Jenson’s expression tensed as he tossed the arrows into the bin. Without a word to me, he spun and stalked back toward the target. One person from each of the stations was doing the same thing. Walking over to the targets… and turning to stand right in front of them, their heads raised, their bodies rigid.
A chill squeezed around my gut. What kind of insanity was this?
“Five shots and then switch,” Professor Roth was saying. “Take a point for each time you strike the target without hitting your partner; ten points each and you’re done. I’d like to keep injuries to a minimum today, please.”
He delivered that caution in a bored tone, as if seeing one of his students take an arrow to the arm or thigh—or, hell, chest—would be nothing more than a minor annoyance.
Jenson glowered at me where he’d braced himself in front of our target. He was tall enough that it only came up to his shoulders, and slim enough that plenty of surface area showed on either side of him, but that didn’t mean he was safe. I hadn’t even managed to hit the actual target every time during my first round of practice.
I remembered the sting when I’d pricked my finger on the arrow tip. Those things were sharp. One slip of the hand, and they could kill a person. Was everyone really going along with this?
It appeared they were. Delta’s partner had already loosed one arrow toward her, striking the bottom right edge of the target a few inches from her calf. The guy next to me grimaced as he missed the target—but also, thankfully, his partner—entirely. No one looked happy about this turn to events, but no one had hesitated either.
I don’t think you’re going to like this class very much, Delta had said. Did they do this every time? A shiver ran down my back.
“Whenever you’re ready, Miss Corbyn,” the professor said pointedly.
My fingers clenched around the bow. I stared at Jenson, the only student in the college who’d been overtly hostile enough that I might have enjoyed the thought of taking a few shots at him—in my imagination. In reality, he was a living, breathing human being, and I was a total amateur. My hand was already trembling with nerves.
I’d hit him. It wasn’t even a question. If I tried to aim at any part of the target, at least one time in those ten, I was going to fuck up and stab him open instead.
I looked over at Professor Roth. My body had already tensed automatically with the memory of the results of past defiance—the headaches, the blackouts. But the thought of going through with this made me balk even more.
“I’m not ready,” I said. “I haven’t had enough practice yet.”
I’m never going to have had enough practice to feel ready to do this.
“I’m afraid that completing this task is part of the expectations of the class,” Roth said, without a hint of regret. “All students are required to meet those expectations.”
I swallowed hard. I’d never outright refused an assignment before. How much worse would I be making things for myself if I did? Would it jeopardize my deal to stay here—my chances of solving Cade’s disappearance? If they kicked me out…
Resolve rose up through those doubts. If they kicked me out, I’d damn well find my way back in. I’d played along with everything they’d asked me to do so far. I’d drunk poison on command. This right here was my fucking line. For me, for Cade, and for every other student they were forcing into this sick game.
“No.” I dropped the bow. It hit the floor with a thud that sounded thunderous. “I’m not shooting at a person. No one should have to do that. You can take your stupid ‘classwork’ and shove it up your—”
It wasn’t like the headache. Agony lanced through my stomach so sudden and sharp I stumbled backward, clutching my belly as if it’d been slit open and I had to hold it together to keep my guts from spilling out.
Any words still in my throat seared away. I couldn’t even cry out in pain. It gripped me too tightly, piercing even deeper all through my abdomen.
My legs gave, and I fell to my knees.
Professor Roth had leaned out the doorway. “Who’s on infirmary duty?” he called into the hallway outside.
I gasped, and the sharp edges inside me seemed to grate together in an even more excruciating way. Two students hustled into the room. Roth pointed to me.
“Get her out of here. I expect she’ll be unwell for quite some time.”
Hands closed around my arms, the pressure lancing through my muscles. And then there wasn’t anything left in my head but the agony.
Chapter Fourteen
Jenson
“Wynter!”
The voice made my spine stiffen before I’d even looked around. Elias DeLeon was beckoning me from the doorway to the cafeteria with that authoritative attitude that raised all my hackles. He was hardly even a real teacher in his own class. He didn’t get to order the rest of us around out here.
I had been going to head out the door anyway, as soon as I’d tossed the remains of my soggy cereal with its battered berries into the trash. I set the bowl on the dirty dishes table and ambled over with no intention of sticking around.
As I reached him, I spotted an unmistakable head of shaggy green-and-black hair lurking just behind his shoulder. Elias had roped Ryo into whatever he was up to as well? I tensed even more with an uneasy prickling that collected in my gut.
“What do you want, Eli?” I asked in an offhand tone, marking down a point for myself at the tightening of his jaw. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that he hated that nickname.
The irritation didn’t sway him from his cause, though. “We need to talk,” he said, with a tip of his head toward Ryo. “The three of us. We can use my classroom. Come on.”
His demeanor still rubbed me the wrong way, but there was an urgency in his expression that I hadn’t seen very often. And I didn’t really want to get into a big argument about what this talk was probably about here in full view of most of our classmates.
“This had better be good,” I said, but I walked with them up to the second floor.
Elias, being the anal, overachieving ass he was, had already set the textbooks for today’s math class out on the desks. He propped himself against the teacher’s desk as if he were about to lead that class for just the two of us. Ryo hopped up to sit on one of the desks, nudging the textbook behind him. I stayed by the door.
Elias folded his arms over his chest, making the muscles under that ever-present suit jacket bulge. Even clean-shaven, the hard lines of his face and the commanding air with which he held himself made it clear he was older than either of us—probably one of the oldest “students” here. I’d wondered idly in the past whether he’d simply come to the college late or been here a while. He’d already been a fixture here when I’d arrived a year and a half ago.
How much longer did he have? I didn’t see any telltale signs of weakness, but he was the kind of guy who’d sooner off himself than let on that he was struggling.
“We need to discuss Beatrix,” he said.
The detached way he said her full name made me want to punch him in the nose. As if he could claim to be any kind of authority on her while he was using the full name she made faces at. How much time had he even spent with her?