—and then he was ripped away from me with a strangled sound, off into a black hole that wrenched his limbs from their sockets and tore his chest in half, blood and guts flying even as the monstrous mass swallowed him up. A cry broke from my lips. I hurled myself after him—
—and jolted upright on my bed in the Roseborne dorms, my forehead damp with sweat and my throat still stinging.
The impression of having watched my foster brother ripped apart lingered with a clenching of my stomach even as I took in the room, the sheets tangled around me, and my ragged breaths. For all I knew, something that horrible had happened to him here. Had I gotten even a little closer to understanding what? What had I actually accomplished in the week and a half I’d been here?
The gloom of the bedroom fed into those thoughts. I’d come up here after my afternoon cleaning duty to take a nap, half afraid I felt the prickling of another headache coming on, and it was still day outside, if muted by the constant clouds. The fractured sleep had only left my mind more muggy. I rubbed my temple.
“Everything all right?” Violet asked in that softly lilting voice that always surprised me. My head snapped around. She’d been perched on her bed so quietly that in my daze I hadn’t noticed anyone was in the room.
It was the first time I could remember her expressing any actual concern for me, rather than grudgingly answering the occasional question. Maybe the concern I’d shown her yesterday had won me points I hadn’t realized.
I hesitated, but the honest answer slipped out. “I feel like I’m not doing enough. I’m letting him down.”
I could tell from the set of her mouth that I didn’t need to spell out who I meant by “him.” By now, everyone at the school must have heard or heard of my inquiries about Cade.
Violet’s hands twisted in her lap. She looked down at them and then back at me. “I’m just saying, because you might not have noticed or bothered to look there, if you wanted to check out the whole school… There’s a maintenance shed around the side.”
The suggestion was vague, but her tone full of portent. Telling me something without outright telling me. I hoped even that wouldn’t bring some punishment down on her.
I scrambled up with a skip of my pulse. “Thank you.”
“Can’t say it’s definitely a favor,” she muttered, but then, as I reached for the door, she added, “Trix?”
I looked back at her. “Yeah?”
“You know… You’re here because you asked to stay. They weren’t after you. If you tell them you’re ready to leave, they might let you.”
Her expression had tensed as she said the words. She was offering me a possible escape route that she knew was out of reach to every other student, including herself. My chest constricted.
Her idea did make sense. I’d insisted on staying—the staff had wanted me to leave. We’d struck a deal without any specific timeline. If I said I was done, that I’d walk away and forget this place the way they could probably compel me to do, would the gate open for me then?
Would I even want to?
“That’s—that’s a good point,” I said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Taking that way out would make Jenson happy, I supposed. He’d been rubbing in how little I belonged from the first moment I’d arrived. Maybe Elias would be overjoyed too, since he seemed to find my presence so off-putting. But frankly, I didn’t give a shit what either of them thought.
The real question was whether I was actually helping anyone I cared about by staying here. What if Cade had been here and then gone, somehow or other, and I’d have found more answers out there? I might be wasting time focusing on this place when I only had a single shred of evidence he’d ever been here.
On my way down, I found Ryo leaning against the second-floor railing, waiting outside one of the classrooms. He smiled when he saw me—a slow, secretive smile that brought me back to the kitchen yesterday, to the press of his lips against mine and the toned muscle my exploring hands had discovered through his shirt.
He was a good kisser, giving and taking just the right amount to send a thrill through me from head to toe—a thrill that had become overwhelming as the minutes had slid by. He was too… nice to just drag into a corner somewhere and scratch an itch with. He’d be tender instead of rough, attentive instead of urgent, and that didn’t work when nothing we did was supposed to mean anything.
But I did want to kiss him again. My gaze lingered on his lips for a moment, and a weird prickling of guilt washed over me.
I wasn’t betraying anyone by fooling around with him. I didn’t owe my chastity to anyone. As much as I might owe on my tab in other sorts of ways, any commitment like that had been severed more than a year ago, and not by me.
“Hey,” I said, taking the route that would let me pass him. When I reached him, I tucked my hand around his for just a second and leaned in to steal a kiss as my way of giving that guilt the middle finger.
Ryo let out a pleased hum as he kissed me back. His smile was broader when we eased apart. “Now I’m twice as annoyed that I have to put up with Literary Analysis instead of running off somewhere with you.”
What were the punishments around here for skipping class? I didn’t think I wanted to encourage him to find out. I let go of him but brushed my fingers over his arm. “Maybe I’ll find you later.”
He chuckled. “I’ll look forward to that.”
What daylight there was had started to dwindle by the time I made it outside. The clouds had bruised with a purple hue. I wandered around the school and spotted the shed Violet had mentioned right away.
It wasn’t even its own building, just a wooden structure put together up against the brick side of the main school. The boards were scratched up and the shingles on the slanted roof curling. The door stood slightly ajar, which was probably why I’d only given it a brief glance before to confirm it held the sort of things I expected: rusting cans of paint, a tool kit, a rake, one of those old manual lawnmowers. Anything important wouldn’t have been left that easily discovered.
Now, I pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the dim space. The door jarred against a cot set up behind it, the blankets rumpled and the mattress dipped in the middle.
I hadn’t gone far enough in to notice that before, but even if I had, I doubted I’d have thought anything of it if Violet hadn’t specifically nudged me toward this spot. I’d have assumed some lesser staff person who looked after the grounds slept out here. But then, I hadn’t seen anyone working on the grounds since I’d arrived. From the layer of dust on the shelves opposite, no one had used those tools in a hell of a long time.
The bed was a little dusty too. It hadn’t been slept in recently. I picked up the blanket to give it a quick shake, and sneezed at the particles that tickled into my nose. With my next breath, I froze.
Another scent had touched my senses: a tart, coppery smell that took me straight back to the last time I’d hugged Cade close.
It had already faded by the time I’d fully recognized it. Without thinking, I yanked the blanket to my nose. A deep inhale filled my lungs with that same scent—faint and with a hint of stale sweat, but unmistakable.
I had enough wherewithal to shove the door shut so no one walking by would see me and wonder what insanity had grabbed me. Then I knelt on the cot and bent down to press my nose to the thin pillow.