Page 58 of Wicked Salvation

“Pardon?”

I hear her heels clicking in the background. “Is there something wrong with the phone signal?” She’s moving to a different location. “I need the names and contact information of your bridesmaids. Your three closest friends.”

My mind blanks out briefly.

“My three closest friends?” I repeat slowly. “I don’t have three close friends.”

She laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Eden. You must have made some friends at Spearcrest.”

“I’ll have to think.”

Eleanor is the only one that comes to mind.

I was a social outcast at Spearcrest, a fly on the wall. I spent more time in the library with books than I did with people. It’s embarrassing to reach out to the girls that I met there to ask them to participate in my wedding.

Some of them would say yes, I suppose.

But do I want strangers in my wedding pictures?

“Please get back to me by the end of the day.” Then, it’s like a switch flips and she’s back to being the woman I know. Not my mother, but Viscountess Evelyn Lockhart. “Remember that a chance like this doesn’t come around often for a girl like you. Marrying above your station is more than I ever thought you’d be able to do. Don’t disappoint me.”

Then the line goes dead.

I sit there, numb, for longer than I want to.

When I come to, I’m on the verge of tears and the world seems to be blurring into obscurity, turning into background noise. It feels like I’m at the edge of a cliff, and if I fall off I’ll never be able to climb back up. I can’t let myself fall like that again, so I head to the only place left on campus I can find solace.

From the momentI could read, books have been my escape.

Maybe that’s why I feel so safe in the library. It’s sparse since most classes are still in session. And right now, the library is the only place left that doesn’t expect something from me.

The books here don’t care about grades or prayers, they don’t care about what I look like in white lace and satin, wedding planners, or even the blood-stained whispers echoing through Augustine’s corridors. All the library ever asks of me is silence.

Silence is the only thing that doesn’t feel like a lie now.

I slip into my usual corner, tucked between two towering shelves of brittle theology texts and a stuffed raven that watches me like it knows exactly the turmoil beneath my skin. The sun slants through the stained windows, the sharp, golden rays illuminate the dust floating in the waxy air. This entire section of the library is beautiful in that lonely, decaying kind of way.

Like something sacred left behind.

I have my books laid out. A tattered volume ofLes Misérables,a golden spiral notebook and an assortment of highlighters and fine point gel ink pens. I’ve been scratching symbols, words and little drawings in the margin of each page, like if I ruin enough pages it will fix the hole in my soul.

The assignment is due in two days.

And my partner—well, he’s on some sort of warpath.

I understand why he’s not here.

But it still stings, more than I’d admit to anyone.

Especially after our time in the cemetery when he looked at me like he was already mourning me in a way I would never understand. Eventually, I skip to the notes I had started writing, the ones we’d worked on together. I flip the pages, tracing my fingers over the part he had written. I stare at the page for a long time.

It just sits there, like a bruise.

I trace the edge of the page with my thumbs, and I swear pain blooms there too. Everything hurts lately. Everything itches. Like I’m outgrowing my skin but can’t get free.

Footsteps interrupt my spiral.

Light, slow and deliberate.