He rested his fingertips on her Obscurist’s collar, this awful, beautiful thing, and it felt warm as blood to the touch; heat from her body or some kind of process within the gold, he didn’t know. “Morgan,” he said. “You don’t have to make this choice. It’s not me or the Iron Tower. You don’t have to—to pretend to love me to make me help you get out of here.”

“Is that what you think about me? That I’m paying you off?” She was angry. Hot spots of color darkened her cheeks, and now she pulled away from him completely and stood up with her hands clenched at her sides. “That I’m selling myself to you? I thought you understood me, Jess. I thought you understood how I felt!”

He held up both hands in a plea for peace. “I meant only that it doesn’t have to end with you settling for something you don’t really want. Even if I want it.”

“You’re an idiot!” She grabbed a pillow from the bed and flung it at him.

He caught it. “Apparently!”

“I’m not going to sleep with you just to get out of being matched in the Tower, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

There was a ringing moment of silence after that, and he stared into her suddenly wide eyes.

“Would that work?” he asked her. “If you did, would it—”

“Get out!” she yelled at him, and picked up another pillow.

“Morgan, it’s my room—”

“Out!”

He was too angry, too hurt, too full of stupid pride, to argue with her.

And he slammed the door behind him on the way out and went to Thomas’s room.

Thomas was standing in his doorway, and with one look at Jess, stepped back and let him inside.

“I propose chess,” he said. “There’s a board in the room.”

That was nearly as perfect an answer to his problems as Jess could imagine.

EPHEMERA

From the personal journal of Morgan Hault

I’ve done everything wrong. Everything. It’s all coming apart. It’s all my fault. I thought I could make everyone safe, and I thought that Jess . . . that we could patch our differences and find each other again. Even if most of that separation was from me, because I was afraid to be hurt again.

But he doesn’t understand me at all. And I hurt Sybilla. I left her behind when I’d promised to help her, too. I ran without even thinking about what that would mean for her. I ran to Jess, and then I didn’t dare get close to him, and now . . . now everything is in ruins.

I’ll be trapped here. Maybe I should accept what fate writes down for me. Maybe Dominic will be a kind partner to me. Maybe one day I’ll be as contented and bland as Rosa, and believe every lie shoveled into my face.

I hope they kill me before I become just another broodmare for the Library’s futile attempt to cling to its past.