feels like several minutes, and again, it’s comfortable. Almost warm.
Then, he says, “There’s a private elevator at the end of the hallway that has access to the underground areas of campus. It also stops at the surface, and there’s a warming room with outdoor access for shifting.”
I can’t remember the last time I even felt the urge to shift since I arrived back on campus. I had all summer to frolic in the sun.
“Thank you for doing this with me.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me. I like Maisie, but she can be…”
“Very annoying?”
“She’s just so happy all the time. It’s like the darkness doesn’t affect her in the slightest,” I laugh, and he smiles, his eyes gleaming like I’ve never seen them before. “So… what happened today in your lab?”
His smile vanishes, and he straightens, looking suddenly peeved to the highest degree. “I need to go settle some things down there.” He turns toward the door, but then stops, adding, “If you’d like some help moving your belongings… just let me know.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
Something big shifts between us when he meets my eyes again. I don’t have a name for it. I’m not sure there is a name for this–a sudden, brutal, mutual trust.
“Enjoy your new view,” he says and leaves.
Leaves me wondering what this strange feeling is in his wake.