He felt me staring. “Yes?”
“The Orion who helped me through that panic doesn’t feel like the same Orion sitting beside me right now.”
The smile tilted. “What do you mean? There’s only oneme, love.” He cleared his throat and nodded at today’s lesson. “Shall we?”
Maybe he was right. Maybe he was just really good in a crisis. But as we got to work, the warmth I’d felt in the storage room slipped away by degrees until, by the end of class, there was none left.
Chapter 4Orion
The Orion who helped me through that panic doesn’t feel like the sameOrion sitting next to me right now.
The bell rang, and Harper gathered her stuff and went out. I watched her go, a strange ache in my chest. A nostalgia for the storage closet. I wished we were back there, locked away from the rest of the bloody school for a hundred more hours. In there, in the dark, I’d felt…
Honest.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and a grin spread over my face.
“Odin,” I said, heading toward the cafeteria for lunch. “How badly do you miss me? A lot or a whole lot?”
“I cry every day,” my big brother replied, but his voice sounded a little tight under the din of the crowded CHA hallways. “I know you’re in class now, but do you have a minute? It’s about Octavian.”
“Give me a second.”
I exited the nearest door, into the coppery September afternoon and found a bench overlooking the Narragansett Bay, where white-wingedsailboats and gleaming yachts cut wakes on the deep-blue water.
“What is it?”
“Don’t mean to alarm you,” Odin said. “I wondered if you’d heard from him lately.”
“Have I communicated with a member of our family?” I said dryly. “It’s not a holiday or birthday. Whyever would I do that?”
“Bloody facts,” Odin agreed.
He and I were the only ones to text or call somewhat regularly, and that meant once a month, if that. It just wasn’t in the Mercer blood to reach out. We’d been trained well to keep to ourselves.
“But why do you ask?”
“He’s acting strangely,” Odin said. “Not at all himself.”
“Drugs?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe. He’s jumpy and flies off the handle at the smallest slight, and that’s not like him.”
“Definitely not,” I said. Our middle brother was a quiet, almost shy fellow. I’d never seen him get upset, even as a wee kid. “But you’re at uni with him while I’m over here. I’m not going to be a good judge.”
“I know. I just wondered if he’d called you and told you something. Anything.”
“No,” I said. “Have Mum or Father noticed a change?”
“I’ll say. Tav demanded Father up his weekly allowance. Threw a fit about it until Father agreed. It was surreal.”
Tension coiled in my stomach. “I hate to say it, but that sounds like drugs.”
“I know, but my gut tells me it’s something else. He doesn’t look strung out and his grades are exceptional as always. Anyway, reach out to him, would you? Check in and see if you can’t pry something loose?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. Oh, hey, I know it’s early days of senior year, but how are things?”
