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It is oddly light in their rooms at Canaan House, and Harrow can’t stand it. She lies on the mouldering counterpane, eyes watery from removing her paint, and wills herself to see only blackness behind her eyelids.
(They had taken so long to die, eyes bulging, lungs shuddering for every breath.
In the gloom of their household cell, her father’s hanging hands had looked like pale spiders as they spasmed and clawed at empty air)
She fails.
Gideon had often remarked on Harrow’s complete failure to adhere to a normal sleep schedule- it had only gotten louder and more annoying since they’d arrived at Canaan House- but, characteristically, she’d never bothered to ask why.
Ironic, really, since Gideon was one of only three other people who are in a position to accurately guess. Lucky, too, as if Gideon had gotten it right Harrow would have had no choice but to spontaneously combust from sheer shame, and that would be a terrible waste of effort at this stage.
Harrow lets out an exasperated breath and rolls over. Thinking of Gideon in bed practically guarantees she won’t sleep.
Speaking of her ersatz cavalier primary...
Quietly, Harrow rolls out of the four poster, kicking up a small could of mould spores and dust as she does so, and crosses the room on quick, sure feet. Sneaking around in the dark is second nature to Harrow. It’s practically what she was born for. Making it to what she is starting to think of Gideon’s room, she halts, one hand on the doorframe.
Griddle is asleep, and drooling.
Harrow’s lip curls in something that is not quite disgust- she half moves to wake the other girl up (there must be some task she can invent to while away the night), but she’s pulled up short when Gideon speaks, in the slurred, thick voice of the dreaming.
“Can’t have her-“
Harrowhark raises an eyebrow.
“Stay back...” Gideon rolls over and grunts . ”S’rry, titty skeletons.” One hand clenches itself in the tattered blanket she’d dragged from the cavalier’s cot at the foot of Harrow’s bed. “Another time...”
Somehow, she’s found herself on the floor. Not next to Gideon’s bedroll, but in the doorway. Harrow rests her head on her folded arms.
When she wakes, which will be before Griddle has even finished her dream, she’ll leave a note about the noise.
For now, in the unsatisfactory darkness of Canaan House, Gideon snores.
And Harrow listens.