Academy of the Forsaken (Cursed Studies Book 2)

by Eva Chase

  I could be better than that. Even if I’d kept up some of the old patterns, I wasn’t exactly the guy I’d been when I’d come here. And now I was a guy who’d given Trix at least a little insight that might help her—a guy who could show her a good time even if that included letting another guy pitch in…

  I’d be so fucking good that no matter how much she found out about my past, she wouldn’t care. It was that simple. Forget keeping a safe distance. I was not going to lose this girl—this girl who somehow seemed to want me even without a bunch of bullshit to smooth the way. I’d just have to handle what we had with as much attention and commitment as any con.

  Professor Roth was watching me, waiting for my response. I gave him a winning smile. “That seems fair enough. Be sure that I’ll endeavor to avoid any injuries today, although really that depends more on my partner.”

  “Choose wisely,” he said in his gloomy voice, and turned away.

  Since I was the first person there, at the moment all I could choose was which station I stood at. I took the one closest to the door so I could get my first pick of partner and practiced my stance with the bow, warming up my muscles, as I waited. I didn’t want to be on the offending side of an injury any more than I wanted to endure another one myself.

  My new classmates drifted in. I nodded to the first few and offered a friendly “Hey!” and a beckoning gesture when one of my roommates came in. Calvin had appeared to be decently coordinated. He came over to join me happily enough.

  “If I promise not to spill any blood, will you do the same for me?” I asked with a smirk.

  He laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

  When we picked up our arrows and got down to the initial, tamer target practice, I couldn’t stop my thoughts from drifting back to that recent Archery class with Trix—the first one I’d had with her since maybe her first or second time going through the paces here at Roseborne. The one where she’d refused to take a shot at me, even though with the way I’d been laying into her, it must have been a tempting opportunity.

  I’d liked her since we’d ended up colliding a couple of run-throughs before that day, but that moment, when she’d dropped her bow and told off Roth in no uncertain terms—maybe I’d been falling for her for a while, but watching that had tipped me over the line to an utter goner.

  As I retrieved my arrows and stepped back to let Calvin take a turn, an impulse prickled up from deep inside me. Why was I going along with this bullshit now? Why the hell did any of us? Everyone stood and watched, making their sneering remarks, while Trix demanded better—had we all given up?

  Had I?

  Just how much of a difference could we make if we all pushed back? It’d just take one person who could rouse a crowd to lead the way…

  I’d fucked over a hell of a lot of people for my own gratification, as the professors had so kindly decided to remind me the other day. They wanted me to own up to my past mistakes? What better way to do it than to play sacrificial lamb for everyone else’s benefit?

  We cycled through another turn each before Professor Roth called for partners to take their spots at the targets. A mix of apprehension and anticipation washed through me as Calvin gamely offered himself up first. Professor Roth took his post near the door, crossing his arms over his chest. My pulse stuttered—and I smacked the base of my bow against the floor loud enough to get everyone’s attention.

  “How crazy are we that we’re even thinking about doing this?” I asked, keeping my voice light but pitching it to carry. “Is there anyone here who doesn’t think shooting arrows at each other is ridiculous?”

  My classmates stared, but no one actually moved to notch their first arrow. Roth scowled, his hands dropping to his sides. “Mr. Wynter, you—”

  “I’m sure as hell not scared of what these jackasses might do to me,” I said, wincing inwardly at the lie in that statement. I just wasn’t scared enough to let it stop me. I tossed my bow toward the professor, who caught it automatically. “Do you really think you can make us take our shots if we all decide we don’t want to? Go ahead and try.”

  I spread my arms. Someone behind me let out a startled giggle. Then my ears caught the most perfect sound—the tap of someone else setting down their bow.

  I had only a split-second to enjoy it before Roth took me up on my suggestion. He didn’t even move, but I had no doubt he was responsible for the lancing pain that tore through me from groin to sternum. My arms snapped around my belly instinctively, my legs wobbling.

  “Is that the best you’ve got?” I managed to choke out. “How many students can the infirmary hold, anyway?”

  Not that many, but definitely me. The searing agony dug deeper and gaped wider at the same time, as if all my organs were being hacked out with a dull knife. My legs gave, my knees smacking the floor. Professor Roth was demanding something in a raised voice, but the words blurred with the ringing of my ears. As I tipped right over onto the floor, I managed to angle myself so I could look down the rest of the room.

  My classmates were all standing still, nervous but resisting, at least in that second. A small spark of satisfaction pierced through the pain, and then my mind went black.

  I woke up at the sensation of the surface under me dipping. It took me a moment—and a lingering ache through my abdomen—for me to remember why I was lying on a mattress even thinner and harder than the one in my bed upstairs. The infirmary was dim, a patter of light rain hitting the small window, but I could make out the girl who’d perched on the edge of the cot with no trouble at all. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else at Roseborne with that blazing orange hair.

  “Hey,” Trix said when I met her eyes. “How are you doing?”

  “Not half as bad as the other guy,” I joked, wishing that were true. After what we’d learned about the staff, I was starting to think I could have shot an arrow straight through Professor Roth’s heart and he’d have simply plucked it out and accused me of misusing school equipment. I cocked my head against the pillow. “What are you doing here?”

  “Everyone’s talking about how you lost your mind in Archery. I know the standard punishment for that from experience.”

  And she’d come to check up on me. She’d cared enough to want to. Maybe my heroic stand had been intended as a selfless gesture, but I couldn’t complain if it ended up benefiting me after all.

  “You know me—tough as steel,” I said, riding on that surge of elation. “It’d take more than one pissed-off professor to knock me down.”

  Even though I knew before I tried that it wasn’t very smart, I couldn’t help shifting to push myself up into a sitting position. My stomach screamed with fresh pain as I shoved myself upright. My fingers dug into the mattress, and some of my discomfort must have leaked into my expression despite my best efforts, because Trix grabbed my arm.

  “Are you sure you should be doing that already?”

  I managed a rough chuckle. “I already have, haven’t I? Let’s pretend I was the epitome of grace about it.”

  Trix’s eyes searched mine. I didn’t know if I was ever going to feel totally comfortable with the way she always seemed to pick up on more than I meant to say, but I could learn to live with it. I didn’t want her to ever stop looking.

  “You don’t have to put on a show, you know,” she said.

  I arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Have you already gotten your fill of my undeniably charming self?”

  She raised her own eyebrows right back at me. “No. But I like you best when you’re talking to me like yourself and not like you need to lay on the charm no matter how you’re actually feeling.”

  What I felt then knocked the air from my lungs and grabbed me by the heart. When had anyone ever wanted anything other than the charmingly jerkish front that’d become second nature to me? Did she even know what she was asking for?

  It didn’t matter. I tugged her to me, ignoring the fresh jab through my stomach, and kissed her like my life depended on it. Hell, it very liter
ally might. But that wasn’t why I’d made the move.

  She had to know how much I cared too, even if I couldn’t say it. Even if saying it would have been hard regardless of my stupid curse, thanks to all the walls I was used to having up. A nervous jitter ran through my chest, but I just kissed her harder, pouring all the adoration I had in me into the meeting of our lips. Then I hugged her, tucking my head next to hers and reveling in how much pleasure I could get from the simple act of holding her body against mine.

  “So you’re glad I came by, then?” she said, softly but with a bit of amusement.

  I pressed another kiss to her temple and swallowed thickly. “Stay forever and we’ll see how true that is.”

  Her shoulders tensed, but only for a second. Then she fully relaxed into my embrace. Maybe I’d said too much, revealed more than was really safe… but I was okay with that. Even if she ended up dropkicking my heart and stomping all over it in the end, I wouldn’t be able to say the parts before hadn’t been worth it.

  Chapter Twenty

  Trix

  When I came out of the infirmary, I was surprised to find Violet standing in the hall outside. She’d been leaning against the wall, but she straightened up when she saw me as if she’d been waiting for me.

  “I heard what happened,” she said. “Is he okay?”

  Jenson really did have a talent if he’d convinced even the standoffish bomber girl to give a crap about his well-being. I nodded and allowed myself a hint of a smile at the thought of his heroics. Out of the three guys, he was the last one I’d have expected to make an overt protest against Roseborne’s authorities. You couldn’t really tell what people might have in them, could you?

  “He’s recovering and feeling very pleased with himself,” I said, and remembered the brief argument I’d gotten into with Violet this morning. “I didn’t put him up to that whole stunt, just so you know. In case you figured him getting in trouble was somehow my fault.”

  I mean, maybe it had been, just a little. If Jenson hadn’t gotten real hope from seeing what I’d been able to accomplish by pushing back against the staff, he wouldn’t have stuck his neck out. But it wasn’t as if I’d asked him to take on the professors.

  Violet’s mouth slanted downward as it tightened. “I wasn’t going to accuse you of that. Actually—” She glanced away, along the empty hallway, and then tugged her gaze back to me. “I shouldn’t have criticized you this morning. I’m the last person who should be accusing other people of going overboard trying to stand up for themselves. Maybe I let that fact stop me from seeing the ways I could still make a stand now.”

  She’d told me my last time here about the crime that must have caught the college’s attention: angry about being dismissed and teased by her high school classmates, she’d set off a bomb in the school cafeteria. She hadn’t sounded all that remorseful about it at the time, but whatever Roseborne’s staff had put her through once she’d gotten here must have at last convinced her that the act had been a mistake.

  A big enough mistake that she’d squashed down whatever anger she had to feel here about the way she and the other students were treated. It couldn’t hurt our cause if she recovered some of that anger now.

  “I get it,” I said. “This place is hard on everyone. I haven’t had to experience half of what the rest of you have.”

  Something flashed in her eyes. “If I have much say, they won’t get to inflict much on me anymore.”

  She spun and stalked away before I could ask what she meant by that, if I even wanted to find out. It was probably better if I didn’t get her to spill her plans here in the school where the staff might be lurking unseen. Hell, maybe something like a bomb would be just what we needed. Were there materials around here we could use to blast open that basement door and spare me more chiseling?

  I’d have to find a good, discreet moment to ask her. And a way of framing it that didn’t give away how I knew she’d have any knowledge of bombs in the first place, in case she hadn’t guessed the story behind my odd behavior.

  I was feeling more hopeful myself than I had all day when I stepped out into the foyer and discovered that Violet hadn’t been the only one waiting for me. Ryo got up from the sitting-room sofa he’d been perched on and gave me his usual warm smile, if a tad hesitant around the edges. We hadn’t really addressed the admissions he’d made and the accusations I’d thrown at him by the pool the other day, even though our interlude in the gazebo must have given him some idea that I’d accepted his explanation.

  “Who would have thought Jenson would turn crusader, right?” he said, his smile turning wry.

  I had to laugh. “I was just thinking the same thing. He did a good job of it, though.” From what I’d heard, Professor Roth had intimidated the rest of the class into continuing with their target practice—but only after several minutes of silent refusal through the painful punishment he’d inflicted on a lesser scale than he had with Jenson. It wouldn’t have done much to reinforce his authority if everyone had gotten out of the task and simply had to rest up and recover.

  Ryo paused and tipped his head toward the sitting room. “Come here?”

  I went over to join him, and he took my hand to draw me down on the sofa next to him, sitting close enough this time that our thighs brushed together. He twined his fingers with mine and looked down at our interlocked hands before meeting my gaze.

  “Are we okay?” he asked.

  A sudden lump filled my throat. The intensity of his golden eyes told me how much my answer meant to him. The fact that I’d accused him of only caring about his own self-satisfaction seemed ridiculous now.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was just—what you told me was hard to absorb in the moment. I’ve had people… change their mind about whether they really wanted me that way in the past, so I might be a little over-sensitive.”

  Ryo squeezed my hand. “I’ve never not wanted you. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but when you’ve gotten used to not having very much of something, even a small amount seeping through the bad stuff feels like a lot.”

  Whatever muted enjoyment he got out of being with me, I had to assume he meant. And really, that made sense, even if I wished I could offer enough gratification to completely overshadow the miseries he experienced here, if only for a little while.

  I didn’t know how to say any of that, so I settled on, “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Ryo’s smile came back. He leaned in, trailing his fingers along my jaw and down the side of my neck to send sparks shooting over my skin, and claimed a kiss.

  I’d kissed all three of the guys I’d collided with at Roseborne today, and it was amazing how different it felt with each of them and yet how much I wanted to revel in all of those moments. Ryo could draw out the melding of our mouths until my heart was thumping for more. For a guy who couldn’t take much pleasure in any kind of intimacy, he sure knew how to deliver it.

  He’d never been a bad guy, not really, had he? He’d been bored and made some stupid decisions, and it sounded as if he’d done some pretty awful things while he was in the grips of his addiction—but it had been an addiction. He’d never liked hurting people or made the decision to do it with a sound mind.

  Would he ever be able to understand how I’d plotted to terrorize a girl, gotten her killed, and let two innocent people take the fall for those actions without being under the influence of anything at all?

  How could I have gotten angry at him for what he’d supposedly hidden from me when he’d at least owned up to it? My chest constricted around the idea of revealing all the things I’d done wrong.

  I dipped my head to break the kiss. When Ryo gave me a questioning look, I offered a weary smile that came naturally. “It’s been a long day, and I didn’t sleep well. I was actually thinking I should grab a nap before I, ah, get down to work.”

  Ryo’s eyes lit up with a mischievous glint at my reference to my covert nighttime activities. “Go get some rest, then. We need you sharp.
”

  I did actually go up to my dorm bedroom, but sleep didn’t come easily. I lay there on the bed with my eyes closed but my thoughts whipping this way and that until my roommates started to enter to turn in for the night. There was definitely no way I was catching any Zs with them puttering around. Swallowing a grumble, I got up and went down to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my tired eyes.

  At least I had something definite to focus on now. With the students heading up to bed, I could slip down to the basement to continue my work on the wall. In the laundry room, I set a quiet alarm on my phone and dug in, letting my mind narrow down to the warming metal in my hands and the crackle of the splitting concrete.

  When the alarm went off at quarter to midnight, I froze. That was my cue to head out to see Cade. What would he have to say to me after last night? My body balked, my shoulders bracing against the solid back of the dryer.

  I’d promised him I’d keep coming. Even if he was upset—especially if he was upset—I owed it to him to face him. Why shouldn’t he feel betrayed when I’d turned him away at a time like this?

  I just had to hope he’d start to understand that it wasn’t anywhere near a total rejection. That he could still count on me in every other way.

  My gut balled heavy in my belly as I trudged up the stairs. I had enough time to put together a few scraps of food in a napkin, in case he’d want that this time. Then I set off with my chin held high and my jaw aching from the effort.

  It’d rained for most of the afternoon. The clouds had eased apart, but the grass swiped streaks of moisture over my boots, and once I was in the forest, every stirring of the breeze sent chilly droplets down on my head.