The pain radiated sharper until I could hardly concentrate on setting one foot in front of the other. At the top of the staircase, I had to stop for a moment, clutching the second floor railing and squeezing my eyes shut, before I could even keep walking. When I stumbled into my bedroom, the headache was full-out blaring, drowning out any thought other than seeking relief.
I flopped down on my bed, and before I’d even pulled my sheet over me, my mind escaped into the blackness of sleep.
Chapter Eight
Ryo
Jenson Wynter and I had never been anything like friends, but I hadn’t realized he was a total asshat until this past week. My usual approach to student life was to keep my head low and my nose clean so I could drift along without drama, but whatever gods that existed hadn’t blessed me with infinite patience. When I caught his voice carrying out of the first-floor sitting room in that snarky tone he only took on with one person, I stopped in my tracks and strode over to the doorway.
Sure enough, there he was dusting the side tables while Trix whisked her broom across the floor, her back to him and her shoulders tensed. Of course the powers that be would have stuck them on cleaning duty together. Roseborne’s staff were by far the biggest asshats in the place.
“If you can’t handle the reality,” Jenson started up again, and I barged between them, turning to face him with a Try me look. He was a tall guy, nearly six inches on me I’d bet, but whip thin whereas I actually bothered to work out now and then. If he ever pissed me off enough that we had to come to blows, I’d put the money on me.
“Why don’t you shut your mouth for once?” I said. “Or maybe forever, if you can’t tell when your comments aren’t wanted?”
Jenson’s eyes narrowed at me, but his stance stiffened at the same time. “I can say whatever I want,” he retorted. “Who asked for your opinion?”
“You did, by making such a production that anyone walking by can hear you.” I motioned toward Trix. “She’s here. She’s going to stay as long as she feels like it. Work out your daddy issues some other way, all right?”
His jaw tightened. It was something of a low blow, derived from a piece he’d delivered in Composition class last year. I didn’t generally rub that kind of stuff in. But if he was going to harass Trix every moment she existed in his presence, he deserved it.
“It’s okay,” Trix said in her unflappable way, chucking the results of her sweeping from the pan into a garbage can. “I can ignore him. He’s not the first loser I’ve ever had shoot their mouth off at me.”
“We’ve got enough crap to deal with around here without him adding to it.”
“And I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that I’m trying to cut through the crap?” Jenson said in a barbed tone. If he was trying to get at something in particular, the point went straight over my head.
“You’re doing a shitty job of it then,” I replied, and turned my back on him too to focus on Trix. “Are you finished with your chores for this shift?”
“I think so. Just got to put the broom away.”
“I’ll keep you company.”
We walked past Jenson to the hall without another glance his way. He muttered something under his breath that from his tone was probably obscene. Water off my back, dude. As if I cared what some slick and smirking white-boy ass thought about me.
He couldn’t tell me anything worse than I already told myself on a regular basis.
“I really was okay,” Trix said as we made for the housecleaning supply room. “He’s irritating, but it’s not like he’s going to do any serious damage with all his hassling.”
“So, more like a mosquito than a bear on the scale of creatures you’d rather not deal with?” I suggested.
The half-hearted joke won me Trix’s rare laugh. She leaned the broom against the wall inside the closet. “Yeah, that’s a reasonable assessment.”
I wanted to ask what sort of presence she’d label me as in the range of possible animals—or whatever other metaphors she felt like using—but I wasn’t going to go all needy on her. That wasn’t the idea at all. Just take it easy, enjoy her company and make mine as enjoyable as possible in return, and welcome the fact that I got this extra brightness in my life after all. The real mystery was how I’d gotten lucky enough to end up with even this much.
Trix glanced across the hall as she shut the closet, and her smile fell. Her gaze lingered on the line of portraits on the opposite wall. She was thinking about her brother, no doubt—frustrated that she hadn’t unraveled more of whatever she imagined that mystery to be.
A pang shot through my chest. She cared so much that she’d come all this way to try to help him, not even knowing what kind of a mess she might get herself into. I wasn’t sure she ever realized how impressive that devotion was. Who in my life had I ever sacrificed half that much for?
It was better not to answer that question.
Better to distract her from those worries too. As much as I’d found I loved seeing how resolve could cast a steely glint across Trix’s face, taking her from pretty to outright gorgeous in an instant, it was a dead end. I couldn’t tell her that, and if I’d tried to I knew she’d have refused to give up anyway, so the least I could do was give her other, more pleasant things to occupy herself with.
I glanced farther down the hall, and inspiration lit. “Breakfast was worse than usual today, wasn’t it?” I remarked. It had been an incredibly grainy attempt at oatmeal with only pebble-hard raisins to add a little sweetness.
The face Trix pulled told me how much she agreed. “I’ve had worse,” she said. “But not by much.”
I grinned. “Here, it’s an hour or so before anyone goes on lunch duty. Let’s see if we can scrounge up something halfway tasty with the ingredients on hand.”
She arched a skeptical eyebrow at me, but I’d caught her attention. She followed me over to the kitchen, where the boiled oatmeal smell still hung in the air alongside the ever-present rose perfume.
I wasn’t sure exactly how the staff arranged our cooking supplies. A truck came by with a delivery every weekend, but I never saw the workers speak to anyone here. Even when I’d tried a, “Hey, man,” to the guy who’d been hefting the boxes over to the kitchen, he’d walked right by me without a twitch of his eyes, like a freaking zombie. I guessed I should be glad they’d never tried to eat our brains.
The food they brought generally appeared to be picked with about as much care as the undead would have brought to the task. If an item could be stale, it would be. The leafy vegetables were always wilting, the fruits bruised or under-ripe. Anything that came in a can would be the cheapest possible brand, mostly ones I’d never even heard of, and the flavor reflected the quality.
But—most of the time—the goal wasn’t to outright poison us, and our ruling asshats did have some sense of variety, so each delivery came with one or two gems that I’d probably only have considered baseline quality if it wasn’t in comparison to the rest. There were packets of old but useable spices at the back of one of the pantry shelves. I didn’t risk them when I was on official cooking duty, but just for me, I didn’t mind experimenting.