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She was so tired. Tired of all of it. Of the misery, of the sounds. The Unresting followed her, even now, and they howled to be heard.
What had it been what Squall had said to her? That sometimes destruction would be more palatable? Sometimes she would feel as if she were the one being destroyed?
Her bedroom fire brightened as she pulled herself from underneath her covers, rubbing her eyes, the room still in half-light greys. She squinted at her clock, the hour hand pointing firmly to just after three in the morning. Far too early then. Hometrain wouldn’t be there for hours, ready to whisk her off to Wunsoc for the day, before she could come home in the evening, do her homework, and have dinner with Jupiter, and she was pretty sure tonight Frank was doing something with trampolines this evening too that she was looking forward too also.
She had been fourteen for two weeks, and in that time, she might have slept for two or three nights entire. Her Nocturne imprint twitched, singing like it always did, mouth open and shimmering ever so slightly, along with her Inferno imprint. Her biggest reminder of that night, except for— well, Basking.
She’d heard a few Clocksmiths on the Wireless come on to say they didn’t know what the Giant was — for all that the general populace of Nevermoor didn’t really care about all that — and when she thought about it, her chest got very tight and she couldn’t breathe quite properly.
Squall hadn’t said, but she hadn’t asked, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know, whether or not it was the case at all.
She shrugged on her dressing gown, wrapping it around herself, shoving her feet into slippers that were almost too soft and warm, and grabbed Emmett, holding him close to herself.
Knowing that her rabbit used to be her mother’s felt so— weird and wrong and incredible. It had felt that before she had known about Meredith Crow once being a Darling, and now even moreso.
In a way, she had learned more about Meredith in the last few months than she had in the eleven years she had lived in Great Wolfacre, with only her name and portrait before. In another way, she felt like she had never known the image of her mother less.
Uncle Jove sometimes mentioned “three AM thoughts”, the kinds of things that came to a person in the middle of the night that should be discarded because they were just some hindrance to sleep. Bold words for a man who’d probably been awake for more three AMs than he’d slept through, but she thought he might have a point with this one.
Still, she wasn’t going to sleep now. She hadn’t woken from that nightmare sweating and screaming in the way characters in books did, ready to run from whatever horror it was. She could barely remember what had happened, snatches of this and that running out of her reach, like trying to hold water in her splayed fingers. The Unresting had been there, but what else? How? When? What had happened to make her heart race like she’d been in an espresso drinking competition with Jack (never again) or nausea gather at the bottom of her stomach like an angry crowd trying to command her attention.
She didn’t go to the Smoking Parlour, though she knew it would probably help her calm down, maybe send her back to sleep. She didn’t wander the halls either, her heart still going too quickly for her to want to jump at every shadow in case it was something. What was the something? She wasn’t sure. Maybe just the Hunt, off to take her to her next lesson where she’d have to bring Jupiter and show Squall her new imprint and— and all of that. Maybe the impression Guiltghast and the Unresting burrowing into her mind. Maybe just her memory, harmless and unable to touch her. At least not physically.
Her feet took her to the rooftop. She hadn’t been up there since her birthday party, and before then not since the night she ended the Hollowpox. Every time, before she had disappeared off to the Silver District, that Frank had suggested a rooftop party, Fenestra had shut him down with the same speed Morrigan had seen her swipe at a mouse in the gutter in the alley outside.
She thought she knew why. And she had left some fish outside Fen’s room to say thank you for it.
But she was up there now. And she wasn’t alone.
“Why are you up here?” Jack asked, staring at her with both eyes open and uncovered. She could spot his pyjamas underneath his dressing gown, his hair ruffled up in almost a ridiculous manner like he’d just been pulled out of bed. And his eyes were red and swollen.
“Bad dream.” No point lying to a Witness. “You?”
“Good dream,” he said, turning away to look at the city again, staring at it like he was trying to read from it with his knack, eyes narrowed in the same way Jupiter’s did.
Morrigan opened her mouth to ask why a good dream would have him up in the middle of the night and crying apparently, but shut it again. She walked over to join him at the balustrade, folding her arms over the edge. It was ice cold to the touch, the hairs on her arms and legs standing up almost immediately in response. The breeze blew through her hair, pushing it away from her face. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do you?”
“Not really,” she said. She was afraid that if she started, she might never stop. “What are you doing?”
“Practising,” his jaw tightened. “The more I do now,” he turned, looking behind him, checking they were alone. “The more I can hold over the League.”
She had already been pretty sure what his dream was about, but that confirmed it for her. “What does it look like? It must be incredible to see, I mean, like as a Witness.” And terrifying. And confusing.
“That’s the thing,” Jack said, turning to look at her. His eyes were as wide as they had been the first time she had seen him without the patch. “It looks, well— I think it’s alive.”