by May Dawson
He leans over and places a white paper coffee cup on my tray. “You need this. More espresso, less depresso.”
“I’m not depressed.”
He scoffs at that. “In this place? You’re either depressed or crazy or stupid.”
“Why pick just one?” I take the top off the coffee and lean over the foamy top to inhale a sweet scent. “Is this a mocha? Do you leave campus?”
“Yes, it’s a mocha. No, I can’t do that. I don’t need to--I have friends. The guards bring stuff for me.”
“Do you really?” I ask. I raise the cup to him in a toast, then take a sip. White chocolate mocha. He knows what I like. And unless he’s changed in that regard, too, he doesn’t like sugary coffee. “I know this is hard for you to remember, but associates aren’t the same as friends, Ever. Why are you buttering me up?”
“I’m trying to be your friend.”
I let myself smirk cynically at that, but I still take another sip. “Are you the one who left me a pillow?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Where did that come from?”
“This is a reform school, remember? Don’t ask too many questions.”
I shake my head at him. I can’t trust his kindness. I’m trying to lure him into a false sense of safety with me; maybe he’s doing the same with me.
I push my omelet around my plate, trying to convince myself that it tastes delicious. My food doesn’t taste the same knowing it’s laced with Break.
Then suddenly, Julian drops his tray beside me and sits down.
Ever stares at him, eyebrows arching.
“Morning, friends,” Julian says brightly, and only one of those two words is a lie: it is morning.
“You guys tried to murder me, and I still think this situation feels more awkward between you two,” I say, gesturing between them, because the air is suddenly tense.
“Tried to murder you?” Ever frowns.
“About that,” Julian says. “We need to talk. Ever, tell the nice lady you never tried to murder her.”
“Of course I never tried to murder you. Is this a joke?”
I had been smiling, but with those three word, fury crashed over me. “No, it’s not a joke,” I say. “My brother’s dead. Remember?”
Ever and Julian glance at each other.
“Of course we remember,” Ever says carefully. “We miss Elliot. Not like you do, but we—”
“Don’t say his name,” I warn him.
There’s an edge in my voice, but that’s fine; I’m not damaging my work with them if I get angry. I need to pretend to forgive them, but first, we have to fight. If they were involved in what happened to Elliot and me—and I am ninety percent confident they were—the fight-and-forgive routine will give me the chance to lull them into a false sense of safety before I drive knives through their hearts. Literally, of course.
Ever studies me quietly, his head cocked to one side. Then he leans forward, one elbow on the table, his gaze meeting mine.
“I’ll say his fucking name if I want to,” Ever tells me. “He was my best friend.”
Silence hangs in the room. I can’t believe he just said that to me. Julian is blank-faced, but his eyes have gone bright with interest. He loves drama, and Ever and I, when we were together, were always drama.
“You knew what they were going to do to him,” I say.
He frowns, and Julian says, “She doesn’t remember anything from that day. She doesn’t remember us leaving.”
I glance at him. I’d feel betrayed if I expected anything from Julian, but I know better than to expect him to keep my secrets.
“We weren’t there,” Ever says flatly. “I loved you and I loved him, Eden. You really think I would’ve left that day if I’d known that the Lords planned to kill the two of you?”
“Yes,” I say, that one word harsh.
“Well, I didn’t,” Ever says. “I went on a stupid mission for Richmond, and when I came back, there were cops all over the safe house. When the coroner took Elliot out, I was there, watching. I thought you were dead too—once I saw him—because you two were always together—”
A tic flutters in Ever’s jaw at the memory, and something curdles in my stomach. I’m almost afraid now that he might be telling the truth.
I’m not scared of much, but I’m terrified of believing him.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, “and then suddenly here you are, at school.”
His voice comes out harsh, and his eyes spark with anger. He feels like I betrayed him.
The Sent kept my survival a secret. Maybe they were embarrassed that I slipped through their fingers when I was supposed to be chained to a hospital bed.
“Am I supposed to believe that?” I demand. “Richmond tricked you?”
“I was a kid too,” Ever reminds me. “A stupid kid who didn’t feel like I had any other choices than to stay with the Lords.”
There’s regret laced in his voice, the same regret that I feel, and it jolts me.
He stands so abruptly that his chair slams into the glass behind him, but he doesn’t look, even though half the cafeteria has frozen to watch him.
“Believe what you want, Eden,” Ever says, his voice flat. He’s furious. I didn’t expect that. “I never hurt you. I never hurt your brother. You’ve been looking in all the wrong places for a monster to blame.”
Something heats in his eyes as he studies me.
“The Lords are dead,” he adds. “There’s no one left to get revenge on. So if you have to find a monster to fight, maybe you should look inside.”
I stare at him in shock. I don’t think I can blush anymore, but it feels like heat crawls up my cheeks. I’m so angry that my chest is tight.
As Everett strides off, Julian rests his hand on my shoulder. “Breathe,” he murmurs in my ear. “He’s not worth passing out in your yogurt.”
“Did you guys talk this story over?” I demand.
Julian sighs, rubbing his long fingers across his forehead. “I haven’t spoken more than an unavoidable sentence or two to your boyfriend in the past year, so no. We didn’t have a nice chat about your absurd murder theory.”
“It’s not absurd,” I hiss. “How are you going to prove to me that you didn’t try to murder me?”
“You can’t prove a negative,” he says mildly. “But I think we have a very convincing alibi. Convinced a judge-and-jury, anyway. They’re convinced we were somewhere else.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
He leans toward me, glancing around as if he’s about to tell me a secret. He leans so close to me that his lips brush my ear, and something inside me squeezes as I stay motionless, even though nothing about Julian leaves me calm.
He murmurs, “We were killing someone else that day.”
Chapter Eleven
Gabriel
Before Eden can leave class, I say, “One minute please, Ms. Greyson.”
She pauses by my desk and asks in a syrupy voice, “Yes sir?”
“Where have you been the last two years?”
Her eyes widen as she faces me, as if she didn’t expect that brash question.
I didn’t expect it, either. I meant to ask her about the wounds that cover her legs, as if she tangled with the Myrmidion. I would caution any student to stay out of the woods. There was nothing inappropriate in my first impulse in calling her aside.
But now that it’s just the two of us in an empty classroom, the sun sinking low in the sky outside the windows, my tongue’s apparently grown loose.
She says, “Hiding.”
Eden’s never struck me as one to hide. Even in a hospital bed, struggling to sit up, to speak through cracked lips and broken teeth, I’d been sure she would rise. Sure she would fight on.
I drum my fingertips against the tabletop as I lean back in my chair, studying her. She waits patiently, her gaze on mine wide-eyed and blank, giving away nothing about what really goes on in that bright mind.
“When’s the last time you
saw Richmond?” I ask.
“It must have been just before the last time I saw you,” she says. “Remember? The hospital?”
“I remember.” I’ll never forget. I’d been the one to recruit Elliot into the Sent. I’d been a brand-new Sent agent, and although I’d never have shown it, his twisted, broken body—and hers—had destroyed something inside me.
I’d volunteered to take a stint as faculty at the school because I thought then, I wouldn’t be putting anyone’s life in danger the way I had Elliot’s. It was just a temporary reprieve, but I had hoped maybe I’d be able to leave the guilt behind.
And now here was Guilt in human form in front of me, with beautiful eyes and a heart-shaped face and sweet lips that always lied.
I couldn’t let Eden get herself killed too.
“Do you need anything else from me, sir?” She says the word sir so lightly that it sounds like mockery on her lips. An inappropriate fantasy darts through me—I could hear that word on her lips in a much breathier voice—and I push it away. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.
I was twenty-one and she was sixteen that day in the hospital. I’d felt nothing but protective then, no matter that Kinley thought of her as a precocious monster. Two years have passed, but our positions aren’t that different now. There’s a distinct power imbalance. I should still look at her with nothing but protectiveness.
And yet…
I clear my throat. “In the past two years, several Lords have gone missing, and a few have turned up missing body parts. Their hearts, usually.”
She nods. “Anyone I knew?”
“They were all people you knew, actually.”
She doesn’t ask for names, but I didn’t expect her to, no matter how innocently she phrased her question. I’m sure she knows the list of the dead quite intimately.
“Close the door,” I tell her, my voice flat. “Sit down and let’s have a chat.”
She gives me a skeptical look, but she moves to close the door. Once it’s shut, the noise in the hallway abates.
“From what my student guide said, I shouldn’t miss Torture 101 with Miss Esther,” she says, but she still crosses back to my desk. Without any further encouragement, she drags a chair in front of my desk, as close to me as possible with the desk between us. Her eyes meet mine, wide and disarming.
“I wouldn’t, no. She’s tough.” I like her; she’s my only ally here against Kinley. Aero favors Kinley, who has a cruel side like his own. “But you have half an hour between classes. We have time.”
As I debate what to say, her eyebrows quirk.
“It’s suspicious that all the Lords involved in your brother’s death have turned up dead,” I tell her.
She nods slowly. “Yes, I imagine so—but murdering Elliot was hardly the only terrible thing they ever did. The Sent consider the Lords terrorists. Are the Sent so very concerned why Lords are turning up dead?”
“They’re curious, not concerned.” The informal Sent motto is the best Lord is a dead Lord.
The second-best Lord is one who informs on the rest.
I wonder what she’d think if she knew the Sent forced Elliot into the Lords. Kinley and I didn’t volunteer a lot of information in that hospital. We’d been interrogating her, not the other way around.
Then I’d walked into her hospital room to find the cop assigned to watch her unconscious on the floor and the window broken. She’d been gone.
“Are you still a Sent agent?” she asks abruptly.
“Yes,” I say.
“Why are you here instead of off saving the world? Are you bad at your job? Or do you just like bad kids?” Despite how cheeky her words are, her face looks so innocent as she smiles that it’s hard to take any of it personally.
But if she talks like that to Michael, she’ll be in danger, so I school my face. “I hope to see kids like you change your ways and take your place in society.”
“I’m eighteen. I’m not a kid.”
I scoff at that, because I need to think of her as a kid. I can’t get distracted by the way she looks at me, with that knowing smile across her lips and a wicked glint in those bright green eyes.
She leans forward, resting her elbows on my desk, propping her face up on her hands. My heart speeds having her come closer to me.
“If I’m just a kid,” she asks, “how can you think I killed all those Lords?”
Her voice is low and sultry, not at all as if she’s discussing murder.
She loves to throw people off. I can see that about her now. From the way she’s spoken to the way she gazes at me, knowing exactly how I read that gaze, and probably how I feel about it.
Suddenly I’m very sure that Eden Greyson is a dangerous girl.
And that doesn’t make her less appealing in the slightest.
I lean across the table too, resting my elbow on the hard surface, and meet her gaze. “I don’t know yet, Eden. But I’m going to figure you out.”
She smiles as she rises to her feet. “Good luck.”
She doesn’t wait for me to dismiss her before she sashays out of my office.
Chapter Twelve
Eden
The conversation with Gabriel Bright throws me for a loop, to be honest. I need time and privacy to process his suspicions, but I don’t have either at the moment: it’s time for class with Ms. Esther. I am so excited right now, I can barely contain myself.
I go upstairs and change into the yellow t-shirt, black shorts, and—tube socks. Fucking knee socks. That’s how you know they’re really trying to break us. I fold the socks over, but they just look worse. I give up, pull the cuffs halfway up my shins, and lace up my sneakers. Glancing in the mirror, I look like an extra in a movie set in a 1970’s era high school.
There’s no time to complain, though, because I have to get down to class.
When I walk outside into the yard, everyone is milling around, and no one else is wearing knee socks. Apparently everyone goes without socks around here. Hell, most don’t even wear shirts; the girls rock their black sports bras with the tiny silky black shorts, and the guys are shirtless.
Mia glances over at me and laughs. “Looking good, Eden.”
“She still looks better than you.” A gruff male voice rumbles behind us.
She twists to face who spoke, a faint flush rising to her cheeks, before she scoffs and turns around again. I resist the impulse to turn too.
I know that grouchy yet somehow sexy voice.
Lincoln.
Esther is younger than I expected, but then, Gabriel isn’t very old either—no matter how he thinks of himself. Esther wears her long red hair in a pair of tight Dutch braids that make her look even younger, and her body is so slender and narrow in leggings and a crop top that she looks like a gymnast.
This is the teacher everyone’s afraid of?
Then she puts us through a brutal workout that lasts until I can barely straighten my arms out, every muscle aching. The air is damp, mist hanging in the air, and sweat clings to my skin. My hands slip in the soft earth as we do a ridiculous number of push-ups.
“Nice of you to show up today, Eden,” she says as she walks past me as I’m planking in the dirt. “From the looks of things, you shouldn’t miss a class.”
She seems lovely.
Then once we’re all exhausted, we start combat training.
When we form two lines, I find myself across from Lincoln. The wind ruffles his dark hair, which stands in contrast to his golden-tanned skin and those molten gold eyes that stare steadfastly somewhere over my left shoulder.
He stares so fixedly that I finally turn, expecting to find something there. There must be a clown or a serial killer lurking in the woods. But no. It’s just Lincoln, pretending that I don’t exist even though I’m standing close enough to reach out and shove him.
“You still space out, hm?” I ask him as I turn back around.
He doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve spoken. He does have a daydreamy side, or at least he
used to, but it nettled him when any of us teased him about it. His mother is a Sent agent and Lincoln was Bred, his mother mated with a full-blood angel to make Linc the perfect high-powered Nephilim weapon; his mother and stepfather never had much tolerance for any weakness. He might be royalty amongst the Nephilim, but that doesn’t mean it’s brought him any joy.
I don’t need this class. I killed nineteen Lords to get revenge from my brother, with wit and courage and not a little bit of skill. But I need to keep my abilities a secret. The conversation with Gabriel reminded me that I need to act as if I’ve been cowering under the bed in a Motel 6 for the past two years.
So I promise myself I’ll only go at half-power, even though it hurts to pretend weakness as I face down Lincoln.
As Lincoln and I spar, I make myself fumble the attempt to throw him. Instead, I slip and land on one knee in the dirt. His eyes flare with contempt as he circles me, and I rise to my feet, dusting my dirty hands off on my shorts and shrugging.
Finally, he barks out, “You have to lock my elbow out before you take me down.”
Oh, how well I know that. I don’t acknowledge him, since he spoke to me in such a brusque tone. I do lock his elbow out fully with the next throw, and Lincoln sails over my shoulder and slams into the ground.
“Better,” he admits as he jumps back up to his feet. Lincoln has endless energy.
The two of us square off again. When Lincoln darts in for the throw, he moves so fast that he’s a blur. I want to show him just what I can do, but I force myself to react slowly.
Lincoln grips my shoulder. I throw my arm out, breaking his grip, but he’s already catching my hip. As I twist to one side, Lincoln’s fingers tighten on my hip. His hand feels hot against my skin, even though my shorts.
Then I hit the ground, so fast that I barely registered what happened. My shoulder blades slam into the ground, and my fists slap out automatically, my body taking the fall like a pro.
Esther looms over me, frowning. “At least you know how to take a fall. That seems like an important skill for you.”