The common room was empty, like I’d expected. My dorm room was too, but I’d been on my bed for a minute at best when a knock came at the door.
I waited for whoever it was to go away, but another knock came shortly after, this time followed by Silt’s voice.
“Damian?”
Unlike Nadia, Sofia had taken the time to change, and was now wearing a pair of plaid pajama bottoms under a long pink tank top. Her brown eyes were as dry as they’d been at Shane’s funeral, but her face was pinched and drawn.
“Is everything okay?” I looked over her shoulder at the empty hall. “Is Wormhole—?”
“Evie’s fine. Cried herself out and I tucked her in about ten minutes ago or so.” Silt’s voice was even gruffer than usual. “Glad to see they patched you back up already.” She didn’t wait for a reply, but slid past me into my dorm room, where she got the five second tour by virtue of heading to the center and slowly turning around.
I let the hallway door close, and leaned against it. “What can I do for you, Sofia?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, face turned to our room’s one window. Finally, she sighed. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.”
A few things clicked into place. Her state of dress. The fact that she’d waited for everyone to be gone or asleep before coming to my bedroom. Maybe even why she’d bothered to be friends with me.
The problem was… I didn’t feel that way about Sofia at all.
I wasn’t a blushing virgin or anything—Alicia the slushy girl had seen to that—but it wasn’t like I’d seen much other action at Mama Rawlins’. I certainly hadn’t ever had to deal with letting someone down easily, outside of very young girls with puppy-dog crushes on the oldest orphan in the house.
“Sofia, I…”
I’d only made it through those two words when Silt finally turned around, took two steps and threw herself at me. I barely managed to catch her, but as soon as I did, she dropped her head against my chest and began to cry.
Oh.
This was something life at Mama Rawlins had taught me how to deal with. I wrapped my arms around the stocky Earthshaker and held her as she wept.
CHAPTER 41
I’d never woken up in bed with a woman I cared about before. Alicia and I had only ever fooled around at the shop; brief moments of pleasure that ended with her going back to her parents and me returning to Mama Rawlins’. Waking up next to a warm, curvy body showed me I’d been missing something. The soft, full boob under my hand didn’t hurt at all.
It took my brain a handful of seconds to realize that it was Silt’s boob that I was holding. I let go of it in a hurry, and scooted back to put some space between us… or at least as much space as the small bed allowed.
We were both still fully clothed, of course. Once Silt started crying, I’d finally realized she had come to me for comfort and not some hot Crow action. I’d held her on the bed until she cried herself out, much like she must have done for Wormhole earlier that day. Before I knew it, she was snoring against my chest. I’d thought about waking her, but sometime in the middle of that internal debate, I’d apparently dropped off as well.
There’d been nothing sexual at all about our night together. Which didn’t save me from embarrassment when Jeremiah walked in that next morning.
“Shit!” His eyes were white craters in the darkness of his face as he took Silt and I in with a single glance. “Put a sock on the door or something in the future. Please!”
That was enough to wake up Silt as well, but while she was still fumbling towards full consciousness, I was springing out of bed. “This isn’t what it looks like, Jeremiah.”
“This is a judgement-free dorm room,” he said. “If she wants to experiment…”
Wait. If she wanted to experiment? Even though nothing had happened, even though neither Silt nor I had wanted anything to happen, I found myself more than a little insulted. Since when did sleeping with me count as experimentation?
“I thought you were at Hektor’s,” said Silt, sleepily rolling out of bed to stretch like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“Why would he have been at Hektor’s?” I frowned.
“Why do you think?” Silt rolled her eyes, then turned back to my roommate. “Anyway, there wasn’t any experimentation going on here, Stonebrain. I just badly needed a friend, and Boneboy gives good hugs.”
“He does?”
“I do?” I asked, at almost the same time.
“Surprised me too,” said Silt with a shrug. “Anyway, thanks for the best night of sleep I’ve had in a while, but I should go check on Evelyn and make sure she’s doing better.”
She was halfway out the door when I realized I had something to do as well. I followed her out.
“Hugs are all well and good, Boneboy, but I’m not going to let you follow me home.”
“Shockingly,” I said right back, “this isn’t about you. I just remembered something Bard told me yesterday.”
“And whatever this was means you need to go somewhere at the god-awful time Stonewall woke us up at?”
“The earlier I go, the more time I’ll have to change her mind.”
Silt’s yawn was so wide I could actually hear her jaw pop. “Whose mind? What are you talking about?”
“Ishmae’s.” I felt Silt pause more than I saw it, but I kept going. When she’d caught back up to me, I added the rest. “Bard says she’s quitting the Academy.”
“And you want to stop her?”
“Not really.” I held open the door to the common room and followed Sofia in. “But I think Shane would’ve wanted me to.”
•—•—•
The first step was actually finding Ishmae. She hadn’t returned to her and Tessa’s room since Shane’s death, and I knew for a
