The crumple of parchment woke me.
It was a small sound, barely louder than the blankets shifting around my legs, but in the silence of the room it seemed to carry. For a moment, I lay still, caught somewhere between sleep and waking. Moonlight slipped through the narrow window and stretched across the floor in pale bars, turning the stone silver where it touched. The candle on the little table between our beds had burned low, its flame bending whenever a draught wandered through the room.
Rosalind sat beside it.
Sleep left me all at once.
Her back was turned to me, dark hair falling loose over one shoulder. She had not changed from her nightdress, and something about seeing her there made the room feel unfamiliar, as though I had woken inside a moment that had never meant for me to see it.
One hand rested flat against a sheet of parchment. The other held a quill above it, unmoving. She did not write at first. She only stared.
Another sheet lay crushed beside the candle, folded into itself so tightly that no word could have escaped it, and my fingers tightened beneath the blanket.
The parchment.
The ones I had taken for her.
Warmth moved through me despite the cold air slipping beneath the covers. She had used them.
I had told myself it would not matter if she never did. I had only taken the extra sheets so they would be there if she wanted them. Rosalind could leave them untouched. She could pretend she had never seen them, and I would never ask.
But she had wanted them.
The thought filled my chest so quickly that my next breath caught halfway in.
The quill lowered with a faint scratch against the parchment, then stopped again. Rosalind's fingers tightened around it, her knuckles paling before she loosened them. Her shoulders sat too high beneath the thin fabric of her nightdress, and even from where I lay, I could see the tension running through her back.
Without thinking, my own hand twisted into the blanket.
She looked as though every word had to be pulled from somewhere she had spent years trying to keep closed.
I wondered what she had written. Not the words exactly. I did not need those. I only wanted to know what had kept her sitting there while the Academy slept.
But I already knew who the letter was for.
There had never been anyone else.
The warmth beneath my ribs softened into something that hurt.
I had seen Rosalind go still at the sound of her mother's footsteps. I had watched her swallow apologies she should never have had to make because sometimes saying sorry was safer than saying anything else. I had watched her wipe tears from her face before anyone could see them, then smile as though nothing had happened at all.
She had spent years saying she did not need them. That they did not deserve her. That there was nothing left to go back for.
And still, she was writing.
Somewhere beneath all of that anger, beneath all the things she had tried to cut away before they could hurt her again, something small had survived.
Hope.
My throat tightened.
Maybe she would have hated the word if I said it aloud. Maybe that was why she sat here in the dark, when she thought no one could see her wanting something she had already decided she no longer wanted.
But I saw it.
And because I was me, because I could never seem to stop myself, hope answered inside me too.
Maybe her mother would read it. No, I knew she would.
Maybe she would understand.
I hoped she would.
Maybe something broken did not have to stay broken forever.
The thought was so fragile I hardly dared breathe around it.
Rosalind shifted.
My whole body went still.
I closed my eyes at once, forcing my face soft against the pillow even as my heart began beating harder beneath my ribs. The chair creaked, and my fingers twisted deeper into the blanket.
She saw me.
Heat rushed beneath my skin.
For one terrible heartbeat, I imagined her turning and finding my eyes open, her hand folding over the parchment before I could say anything. I could almost see the little opening disappearing as quickly as it had come.
Rosalind could do that. One moment something would show in her face, her hands, her voice, and then it would be gone.
I did not want to be the reason this disappeared too.
So I stayed still.
The silence stretched long enough that my pulse began to hurt in my ears.
Then—
Scratch.
Pause.
Scratch.
The breath I had been holding slipped quietly from me.
I waited another moment before opening my eyes the smallest amount. Rosalind had bent closer over the page, candlelight touching one side of her face and catching the faint line between her brows. Her hand trembled once before she pressed it harder against the parchment until it stopped.
My leg shifted beneath the blanket before I could think better of it.
I wanted to get up.
The wanting came so quickly that for a moment I almost did. I could sit beside her. Pretend I had only just woken. Ask if she wanted tea even though we had none. Say I could not sleep. Say something small and silly until the tightness left her shoulders.
Anything that meant—
I'm here.
My fingers slipped toward the edge of the blanket.
Then stopped.
She had not woken me. Rosalind had waited until she thought I was asleep, and I had put the parchment there because I wanted her to choose.
If I got up now, she would stop.
She would crush this page too.
My stomach tightened at the thought, and my hand slowly pulled back beneath the covers.
So I stayed.
My toes curled beneath the blankets while my fingers found the fabric again, bunching it quietly against my palm as I watched the small rise and fall of Rosalind's shoulders.
Usually there was something I could do. I could take her hand. Sit beside her. Make space for her at my window when neither of us wanted to go home yet. Wait outside a door until she was ready to open it.
This time, staying meant not moving at all.
It felt much harder.
The quill scratched across the parchment again, slower now, careful enough that I could hear each pause between the words. It sounded as though Rosalind might still change her mind at any moment, as though one wrong thought could make her tear the whole thing apart and start again.
I hope she finishes it.
The thought came before I could stop it.
I hope she sends it.
Hope pressed warm beneath my ribs, frightening in the way it always was when it mattered too much.
I imagined morning coming and Rosalind sitting on the edge of my bed, the finished letter folded between her hands. Maybe she would tell me she had written it. Maybe she would say she had sent it.
She would not have to tell me what it said. She would not even have to tell me much.
Just enough that I would know she had tried.
Just enough that I would know some part of her still believed there could be something on the other side of all that hurt.
My grip on the blanket softened.
Maybe there could be.
I wanted there to be. For her. For both of us, maybe.
Because if things could mend for Rosalind, then maybe broken things were not always broken forever.
The thought settled quietly inside me as the quill moved again.
Scratch.
Pause.
Scratch.
I watched until my eyes began to sting and the candle blurred at the edges, until the fingers resting against the blanket had gone numb and the moonlight across the floor seemed softer than before.
Rosalind never looked back.
And I let the darkness keep her secret, pretending not to hear how much courage it took to make so little sound.
✧
By morning, the parchment was gone.
I noticed before anything else.
The table between our beds stood bare except for the candle burned almost to its base, a thin curl of wax hardened along the brass holder. The crushed page had disappeared too. Morning light had replaced the moonlight across the floor, pale and cool, touching all the places the candle had left in shadow only hours before.
Rosalind stood before the mirror fastening the collar of her uniform.
Her hair had been smoothed neatly into place. Her shoulders were straight, her expression calm, every movement careful and certain. If I had not opened my eyes in the night, I might have believed she had slept through all of it.
I watched her reflection while pretending to fix the cuff of my sleeve, my thumb worrying the same fold of fabric until it would not lie flat anymore.
Is she going to send it?
My eyes slipped toward the little drawer beneath the table.
Maybe the letter was inside, folded away until after lessons. Maybe she had hidden it between her books so she could take it downstairs without me seeing. Or maybe it was not finished yet. Maybe last night had only been the beginning and there were still words she could not make herself write.
I hope she will send it.
I really did.
Last night, hidden beneath the blankets, I had wanted it so badly. I had imagined her mother opening it, reading Rosalind's words and finally seeing what I had always seen.
But morning made the hope feel different.
My fingers slowed against my sleeve.
Because if Rosalind sent it, her mother could answer.
And what if the answer hurt?
What if there was no apology? No I miss you. Nothing soft. What if her mother found some way to turn Rosalind's reaching into another thing she should be ashamed of?
My fingers closed around the cuff until the fabric bunched inside my palm.
I had taken the parchment.
I had put it on the table.
In case you wanted to write.
At the time, it had felt so simple. Rosalind would never have taken the pages herself. I knew that. She would have stood beside the desk and acted as though she had no reason to want them, because wanting meant caring, and caring meant there was still something left that could hurt.
So I had taken them for her.
Because I had seen her looking.
Because some part of her had wanted them even when the rest of her refused to reach.
But what if all I had done was make it easier for someone to hurt her again?
My nail pressed through the fabric into my palm.
I could imagine it too easily. A letter arriving with the Academy seal broken. Rosalind unfolding it. Her face becoming very still in that way it did when something hurt more than she wanted anyone to know.
Maybe she would fold it back up and put it somewhere I could not see.
Maybe I would ask what was wrong and she would smile.
Nothing.
My stomach twisted.
And maybe after that she would stop taking the things I offered her.
Maybe the next time I left something within reach, she would leave it there.
Maybe the next time I reached, she would not reach back.
My nail dug harder into my palm.
I knew why she would.
I had known hope scared her, and I had put it right in front of her anyway.
What if she wished I hadn't?
For one awful moment, I wanted the letter to stay exactly where it was.
Hidden in the drawer.
Safe.
Unanswered.
If no answer came, nothing could be said wrong. Her mother could not take the little hope Rosalind had let herself have in the dark and crush it between a few careless words.
But then I looked at Rosalind again.
Morning light caught against the side of her face as she worked the last clasp at her throat. She looked so composed that no one would have guessed her fingers had trembled around a quill only hours before.
And I wanted the opposite just as badly.
I wanted her to send it.
I wanted her mother to read whatever Rosalind had fought so hard to put on that page and understand. I wanted her to see Rosalind, not whatever fault she had spent years trying to correct. Not the smile she demanded. Not the obedience she expected.
Just Rosalind.
The girl who had sat awake long after the Academy went quiet because, no matter how many times she said there was nothing left to go back for, some small part of her had still tried.
My grip on my sleeve slowly loosened.
Maybe that small part deserved an answer.
A good one.
Something that did not punish her for wanting.
My thumb moved over the little crescent my nail had left in my palm.
Please don't hurt her.
The thought came small and scared.
I did not know if I meant her mother.
The letter.
Or me.
I stayed caught there, watching Rosalind through the mirror while my thumb rubbed uselessly over the mark in my skin.
She finished fastening the last clasp at her throat and smoothed the fabric once.
Then her hand stilled.
So did mine.
Her eyes lifted to the mirror.
Straight to me.
My breath caught.
I realised too late that I had been staring. Not at her exactly. Somewhere through her, lost so far inside my own thoughts that I had forgotten she could see me too.
Rosalind's mouth curved.
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
Heat rushed into my face.
"Nothing."
Her smile widened. "Nothing?"
There was something teasing in her voice now, light enough that it pulled me out of my thoughts before I was ready. I looked down quickly and went back to fixing my sleeve, though by now I had probably made the fold worse.
"I was just thinking."
"So I noticed."
When I glanced up again, Rosalind was still watching me through the mirror, amusement sitting warm in her eyes.
"I haven't seen you look that serious since you spent half an afternoon trying to decide whether that injured sparrow liked you."
My face went hotter.
"I was seven."
"You cried when it flew away."
"I did not cry."
"You absolutely cried."
"It had a hurt wing."
"And then it got better."
"That wasn't the point."
Rosalind laughed softly.
My shoulders dropped before I even realised how tightly I had been holding them.
The sound seemed to loosen something else too. The drawer beneath the table disappeared from my thoughts. So did the letter, the imagined answer, the little mark aching in my palm.
For a moment, there was only Rosalind smiling at me and an old memory I had not thought about in years.
I remembered the sparrow suddenly. Its tiny body trembling between my hands, one wing held strangely against its side while I sat in the grass worrying over whether it liked the crumbs I had brought. Rosalind had spent the entire afternoon beside me pretending she was not nearly as worried as I was.
And she remembered it too.
Something warm filled my chest.
It felt normal.
So normal that it hurt a little.
Like we were somewhere smaller again, before the Academy had filled our days with lessons and whispers and people I did not know. Before I had started wondering whether every silence between us meant something had changed.
Rosalind was still smiling at me.
And for that little moment, I did not have to wonder.
She remembered.
She had noticed me sitting too quietly inside my own head.
She was looking at me the way she always had.
My heart felt too full for something so small.
I lowered my eyes before she could see how much it meant, but the smile had already found me. My fingers moved over my sleeve again, gentler now, no longer pulling at the fabric.
"I was seven," I murmured, because it was the only defence I had left.
"I know."
There was still laughter tucked inside her voice.
My smile only grew.
Rosalind turned back toward the mirror, smoothing one side of her collar. The movement was easy again, and for a few breaths I let myself hold on to the warmth of it.
"You slept well, then?"
My fingers paused against my sleeve.
The question sounded casual, almost teasing, but after the night before it made something flutter nervously in my stomach.
"I think so," I said.
I almost asked her the same.
The words rose easily, already waiting at the back of my throat.
What about you? Did you sleep well?
But I knew what she would say.
Very well.
She would smile when she said it. She would make it sound so simple that, if I had not been awake, I would have believed her.
Not because she wanted to lie to me.
Rosalind just did not like saying when something hurt. Saying she had barely slept would mean admitting something had kept her awake, and then I might worry. I might ask why.
And maybe she was not ready for the why.
My thumb brushed over the little crescent in my palm.
So I let the question stay where it was.
Rosalind's eyes found mine in the mirror once more, the faintest smile still curved at her mouth.
For one heartbeat, I wondered if she knew anyway. If she had heard something in my breathing last night. If she had seen the blanket move. If she knew I had been there quietly hoping with her.
Or maybe she only thought I was being strange this morning.
I could not tell.
She did not say.
Neither did I.
Then Rosalind reached for her books and turned toward the door.
"Come. We'll be late."
The nervous little feeling remained, but the warmth did too.
I followed.