Page 54 of The Teras Trials

I look her in the eye. “The dean found us. Not a single word for the dying man. Just told me to put him out of his misery.”

I close the barrel with a click.

“Jesus,” Bellamy says, reeling away. “Jesus.”

And because I’m already speaking, I can’t seem to stop myself.

“When I went to the church, I found no solace there.” I leave that thread hanging; I’m not sure where God sits for these people. “So I thought about the letter, and I came here. And then I saw Blood Hunters. Someone else has done a runner. So that’s two of our cohort dead outside of trials. Three if you count the boy who confronted the dean.”

Bellamy rubs his face, and Victoria turns to stare at the rain. Fred grabs her brother and says they’ll see us back at the rooms—they want little to do with me. I know they don’t trust me. Leo is the only one who maintains his eye contact. Stormy expression. I don’t care about Fred or Silas’ opinion.

I do care about Leo’s.

We walk back in relative silence, Victoria and Bellamy ahead of us, sharing a cigarette, arm in arm. The lit cigarette bobs forward through the dark corridors.

I feel Leo next to me. Feel his heat, the sheer size of him. The urge to link our arms assaults me, and I do something idiotic: I let my bare pinkie finger graze the backside of his hand, and then I flinch away as if I was burned even though Leo doesn’t move.

If he notices, he does me a great service by saying nothing.

“Are you upset with me?” I am compelled to ask.

“No. Not at all. I know why you’d hide such a thing. We are strangers.”

I blush for no reason other than shame. He’s right, but I feel badly for it. I’m a hypocrite for telling them all we need to work together, and then for hiding such a note.

But Thaddeus is your brother. Not theirs. And it’s all you have left of him.

“Are you upset with me?” Leo asks suddenly. He gestures for my cigarette before I can answer, and I’m stunned into handing it over. He breathes in, holds it, coughs madly into the crook of his arm. Shaking his head, he hands it back to me.

“Still can’t get used to it?” I ask.

“Disgusting stuff. No offence.”

“None taken,” I say, though after one more puff I stub the thing under my foot, worried that every pore in me is leaking out the scent of tobacco.

Back at the tower, there’s not much else to do but sleep. It must be past midnight by now, and we have no idea when we’re meant to be awake. The Lins are nowhere to be seen. Probably asleep. No one makes the effort to chat. It’s been too long a day.

Victoria and Bellamy go to bed together, without any pretence of heading to their individual rooms. I say nothing, because I cannot blame them, and because I am, admittedly, jealous. Everything in my body is tense and unsettled. For plenty of people, I’m sure that would be enough to feel absolutely no lick of lust. Well, I envy those people.

Something about the horridness of the world means I crave to lose myself completely in another. I get so wrapped up in the sin of it, the layered transgressions I make against God—I cannot marry my lover, my lover is a man—that I briefly forget none of it really matters, in the end. What use is there in getting worked up about my so-called sins when living to thirty is a luxury? Hell is here. Hell is on earth, clawing at London’s walls. And if I can live a little happier for taking someone to bed, why shouldn’t I do it?

So this time when Leo says goodnight, I say wait.

He waits. He looks at me like I’m about to tell him something secret. And it is secret, in a way—my desire. I like to think I’m not this kind of person. But when I voice my question to Leo now, he will know exactly what I am, and what I crave. Even before he’s touched me, that’s a vulnerable position to be in.

The alternative, though, is letting every rabid thought from the day eat away my peace. I won’t sleep tonight. I need to sleep tonight.

“Do you want to. . .” I say, and I flush immediately, because I’m a coward. I gesture my head towards the closed door of my room. “Would you like to have a drink with me? In my room?”

I tack my room on the end, as if it isn’t the most important part in all this. The private, liminal space of my room. The door that we can close. The illicit things we might do to one another. Leo glances between the door and me, and the look in his eye darkens. There’s an open yearning in them, a hunger. I wonder if he has the same qualms as I do about sin and men, before I realise God’s kingdom beyond the wards is broken. It is much easier to overlook so-called misdeeds when death is a near certainty.

“I’d like that,” Leo says, with a small smile.

We are alone in the corridor, but I still make my footsteps as silent as I can. I have a latent shame in me, if that wasn’t obvious. I fear being seen; I fear being known. Thus I lead Leo to my room, half brimming with anxiety, and with lust. We cross the threshold. In the dark, I stumble over to light the lamps on my desk, and then at my bedside table.

I want this. I also never want to be touched. I want to be fucked like an animal. I want to drag my virginity from the gates of hell.

My head is a mess and my heart is hammering against my chest. I’m so obviously on edge, Leo gently touches my shoulders and asks, “Everything alright, Mr Jones?”

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