Page 54 of The Dazzling Heights
“Is that an IntoxiCandle?” Avery had never burned one before. They were just normal candles, with air-transported endorphins and serotonin baked into the wax. But all candles were illegal in the Tower, due to the fire hazard—especially this high up, where the air was pumped with extra oxygen to compensate for the altitude.
“I thought you could use it. It used to help me, when I was drunk and moody.”
“I’m not moody!” Avery cried out, and Cord laughed at her. “Though I am pretty drunk,” she admitted. The room had stopped its slow spin, but she still felt a bizarre sense of unreality, as though none of this was quite believable.
“I can say with firsthand experience that you’re moody as hell, and unquestionably drunk,” Cord declared. She knew he was trying to be lighthearted, but his phrasing only heightened Avery’s sadness. “The candle was Eris’s, actually,” Cord went on. “She bought it for—”
He broke off awkwardly.
“No, it’s okay.” For some reason it felt good talking about Eris, as if by turning to the older, more aching hurt, Avery could ignore the new one that burned in her chest. “I like the idea of using something that was hers. She would want us to burn it.” Avery watched as Cord hunted for an old-fashioned lighter, since no bot would burn anything, not inside.
“I miss her a lot,” she added softly, as he clicked a small flame to life and held it to the candle’s taper.
“I miss her too.” Cord glanced down. The light of the candle cast small shadows under his eyes.
“You know, if I met Eris now, I think I would be intimidated by her. She was so unapologetically original,” Avery mused aloud, fumbling for the words. “But we’d been friends for so long that I took her for granted.”I can’t take anyone for granted ever again, she promised herself, except that she was already losing the people she cared about. Leda hated her, Watt obviously resented her, she and Atlas were fighting, and her parents were watching her like a pair of hawks. When had all of Avery’s relationships started falling apart?
“Eris’s funeral didn’t do her justice,” Cord was saying. “It was too generic for her. She needed something spectacular, like confetti bombs. Or bubbles.”
“Eris would have loved that.” Avery smiled and took a deep breath, letting the scent of the candle travel from her lungs all the way to the farthest corners of her body, seeping into her hair, to the tips of her fingers. It smelled like honey and toast and campfires.
The holo switched to a commercial for a new karaoke game. A silence stretched between her and Cord—the sort of easy, companionable silence that falls between two people who’ve known each other a long time.
She nodded at the commercial. “Why don’t we ever play games like that anymore?”
“Because you’re a terrible singer. Which I’ve never understood, given the whole genetic engineering thing.”
“Not fair!” Avery protested, though she secretly liked it when Cord brought up the fact that she was a custom-order baby. No one else ever dared to.
“It’s okay. There are more important things,” Cord said, and there was a strange note in his voice that made her look up. At some point—she wasn’t sure when—he’d shifted nearer to her, or maybe she’d been the one to move. Either way, here they were.
Time seemed to stretch out like a liquid. Avery’s face was so close to Cord’s, and he was looking at her with that unfamiliar blue-eyed intensity, none of his usual nonchalance or sarcasm, his gaze focused and resolute. Avery couldn’t breathe over the pounding of her heart. She knew she should pull away, but she didn’t, she couldn’t move, it was all too sudden and unexpected. She’d stepped into some strange universe where Cord Anderton might lean in and kiss her.
Then suddenly Cord was sitting back, making another teasing comment about how her singing sucked, and Avery wasn’t sure what had happened, or if anything had even happened at all.
Her eyes lit on the candle, which still flickered there on the table. Little pockets of happiness melted out to drift blissfully upward, beads of wax sliding down the sides to gather in golden pools at the bottom.
Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing.
Avery’s eyes fluttered open and she shut them again, shifting in her bed. Except that she wasn’t in her bed at all. She was lying on the Andertons’ couch.
She sat up quickly, reaching up to touch the matted knot of her hair. Her eyes frantically skimmed the room. The candle was still on the table, its flame long since guttered out. Early morning light streamed through Cord’s enormous floor-to-ceiling windows.
She couldn’t even remember falling asleep. She and Cord had been talking about Eris, and he’d lit the candle to help her relax … that must have been when she drifted off.
Her gown was right where she’d left it, draped over the back of a chair. Avery stumbled to the hallway closet where the Andertons kept self-steaming garment bags; she quickly grabbed one and tossed her dress in it, then slipped on her satin heels and muttered under her breath for a hover, already halfway out the door. At the last minute, an unbidden impulse caused her to turn back and grab the melted remains of the candle. There was still a good hour left to burn, and she had a feeling she might need it.
Safe inside the hover, Avery leaned back and closed her eyes, struggling to sort through the events of the last twelve hours. She still felt hurt by her stupid fight with Atlas; but also ashamed of her immature reaction, setting out to flirt with another boy in order to irritate him. No wonder he hadn’t flickered her. He must have seen her laughing and dancing, taking all those shots with Cord, then stumbling home with him at the end of the night.
Her cheeks colored. What did Atlas think of her? For all she knew he might assume that something had actuallyhappenedbetween her and Cord.
Had it, almost?
Avery kept replaying that moment, trying to parse out what it was and what it meant. Had Cord almost kissed her, or was it just the product of her alcohol-soaked, IntoxiCandled mind?Well, she thought firmly,thank god nothing had happened in the end.
The hover raced upstairs, getting ever closer to the thousandth floor. Avery leaned forward, her head in her hands, trying to shut out the world. What would she do when she saw Atlas—storm past him, ignore him, talk to him?
Kiss him and tell him it’ll be okay, no matter what, her mind whispered to her, and she knew that it was true. She’d hated seeing him flirt with Calliope, but in the cold light of day, she knew he was right: it didn’t mean anything, and if it helped divert their parents’ suspicions, then so be it. She loved Atlas, and nothing else really mattered. They would figure it out, she told herself, like they always did.
