Academy of the Fateful (Cursed Studies Book 3)

by Eva Chase

  I hadn’t been paying attention to the time. It must have just turned half past midnight. Cade strode into the foyer looking like himself, like the boy I’d grown up with—and at the same time, terrifyingly determined as his gaze fixed on me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Trix

  Roseborne’s spirits wavered to the side as if to watch what would happen between Cade and the four of us. Two of the brilliant lights streaked away—I wasn’t watching closely enough to note which ones. All my attention was focused on the guy in front of me.

  The hastily bandaged wounds on my forearm and calf stung with the memory of how I’d gotten them. Jenson had tensed beside me, no doubt starkly conscious of his recent tangle with my foster brother’s monstrous form.

  Cade looked pretty monstrous even right now, standing on two feet with totally human features. His gray eyes glinted with a furious light, and the muscles all through his broad shoulders and wiry arms flexed against his Henley shirt. His hands had formed fists at his sides. Aggression hummed off his stance.

  I didn’t for a second believe he was incapable of hurling himself at me or any of the guys the way he had Richie or his dad or any of the other people he’d gotten into altercations with over the years—more than I knew, clearly.

  “These assholes are the ones you want to throw your lot in with instead of me?” he said, his voice low and taut. “You think they haven’t done at least as much shit as I have? I’ve looked out for you, taken care of you, for years. How can you even compare that, Trix?”

  My throat had closed up. I forced myself to speak, even though the anger that had fueled my words in the shed no longer burned as hot. More than anything, faced with the boy who’d been my whole world for so much of my life, I simply felt sad.

  “It isn’t really taking care of someone if you’re going to hold it over their head so they’ll do what you want,” I said. “And no, I’m not going to tell you anyone in this room is perfect. I’ve seen how fucked up their lives were too. Just like mine was fucked up. The difference is that they’ve all been able to do something different since then. You’re still treating me like you own me.”

  His eyes flashed. “I’ve never said that. And what have they done that’s so amazing in the last few months? You couldn’t even remember them most of that time.”

  “While you were so busy preserving your ego that you wouldn’t reach out to me at all, even though you knew I was here for you?” I retorted. “They’ve answered my questions; they’ve pitched in when I couldn’t handle all the parts of a plan on my own; they’ve encouraged me to figure out my own way instead of trying to force their ideas on me. They’ve let me decide when I’m ready to take our relationship further. They’ve acted like my happiness was at least as important as theirs. You’ve said a lot about how much I matter to you over all those years, but I don’t think you’ve put it into practice as much as they’ve managed to in a hell of a lot less time.”

  Elias’s hand squeezed my shoulder reassuringly. I suspected he’d have stepped between me and Cade if I’d made any gesture suggesting I wanted his protection, but from the tension in his stance, I could tell he was still struggling just to hold his posture straight.

  Roseborne had already worn him down more than I could bear. This was my battle to fight, and I’d damn well fight it.

  “They’ve messed with your head, made you think they’re the good guys while they laugh behind your back,” Cade sputtered. “There’s no way, no fucking way—”

  At my other side, Ryo shifted forward just an inch. “We haven’t tried to make Trix do anything. If you think she’s so weak that someone could brainwash her that easily, you obviously don’t know her anywhere near as well as you want to think. She’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. It’s an honor to have been along for the ride while she’s taken this place on.”

  “Do you think laying into us some more is going to make her think you’re some great catch?” Jenson tossed out. “Please tell me you’re not that stupid.”

  Cade’s eyes narrowed. “From the look of those bandages, going up against me didn’t work out so well for you last time. Maybe you should stay out of this.”

  “Why is it I’m not that scared then? Could it be you’re not half as menacing as you’d like to be?”

  I held up my hand to cut off any more heckling. “None of this is important right now. We all need to get out of this school. Who’s doing what with who, who cares about who how much—it makes no difference if we die here because of the biggest assholes of them all.”

  I waved my hand toward the watching spirits. If they objected to my characterization, they didn’t show it. The two that had disappeared briefly streaked through the air to rejoin the others. I studied the mass of their glaring lights warily.

  “Maybe I think this is more important,” Cade said. “Maybe I’d rather deal with this hell another year than watch these three pricks take you away from me. I get to decide that.”

  My jaw set. “No, you don’t. You don’t because I didn’t belong to you in the first place. They’re not taking anything; I’m going. And you don’t get to decide where I go.”

  “That’s not how this is supposed to work. If it was just the two of us again—if I could make you see—”

  His voice broke with a note of pain. Something twisted in his face, so anguished it wrenched at my heart but so furious at the same time that my pulse stuttered. Before I could really prepare, he flung himself at me with a growl that sounded more like the beast than the boy.

  His fingers clenched tight around my wrist, sending a fresh ache through my wounded arm. I jerked back instinctively, trying to scramble away, but he yanked me toward him at the same moment. Ryo leapt in, and Cade punched him in the face so hard I heard the crack of bone. Blood gushed from Ryo’s nose.

  “Stop it!” I said, halfway between my own fury and a surge of panic. “Leave them alone—leave me alone—just—”

  The next heave of his hand sent a sear of pain up my arm. My voice cut off with a yelp. I stumbled toward him, Elias rushed in, Cade swung his fist again—

  And a blaze of light knocked my foster brother off his feet with an electric crackle that snapped his hold on me and pinned him to the floor on his back. I careened backward into Jenson’s arms. As he steadied me, Oscar’s glowing figure straightened up over Cade. One of the other spirits, a guy whose name I didn’t remember, stayed braced over my foster brother, not so much as wincing at Cade’s ineffective struggles.

  “He isn’t going to stop,” Oscar said in a cool voice that reminded me of his demeanor as Dean Wainhouse. “He’s going to torment you and attack anyone you care about other than him for as long as he’s still alive, out of the love he claims to feel for you. It’s the only way he knows how to show that devotion. You can put an end to it, protect yourself and them and everyone else he might hurt, right here, right now.”

  His ghostly hand lifted with a completely solid knife in its grasp. A knife I recognized well enough for the sight to chill me.

  It was the blade he and his followers had used to slash open their wrists in the final act of the sacrifice of life and blood that had transformed them and this school. The one that he’d shoved into the basement floor in the pool of their blood to grow the demented rosebush I’d destroyed. It’d remained there afterward—he and the other guy must have raced down there to retrieve it for this purpose. He held the weapon out to me now, turning it so I could grasp the wooden handle.

  I took it, if only because I’d rather it was in my hand than his. My fingers curled around the grip as if they were meant to be there. Oscar smiled at me encouragingly. On the floor, Cade thrashed against his captor. Another spirit joined them to help him still.

  A whiff of supernatural energy quivered from the knife into me. It settled in my chest, cold but potent. I found myself thinking of the glimpses of the ritual I’d seen in Winston’s memories. The power those eight students had brought into themselves by sacrificing t
heir blood—and someone else’s.

  Plenty of my blood had spilled around campus. If I did what Oscar was urging, if I stabbed this blade right into Cade’s heart, would I gain enough power to challenge the remaining spirits?

  It wouldn’t be like what they’d done, not really. One death to prevent dozens of others. The death of a guy who’d already attacked my lovers more than once, who’d made every appearance of aiming to kill Jenson in the shed.

  The thought passed through my mind, chillingly smooth—and I shoved it away with a wave of revulsion. The thought of plunging this knife into any part of my foster brother’s body brought bile into my throat.

  I wasn’t a killer. Cade didn’t deserve to be treated like a rabid animal. None of this was okay.

  I’d found power within me before through other kinds of sacrifice—sacrificing the security of shutting myself off from everyone around me, sacrificing the lies that protected me to offer up the truth of my awful mistakes. If I was going to beat these fiends now, that was how I’d do it, not by buying into their version of the game.

  I stepped closer to Cade and raised the knife. He went still, staring up at me. His eyes widened, his mouth forming a stiff line—and then the tightening of his features relaxed with a hopeless sort of resignation. A hopelessness of my own constricted my lungs.

  He honestly believed I could do it. That I could turn on him even more utterly than his dad had all those years ago. He might even be thinking it was inevitable. How could I ever hope to get through to him, to be enough that he’d care about me in a way that didn’t tie me down, if after all this time he couldn’t even trust me that much?

  Maybe I couldn’t, but that didn’t change what I had to do.

  “I can’t be with you or be there for you the same way I was before,” I said to him. “I can’t give you everything. But I forgive you for wanting it. Maybe there’s a monster in you, and this place has brought it out even more, but that’s not all you are. You’ve also been my brother and my defender and my support system, and I’m never going to forget those things. Even if those parts of what we had are in the past now, they still count.”

  Oscar’s mouth started to move, but before he could speak, I dropped to the ground and plunged the knife into the floorboards. “Grow again,” I said, with a flare of power like when I’d owned up to my crimes to the guys behind me. “Grow something better, for me and all of us who are more than our mistakes.”

  The knife didn’t transform, but another, larger surge of energy shot through me.

  Cade stared up at me. His expression wavered, puzzled and then filling with something like awe. “Trix,” he said hoarsely. “I—I never wanted to be—It wasn’t—"

  Oscar’s lips drew back in a snarl as he cut my foster brother off. “Winston had the darkness in him,” he said to me. “Winston woke it up and gave it life. It’s still in you too. We just have to find the right incentive for you to let it loose.” He raised his head to look beyond me. “If anger won’t do it, maybe grief will.”

  At some signal I didn’t see, the other spirits launched themselves toward Elias in one mass. I cried out as they crashed into him, slamming him to the ground with a horrible thump. He cast out with his arms and legs to try to fend them off, but there were too many of them. Light blazed across his mouth, around his neck, against his chest—to strangle him or suffocate him or maybe both at once, I didn’t know.

  I tried to catch hold of them to wrench them off him. Jenson and Ryo—bloody nose and all—jumped in too. But even with the power flowing through me, my hands passed through the spirits’ bodies like they were nothing but frigid mist.

  A choked gurgling sound escaped Elias. His movements were weakening; his face flushing dark. My eyes flooded. I whipped around to face Oscar, grasping for something, anything that might make him call them off.

  It wasn’t the ringleader whose gaze I ended up meeting but Cade’s. He’d pulled himself to his feet as soon as the spirits had left him. He stood there, swaying slightly, taking in the tears trickling down my cheeks and the despair that must have been etched all over my face.

  “Trix,” he murmured, his voice even more ragged. “No.”

  I had no idea what he was saying no to. His gaze slid to Elias under the barrage of spirits and back to me. His jaw clenched. Then in a surge of motion, he snatched the knife from where I’d stabbed it into the floor and dove into the fray.

  My ragged protest echoed his. “No!” But even as the syllable broke from my throat, I realized he wasn’t joining in the attack. He was slashing not down toward Elias but left and right into the spirits that were wringing the life from the other guy.

  “Get off him, you bastards!” he shouted. “She’s been hurt enough already.”

  He was defending Elias for me. And his efforts were working. The spirits flinched away when the blade cut through them. Elias managed to suck in a rough breath.

  Jenson, Ryo, and I rushed back in, grasping Elias’s shoulders and hands, hauling him away from the glowing menace. The spirits were now whirling up around Cade instead. They jerked this way and that around his swings of the knife, blazing more fiercely by the second.

  Then the brightest bolt of all seared into their midst. Oscar wrenched the knife from Cade’s hands. He moved to lunge past my brother, the blade aimed at us. With a wordless sound of protest, Cade hurled himself between the spirit and our cluster.

  Oscar’s hand slammed down. He drove the knife with all his might into my brother’s chest.

  Cade sagged and toppled over on the floor. I let out a breathless shriek. As Jenson and Ryo guided Elias the rest of the way to the stairs, I ran to my brother.

  The spirits backed away, watching again with that sickening curiosity. The blaze of their light drained away into something much paler. My hands clenched as I knelt next to Cade.

  He was still breathing in short rasps, blood flecking his lips. More of that liquid crimson was spreading across his shirt far too fast for me to believe I had any hope of saving him. His hand fumbled to the side and managed to grasp mine. His voice rattled as it left his mouth.

  “I love you, Trix. Always did, always will. But I never really gave you a chance to be what I needed, did I? Fucked it up way too much. You—you deserve better.”

  “Cade. You didn’t have to—”

  He coughed wetly and managed a sickly smile. “If I stuck around, I’d probably go back to fucking us up all over again. I can already feel— This way, it works out. You can keep fighting, and you don’t lose the guy who made you look that upset. I won’t be able to go back on the one good thing I’ve done for you here.”

  Fresh tears sprang to my eyes. “I didn’t want you dead.”

  Cade’s smile softened. “Best way I could have gone,” he said, barely a whisper. His body shuddered.

  His fingers slipped from mine. His eyes rolled back. They stayed there, unblinking, as his chest stilled.

  I swiped at my eyes, gasping around a sob. A shudder to match Cade’s rippled through the spirits surrounding us. As I looked up at them, their light dimmed even more. The darkness twining through them shone more prominently, as if leaching their energy away. At the same moment, a glow expanded inside me, sharp and heady enough to cut through my grief.

  Cade had done more for me, for all of us, than he’d even realized. He’d sacrificed his own life—not out of vengeance, but out of love. And the power of that act was singing through me even as it diminished the spirits who’d held us here. That was why they’d drawn back, why they’d pulled away from the fight.

  They were scared of me now.

  The agony inside me solidified with a sense of purpose. I couldn’t bring my brother back, but I could make his death mean something. A certainty gripped me that if I marched out of here in this moment, I could blast straight through the gate and free us all.

  I grasped Cade’s hand one last time and ducked quickly to brush a kiss to his forehead. “Thank you,” I murmured, choking up all over agai
n. Then, despite my heavy heart, I pushed myself upright. In the face of my glare, the spirits twitched backward.

  “Come on,” I called back to the other three guys. “We’re getting out of Roseborne right now—all of us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Elias

  With Jenson’s and Ryo’s help, I managed to stand. My legs wobbled, and my throat ached from the way the spirits had battered it, but I could hold my own weight for at least a little while longer. I could breathe. And seeing Trix lit up with a glow that rivaled that of the ghosts gave me even more strength.

  If she could keep going after the catastrophe and loss she’d just experienced, if she could find the will to fight even harder, then I’d be damned if I let myself falter.

  She glanced back at us, the supernatural light gleaming in her eyes as well. I nodded to say I’d follow.

  We walked together out the front door with her in the lead. As I passed Cade’s limp body, conflicted emotions squeezed my chest. I hadn’t wanted that guy anywhere near Trix after I’d found out how he’d treated her, but I wouldn’t have said he deserved to die either. He’d still meant something to her—I believed her when she said he wasn’t a total monster.

  Hell, he’d proved that to me more than anyone just now. If he hadn’t intervened, I’d probably be the one sprawled lifeless in the foyer.

  Outside, the cool night air washed over us, giving me the sense of being wiped clean. I’d meant to go with Trix all the way to the gate. But as I came down the front steps, tensing the muscles in my thighs to hold myself steady, one more ghost came wavering across the lawn toward me.

  A ghost in the shape of my grandfather.

  My legs locked completely. My first instinct was to reach into my suit jacket pockets for whatever brambles I had left that might deflect him. My fingers closed around the broken twigs and thorns—and they crumbled away into dust at my touch.