She continues through the song even as tears well in her eyes.
“Fuck, I hate this,” Julian whispers beside me, his fingers laced with mine as he squeezes my hand against his growing anxiety. “Who would do this to her?”
The fact that I’m the first one I would blame isn’t lost on me, and given the side-eye I get from Nolan, I guess he’s thinking the same.
“I don’t know, maybe…” Nolan trails off as if unwilling to say the name aloud, but he doesn’t have to; we all know who he’s referring to.
I feel Felix leave, the shadows pulling and moving to allow him passage, and while I feel like I can breathe again without him here, I also hate to know he’s free out there.
Father should have locked him away for what he did; instead, he took the chance to use him, turning my murdering brother into the perfect weapon. He’s always done anything he can to gain power.
“We shouldn’t turn Felix loose on him, right? Like we should ask him about it before…” Julian seems unsure, and I understand why.
He loves Wren.
I’m almost 99.9% sure they’re mates; though, with her being a dud, I’m not sure how that will work out. If she were fae, the bond would have snapped into place the moment they touched.
“No, we need to talk to him. It might not have been him.” We owe him the benefit of the doubt, even if I’m not hopeful.
Gavin all but hates Wren; this seems like something he one hundred percent is capable of, even if I hate to admit it.
I’d thought he’d calmed down a little after seeing the state of her over the last week. He’d helped us figure out her hair, and even before that was a lot less abrasive with her.
But finding out she and Dimitri had been sneaking around together seemed to have thrown him right back off the deep end, maybe even worse than before. I actually haven’t seen much of him since the night we found out, and while that’s not really Wren’s fault, I don’t think Gavin uses his rational brain when it comes to her.
None of them do.
We stand watching the train wreck that is Wren’s performance, and I have to hand it to her; she’s strong. Lesser people would have run for the hills, unable to face the humiliation, but she plays through as if nothing is wrong, choking back her tears and obvious fear.
The song comes to a close, and I watch as she pushes to her feet on wobbly legs before turning to the crowd and bowing. Nobody claps, and as I look out over the eyes that stare back, one set stands apart from the rest. Her aunt’s eyes blaze with anger and actually glow a nasty yellow color that tells me she’s something other than human.
As if I needed more reason to hate her, to prey on a mortal is disgusting, and a mortal child…
The second she’s past the curtain, she bolts, and we scramble to do the same. Julian, not giving a single shit about anyone but her, pulls me across the stage, our fingers still intertwined as he calls out for her, even after she’s disappeared from sight.
We burst out the back door into the cool night air and the nearly empty quad. A few people linger around, but I don’t see her.
“Where is she?” I hear the panic in Julian’s voice and can’t imagine how he must be feeling. If I were in his shoes, watching him fall apart like this…
It would break my heart.
“We’ll find her. Come on,” I tug him toward the dorms. “Let’s check places she might go. We’ll check the dorm, Nolan, you—”
“I’ll check the pool house,” he says, cutting me off, which is just as well because other than the damn library I have to constantly keep her away from, I have no idea where she likes to go.
“I’ll head to my office, but someone should check the library, and I don’t know where Felix fucking went,” Dimitri hisses, looking around as if my brother will come back. He should know just as well that Felix only does what serves him or my father.
“I’ll check the library,” Julian says, squeezing my hand before pulling away, and I don’t want to let him go, but I know I have to.
This isn’t about me.
Before we can actually move from the spot, I feel it, the shift in the shadows, and I pause. Not three seconds later, Felix walks out of the shadows behind a tree, his hand wrapped around the back of Gavin’s neck as he directs him toward us as if he might run.
Not that I would blame him; most people do run from Felix, just given his reputation, but Gavin and the guys know exactly what kind of monster he is.
“Here.” Felix shoves him toward us, making him stumble forward, nearly running into Nolan, who glares down at him with anger I’ve never seen before, burning in his eyes.
“It wasn’t me!”
