“You took your time.”
“Yeah, sorry. I ran into Stephen, don’t worry though, no fighting this time.”
He grinned up at her as he stood. “Good, I think another fight would give Benedict a heart attack.”
“Yeah, I don’t think he likes me that much.” She scrunched her face up.
Thornton frowned at her, tilting his head to the side. “What? Benedict thinks you’re great. If any other student would have pulled half the crap you have, they’d be out in a heartbeat. Benedict’s fighting for you.”
“Really?” She loved that, she wasn’t really sure how true it was, but she loved the idea of it nonetheless.
“But we don’t have time to talk about Benedict right now, we have to train. There’s another class in here in an hour.”
Jaycen waggled her arms, stretching her shoulders as she twisted. “Okay, I’m ready. What are we doing? Fighting with knives? Swords?” She was so ready for this. She had only seen Thornton fight once, but he had been a beast. She wanted to train under him.
He just looked amused as he took a step back. “No, today we’re starting off simple.” Then he started to jump up and down on the spot.
This was not how she’d imagined her training going. “What’s happening?”
“We start simple, come on and start jumping with me.”
So, she did, and for what felt like a good five minutes they were just jumping together.
“Not going to lie Thorn, this is not how I imagined this going.”
He laughed, shaking his head, and nodding towards a table at the far end of the room. A table littered with objects. Thornton held out his hand, sending a half empty water bottle flying into the wall behind it.
“Now, try that. Concentrate on the jumping, and just send the next bottle into the wall.”
“Didn’t you see me with the book? I can totally do this.”
“Yeah but don’t say it. Just think it.”
Oh, this was interesting. Jaycen carried on jumping, keeping her eyes on the bottle. Then, her arm flew out. Nothing happened.
“Oh, well, that was very anticlimactic.” She stopped jumping, and looked at Thornton. “So, what went wrong?”
He was still jumping. “You’re thinking too much, start jumping again.” He waited until she actually started jumping again to continue. “Try this, when I say go, send the bottle flying, but not until then, okay?”
“Okay.”
He left them jumping for what felt like ten minutes, ten whole minutes. Jaycen was now really sweating. Why was she so unfit?
Then, Thornton shouted, “Now.”
His shout made her jump, but her arm flew out, sending the half full bottle of water crashing into the wall, just like Thornton’s had.
“It worked!” She stopped moving and bent forward, breathing in long and deep. Thinking about if she should have brought the bottle to her—she was gasping for a drink.
“See? You can do this. You just over think it. Come on, we’ll try it again.”
Oh god, more exercise. She started jumping again, not as high as she had been before, but still it was a jump.
“Now,” Thornton ordered again. Jaycen’s hand went out again, and again the bottle went into the wall.
“Oh, I’ve got this. I’ve totally got this.” She sat down on the training mat. Surely, that had been enough of the jumping?
But no. Next, Thornton had her running around, pulling objects towards her without stopping. She was slowly getting used to it. Apart from one time she tried it with a book, and it started coming towards her a lot faster than she had anticipated. She ducked, and it flew past her—and hit Thornton in the face instead.
“Oh shit!”
“Oh my God, are you okay?” Jaycen shrieked as he fell backwards, clutching his face.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” He tried to brush it off, Jaycen could clearly see that it was a lie. A big fat lie.
His face was red, and his eyes were watering. “I should have warned you,” she conceded, her hands on her hips.
“Yeah, maybe, that would have been a good idea.”
“Honestly, I thought you’d move out of the way if I’m honest. You’re kind of slow.”
Thornton straightened, his sore face long forgotten. All of a sudden he jumped at Jaycen, knocking her feet from under her, and slamming her into the ground, his body pinning her down.
“Now, who’s slow, huh?” He grinned down at her, his green eyes sparkling.
After spending an afternoon not thinking about her actions, Jaycen leant up, crushing her lips to his. The kiss was hard and fast, before she pulled back. Desperately searching his face and trying to figure out if that had been a mistake. Thornton just stared back at her, looking pained. That was never a good sign.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She tried to backtrack, she’d have physically moved away if she could have, but she couldn’t as Thornton still hadn’t moved an inch.
Then, it happened. Thorton crashed his lips back down on hers, not breaking the contact for a second, Jaycen loved it. She wrapped one arm around his back, pulling him as close as possible, her other hand diving into his hair. God, she had wanted to do this for so long.
“Is this really happening in my training room?”
Thornton’s head shot up. Both he and Jaycen looked over at a very pissed off Drake standing in the doorway, a large blue bag hanging from his shoulder.
This guy again, did he really hate her that much?
“Are you kidding me? Neither of you are going to get up and move? Really?”
Thornton moved first, and then he helped Jaycen to her feet.
“Sorry, Drake.” He coughed, running over to grab their jackets. “Didn’t realise the time.”
Drake looked less than impressed. “I’d gathered that.”
Both Jaycen and Thornton were nearly out the door before Drake spoke again.
“Next time, try do what every normal young couple does. Go to the library and keep my training rooms out of it. Okay?”
Chapter 23
Silently, they both walked through the campus. Jaycen’s lips were still tingling from the kiss, but apart from that it was like it had never happened, because Thornton wasn’t talking at all. It was awkward as hell. She wondered what he was thinking.
“Want to stop at the shop and pick up a few snacks?” he asked casually.
Jaycen could have had a thousand guesses as to what he was thinking, and she would never have guessed that.
“Snacks? Why?” She asked, like the whole concept of eating was new to her. If she was honest, she’d been kind of assuming he’d want to run off—but apparently not.
“Yeah, you know, chips, candy. That kind of thing, we could take it back to your place and chill. Do you need any help with any of your classes?”
He had never offered her help before, why now? “We really don’t need to do that.” She was giving him an out, a big simple way out that wouldn’t be too bad for either of them.
But instead of taking it like any normal person, he shook his head. “No, I want to. Don’t you?” He was clearly having regrets about the kiss. Why was he making this more difficult than it needed to be?
“Oh, okay then. Only if you want to though.”
They went to the school shop, filling her bag with sweets, all the while completely silent. It was killing her, why wasn’t he talking about the kiss? Why wasn’t she talking about the kiss? Why was it this awkward? To make it worse, if she had thought people stared before, it was nothing to the way people were looking at them now. It was like they all knew. She even caught Luke’s eyes from across the campus—he didn’t wave or smile, just raised an eyebrow in a silent question. The are the two of you really just friends question. She just shrugged and looked away.
Thornton silently followed her to her dorm. Not ten minutes ago he had been warm and funny, now he was completely silent. The guy was so hot and cold, she had no idea where she stood. Was he doing it on purpose? Stringing he
r along? Did he even know?
Thornton moved around her room easily, like he’d been there hundreds of times before. He turned on the TV and quickly pulled up a streaming site. Jaycen just sat there, confused as hell.
“What kind of film do you want to watch?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the screen.
“I don’t care.”
That was the extent of their conversation, Thornton found a film and settled back to watch it. Just like that.
Why wasn’t she saying anything? Why was she just accepting his mood swings? This wasn’t her, this wasn’t the type of woman she was. She was going to say something to him. Yeah, she was going to find out what was in his head. Today was the day she would put her foot down.
“I have to go. Benedict wants to see me,” Thornton said, grabbing his jacket and standing up.
Today was apparently not that day.
“Okay.” Thornton said, frowning down at her. “Are you okay? You seem, uh, quiet?”
Now it was Jaycen’s turn to frown. “Are you kidding me? You haven’t spoken in two hours. I swear, you could seriously be bipolar or have a multiple personalities disorder or something. You just switch back and forth so fast, it’s confusing.”
He looked taken aback by her sudden outburst. “I told you, I don’t mean to be like that. I just, I need to sort things out in my head.”
“If you don’t want to be that way, just don’t be. It’s literally that simple.” To her it really was that simple. She rubbed her temples in large circular motions. This was not how she had imagined this conversation going. “Look, I didn’t mean to lose it. You’re just really confusing sometimes.”
“I know, and I hate that. I hate that this isn’t simple. It’s just that… I can’t just jump into things like this. With my life, my family….” He stopped talking and twisted the gold ring on his finger. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded mutely. “It’s okay. It’s just really hard to keep up with you sometimes.”
Now, he smiled. The heaviness in the room lifting. “I’ll try to be better.”
“Good.” She grinned up at him. “So, why you going to see Benedict?”
“No idea. It’s probably just about the blood drop tomorrow. If it’s not confidential I’ll text you and let you know.” He leant in, lightly kissing her on the lips.
“Confidential? Benedict tells you stuff like that? Why?” Jaycen was interested in his answer, but she was also interested in keeping him there just a little bit longer. Because, well, why not?
“Because I’m his protégé.” He winked before grinning and heading out the door with another promise to text her later. She watched him walk down the hall, smiling as he turned around to look at her just before he turned the corner. It would have been so much cooler if he didn’t look back. She laughed to herself, closing the door, and turning on a lamp. It was barely eight at night and she was tired. Thornton was right, magic zapped your energy.
She was getting changed out of her jeans and into her night clothes when a knock sounded at her door. Did he forget something?
She opened the door, her smile quickly falling from her face when it wasn’t Thornton looking back at her, but Stephen’s two followers.
“How do you know my dorm number?” She pulled her door to her, she didn’t want them looking in her room, seeing all her stuff.
“Look, we don’t want to be here either, but your friend got hurt. He wanted you and not Benedict,” one of them said.
One thing she did know was that they were definitely lying. She only had one friend at the school and Gemma was safe and sound at the hospital.
“Do you really expect me to believe that? Gemma isn’t even awake.” She really couldn’t tell if they were being serious or not, they looked serious. Did they really expect her to believe them? Couldn’t they think of anything more original?
“Not her, her man. What’s his name? Lee?” one of them started, stopping when wannabe thug number two held up his hand.
“Look, if you don’t want to help him, don’t. I don’t care. He just asked us to get you. He and Stephen got into it, he got hurt. Obviously.”
Luke? Why the hell would he ask for her? Didn’t he have any other friends? She stared at them both, trying to figure out if they were telling the truth. They just looked bored. But even if they were lying, what was the worst thing they could do? Get her in trouble with Benedict? Already done. Try and jump her? Please, they could try.
“How are the two of you out of your rooms? Don’t you have hall guards?” She had no idea what they were called. “You know, people making sure you don’t leave?”
“Yeah, they start at ten. Are you coming or not?”
“Okay, let me get my shoes and get changed.” She closed the door behind her, getting changed and grabbing her phone, throwing Thornton a quick text, telling him about her little outing. You know, just in case something went wrong, and she needed either an alibi or help.
When she opened the door, the two guys were still there. She had half-expected them to leave.
But nope, instead they led the way down the hall and into the courtyard, in complete silence. It was awkward, very awkward. Her phone was going crazy in her pocket. She fished it out and saw five texts and two missed calls, all from Thornton.
She skimmed through the messages.
Who is Luke? They are probably lying. Don’t go.
Did you see my last text? I SAID DON’T GO!
Did you go? Where are you?
ARE YOU GETTING MY TEXT MESSAGES?
ARE YOU OKAY?
She couldn’t hold in her laugh at the growing hysteria in his texts. She was texting him back when she saw other students walking with them, a lot of other students. All of them heading in the same direction as she was.
“The whole Luke story was a lie, wasn’t it?”
Wannabe thug number two looked over his shoulder at her, smirking. “Yeah, can’t believe you fell for it.”
Well, what could she say to that? She didn’t want to turn around now, she was practically there, wherever there was. She looked back at the school. They’d walked across the field and were now at the far end of the campus, and just about to walk into a wooded area. If there weren’t so many people walking with them she’d have been sure that they were just about to murder her.
She heard laughter and chanting before she could see anyone.
Wannabe thugs one and two pulled out their phones, using the light to guide the way, as did everyone else around them.
“And it’s,” Stephen’s voice shouted, really loud, “it’s pale, but it’s violet!”
Everyone either hooted, clapped, or just plain shouted. How were they getting away with this, with all the noise? Where exactly were all of the teachers? It was then that Jaycen saw Stephen. He was standing in a clearing, with a crowd of people surrounding him, and a large wooden box next to him. Another girl stood up, her hand shaking as she took the knife. Not bothering to wipe off the blood before she cut her own hand—Jaycen scrunched up her face in disgust—the girl let her blood drip into the box. She and Stephen both peered into it, her shoulders falling as Stephen burst out laughing.
“What the hell is that? It’s practically white!”
Everyone laughed, everyone apart from Jaycen. Mainly because it really just wasn’t that funny. So, what if her blood wasn’t a purple colour? The girl ran off, pushing past Jaycen and running back to the school, other students chanting after her: “Hey ho, clear bloods gotta go. Hey ho, clear bloods gotta go.”
This was wrong, so wrong.
Stephen saw her then, and grinned. “Well, well, look who we have here.” It felt like everyone turned to look at her then, and she only recognised a few of the faces. She knew none of their names, but she’d seen them in some of her classes. Luke, however, was not one of them he wasn’t even there.
“What you do mean look who’s here? Your friends came and got me,” she shouted back, people around her laughing.
He didn’t li
ke that. “Why don’t you come over here, eh? Why don’t you come over here and try the blood drop?”
Everyone fell silent as he held out a knife to her. So, this was what was happening. Stephen had somehow stolen the blood drop.
“Are you scared?” he laughed, bringing the knife to his hand and cutting it. “I’ll tell you what then, I’ll go first, okay?” He held his hand over the box, letting his blood drip into whatever was in it.
Now, everything was making sense, he wanted to prove that he was more violet than she was.
“Something tells me that I couldn’t have stopped you, even if I wanted to.” She walked around his friends to stand closer to the drop, unable to hold back her curiosity.
“I think she’s going to be so violet, did you see her throw him across the courtyard?” an unknown voice said. She heard it, and so did Stephen clearly, because his head shot up. He looked pained.
“Not as violet as me,” he sneered, pulling his hand back and holding his arms wide, basking in the applause. No one was really clapping, just a few people cheering, but if she was honest they looked drunk and like they would have cheered for anyone.
“And that is as violet as they come.”
She peered into the box, her breath catching in her throat at the large gold goblet inside. It was beautiful. The liquid inside was swirling around, like someone had just stirred it. A light violet colour in the middle was pretty, the colour fading the further out it got. Was this what they meant by violet blood? This hint of a colour in the middle of the liquid? All of the protesting, all of the bullying, for this? Was it really all worth it? The water settled, and the colour faded until it was completely clear and still.
Stephen held out the bloodied knife to her. “Let’s see what colour you’ve got.” It was a taunt, a dare.
“This is very unhygienic,” she informed him, bending down and wiping the blood on the grass.
Everyone’s chatter hushed as she cut her hand, trying not to wince at the pain. She had no idea why they were all watching her, they couldn’t see the liquid inside the blood drop. She held her hand over the drop, looking at Stephen before she let her blood mix in with the clear liquid. “Does it really mean that much to you?”
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