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Fixing the damage would be another battle altogether. But one thing at a time.

Fern began the arduous process of unbuttoning her dress shirt with one hand. The sleeves were long and narrow; given how painful it had been to get her coat off, she might have no choice but to cut the shirt sleeve away.

A soft knock sounded. Fern jumped, looking up, eyes wide, heart in her mouth.

She waited. The sound came again, a soft rapping at her door.

She checked her watch. It was a little past three in the morning. Who could possibly want to speak to her at this hour? She saw all the other candidates most days during breakfast or lunch. Any of them wishing to speak to her could do so then.

Unless it was a candidate who was unable to do so.

She surged to her feet. Had Vittoria returned? Perhaps Baudet had gone to search for her and needed assistance. She could not tell him of the Astronomy Tower, but she could certainly try to help him, since nobody else would. She padded over to the door and pressed her ear to the panel.

“Hello?” she said quietly. “Who is it?”

A masculine voice, deep and lilted with melancholy, answered.

“It’s Léo.”

Her heart, like a Sumbral entity, exercised its power from the red gateway of her chest. It pulled hungrily, calling to itself. Fern fought it. She caught her breath and held it, and waited for her heartbeat to still, and carefully sifted the emotions out of her voice before answering.

“What do you want?”

“I just want to talk.”

Fern thought of how she had paused outside his door.

What had she wanted then? What did she want, right at this moment?

She was barely sure. She was sure only that she did not want what she ought to.

“Not now,” she said.

“Please, Fern. It’s important.”

Fern’s mind coldly commanded her to be careful, but her heart, which was perhaps bruised and raw, begged her to open the door, to let him in.

Fern hesitated for a moment—and then she obeyed the latter.

Chapter thirty-seven

The Mistake

Lautric slipped in throughthe narrow space Fern opened in the door; she closed it as soon as she could with the feeling of having committed some clandestine act. They stood in her small vestibule, bathed in the golden light of the table lamp.

“Thank you, I wanted to, um…” Lautric stuttered and faltered to a stop. He blinked, his gaze sweeping over Fern. “I’m sorry, I, ah, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Fern glanced down. Her shirt was half unbuttoned, falling open to reveal her bra, a simple garment of dark green cotton. She looked up. Lautric’s face was flushed a dull pink underneath his freckles.

She had never been particularly self-conscious: nudity in St Jerome had been bony and sterile, and privacy was a luxury that had been beyond the orphans’ means. As a result, Fern’s sense of her own body was detached and practical.

But Lautric’s soft stutter and flushed cheeks made her suddenly aware of herself as a woman rather than a librarian—a woman standingalone with a young man in her apartment. Though Fern considered him a Lautric first and a man second, she could not deny that he was handsome, with his pretty features and tall frame. And his gaze made it clear he was not looking at her the way one ought to look at a professional rival or an assignment partner.

Fern had stepped, without meaning to, into a hazy, otherworldly mire—the mire of her and Lautric alone in her apartment with the smell of marzipan enveloping them—one she knew not how to navigate.

She cleared her throat. “Ah, I’m sorry, you’ve caught me at a bad moment. Please, take a seat.”

She led him inside the apartment and pointed at her desk chair, the most professional and uncompromising place she could think of putting him.