I grab a water bottle from the mess hall and some fruit before I head back to the dorms. I’m halfway up the east staircase when I run into Dray. He’s coming out of the boy’s corridor, his silvery hair mussed. His eyes lock onto me and it’s like watching a stone mask being pulled over his face.
“What are you doing up?” I blurt out, almost accusingly.
His stone mask cracks. He lowers his lashes over his darkening, stormy eyes. “You first,” he says with a menacing step towards me. “Been with your teacher all night?”
I hear the familiar crispness of danger in his tone. Instinct seizes up my muscles. I take a discreet step away from him, sliding closer to the barrier.
“No, I was sending a letter, actually. Not that it’s any of your business—”
He sweeps closer to me in a blink, the look on his face practically murderous. I catch the beige of a scrunched-up letter in his fist. For a moment, the glimpse of handwriting looks familiar, and I wonder if the letter is from my father. But the thought is struck out of me as Dray closes in on me, a predator moving in on its prey.
“You think you can shack-up with a teacher? How dense are you, Olivia? There is no leaving this world.”
“Really?” I bite, though I know I should shut my mouth. “You’re the one constantly trying to push me out of here, and now that I’m trying, you’ve got a lot to say about it.”
“When have I ever wanted you to leave?” he hisses. “You think you know all the pieces around you, but you don’t realise you’re just a piece yourself, a pawn on a chessboard. There is no escape from this world. I haven’t been particularly welcoming to you, but I’ve never fed the ridiculous notion that you can leave it either.”
I push from the barrier with more courage than what’s in my writhing stomach. I stare up at him, my hands fisted at my sides. “What is your problem, Dray? No matter what I do, you’ve got an opinion, your nose stuck where it doesn’t belong! Why don’t you worry about your own engagements? I’ll worry about mine.”
His face twists into something fierce. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
His words hit me like a slap to the face. Startled, I blink at him.
“Did you really think anyone but me placed an offer on your contract?” His hissed words snake all around me, like echoes down a cave, mocking me. “Our families are meant to be united, and if that means we must marry for it to come, then so be it. I won’t stand by and allow the destruction of our union over some silly crush.”
I’m still in shock. I can’t stop staring at him like a stunned fish. Questions tangle in my mind, like spider webs, and I can’t claw my way back to sense. None of this makes sense, not to me at least.
“No.” The word chokes out of me. I shake my head. “No, I won’t, I’ll never … I’ll never marry you.”
If he’s surprised by the venom in my tone, he doesn’t show it. He just stares at me coolly, the letter crinkling in his tightening grip.
“I would rather die.”
Those words hit him, hard. His eyes flash like lightning through storm clouds and he raises his brow.
It happens so quickly, it’s hard to know who started it. I’m slapping him, anywhere I can reach, his face, his arms, the hands that grab me. The fruit I snagged from the mess hall bounces down the steps.
Dray drags me off the stairwell, down a dark corridor, and I’m thrashing against him. Before my eyes can even adjust to the shadowy corridor, I’m thrown into complete darkness—a broom closet.
He throws me so hard that I crack against the wall. “Better get started, then,” he spits at me before he slams the door shut.
I run at the door and try to slam it back open. It doesn’t budge. He’s locked it from the outside somehow. A chair lodged under the handle, or even makut. However he’s done it, he’s trapped me in the broom closet and I can’t get out.
Chapter 9
Dray doesn’t come back. He leaves me in the broom closet.
Chapter 10
My head is swimming.
The closet seems smaller than when Dray shoved me inside of it. The walls are closing in, but I know that it’s my mind playing tricks on me. Doesn’t make it any easier to bear.
It’s been hours. It feels like days, and every time I hear faint voices go down the stairwell, I pound my fists on the door, shouting for help. No one comes. Whether or not they hear me, I don’t know.
But it’s more than the closet that has me suffocating. It’s Dray.
It’s Dray.
Of course, it’s him. No one else would go to such lengths to ensure my eternal misery. He’s not just putting an offer on my contract for the coming together of our families. It’s more than that. It’s his need to have a controlling grip on my life, it’s his hatred of me fueling him to spiral me into an abyss. And we both know it.
Weakly, I sit hunched against the door and tap my sore knuckles on the door. I don’t hear anyone on the other side. Still, I don’t stop until the sores on my knuckles open again and I feel the sting of blood spilling. I wipe my hand on my pajama bottoms and slump. Looks like my best chance of getting out of here is waiting for the cleaners to open the door. It’s Sunday, so they should be by before nightfall.
But that leaves me in this dank cupboard for the entire day.
Chapter 11
A cleaner finds me not long after dinner shuts down in the mess hall. I know because as soon as I’m free, I follow my starved stomach for something to eat, but the doors are closed and no matter how many times I shove them, they don’t so much as wobble.
I switch to the next priority my body screams for and use the bathroom before I storm back to my dorm room. Courtney sits up, startled, as I stride straight to my desk, eyes on pencil and paper.
“Where’ve you been?” she says from behind me.
I park myself on the seat and grab the pencil to begin a heated, nasty letter to my father. “In a cupboard,” I mutter and start the scratch of lead on paper. “Dray locked me in.”
I hear the bed springs before I look over my shoulder and Courtney is walking over to me. She sets herself down on the foot of my bed, her gaze soft as she measures me up.
“You don’t look … I mean,” she starts again, “if you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t know…”
I don’t look teary-eyed and desperate for acceptance, she means. I look fucking livid.
“He stole a whole day from me,” I grit out, and think as an afterthought, he’s going to steal a hell of a lot more soon if I don’t stop him. “I need to catch up on some things.”
She takes the hint and leaves me to my letter.
I pour every ounce of my fury into words. Father doesn’t know the extent of mine and Dray’s hatred for each other, but he knows enough—enough that the thought of marrying me off to him should repel him.
Instead, he’s considering it, as if I’m a contract, not a girl with a contract.
I don’t tell father everything, but I tell him enough that there’s no way he won’t be able to gauge the extent of my loathing for Dray. Once I’m finished, I wait until it’s late in the night before I go to the main foyer and ram the letter into the post-box. Don’t want to risk another encounter with Dray.
But I bump into someone else on the way back to my dorm room. Brad, with bruises growing on his neck in ugly, purple patches, a swollen eye, and a box of chocolates.
“What the hell happened to you?” I stop in front of him as he’s leaving the girl’s dorms. Panic bolts to my stomach. “Date gone bad?”
He gives me a crooked grin. “Looking for you, actually,” he says. “And don’t worry about this, it was just a friendly spar.”
He steers me into the small common room. It’s empty, the only sounds to fill the room being the crackles and pops of the simmering fireplace.
I sink onto the cosy couch. “Sparring isn’t allowed at Bluestone.” I feel silly just mentioning the rule, since Brad and the elite snakes don’t often pay much mind to them.
; “Here.” He hands me the chocolates. “I didn’t see you at meals today,” he adds at my doubtful look. “Figured you might be hungry.”
“Starved.” I rip off the lid. He snares one before I can ram a fistful into my mouth. “Let me guess,” I start, through a mouthful of chocolate, “Dray did this to you?”
He shrugs and leans back on the couch. “Should see what I did to him. Don’t give me that look, O. I got a few hits in myself.”
“Why’d you really fight?” I ask. “This wasn’t a spar.”
He just smiles, all secrets and shadows. “Rumours are going around, O. The kind I don’t like to hear.”
I pop another chocolate into my gab. “What’s new?”
His smile turns strained. “Are you really fucking a teacher? An elite who might as well be a half-breed, he’s so insignificant?”
“Is that why you were fighting?” I arch my brow. “Defending my honour, were you?”
He waves off my barbed words. “No, I was trying to beat the shit out of Dray for locking you in a cupboard.”
There is so much I want to jump on here. I start with, “How did that go for you?”
“Like I said, I got a few hits in.”
“Did he tell you I was in the cupboard?”
He shakes his head. “Melody was blathering on about how she heard you in one before she hit the slopes. I went to find you, but you were already out. Who freed you?”
“A cleaner.” I shrug. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is why you’re suddenly rushing to my defence.”
The look he gives me is pained; his eyes raw with feeling. “I’ve been a fairly shitty brother, haven’t I?”
“Is that really a question you need an answer to?” My look is measured, and I pick at the last chocolate. “You’ve been horrible. More than Dray because you are my brother.”
He touches his gaze down at the empty chocolate box. “Guess when you’re young, you don’t think about what’s right so much.”
“What’s changed?” I frown at him. “You heard I’m with a teacher, and you turn over a new leaf? I know you better than that. Once a snake, always a snake. You have your own interests here, Brad.”
He nods, slowly at first, then brings his raw gaze to mine. “You’re right. I don’t want you to set your heart on someone father will never choose. And I’ve come to know a few … harrowing pieces of information that have motivated me—”
“You mean like my secret engagement to Dray?”
His brows lift. “You know about that?”
I scoff. “Dray practically baited me with it before he locked me in the broom closet. Guess he can only keep a secret for a few weeks. How long have you known?”
“Days.” His mouth turns down at the corners. “Days of trying to convince father you’re better than Dray.”
“It’s not about who’s better. You know that.” I toss the empty box onto the table. “It’s about—”
“Unity.” We both say it at the same time. And we both know that’s the biggest motivation there is in our world. Unity. Keep the blood lines elite, keep the old families strong, keep the world at our feet.
“I don’t want you to marry him,” he confesses, and his voice is low because the admission can paint a target on him. Unity means we don’t go against each other, not the way Brad is doing now. “Or that crappy teacher you’re running after. You’re worthy of more.”
I choke on a snort and look at him from beneath my lashes. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? You think you can come to my side after all these years and talk me out of things you know nothing about. Eric is my escape. He is who I’ll be marrying. And you, Brad, you won’t be in my life when I finally get away from this world.” I throw a look at the empty chocolate box. “Sweets and sweet-talking will get you nowhere with me. You don’t get to be my brother anymore.”
He looks at me, his face flickering with hurt. I watch the battle of cruelty and pain in his eyes for a long, quiet moment before he pushes up from the couch and storms out of the common room. I’m left looking at an empty doorway for a while.
My luck means the doorway isn’t empty for long. Dray strolls by, his tie fastened around his wrist and his shirt crumpled. I don’t have to wonder where he’s been and it could have been with any of the senior girls.
He spots me in the common room and pauses, a flash of shock lighting up his eyes. He’s surprised I’m out of the closet so early.
Last time he locked me in a broom closet, I was stuck in there for a whole night and day before a clueless junior helped me out. That junior found himself in a closet down in the basement not long after. He wasn’t found for days.
“Scratch your way out?” he says and leans against the doorframe. His shirt hangs off him, revealing a strip of pale, toned chest, and he folds his arms.
“Leave me alone.” My voice is weary. There’s not even enough energy within me to be afraid. I’m just tired. “For once, just … fuck off.”
Dray’s eyes harden like stone, and he advances on me, slowly. He stops when he’s towering over me on the couch. His hand reaches out for my hair, fingers combing through the tangled strands.
“Is that any way to speak to your fiancé?” he teases me, mocks me, to wrench out a reaction.
I won’t give him what he wants. I just stare at him.
Light from the fire flickers over his face, banishing the shadows that belong there. Then, in a blink, he’s snatched my arm and hauled me up off the couch.
Hand buried in my hair, he crashes his mouth to mine and steals my breath. I’m motionless against him, frozen by shock. This isn’t like the time he tried to kiss me in the corridor. There’s no alcohol in our hands or on our breaths, and there’s a raw desperation in the way he kisses me. His sweet, minty tongue sweeps over mine and his grip in my hair is so tight that I can’t move my head an inch. Then, he stills, and presses his mouth to mine, not kissing me, but not ending it either.
Against my lips, he murmurs, “Never forget what you are, waif.”
Possession.
He releases his hold on me, and I fall back onto the couch. Glaring up at him, my hands fist on the upholstery, and I hear the faint rip of fabric as my nails cut it apart.
“And never forget that I win,” he adds darkly before he leaves the common room. “Always.”
I win…
I stare after him, memories creeping up in my mind.
I raced through the garden maze at Sinclair Manor.
Every rose-bush I dodged and weaved around. They were hot on my heels. Landon and Dray. Chasing me.
Light footsteps gained on me, getting closer and closer until—
“Whoever catches Liv gets a kiss from her!” Landon’s voice sang out behind me.
I ran faster, laughter bubbling up inside of me. Just seconds after Landon raised the stakes, something hard hit my back and I was tackled to the grass.
Laughter jutted my body as I tried to worm my way out of Dray’s arms. I clawed at the grass, but he snatched my ankle and swiftly moved to hold himself up over me.
Our faces aligned. His grin was bright and sent a horde of butterflies to tickle my tummy.
At our tangled feet, Landon stood with a frown on his face and his arms folded over his chest. He looked about ready to cry.
Dray’s hands snatched my wrists and pinned them to the grass. My laughter ebbed as we stared at each other. His smile faded and he slowly brought his mouth to mine.
Before he planted a gentle kiss on my lips, he whispered words that snaked around me.
“I win.”
Chapter 12
“Got anything stronger than hot cocoa?”
Courtney shakes her head. “We could always go to the half-breed party. It’s in the conservatory.”
“I’m not a half-breed,” I say, and look over the stacks of papers spread out over my bed. “And I have a lot of homework to catch up on.”
Courtney studies me quietly from her side of the narrow room. She’s perched on the
foot of her bed, a heavy tome open on her folded legs.
“The snakes won’t be there,” she says, and I’m already half-convinced because I know she’s right. No matter the lure of a party, they wouldn’t go near it. “And it doesn’t matter that you’re not a half-breed. I’m inviting you.”
I give a half-hearted shrug, weary gaze lingering over the papers. Then, she deals the kicker.
“I’ll let you choose my outfit.”
I’m off the bed in a hurry. “Make-up, too,” I add and rush to my closet. There are a few pieces I’ve been working on, but they are unfinished, still on the mannequin. I shoot them a look of longing before I dive into my boxes of clothes.
Courtney’s laugh follows me. But she’s not laughing when I throw a strappy dress her way, and force her to wear it, or when I shove a pair of red-bottomed stilettoes in her arms. In fact, she looks like she’s about to faint.
I pull on a pair of black breeches that hug my legs so tightly, it’s like they are leg-corsets, and wear a boyfriend-shirt to match. It hangs off one shoulder, and I fiddle with it in the mirror for a while before we leave.
The conservatory is tucked at the back of the chalet and the stairwell leading to it can only be accessed from the basement corridors. I shoot Eric’s office a glance as we sneak past, out after curfew. His door is shut.
I should go see him after the party. It’s been a few nights, since I’ve been bogged down by homework and generally avoiding the corridors after curfew since I seem to run into Dray at every turn, and he sometimes walks the girl’s dorms after a night with another senior.
Bluestone Elites (A Paranormal Bully Academy Romance) Page 6