He was openly declaring war—against me, and against Pandora.
And if he roped the other frat brothers into it, that means he must have at least some support from my father.
Once I’m out of the building, I check my phone again. One new message from Pandora from fifteen minutes ago.
Pandora
Blabe, I think the wallpaper in the library is bleeding. From boredom.
Blaze
Are you sure those aren’t just your eyes?
Pandora
You’re right, my eyes are bleeding too. Come save me from all the knives and needles boringly poking through my skin.
Knives poking through her skin? I wonder what that’s supposed to mean.
I do know that I desperately need a dose of Pandora right now. Imake my way to the library, where I find Pandora sitting in a private study room, staring up at the non-bleeding walls.
Pandora smiles when I enter the room.
“Hey! You’ve come to rescue me from eternal boredom?” Pandora asks, reaching out for me.
I approach, bending down to kiss her before I take a seat beside her. “I was promised bleeding walls.”
She giggles and pushes my shoulder. “Gotta start hallucinating if you want those.” She sighs and points to her laptop. “I am so over biochem. So I switched to calculus, which I thought would at least be faster and require way less memorization, only it turns out I hate math right now too.”
I peer at the screen to see the examples of calculus. “I took that class last semester,” I say.
“So you can help me study?” Pandora asks.
I shake my head. “Nope. I got a C.”
Pandora laughs again. This is why I stood up to my frat brothers. This laugh is so much more important than any notion of brotherhood or promises of future riches.
After her laughter dies down, Pandora asks, “What happened?”
I tilt my head at her. “Why do you think something happened?”
She raises her hand and rubs it along my jaw. “You are really tense, right here. And I knowIdidn’t piss you off, and River and Asch are both doing their own thing, so…”
“I can handle it,” I say, clenching my jaw tighter.
Pandora pouts at me. “Didn’t you guys get on my case that I can’t handle everything alone? That we’re a team, or some trite BS like that?”
“It wasn’t trite,” I argue. “It was beautiful.”
“It really was.” Pandora scoots her chair closer to me. “So come on. What happened? Who do we need to stab?”
I shouldn’t tell her, if only because I don’t want to encourage her violent tendencies… but if I didn’t like violent tendencies, I wouldn’t be with Pandora.
“Ezio is back,” I say quietly. “He rallied up the other Kappa Alpha brothers and staged a mini coup. Like I care about them anymore.”
Pandora goes very still. “Oh. Well. Where are they? I just sharpened my knife, so I can stab at least six of them without it being too dull. Then I can stab the rest with the dull blade.”
I smile and shake my head. “No. Don’t cause a scene here, where there are witnesses. We’ll figure out Ezio later.”
