“You do what you have to do,” he said. “Just remember that you don’t owe me anything.”
“Hey.” I poked him in the chest. “Same goes for you.”
He grinned at me in a way I was starting to find way more adorable than was probably wise and headed up to his dorm. I turned in the opposite direction.
I wasn’t planning on actually sleeping yet, but if I was going to pull off what I’d planned to attempt tonight, I should probably make a show of going to bed. The thought of making this last-ditch effort made me so restless it was probably better I lay down and at least pretended to rest while giving my nerves a chance to settle. If it was a little early to turn in, I didn’t think any of my roommates would care that much.
I reached the top of the stairs to the girls’ dorms and hesitated there. A few of the students were clustered around the door to my bedroom, leaning past the doorframe and then murmuring to each other. A thread of uneasiness pierced through my chest.
“What’s going on?” I asked, walking over.
The girls didn’t answer, just eased back to let me through. I stepped inside, my heart already sinking, to find Violet and a couple of my other roommates standing around Delta’s bed. The covers were drawn back from Delta’s face, her red hair stark against the white pillow beneath it, but I couldn’t see much else between the observers.
“She’s gone,” Violet said, and glanced up. Her mouth tightened when she saw me.
One of the other girls who I thought might be younger than me wrung her hands. “What do we do? I didn’t think she’d really— She’d only been sick for a few days—”
The girl between her and Violet shook her head. “It’d been creeping up on her for a while. The staff probably already know, but if it makes you feel better, you can go look for the dean or one of the professors. They’ll take her out when they’re ready.” Her tone suggested she didn’t expect them to be ready with any urgency.
I hugged myself as I approached the bed. Delta’s cheeks had caved in on themselves, almost as dark as the rings that surrounded her eyes. Those eyes stared blankly straight ahead, already starting to glaze. Her lips, pale and cracked, hung slightly open, as if she’d been dragging in one last breath when her body had failed her.
No. I wasn’t sure how much I’d even liked Delta, but I’d never have wished this on her. Just this morning, she’d made it to breakfast. She’d seemed like she might be getting better, not worse. How could—
I spun around before I’d even known I was going to move. If I could just—if there was some way—
The fractured thoughts chased me down the stairs and all the way out onto the darkened lawn. Just enough moonlight seeped between the strewn clouds overhead that I didn’t need my phone to guide me. I hurried along the wall and into the sparser stretch of forest there, my chest getting tighter by the second around my racing heart.
I recognized the spot from the jagged stump where a tree had toppled sometime in recent months. Just past that, at about my shoulder height on the wall, I should find Delta’s rose…
It wasn’t there. Leaning close, I made out a couple of narrow, pointed leaves, yellowed and shriveled, where the blossom had been. Shit. I dropped to my knees, fumbling across the uneven ground below in the dark.
My fingers brushed something dry and delicate that gave a soft rasp as it shifted. I froze and peered closer.
A small heap of brown petals lay at the base of the rosebush, a few of them still clinging tenuously together. Their edges had cracked, one already crumbled into smaller fragments.
My stomach lurched. I braced my hands against the earth, willing down the urge to vomit.
No one could fix that flower, no matter how green a thumb they had. There was no restoring that bloom to life. If I was being honest with myself, I doubted I could have rejuvenated it even if I’d started trying when I’d first seen it. And that was assuming it was growing in a natural way and not as much dictated by the whims of the staff as everything else here appeared to be.
I stood up on shaky legs. The image of Delta’s wasted face remained in the back of my mind. When I closed my eyes, it only loomed more vividly.
She couldn’t have been that much older than me—none of the students looked like they were older than their mid-twenties, and most of them younger than that. Was that how it went for everyone? They were trapped here for however long the college decided their punishment should last and cut down completely after just a few years?
How much longer did Cade have? Ryo? Any of them?
How short would the rest of my life be if I stayed?
Twigs crackled underfoot. I looked up to see Elias making his way over, his expression solemn, looking weirdly formal in one of those suits he always wore.
He stopped beside me and took in the bush and then the petals on the ground. “I heard about Delta. I thought you might be out here.”
His rose had been starting to crinkle up. Had he already prepared himself to go the same way she had?
“It’s awful,” I said. “Like the life was just drained out of her. I wish there was something I could have done…” I turned back to the rosebush. “I’m good with plants out there in the regular world, you know. That’s what I want to do when I’ve saved up enough: start some kind of business setting up people’s gardens for them and looking after them.”
“These aren’t your standard roses,” Elias said. “Sun and fertilizer aren’t going to stop them from dying. And you shouldn’t be worrying about this anyway. You’re leaving tomorrow, like you’re supposed to. It’s okay, Trix. No one here expected you to save us.”
Delta definitely hadn’t. I remembered her annoyance at my shows of concern. But Elias’s words twisted me up inside with a different memory: seeing the relief on his face when I’d accepted the dean’s offer. He hadn’t spoken a word to me.
I gave him a defiant look. “I think I might have changed my mind about leaving.”
His lips jerked into a frown. “Over this? You couldn’t have done anything to stop it, I promise you. You have to think—”
I held up my hand to stop him and then rested it carefully on his chest over the lapel of his suit jacket. Over the spot where his heart would be thumping. Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted to see the flicker of heat that would light in his eyes like it had when I’d stepped close to him before. To remind myself that some part of him liked having me here.
“I don’t have to do anything for anyone,” I said. “I got overwhelmed in the moment and thought I’d screwed everything up, but I’m not ready to totally give up. Thank you for trying to protect me, though, even if I didn’t always like how you were going about it.”
“That really is all I’ve been trying to do. Protect you.” His voice came out low and a little rough, and a tingle shot over my skin, as if I hadn’t just taken my fill of another guy less than two hours ago. It was hard not to wonder just how much passion might lurk behind that starched exterior.
I tipped my head toward the deeper forest. “I know about Cade now too. Ryo showed me. I don’t know if I can leave without at least trying to talk to him, even if he can’t understand with… what they’ve done to him.”