Page 6 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
I shiver, even though I’m out of the wind.
“Are you okay?” he asks, searching my face to make sure, and it’s as he’s examining me that I realize I’ve seen him before, that I know him somehow. It only takes me a second, and in that second, two things happen. Firstly, a cloud shifts ever so slightly outside and allows a patch of meager sunshine into the doorway, which means that I can see his eyes are actually a dark, dark brown, as is his hair. His skin is tinted bronze but paler than it was when we were children, like he’s known several rain-soaked years here in England since then.
The second thing that happens is that he says my name. “Proserpina?” he whispers, his eyebrows drawn together.
I bite my lip. “St. Sebastian?”
St. Sebastian nods, looking a little stunned.
“He goes by Saint now,” comes a long, elegant drawl from behind me.
I shiver again because somehow I know, I just know, even though he wasn’t supposed to be here, even though I thought I’d never see him again.
I turn, and I see the boy I’ve hated myself for loving for the last twelve years.
Chapter 2
Auden Guest is tall, like I guessed he would be, and handsome, like I knew he was. There’s the high cheeks and the square jaw hewn out of the promise of his boyhood prettiness, and a mouth that’s still a bit too exquisite for a grown man. There’s light brown hair that flops just so over his pale forehead, and hazel eyes that promise . . . well, that promise everything. Money and mystery and cruelty and all the pouty rich-boy things I’ve
spent years armoring myself against.
And when he sees me, really sees me, he gives a wide, dimpled smile with white teeth and this fatally charming lift on one side of his upper lip—a human dash of asymmetry on an otherwise flawless face. Those hazel eyes make their lying promises under long eyelashes, and for a moment, I forget all my own promises, all the vows I made to myself back home before I came here.
After all, it’s stupid enough that I never stopped thinking about the day we kissed, and it’s stupid enough that I spent the early part of my teenage years convinced we were soul mates. It’s stupid enough that my first stirring dreams and urges weren’t about celebrities or even boys in my own school, but about Auden . . . and St. Sebastian. And Rebecca and Delphine and Becket. I must have been the only one of us six who missed that summer, who wished we were all together again. Who wished for something more than friendship. Something profane.
Anyway, I vowed to myself before I came here that I wouldn’t compound my stupidity by falling in love for real.
Here’s the thing: I finished high school at sixteen and crossed the stage for my bachelor’s at twenty, crossed it again for my master’s just this year. I have a mother who taught me every myth she knew, I have a father who loves me, I have friends who like me and colleagues who respect me. And I am hopeful and reckless and curious, but I am not stupid.
And I am not going to do something as stupid as fall in love with Auden Guest.
All at once, my defenses are back, and I’m able to return his smile with a steady one of my own, even if my heart won’t slacken its frantic fluttering beat.
God, I’m so tired. It hits me suddenly, like a heavy sack thrown over my shoulders, bending my knees and making my head droop. “Auden,” I say, the last syllable of his name breaking on a yawn.
“Proserpina,” he says warmly. “You must be tired after your trip.”
“Yes,” I say, heroically fighting back another yawn. “And you can call me Poe.”
“Poe,” St. Sebastian repeats, as if to himself. As if to memorize it.
Auden’s smile grows lazier and maybe more dangerous, even as he pointedly ignores St. Sebastian. “Poe then,” he says, his eyes never leaving my face. “I’m surprised you recognized me.”
There’s no point in completely lying, because nothing matters with Auden and nothing ever will. So I settle for part of the truth. “I looked you up on Instagram before I came here,” I inform him.
He makes a face. “Oh, that thing. I’m a little embarrassed.”
“You shouldn’t be,” I say, and I mean it. It’s the kind of sparsely updated account that speaks to a mostly unself-conscious life. A handful of selfies from his days at Cambridge, a few pictures of him with his rowing team. A picture of him smiling in his undergraduate graduation robes with his family and then a picture of a German shepherd puppy named Sir James Frazer. It hasn’t been updated in the last year and a half, unlike Delphine’s, which is updated almost daily—to say nothing of her stories.
And okay, yes, I looked at everyone’s social media before I got on the plane, everyone except for St. Sebastian Martinez, who doesn’t have a single social media account, who barely exists at all, according to the internet.
There was Auden of course, with his indifferent profiles displaying the slenderest peek of his charmed, rich-boy life, and then there was Becket Hess—or rather Father Becket Hess—who’d only just been ordained last year and been sent here to Dartmoor to shepherd an idyllic little parish. Then there was Rebecca Quartey, with her impeccably professional account showcasing her work in the last year as a landscape architect, and Delphine Dansey, who as far as I could tell didn’t have a job, or if she did, it was simply to be pretty and happy in lots of different pretty and happy locations.
“Trust the librarian to do her research before she came,” Auden says.
“I am a bit surprised to see you, though—Mr. Cremer made it sound as if he’d be the one to greet me . . . ?”
“Oh that,” Auden says, waving a hand. “I was here anyway, and besides, I was looking forward to meeting you again after all this time.” He takes a step forward, and for a moment, I think he’s reaching for me—maybe for my hand or to pull me into a hug—but he’s only reaching for one of my suitcase handles. “Let’s get you settled then, and show you around the place—”
