by Jo Holloway
Before she could spiral into thinking too much about all the things she hid and the lives her actions could impact, Jenyx threw a little calming energy her way.
“I am glad to hear you say so.”
SHE SPENT THE EVENING with Delaney, watching her roommate paint in the art room. No one would come looking for her there, and watching Delaney layer colors on a canvas until white clouds slid across blue sky, and orange flowers rose and bloomed from green grass was the most soothing thing she could imagine. With her thoughts quieted and as much control mustered as she could manage, she even slept okay.
When she spotted Rhys at breakfast with Emma, she fully expected the shattering heartbreak. Of course he looked great, his smile glowing above a dark-red Henley that framed the solid shoulders her hands had run across last night. She’d steeled herself for this moment and managed to hold back the tears. But how could he sit there smiling with Emma like nothing had happened? Or worse, like he was happy with her? Obviously, he hadn’t told Emma anything, because her smile seemed more excited than usual too. She even shot Cara a grin when she spotted her slinking by on her way to hide behind the loud table of football guys at the far edge of the room.
When Emma reached over to Rhys’s arm with a teasing touch, Cara had to look away. She sat down with a thump. “I kissed your boyfriend” might as well have been scrawled across her forehead in black marker, and Emma would see it any second now.
No crying. You promised.
She spread strawberry cream cheese on the giant bagel she’d chosen for breakfast. If she wasn’t going to let herself cry, carbs and sugar were the next best thing. Of course there’d been no peach yogurt left. That would be too much to ask for on such a terrible day. Ice cream would be on the agenda for tonight. And more time with Delaney, who never asked too many questions.
“Hey.”
Her head snapped up at his voice. What in the holiest crap was Rhys doing?
He slid out the chair beside her and sat down. She couldn’t make her jaw close again. It was like he wanted to get busted. Why would he leave Emma to move over here? Maybe it was normal to come sit with them when it was a whole table with his sister and Wes and Jory, but not with just her. She spotted Emma leaving the dining hall with a furtive glance over her shoulder. No chance she hadn’t noticed, then.
Cara turned back to Rhys.
He looked a little more uncertain after following her gaze. “Um, about yesterday . . .”
Oh. That’s what this is.
She struggled to control her voice. “It was a mistake.”
While she’d sat and watched Delaney create beauty from nothing last night, she’d gone over it all in her mind. It had been an emotional moment that went too far. Shared secrets had layered over misplaced gratitude and blossoming friendship to paint a singularly perfect moment. That was all. Acrylics on canvas—nothing more. Whether he’d kissed her back or not, it wasn’t real.
Knowing it had been a mistake didn’t mean she wanted to hear him say the words. Her heart already hurt enough, so she’d said them first.
“Pretend it never happened, okay?” Somehow, her voice held steady.
Tears prickled in spite of her vow to herself, so she focused on her tray and took a bite of her bagel. While her jaw mashed each bite, she blinked and willed the moisture in her eyes back where it belonged.
“Oh. That’s, um . . . sure. If that’s what you want.”
Her head did an awkward nod-shake thing in dismissal. She wouldn’t look at him. He should probably just leave already.
“Okay, then. I’ll see you later, Cara.” He rose with his mostly full tray. “Oh . . . here. It was the last one, so I thought . . . whatever.” He set a peach yogurt on her tray and walked away.
If it wasn’t real, why did it hurt so much?
After several moments of clenching her jaw, she won the battle against the urge to cry. But she lost her appetite.
“Where’s he going?” Liv looked after her brother, and Cara glanced up in time to see his back as he slumped out the door while her friends joined her. “It didn’t look like he even ate anything aside from the apple he took with him. What is up with him? He was acting all strange when I went to see him last night, too.”
Wes took the seat beside Cara and studied her expression with a crease between his brows.
Jory sat down on her other side. “Why the change in table?”
She shrugged. “Change of scenery.” Only Wes seemed to notice anything was up with her. After her promise not to shut her friends out again, and her thoughts about hiding things since yesterday, everything about this morning felt gross. Awful. Sick.
No wonder Rhys hadn’t wanted to finish his breakfast. She knew the feeling.
She pushed her tray away.
“Why is no one hungry today?” Liv reached out and took the yogurt from Cara’s tray. “You don’t mind, do you? There was no peach left.”
Cara shook her head. At least it wouldn’t go to waste. She almost snickered, but it would have come out too dark. Her whole world could be going to crap, and she was worried about wasting one yogurt. Messoryx was having the last laugh right now, toying with her thoughts without even being there. At least it had the benefit of reminding her what the real problem was.
Time for some perspective, Cara.
Who needed boy trouble when someone was out to kill you? Not to mention his plans to eliminate as many humans as he could manage. And then there were his pretty valid reasons for wanting to.
Seriously. Someone should tell the aching hole in her chest that they had bigger problems.
CHAPTER 23
AFTER MONDAY HAD LIVED up to its awful reputation, the next few days crawled by the same way. Emma had stopped looking so happy. She wore a frown that alternated between disappointment and exasperation.
In her darkest moments, Cara hoped that meant she and Rhys were breaking up, but they still sat together most meals, Rhys looking equally miserable. Her better side hoped the fact they were still together meant they would work it out. Which meant it hadn’t been a big deal. It couldn’t have mattered to him that much. There was no way Emma would stay if it had meant something to him. If he’d been affected the way she was, Emma would look more than frustrated. She’d be downright mad. Or, if she felt the way Cara did, she’d look like Cara felt . . .
Crushed. You can say it. Nothing matters, anyway.
She told the voice in her head—the stupid, negative one everyone had—to shut up. The Pyx voices in her head were the ones she should pay attention to. Things still mattered. Big things mattered. The warning from the Pyx in the forest rang through her mind.
“Our cause is noble. Don’t try to convince us otherwise.”
How did they think she was going to convince them of anything? Why was that a warning they needed to give her? The whole thing made no sense.
She was still chewing on the annoyingly cryptic message when she boarded the team bus on Thursday afternoon. She’d been worried about being close to Emma at Tuesday’s track practice, but the older girl had ignored her, casting only a few confused glances her way. Presumably that would continue today for their annual friendly spring cross country meet with Valley Green. The whole team had been looking forward to the fun meet, and it might cheer up Emma. Cara waited to board the bus last as usual, but she was too lost in her musings about the warning to avoid Emma’s sneak attack.
“Sit.” The tall girl stood in the aisle near the front of the bus, blocking her way.
With a drop in her stomach, Cara glanced over her shoulder for another seat she could take instead, but the first three rows were all empty aside from Coach Francis. Coach held a fixed stare out the front windshield as if she didn’t notice her star team member staging a blockade three rows back. With her skin feeling two sizes too small, Cara slumped into the window seat, letting Emma trap her.
They sat in tense silence while the bus rumbled to life and lurched out of the parking lot. The gold band across the
shoulders of her school shirt—the band indicating she was part of the top team—might as well have turned to lead. Surely it must look as heavy and tarnished as it felt sitting next to Emma in her matching shirt. The gold band of hers set off shimmering highlights in her amber hair and gleamed with the pride it deserved. Cara’s insides squirmed while she held perfectly still as trees blurred by the window.
Emma stirred beside her when they passed the fork in the private road. A flutter rose under Cara’s breastbone at the pull of the beautiful mansion lying beyond the trees up the narrow driveway. Right now, at the start of May, the meadows surrounding the grey stone walls would be spun with wildflowers woven through the grasses. The early blossoms of the fruit trees in the small orchard would have dropped to litter the ground with petals and give way to budding fruit.
An image of the cobblestone driveway brought a ghostly ache to her knees where she’d hurt them when she’d fallen. The visual of the long garage and all that had happened there drove a shiver down her spine and landed her firmly back in her present situation. She startled at the sight of Emma watching her face.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”
Cara could only blink.
After trapping her here, Emma seemed unsure what to say. “Whalton manor. You’ve been there. When you went to meet Liv . . . and other times, right?”
Cara’s throat had gone dry, and she had difficulty swallowing. She nodded instead of trusting her voice. The cold metal side of the bus pressed into one shoulder as she leaned away from Emma’s scrutiny.
“Did I do something?” Emma asked.
“What?”
“I know we’re two grades apart, but we used to talk. We are teammates after all. Now you avoid me like a bad disease.”
“No, I—No, Emma. You didn’t do anything.” Her head shook too quickly. She rubbed the strap of her dad’s watch around her wrist. What was she going to say to make this right?
“Well, I’m graduating in a month, and I don’t want to leave it like this. I’ve wanted to talk to you since February. I think you saw Fiona run over to me at the dance, and I’m guessing you know what she said. You left before I could talk to you.”
Cara gulped. She could see the scene in her head: Fiona darting across the gym to Emma’s ear. Rhys standing with Emma and glancing her way after she ducked out at the end of their dance. Emma’s face tracking her movements before she ran out.
“Emma, that photo wasn’t what it looked like. The gala was—”
“None of my business. Whatever it was is between you and him.”
She gave a disgusted snort. “It was nothing.” To him.
“Doesn’t matter. I asked Fiona to keep it to herself. She gossips too much for her own good, anyway. But I never asked you about it after that night. I wanted to, but you became so withdrawn right after, and . . . I don’t know what it was. I know something bad happened that night. Rhys was gone too.”
It was the first time Emma had said his name. It felt like she’d been avoiding it up until now. Emma’s head lowered, studying her response. Her eyebrows rose when Cara flinched at the name and the memory.
“Yeah. I figured. He wasn’t the same after that night either. He won’t tell me about it, but he was pretty dark for a while there, too. I left it alone for a bit to give him time to open up when he was ready. After Easter break, he seemed lighter. Then I noticed you did too. It’s like you two mirror each other.”
Her belly clenched around the bubbling emotions rising through her core. If she could forget she was talking to Emma, those words would be filled with a shimmering hope. Maybe she wasn’t so invisible to him. Maybe the connection she felt was real. And maybe that kiss hadn’t been such a horrible mistake. But this was Emma searching her face with squinting brown eyes. Her arms sagged heavily to her sides.
“At least, you did,” Emma continued, “until Monday morning.”
And there it was. She knew.
Beyond any remaining doubt, she knew about the kiss.
All the bubbles turned to stones as guilt weighed her down. What could she say? All she could do was apologize. Say she hadn’t meant to. Before she could find the words, Emma’s gaze opened. Her voice softened with her next words.
“You really like him. Don’t you?”
“What? No.”
Emma had sounded uncertain. Hesitant. Cara had to reassure her.
“Of course not. Nothing like that. I mean, he’s great, but it’s not like that. I won’t say nothing happened, but it didn’t mean anything. I swear.” She had to make Emma believe it. If there was a chance she could fix things for them, she owed Rhys that much. He’d saved her life from Messoryx that night when Lydia attacked, and he’d protected her a bunch of other times. The least she could do was back up whatever he’d told Emma about the kiss.
“Are you sure?”
“Totally. Big mistake.”
Everything in her body fought against the lie. Saying that kiss had been a meaningless mistake to her was like saying the sun rose in the west or the Earth was flat. It turned her inside out. As much as she’d tried to deny it before, telling Emma made it real. The truth had to be obvious in the heart beating outside her body, completely exposed.
They fell into silence as Emma fidgeted and stared at her hands, but finally decided she had nothing else to say about it. When she spoke again, she changed the subject. By the time they pulled into the parking lot of Valley Green High for the meet, Cara couldn’t recall a single topic or any of the bland answers her mouth had provided while her brain brooded in the corner.
“You coming?” Emma stood in the aisle.
Cara willed her heavy legs to carry her off the bus. This race was a write-off before it ever started. She considered telling Coach she was going to be sick. Or actually being sick.
She looked for a handy bush in case she needed it, and found a familiar face in a nearby tree instead. The great horned owl’s eyes gleamed green, and she swore its head bobbed for her. It lightened her mood a fraction to know there were still Pyx nearby lending some support. Not that it helped with the Rhys and Emma situation, but that wasn’t the only thing in her life. She couldn’t thank the owl for the reminder in the midst of her teammates, so she simply trudged along with the group as they checked the course.
Kaylee caught up to her so they could warm up together like they always did.
“Did Emma want to talk strategy with you?”
“Something like that.”
“This will be a good test for next season for us. I hope I did enough last season for Coach to consider me for the green team in the fall. There’s only you and three juniors from this year, so she’ll have to name three more . . . Are you listening?”
“Mm hm.”
Her mind had been so far from sports for the last few months, she had no clue what Kaylee was saying. The words washed over her and swept back out into the sea of things that didn’t really matter. It had been hard to focus on school stuff or even the team she usually loved while she was obsessing over a genocidal mastermind bent on eliminating untold numbers of people . . . after he eliminated her. And why? There had to be a reason he felt the need to threaten her.
She pulled the wrong shoes from her bag, and Kaylee had to stop her and point out the right spikes with a confused look. Without any conscious thought, she reached for the tape and secured the shoes on her feet, though there was no mud to worry about today. Blindly, she moved to the starting line with the rest of the girls. For once, she had no pre-race jitters. She was slow to start when the crowd surged forward at the signal, and found herself near the back.
“Caw caw, Cara.” Ryx’s voice cut through her daze.
Annoyed more than startled, she found the raven flying low along the trees beside the grassy track. The grumble in her throat made its way past her lips, and the Valley Green girl running beside her shot her a worried glance and moved to the far side of the wide path. Cara’s irritation brought a bit of the blood flowing back through
her body, and she pushed her stride out to move past a few more girls into an open space ahead. This stride felt more natural, and she found a rhythm to fall into. Her thoughts quieted as her feet covered the ground, and the minutes flew by.
The raven’s shadow swept the grass in front of her. She stretched, feeling the urge to stomp on it. She had no idea how good a raven’s hearing was, but she might as well find out.
“What are you doing here?” she mumbled as her feet pounded the dry earth. “Shouldn’t you be watching over Rhys?”
Ryx’s only redeeming quality was he was keeping Rhys safe. Or he was supposed to be.
“I don’t take my orders from humans. Well . . . not many humans.”
Why did he always avoid answering her directly? It wasn’t humans who had asked him to guard Rhys—it was the other Pyx. What was he talking about?
Even this small separation from the school made her miss Jenyx. He would give her an answer. She wished Grawlls were here, too. The powerful black bear lent her a sense of security. She regretted the way she’d spoken to Grawllyx outside the Dougie on Sunday.
“Maybe no one asked me to come. Maybe I wanted to check on you,” Ryx added.
A derisive snort came out her nose. Doubtful.
She focused and pushed through a tight spot on the track where racers bunched together at a narrowing between the trees. She passed August in her green-and-gold shirt as she burst forward from the bottleneck of people.
“Fine. I’ll go. But there are others here,” Ryx said. The raven flew off and left her feeling strangely alone.
She might hate that stinking bird, or at least the Pyx who flew with him, but a cold feeling stole through her when he left. He’d said there were others. Other Pyx? How did he know if they were friendly?