an; real quick, I just wanted to say: if  you aren't receiving notifs for Perigee, please make sure it's still added to your library. Apparently the book has been deleting itself from libraries and that's why some of you aren't getting notifications.

Also this chapter is a bit unnecessary in terms of plot but very much necessary in terms of Tisper, so enjoy anyway. I know you guys are dying for the spicy stuff and I promise it's on the horizon, but the plot and subplots are also very important so please be patient! ♥

She hadn't meant to go into his room. Not really.

First, it was the hard, drumming pulse in her head. The one that had nestled in after all of that wine. Then it was that distracting crow of laughter down the hall, the sun glinting in through the window at the far end—ricocheting from a room plaque and blinding her momentarily. Yes, that. That was why she'd accidentally found herself in his room, staring at a bed with no one in it.

He must've left already—gone downstairs for a drink or out with a friend. Or maybe he'd gone wolf again, swept out into the trees for that solitude he seemed so keen on finding.

She hadn't expected his room to be so clean. It was Felix, after all. In her mind, she saw clothes strung about—those frayed-at-the-knee jeans, that black bomber jacket he always wore, so threadbare and shredded, it looked as if it'd gone through a lawn mower twice and lived to tell the tale.

But his things were put away—and definitely not by room service, because his bed was still a twisted, undone mess of rumpled sheets, the duvet kicked all the way to the foot.

Tisper wandered to his dressers, and inspected the items on top. Some change he'd pulled from his pocket, a black BIC lighter, a keychain with a scant amount of keys and a single silver bottle opener. Then a black leather wallet.

She gave a look around and nudged the outer flap open, and his ID card shown inside the plastic window. Felix Cummins, just like he'd said—but Tisper knew ID cards weren't hard to fake. She'd paid a hundred bucks to be twenty-one on her seventeenth birthday.

Staring at a photo of Felix was so different from looking at him in person. She could never really keep those dark green eyes in one place. He looked away too often, never stared at one thing for too long. Why did he look so serious in this photo? Serious wasn't Felix. Was it?

"I've got no cash."

Tisper jumped—jumped at the sound of his voice. She clapped his wallet closed and turned to him, her hands behind her back.

He was wiping down the side of his neck with a bath towel, bare-chested but dressed in a pair of fitted slacks—which was admittedly strange in its own. Izzy must have forced them on him, or maybe the ceremony really was just that important.

She could smell a rich cologne, and when he'd pulled the towel away, Tisper caught for the first time his clean-shaven face. He had a long jaw, a sure chin—a scar on the right side of it that made him look like he'd been in a knife fight. In fact, he had scars all over—not that she minded them, but she liked the scruffy unkempt version better. This Felix looked too sharp, too young, too criminal. A man up to no good.

When she said nothing, Felix cocked one sharp red brow. "Are you a kleptomaniac or is it only me you're trying to rob?"

"I don't want your money," she said. "I wanted my arrow." It was the first thing she could think of, but she jerked her chin up with conviction. "The one you ate that bird from like a shish kabob."

But she wasn't expecting Felix to gesture to the bedside, where on the nightstand drawer sat the arrow she'd shot that night—wiped clean and still resting on the cloth he'd washed it with. She didn't think he'd actually bring it back with him. It was only an arrow.

"Couldn't find the others," he said, and when she looked to him, Felix had tossed his towel. She found herself counting the scars on his skin. She'd seen them before, but never this closely. They were long, deep gashes in some places, small pockmarks in others. And then he turned to take a shirt from his dresser, and when she saw his back, her fingers went numb. A chill rattled her spine.

He wasn't only scarred, Felix Cummins. He was mangled—battered, permanently disfigured by the dozens of tracks on his back that tangled in disarray. Like the roots of a tree—each crack in his skin riving into another.

"What happened to you?" she managed.

When Felix heard that, he went still. A deep breath, quiet, but loud enough to leave an echo in her. He pulled a white shirt on over his head, and in nothing but slacks and a wife-beater, he looked like a 1960's crime boss. All he would need were suspenders and a fat cigar, and he'd make for a fitting honcho villain, a drug laundering prodigy. A bad guy with a story to tell.

"You have your arrow," he said. The change in his voice was a ghostly thing.

"I'm sorry." As quickly as she could get the words out, she said them. "I didn't mean to pry. Come shoot with me again," she said. "I think I'm figuring it out."

"Not tonight," Felix replied, stuffing his wallet and his keys and his lighter back into his slack pockets. "Ceremony's tonight."

"Tomorrow?"

"Ye don't need me," Felix told her. He moved closer, hands still in his pockets. Tisper could smell all the soaps and perfumes on his skin. See all the muscles breathing beneath that thin cotton wife-beater. Then Felix took the arrow from his nightstand and held it out to her. "Ye need to stop doubting yourself." As she reached for it, he yanked it away and stared soberly into her eyes. "And ye need to stop prying." Then he dropped the arrow into her hands.

It was one of those things she wished she could rewind, undo. Even as Izzy circled her with a curling iron later that day, twisting her hair from her face and letting it fall from the heat in waves. She was going on about the dresses they'd wear for the ceremony.

"Ever since like... well, forever, we've worn evening gowns. Ones with only one shoulder. Sometimes we just chop the shoulders off and re-trim the bust, but I managed to find one for you. One made that way."

Tisper watched her reflection in the mirror, resisting the urge to brush the mascara dusting from her cheek. She'd come to love her face—the high, natural arch in her brow, the little line that dipped at the center of her nose. She wasn't perfect, but she was the woman she'd always wanted to be. Tonight, she didn't see that woman in the mirror. Tisper didn't know where she'd gone.

"Don't you want to know why?" Izzy was asking. "Why only one shoulder?"

"Okay. Why one shoulder?"

"Because," Izzy said, "we wear silver cuffs on the other arm."

"I thought silver hurt you?"

"If you've got an open wound, it hurts like hell, sure. But that's why we wear them—it's a mark of bravery. We wear our weaknesses inches from our hearts and it makes use fearless. Once you embrace your vulnerabilities, you've got nothing to be afraid of." Then she went back to weaving curls through Tisper's hair.

It wasn't long after that the bathroom door opened and Imani swept in, a dress hung delicately from her forearm. Tisper had hardly seen her at all since they'd arrived, but she was almost startled by the sheer grace of the woman.

She wore her hair up—tall atop her head. A sharp, flawless face sat on a long neck and strong shoulders—powdered with something that glinted like gold in the bathroom lights. She hadn't dressed yet; like Tisper, she'd been walking around in a casual tank top and shorts, but she was absolutely beautiful.

Izzy shut off the iron, wrenching Tisper up from her seat. She spun her by the shoulders to look at Imani, who held the dress out like it was something much more fragile than simple fabric.

"It was mine," she said, a ring of pride in her fiery voice. "Two sizes ago, so be kind to it."

"Are you sure?" Tisper asked. She was hesitant to take it. "Is it special to you?"

"It's only material," she said, but there was a wistfulness to her voice. "It's given me my memories. Let it make some for you."

Tisper swallowed. Imani was tall, robust. Maybe it'd fit her, but what if it didn't? What if she ripped it—what if the zipper didn't budge, what if she popped a seam in the waist? What if—

"For god's sake," Imani said. "Undress, we don't have all day. And let's hope you're not too modest."

Tisper didn't know what she'd meant by that until she was stepping out into the courtyard, wind bristling the bare sides of her waist where circles had been cut from the fabric to show all those feminine curves she feared she might not have. Luckily the neck-line was high enough that she didn't have to worry about showing too much of the feminine things she did have—save for maybe the keyhole cut in the center of her bust. If anything, she was proud of that one.

She'd only taken one quick glance in the mirror, but the powder blue silk turned her skin two shades tanner, and she was baffled by the way Imani had drawn deep cuts of black along her eyelids. Long, lavish coal wings that made her look feline, but felt dry and tugged her skin when she smiled.

She loved to dress up, but she'd never gone to this extent. Boys always griped about makeup—that they loved the "natural look", but all the same if was like they knew nothing about a woman's face. If she wore makeup, she was a sham. If she didn't she was unattractive. So Tisper had tried to look natural in the most unnatural ways. There was nothing natural about the way she wore it now, but god, she didn't care. She looked powerful—dangerous and knowing and sophisticated. She'd decided the moment she saw her face in the mirror that makeup wasn't distortion or deceit. It was powder and paint on a face. It was art and boys were idiots.

Izzy had spent so much time on her that she'd hardly done anything to herself, so while she was upstairs brushing powder over her eyes, Tisper was forced to walk the grass alone. She followed a couple ahead of her and cut toward the growing bustle of the courtyard. Already she wanted to toss off the heels she'd been given—they made her wobble and stumble on the uneven lawn.

The place was almost indescribable. It wasn't the same courtyard where she'd lounged with Felix a night ago; tables had been placed around the right side of the fountain and caterers cooked beneath tents, on barbecue grills and open flames. Ribbons had been tied from the fountain's top—webbed away in hanging arches to the crowns of awnings, where furniture had been placed around metal fire pits. And in the center, perched on the fountain's edge, Quentin and James played their cellos to the pep of a buoyant folk song. Women twisted and danced around on the mosaic bricks, lucent beneath the fountain's glittering lights, spinning themselves to the zealous tempo.

When Quentin glanced up, his eyes found her in an unforeseen sort of way. An accidental discovery that seemed to catch him off guard. His music faltered for a stuttering second and when he realized who she was, he gave her a smile—a wide, handsome grin that she quickly evaded for the sake of her own embarrassment. Not a second later, he fell back into rhythm with James.

She parted through the crowd until she caught sight of Alex's curly blond hair, Matt's gray vest and red tie—and that hideous baseball cap from a camp he'd been shipped off to four summers ago. It didn't match his outfit at all, but Tisper wouldn't have been surprised if he'd simply forgotten to take it off.

On the contrary, Sadie looked like a goddess straight from the sea, standing still and yet floating in her glittering green gown. A fairy—that was how she looked to Tisper, with layers of sheer voile, spilling from her shoulders, and that silver band on her arm, ice against the warm, dark shade of her skin. Tisper adjusted the same silver band on her own bicep and strode toward them.

"You're not gonna die, Matt," Sadie was saying. "Cora's just... old. That's what Aster said. She's starting to lose her wits."

"But what if she's not?" Matt asked. "What if she's right and I am dying?"

"Sadie's right," Alex told him. "The whole reason Devi's even here is because Cora's too old to function on her own. Don't freak just yet."

Matt's shoulders slumped. "You guys don't get it. I'm second-guessing everything now. Every time I feel an itch I'm like shit, here it comes. And now that I think about it, I've been gettin' a cold. A real nasty one, I can tell. Can feel it in my lungs."

By then Alex and Sadie had both noticed her in the crowd and Alex sent an elbow into Matt's side—who ripped the cap from his head at the sight of her and crushed it to his heart.

"Shit."

"Shit is right," Sadie hooted. She reached out to take Tisper by the wrist. "Look, you turned Alex pink."

Alex diverted his gaze to anything else. "It's summer. It's hot out. This is—" he gestured to his face, "—heat."

Tisper gave her dress a sheepish adjustment and straightened out. "So why's Matt dying?" Anything else. Talk about anything else but me.

"Just something an old woman said," Sadie assured her. "But he's practically planning his funeral already."

"I'll help you with the playlist. Has anyone seen Jay?" Tisper asked.

"Asshole's still sleeping," Matt told her. "Tried to wake him up, but he shut the door in my face and went back to bed."

"He'll appear like he always does," Sadie said and she pulled Tisper away from the circle. "Let's dance. I've been waiting for you all night."

They stumbled out onto the bricks, where Tisper could feel the music, like a tickle in her stomach. Sadie clasped her by the hands and they did dance. Not real dancing, but the kind of dancing Tisper recalled from middle school. Clinging onto one another and twisting themselves until their gowns twirled like bells around them. They danced until her shoes dug into her toes, and the hot summer night had her sweating at the temples, and that was when she noticed Sadie's distraction.

Her eyes had strayed to quiet a gap in the grass a ways away, where a woman twirled from side to side. Her eyes shut and a blissful smile rested on her face—and it wasn't so much that she was dancing, but enjoying the music in a meditative sort of way. She wasn't one of the wolves by the look of her dress—a gentle yellow, with straps that hung off of her shoulders. No silver band on her arm, and she wore so many flowers in her hair, Tisper couldn't pick the color from the roses and gardenias.

"Do you know her?" Tisper asked.

Sadie hadn't looked away. "Just her name."

"Go ask her to dance," she urged Sadie. When the girl hesitated, Tisper gave her a push. "Go! Go ask!"

Sadie grinned, dimples and all, and split her way through the other dancers. And when it was only Tisper left, she took a seat on the fountain beside Quentin—listened to the tune of his cello up close. When their song had come to an end, and he had a moment to stretch his finger and take a drink from the glass beside him, Quentin leaned to her and said, "You look beautiful."

Tisper wiggled in her seat to that, pressing her hands flat to her knees. "I know."

He must have caught her venturing eyes, because as he tuned the strings of his cello, Quentin asked, "Are you looking for Felix?"

"No," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"No," she said again.

"He was by the bar, last I saw him," Quentin told her. And before she could ask anymore questions, he was testing the adjustments he'd made with slow, quivering stoke of his bow.

So maybe she was looking for Felix. She wanted to right things with him. Those scars on his back weren't her business, she shouldn't have asked the way she had. Maybe he wouldn't have withdrawn and disappeared for the rest of the day if she'd kept her mouth shut.

Tisper hadn't even noticed a bar, until she'd found a makeshift arbor—a large beer-garden, built from wooden poles and sagging sheer curtains that met at a point in the middle. In the center was a portable bar manned by two bartenders, servicing a large flock of young women in silver arm bands, and the handful of men that accompanied them.

As she stepped inside, a rose was held out before her. She turned to the woman who'd offered it and the young brunette smiled warmly. "Courting rose?"

Tisper didn't know quite what she meant, but she took it with a smile and a thanks.

Then she ventured beneath the curtains, where the world had taken on a faint shade of pink. Beyond the crowd, she caught the deep chestnut-red of his hair. It had been combed back, sleek and flat on his head, the black tie he wore tugged loose around his neck. He was no longer dressed in a wife-beater, but a white button-up shirt, a real suit jacket.

Little seemed to matter much to Felix. She wondered what was so special about this night that he was willing to shave the scruff from his face, willing to wear fancy cologne and uncomfortable clothes, willing to slick his hair back with more than just his fingers.

And then a disembodied hand traveled up the lapels of his suit, pulling back the fold to place a rose on the inside pocket. A few forms in the crowd shifted enough that Tisper caught sight of the woman that hand belongs to and the world made sense again.

She was older. So beautiful, it made her mouth taste bad. Small, slender, curved inward in all the right places. Outward where it mattered. Looking at her made Tisper feel so wrong in her dress. Maybe she didn't have the curves for it after all.

She watched the woman reach up and take his chin between her fingers—blood-red acrylic nails so long, they scraped against his skin as she drew him down to whisper in his ear. And whatever she'd said beckoned a grin from him. Tisper had never seen the creases in his cheeks until now.

She fiddled with the flower in her hands because it was somewhere to put her eyes. Somewhere that wasn't this woman's tight-fitting dress, her long slender legs, the impressive chest she pushed against Felix's suit as she traced the rose in his right breast pocket.

"Felix is so straight you could thread him like a needle," Quentin had told her that night. "Through one ear and out the other."

It was so long ago, she'd forgotten to keep her wits about her. It wasn't something she thought she'd really have to do, until she was standing there, feeling so completely inadequate.

When Tisper looked up again, Felix wasn't grinning anymore. He'd caught sight of her from across the room, and he watched while that woman ran those long nails down the seams of his suit. Eyes deep green under the curtains shadows, they gouged her, brows narrowed like he was trying to pick apart her pieces. Trying to comprehend something. She didn't know what it was he was searching for, but it didn't matter either.

She wanted out of this dress.

an; sooooo.... I started to actually PLOT this book out on paper and yeah. It's gonna be bigger than I expected. Also possibly looking at a third book--or at least a spinoff :')