His thousand possibilities exploded like a starburst in my mind, cascading down, setting my body alight, weakening my knees. I hadn’t known possibilities until Carden.
My skin buzzed. For now, all else was forgotten. I reached up, standing on tiptoe, stretching my body along his, ready to make our way down this mysterious list, when I heard a door open down the hall. I froze. It was probably just some girl going to the bathroom, but still, instinct was strong, and I held my breath, waiting for our Proctor—lovingly nicknamed Killer Kenzie—to come and bang on the door and flay me for having a guy in the room.
He read my mind. “There’s no need to fear when you’re with me. ”
“But curfew. ” I mouthed the words almost silently. Because, yeah, Kenzie was a Guidon and there probably wasn’t that much to fear from her where Carden was concerned. It was the other vampires I worried about. “It’s soon. ”
“Aye. ” He gently laced his fingers through the sensitive hair at the nape of my neck. “We have little time. ” His other hand took my waist. It felt broad and sure. “I’ll not waste it. ” He pulled me closer.
Kissed me.
Vampires, curfew, old friends, and new enemies…it all fell away. When he parted from me, it took me a moment to gather myself. To catch my breath.
The guy could kiss.
He said nothing. Carden merely let those eyes bore into me, a promise of more and later.
The intensity made me oddly shy. I had to fill the silence. “So you could tell I was sad?”
“Indeed. Now will you tell me why?”
I remained wary of confessing my concerns about Yasuo, but I had no such qualms about his pals. Rob, in particular, flashed into my head, how he’d slammed my tray down. How stupid I’d felt tugging at the thing. He might as well have had me pinned to that table. I’d have been just as frozen in place.
“I’m weaker than the guys,” I confessed. “I’ll always be the weaker one. ”
He sighed, thinking. After a moment, he said, “There’s a difference between strength and power. ”
My warm and fuzzy mood of a moment ago was fading fast. “Are we doing the speaking-in-riddles thing again?”
But he didn’t take the bait. For once, Carden’s expression remained dead serious as he met mine.
“All right,” I said, considering his words in earnest. “I’ll bite. Strength is different from power. I still don’t have either. ”
“Don’t you? Strength is physical. But power…power is strategy. Control. The capacity to act. Power is mental. ” He shot me a sly smile. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying how your mental faculties are superior?”
“I do not. ” I gave him a little shove. But the lightbulb had gone off over my head. We’d discussed this once before. He’d told me how I wasn’t helpless, but I thought he’d referred only to physical power. I’d listened, but I hadn’t heard.
“Do they have power over you,” he mused, “or is it merely that you allow it to be so? Power is a thing to be given or taken away. When, unthinking, you do as Hugo asks, you give him power. ”
“I can’t just hop on the next boat out of here,” I protested. I felt a stab, remembering my friend and former roommate, Mei-Ling. She had hopped on a boat out of here—I knew because I’d put her on it. “I need to play the game. ”
“I know,” he said gently. “I’d be on that boat with you if I could. But trust me, love. I know better than anyone. Power is the game. ”
For a few minutes, he just held me. I became aware of his thumb rubbing circles along my side. “You do realize your melancholy isn’t the only reason I’m here. ”
A switch flicked in my body, giving me that wiggly, lit-up feeling again. I tried my best womanly voice. “It’s not?”
He pushed away from me with a grin. “No, dove. And it’s not that either. ”
“Wait? What’s the other reason?” It was a struggle to concentrate.
He pulled completely away now. “Do you truly not know?” He wore a bemused smile that made him look suddenly boyish. It gave me a pang of sadness for the innocent he’d once been, for the innocence in him I’d never see.
I stared, thinking hard, but pulled a total blank. Slowly, I shook my head.
“What day is it?” he asked.
“It’s January…. Oh. ” My birthday. Suddenly my eyes burned and my vision blurred. I didn’t blink. If there were tears in my eyes, I’d refuse to let them spill. I wouldn’t cry in front of Carden like some mopey adolescent.