43
Last night, I dreamed of Arcana.
Blurred images of a torch singer wearing a crown of golden antlers, boys in slinky black gowns, and time dripping like tears down ornately paneled walls unfurled like a ribbon before me.
It’s the same dream I’ve been having since the day I lived it. Only this time, I was aware of Braxton gently lifting my limp body into his arms before carrying me out of the room to where Elodie waited.
“Told you,” she said.
Before Braxton had a chance to respond, I woke to the world around me still dark and the sound of someone urgently pounding on my door.
Only, once I was awake, I realized it was actually the sound of footsteps running down the hall.
I threw the covers aside and leaped from my bed. With my ear pressed to the door, I listened to the beat of an insistent fist thumping on wood, followed by a rush of urgent whispers.
When I tipped onto my toes to gaze through the peephole, I saw the noise was coming from Oliver’s room across the hall. Finn stood inside the entry, hair disheveled, a silk robe draped loosely around him, as Oliver, looking equally tousled, soon came to join him. Tossing an arm around his shoulder, Oliver pressed a kiss to Finn’s cheek and pulled him in close to his chest, while Song, her face red, probably from crying, hurried inside, leaving me staring into a dim, empty hallway.
I backed away from the door, my skin tingling with chills, stomach tangled in knots, then immediately scolded myself.
I’m in a boarding school. Which means there’s probably no shortage of drama, rivalries, cliques, and intrigue. Kind of like whatever was going on, or possibly was even still going on, between Braxton and Elodie.
Just because I’m not part of their inner circle doesn’t make it sinister.
And yet, as I climbed back into my canopy bed and settled onto a pile of pillows, I made myself two promises:
One: Like I did at my old school, I’ll keep to myself and steer clear of anything having to do with social politics or romantic entanglements.
Two: As far as Braxton’s concerned, the almost-kiss in the Moon Garden is as far as we’ll go. Which, considering how quickly he turned off the heat, that clearly won’t be an issue.
But then I remembered all the stuff that happened just before Mozart intruded. The scorch in Braxton’s gaze, the whisper of his voice when he saidThis energy between us…And I seriously began to doubt my ability to stick to my list.
The rest of the night, I slept fitfully. So when the first fingers of dawn reach around the edge of my drapes, I spring out of bed, rush to the window, and press a palm against the thick leaded pane.
I’m not sure what I expect to see. Maybe the maze returned, and the sight of a cloaked figure vanishing and reappearing.
What I get is a bird’s-eye view of fat droplets of rain rolling down the collection of statues in the Tarot Garden. And for one fleeting moment, I have the wildest thought:
What if those statues are real, and the ones in Italy are fake?