I find Cat sitting at her usual table with Leo, Anna, Hedeon, Ares, Chay, and Rakel. The dining hall is packed with students. Everyone enjoys the Christmas brunch, which includes all the usual staples of pancakes, French toast, bacon, and eggs, as well as several regional favorites like German brown-butter skillet cake, Japanese egg custard, and Turkish poached eggs in yogurt.
I fill my plate, then carry it over to Cat’s table.
She looks startled but not displeased as I set down my tray across from her, squeezing in between Hedeon and Chay.
“Hey,” Leo says. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” I reply politely.
Anna is watching me, wary but not hostile. I give her what I hope is a friendly nod.
“Did you enjoy the dance last night?” I say.
“I did,” she says. “And you?”
I glance at Cat as I reply. “It was perfect.”
A somewhat awkward silence follows, until Chay breaks it by saying, “Did any of you see Professor Penmark harassing Professor Thorn? He kept following her around and around the hall until she spilled her punch on his shoes. One hundred percent intentionally.”
“Good, fuck Professor Penmark!” Cat says, spearing a bite of French toast with unnecessary vigor. “I hope they were expensive shoes.”
I love Cat when she’s spiteful.
Grinning to myself, I likewise attack my French toast.
The strangeness of my presence at their table abates, and soon a pleasant hubbub of several simultaneous conversations arises, as Chay shows Anna and Rakel the boots Ozzy sent her for Christmas, Ares asks Cat if Zoe and Miles went back to Chicago for the holiday, and Leo shouts something over to Matteo Ragusa at the neighboring table.
“I heard you’ve been training with Snow,” Hedeon says to me. “Outside of our normal classes, I mean.”
“That’s right,” I say.
“Lucky,” Hedeon says enviously. “I’ve never had a better teacher.”
“I agree.” I nod.
Hedeon pokes at his food moodily. He’s the only person at the table without a hint of a smile. I’ve always assumed he hangs around with Leo and Ares because nobody else wants to put up with his sulky silence. Even his roommate Kenzo Tanaka barely seems to tolerate him. And you’d hardly know that he and Silas were brothers, for how rarely they’re seen together.
“How come you never sit with Silas?” I say, nodding toward the table where Silas, Bodashka, and Vanya sit.
“Because I fucking loathe him,” Hedeon mutters.
“He’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, is he?” I say.
Silas is the most humorless person I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something after living with my father the last several years.
“You can’t imagine what it was like growing up in the same house as him,” Hedeon says quietly.
I look at Hedeon, really look at him for the first time.
I see his blue eyes, strangely lifeless, and his face that ought to be handsome, but never seems to draw any girls toward him, because of the anger and despair etched into every expression. He’s like a reverse magnet, repelling anyone who would get near him.
It’s far too familiar to me.
“What about the Grays?” I ask him. “Were they good to you?”
Hedeon laughs bitterly.
“Is a butcher good to his knife?” he says.
“I suppose he’s careful with it.”
“No,” Hedeon says. “He sharpens it against stone, and then uses it any way he pleases.”
I think I finally understand.
“Silas is the stone,” I say.
Hedeon meets my eye for the first time. The understanding that passes between us is unhappy on both sides.
Cat watches me from across the table. I’m not sure if she likes me sitting here with her friends. It’s a collision of worlds.
Especially when Bram passes our table, hair tangled and face still puffy from sleep, searching for somewhere to sit in the crowded hall.
“Here,” Hedeon says, pushing down the bench to make room. “There’s space for one more.”
Bram grunts his thanks, dropping down beside me.
“Never seen the dining hall from this side,” he says, glancing around.
“This is prime real estate,” Leo says. “It’s a straight shot back to the galley to refill your plate.”
“Might do that a couple of times,” Bram says, stuffing half a croissant in his mouth.
“You look like you already did,” Chay says with a wicked smirk.
“What are you saying?”
“Oh, nothing. Just that you’re a couple more croissants away from Father Christmas.”
“Get the fuck outta town,” Bram says, outraged. “Father Christmas couldn’t gift himself abs like this.”
He yanks up his shirt to display his stomach, which only makes Chay and Rakel laugh.
“She’s just winding you up,” I say to Bram.
“Don’t you fuckin’ test me,” Bram says to Chay. “I’ll strip all the way down, just like Leo.”
“You’ll regret it,” Leo says. “It’s breezy in here.”
As the banter bounces back and forth across the table, Cat and I lock eyes. She smiles at me in a way that lets me know I’m more than welcome here.
After breakfast, I ask Cat if she wants to come for a walk with me.
“Sure,” she says. “It’s cold, though . . .”
“I know a place we can go.”
I take Cat to the south side of campus where the twin greenhouses stand.
To call them greenhouses hardly does justice to the vast iron and glass structures—each one rivals the Crystal Palace built in Hyde Park for the London Exhibition. Much of the produce consumed at Kingmakers is grown here, as well as herbs and Professor Thorn’s collection of rare orchids.
“Oh!” Cat says, thrilled by our passage from the chilly day into the warmth and humidity of the greenhouse. “I didn’t know we could come in here!”
“Nobody’s stopped me yet.”
The scent of leaves and blossoms is heady and overwhelmingly alive. It feels as if we’ve stepped into another world.
Cat removes her jacket and then pulls off her sweater as well, draping both over her arm. Her curls spring up tighter than ever in the humidity.
Condensed droplets run down the interior of the glass walls, and snow sits along the iron spines of the exterior. The plants look vividly green against the white snow.
“That was nice at breakfast,” Cat says. “All of us sitting together like that.”
“It wasn’t bad,” I say, by way of agreement.
Cat looks at me with those dark eyes, always alive and curious, never restful.
“You don’t seem to hate Leo as much as you once did.”
“We’re not friends,” I say roughly.
“But you don’t want to kill him anymore.”
Ah. So he told her about that.
That’s fine—I own my actions. Even those that might have been driven by a sort of madness at the time.
“Yes, I tried to drown him,” I say, refusing to deny it.
“You must have been . . . very disappointed,” Cat says, looking at her feet. “About Anna.”