He lay on the infirmary bed, naked apart from some areas of his leg where his jeans had fused to his skin, the fabric garishly bright against blackened chunks of flesh. His legs didn’t look like legs anymore, and around his torso, his beautiful tattoos had been reduced to weeping blisters. Someone – Courtney, I guessed, since Old Waldron was with the teachers – had started to dress the wounds, but the job looked insurmountable. There was just so much damage.
Ayaz breathed through a mask, his body shuddering with each gasp. I thought he was unconscious, but then his dark eyes swiveled toward me.
His whole body jerked with shock, which caused him to let out a pain-soaked scream.
A tear fought its way out of the corner of my eye and rolled down my cheek. I’d never wanted this to happen. He was never supposed to get hurt. Never.
Fire burns. But that’s what happens when you unleash your monstrosity on the world. People you love get hurt.
“Fuck, Ayaz.” My hand hovered over him, my fingers itching to touch him, to feel the softness of his skin against mine. But touching him would only bring us both more pain. How will his body ever heal from this?
How will he ever forgive me? How could I ask him to? He’s lost to me now.
I turned away, disgusted with myself. I shouldn’t be in the room with him. Courtney was right – he shouldn’t have to look at the face of the one who did this to him.
“Wait,” he croaked out, his voice muffled by the mask.
The word tugged at me. Don’t turn around. Don’t give him a chance to—
I turned around. Of course I did. I would do anything that boy asked of me.
Ayaz leaned back on his pillows and raised his arm, his breath ragged as the pain of it tugged at his ruined muscles. I was too shocked, too frozen to force him to stay still. I watched, mesmerized, as he reached toward my face, his rage twisting his features into an ugly mask. A well of emotions flooded up inside me. All I wanted was for him to wrap those strong arms around me and pull me into a hug. All I wanted was his lips on mine, his fingers tangled in my hair, his heat enveloping me.
All he wanted to do was kill me. And I didn’t blame him.
At the last moment, Ayaz snapped his fingers back, his mouth twisting – not in rage this time, but confusion.
He reached up to his own face and tugged off the mask. “Who are you?” he demanded.
My whole body trembled. “You know who I am.”
“I don’t! They told me that you were a dangerous bully who had to be stopped, that you were trying to destroy this school. That you were something evil and wrong and… and last night I saw it with my own eyes. But I get this feeling when I’m around you—” he scrunched up his face and jerked his head like he was trying to shake me off. The movement made him cry out in pain. “I’m going fucking nuts.”
Seeing him suffering like that, not trusting his own mind while he fought against the injuries I inflicted, made me long to pull him against me. I stepped toward him, but he glared at me with those dark, untrusting eyes.
Ms. West did something to him. I know it.
“They lied to you – about me, about us, about Zehra, about everything. I don’t know why you believe them over your own best friends.” I nodded to Trey and Quinn in the corner of the room. “Maybe if I stayed away from you in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. But it’s okay. I have to believe it’s okay that you forgot me, forgot everything. You don’t even remember that night in my room.”
The stumped look on his face revealed the truth. Rage bubbled up inside me. They’ve already taken everything from Ayaz. How dare they take that, too?
Heat rocketed down my arms. How dare they rip away the tiny shreds of happiness we eke out of this hellhole?
“It’s probably a blessing that you don’t. It might be keeping you alive. You think Ms. West gives you the truth, but she’s the biggest liar of them all. You think Vincent Bloomberg is like a father to you, but you’re wrong,” I spat, fighting to control the fire beating against my palms. The fire had already burned too much already. “Everything you heard tonight is true – Vincent is the architect of Derleth. He chose to sacrifice you all. Do you know what he’s doing with all that info you gave him about the god’s prison? He and the Eldritch Club were planning to kill you all so they can free the god.”
“How do you know about that?” Ayaz demanded, his shoulders tensing as he struggled against his internal demons. “How can you—”
Ayaz tried to roll toward me. He winced as he put weight on his arm, his body convulsing with pain.
“Don’t move.” The fight fled me at the sight of his pain. I placed my hand on his chest, shoving him back down. Where our skin connected, a wave of heat sailed along my veins, touching every part of me with sizzling warmth. It took everything I had not to wrap my arms around Ayaz and press myself against him.
I closed my eyes, tried to draw my hand away. Warm fingers clamped around it, holding it in place. My eyes flew open.
Ayaz. My beautiful dark King. My artist with the brilliant mind trapped in a world where his talents held no value. My man of myth and opium from across the sea. In the corners of his eyes, the faintest flicker of his former self danced.
“That was a hell of a fireworks display you put on last night,” he said. “When I first came to America, Trey took me to a Fourth of July display in New York City. We sat on a million-dollar yacht and watched the sky burn. You made that look like kiddie shit.”
“It had to be done.” I tried to make myself sound confident – more confident than I felt. Ayaz must have been able to see my heart pounding against my chest, my whole body poised. After he let me walk away with Parris’ book I thought there was a chance he might remember me. But just yesterday he handed the Eldritch Club everything they needed to fuck over the world, so now I couldn’t be sure. “You all had to know the truth.”
“You used Tillie’s own sister against her.” His words dripped with hate. I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about Bianca, but about Zehra.
Zehra, who’s still locked in the gym, with only Greg and an army of rats for company.
It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out where she was, but Ayaz probably knew. After all, I was pretty sure he betrayed me to save her. I couldn’t hate him for it – just the opposite. I missed him more than ever.
“I didn’t want to, but it was the only way. It’s more important for me to show you the truth than for you to… to remember me.”
“You’ve explained to me, at least twice, what I am to you,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Don’t speak.” I shook my head. “Not if it hurts. Focus on getting better. You will get better.”
“My body will heal from this, as it has from all wounds. My heart, on the other hand… what I’m trying to say is that I still don’t remember you. All the evidence I’ve seen is that you’re here to destroy us. You broke into my room. You burned me. You know things about my sister that you’re not telling me. You have the students enraged and the teachers afraid and you’re bitter enemies with the man who’s treated me as his own son.”
I dared a smile. “You’re not allowed to write my obituary.”
“Ever since the day I saw you, I’ve been drawn to you. It’s like…” he looked puzzled for a moment. “My body remembers you, even though my mind draws a blank. You’re imprinted up here.” He tapped the side of his head, then winced. Apparently, he’d momentarily forgotten he’d been burned over most of his body. Lifting his arm over his head was a no-no.
My mind cast back to the first time Ayaz and I spoke after he’d forgotten me. I snuck into his room to steal Parris’ skin book and discovered Ayaz’s sketchbooks filled with drawings of me.
He must’ve been thinking of them, too. “Last time I came to in the infirmary, near the end of second quarter, Ms. West handed me a fresh sketchbook. She said that I’d been horsing around with Trey and Quinn and had a bump on the head, that my memories may feel fuzzy and disjointed, bu
t drawing was something I loved and it may help me to transcend my confusion.”
He’s talking about the scuffle in Trey’s room, where Ms. West and Vincent dragged the Kings away as I escaped out the window. But Ayaz wasn’t there, so the only reason he’d have to be in the infirmary is if Ms. West did something to him. If she’s moving souls around to different bodies, it wouldn’t be a big deal for her to alter Ayaz’s memories.
“After I got back to my room, I opened the sketchbook and started to draw. It was a compulsion – my hand moved on its own. I had no control. When I had finished, you stared back at me from the page, defiant, radiant, mesmerizing.
“Every time I sat down to draw something, the lines turned into you. I told myself, ‘I’m going to sketch a kitten,’ and I’d imagine all the planes and curves of the creature in my mind and then I’d look down at the paper and you’d stare back at me. I couldn’t understand it – they told me you were dangerous. Obsessive. A liar. A bully. And yet, some part of me saw you differently.”
“Is that why you trusted me that first time, with the book?” I asked. “You could have given us up to Courtney and taken the book back, but you didn’t.”
He nodded. “I wanted to see what you’d do. I wanted to see if I could trust you.”
My Ayaz. I couldn’t even imagine what it felt like to grasp at a memory but have it constantly slip away, to feel as though your mind and body were at war. There must be something that could help him remember. Or, if not remember, then reimagine.
Flames licked at my heart, urging me to act. Never one for impulse control, I slid from the chair and stood over his bed, leaning down so my face was an inch from his. This close I could see a nerve in his temple jumping. He swallowed hard after every breath, as though willing the air to stay in his lungs. He was in greater pain than he was letting on.
Perhaps I could take a piece of that pain away.
I leaned in closer. His breath touched mine. Behind the sickly smell of the creams slathered on his wounds, the metallic tang of blood, and the unmistakable charred meat scent of burnt flesh, I caught a whiff of opium and earthy incense. My beautiful Turk.
You remember. I know you remember! The words screamed inside my head, but instead of yelling them, I brushed my lips to his – so gently, so softly that I could pretend I’d never kissed him at all.
But that touch was enough to send fire racing through my limbs, to grab my heart and shake it like a fucking earthquake, to leave me breathless, gasping, desperate for him.
Ayaz’s eyes widened. In those dark pools, I caught a flicker of the wounded boy who’d come into my room in the second quarter, who’d shared a piece of his shattered soul with me, who’d let me leave my monster at the door and just be Hazel in his arms.
Please remember. Please…
Every stolen moment, every wish I’d had for a future with him, every emotion I’d stamped down and refused to acknowledge, I poured into that kiss. Please remember. Please remember.
Fire coursed through my body – a line of flame connecting my lips to my heart to the throbbing heat between my legs. Tendrils of flame broke through my skin, reaching for him, not to burn him again but to bring him back to me.
It took everything in me to tear my lips away. I dared a smile. “Did that bring anything back?”
“Just that I’ve been fucking stupid wasting the last quarter with Courtney.” Ayaz grinned. His hand reached up, and even though he winced, he gripped my neck with surprising strength, pulling me against him for another scorching kiss. “Where have you been all my life?”
I sat back, the taste of him sizzling against my lips. “You remember me now?”
Ayaz’s eyes swept across my face again.
“No. But I remember… that I know you,” he whispered.
“In the biblical sense,” Quinn piped up helpfully.
“You do know me,” I whispered. “Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”
“I don’t know how, but I know… I will never forget you. I remember that you’re more important to me than myself. And that’s enough for now.”
My heart soared. I touched my hand to his, stroking his fingers. It felt so good to touch him. “I have so much to tell you. I don’t want to melt your brain while you’re still trying to recover.”
“I can handle it.” He nodded at his legs. “This is going to take a bit of time to heal. You might as well fill me in.”
I glanced over my shoulder, checking the room was empty. Old Waldron wasn’t hovering as she normally did. Of course, she’d be with the other teachers, going over their plan. Trey and Quinn slid out the door, but I knew they’d be right outside, keeping guard. I took a deep breath.
Between more tender kisses that melted like chocolate, I told him everything that had happened since he’d betrayed me in Ms. West’s office until last night, when he’d walked into that Eldritch Club meeting and then appeared on stage with Ms. West.
“Shit.” His face wrinkled in pain. “I told Vincent what I discovered in Parris’ book. I gave him a recipe to destroy us.”
“Yup. You fucked things up for us a bit there. But the teachers have Courtney’s mother, which means it’s a stalemate between the adults, for now. This next bit is the rough bit. Are you sure you want all the gory details?”
“I can handle it.” He gritted his teeth, his body stiffening as another spasm of pain rocketed through him. I bent down to kiss him again, wishing I could sweep up his pain into myself. The good news was that when I gathered my strength to look at his legs again, a few of the blisters seemed to have gone down. He was healing… slowly.
As best as I could, I told him everything I remembered from West’s insane tale of souls and progeny. Ayaz shuddered again, but whether from the pain or the news that he’d been intended as a child of the god, I couldn’t tell. When I finished, he didn’t say anything for a while, just kept gasping his shaky breath.
I hit Ayaz with the last piece of the puzzle, praying that I’d read him right and he really was back on our side. If he betrayed us to the Deadmistress, it would be all over. “Ms. West wants us to be her pawns so she can force the Eldritch Club to break the sigils that trap you in the school. She doesn’t know that we can already get past them.”
“You can?”
“Yup. But I want her to keep believing we need her as much as she needs us. We can’t do anything without control of the school. For that, we need you.”
Ayaz laughed bitterly. “After you burned the auditorium, didn’t you summon that crazy pillar thing? Courts told me about it. I’d say you’ve got control.”
I shook my head. “People are afraid of me. I like it, actually, but I know from the Bloombergs that having followers who fear you isn’t the same as people who adore you. I’ll deal with the god and his weird pillar and his soul-eating ways, but I need you to convince the others to listen to me. You’re loved at this school, Ayaz. The other students look up to you. I think it’s no accident that Ms. West targeted you with her… charms, and that you had your memories of me wiped. Of all the Kings, you’re the most dangerous, because people actually trust you. And now you’re the only King left.”
Ayaz’s eyes swam with pain and confusion. “Is it really all true… Ms. West swapped part of my soul with the god?”
“I swear it on a mountain of bacon.”
The corners of my Turk’s mouth twisted up into one of those rare, dazzling smiles. “Then whatever your plan is, count me the fuck in.”
Chapter Ten
No way was I leaving Ayaz alone. Quinn and Trey stayed in the hall, keeping watch, listening for the return of the students. I searched the infirmary cupboards and found a couple of scratchy wool blankets and a supply of Scotch hidden in Old Waldron’s desk drawer. I crawled up on the bed beside Ayaz and slipped under his arm, placing the blanket over my knees and being careful not to touch him anywhere below the waist.
“You’ll heal, right?” It was hard to tell if his burns had actually improved or if t
he horror of looking at them had simply faded a little.
Ayaz shrugged, then winced. “I fucking hope so. In twenty years I’ve never been this badly injured. I can feel things happening down there, but I’m too afraid to look.”
“He’ll heal fine.” Quinn strode into the room and tossed me my mobile. “Once Trey cut my arm off just to see what would happen. It took a week but it came back. Hurt like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I bet. What’s this for?” I stared down at the phone, not understanding why Quinn had brought it. Outside the walls of the school, I had nothing and no one. Deborah… maybe? But who was she apart from a stranger who got caught up in something she didn’t understand. I didn’t know how much we could trust her. Judging by the way Quinn immediately slid into the corner of the room – as far from me as he could get – I wasn’t sure I still had all my Kings.
If the students are all as afraid of fire and that creepy pillar as Quinn is, I’m going to have a hell of a time getting them to trust me.
Which was super annoying, because I wasn’t used to needing others and I didn’t know the first thing about inspiring trust. At my old school, I didn’t give a fuck about the other kids. I was perfectly happy flying under their radar, especially since half of them were in gangs or worse. But if I was going to pull this off, if I was going to find out why I was the key and what the pillar unlocked, I needed the Miskatonic Prep students on my side.
All of them.
Even though it would be easier in the end, I couldn’t do that if Quinn was afraid of me. I searched his face for some clue as to how he was feeling, but apart from the distance between us, he appeared his normal, happy-go-lucky self. No trace of the ice king from earlier.
“I went back to the dorm to see what was going down. While I was there, I went to our rooms for supplies,” Quinn’s familiar grin churned me up inside as he emptied his pockets, revealing my knife, several smushed Twinkies, and a box of condoms. “The phone was beeping.”
Ignited: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 4) Page 6