Page 33 of Mayhem

Priya studied me for a few seconds. “And Nichlas? Because he came out of the east wing yesterday with a split lip and marks around his neck. I’m guessing the timing isn’t a coincidence.”

“I found him. He betrayed me a long time ago and almost got me killed, then disappeared before I could settle it. I came to Aldrich because I finally tracked him here.” I folded the shirt over my arm and picked up the skirt. There was no reason to dance around the part they would discover eventually. “Yesterday was the first conversation we’ve had since then. He still thinks being scared excuses what he did. I disagree.”

Maren’s face tightened. “When you say settle it, what exactly are you planning to do?”

“That depends on how entertaining he is before I’m finished.”

Priya stared at me, then glanced toward Devon. He opened his mouth and apparently thought better of whatever he had been about to contribute. Good. The conversation had finally reached a useful question.

Priya brought it back to the other problem. “Where does Malakai fit into all of this? Because people saw him following Nichlas yesterday, and then neither of you showed up anywhere for a while. Now Hunter is sending clothes to your room. Those things feel connected.”

“He followed Nichlas because he wanted to see what I was doing. He interrupted me before I could put a knife into him, dragged me into an empty classroom, and we fucked. Afterward he took me to Hunter, Hunter found out why I’m here, and we made the deal. That’s the entire sequence. You can stop trying to reverse-engineer it from hallway gossip.”

I gathered the clothes and headed for the bathroom while Priya was still looking at me like she needed another minute to reorganize several assumptions. “I’m changing. If Hunter expects me at his table, he can explain the rest himself. I’ve already spent more time discussing yesterday than I intended to.”

By the time we reached the cafeteria, I had already decided the shoes were staying in my closet after today.

They looked good. I could admit that much without developing feelings about them. The problem was that every step reminded me somebody else had chosen them, somebody else had decided how I was supposed to look walking through Aldrich, and I had never responded particularly well to people arranging pieces of my life without asking. Priya seemed pleased with the result, though. She had spent most of the walk downstairs adjusting the cuff of my blazer and telling Maren the tailoring was unfairly good while Devon kept insisting we were going to miss the only decent breakfast potatoes if they didn’t walk faster.

The cafeteria was already full when we came through the doors. Aldrich managed to make breakfast look expensive even when people were eating scrambled eggs under fluorescent lights. Long tables filled the center of the room, with smaller groups gathered around the edges and enough blazers, watches, and family names in one place to fund a small country. I had been eating here for days without caring much about who sat where. That morning, I noticed the structure before I reached the first table.

People noticed us too.

A few heads turned as we crossed toward the food line, then stayed turned longer than usual. Someone near the windows said my name low enough that I only caught the shape of it. Priya heard it too. Her hand brushed my elbow, and when I looked over, she had that expression again, the one she had worn in my room when she tried to explain that being noticed by the Kings meant something here.

“I know,” I said before she started.

She pressed her lips together and let it go.

We made it halfway to the line before Maren slowed. I followed her attention toward the far side of the room and found the reason immediately.

Hunter sat at the center of a table near the windows, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup while Ronan read something on his phone beside him. Malakai was sprawled in the chair on Hunter’s other side with enough disregard for posture to make the expensive furniture look temporary. There were four other people at the table, two I recognized from the library and two I didn’t. Nobody around them looked particularly relaxed.

Malakai saw me first.

His attention locked onto me so quickly that I knew he had been scanning the room already. The grin that followed made me regret giving him anything to be pleased about yesterday. His gaze traveled over the altered uniform, paused at the shoes, then returned to my face with an expression that told me he knew exactly who had arranged all of it.

I stopped walking.

Priya nearly ran into my shoulder. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Hunter looked up a second later. Malakai must have said something because Ronan’s attention moved toward us too, but Hunter was the one who lifted two fingers and crooked them once in my direction.

I stared at him as 1he three of them went quiet beside me, all waiting to see what I did.

“He’s summoning you,” Priya said eventually.

“I can see that.”

“He doesn’t usually do that.” Priya turned toward me fully. “Echo, you made a deal with him yesterday and woke up to custom clothes this morning. Maybe don’t start the day by testing whether publicly ignoring him counts as behaving.”

I looked back toward the table. Hunter had already returned to his coffee. He wasn’t watching to see whether I obeyed. He had apparently decided I would.

That irritated me enough that I almost turned around. Then I remembered Nichlas. I handed my bag to Maren. “If I’m not back before class, assume I found a reason to make breakfast complicated.”

Devon took the bag from her before she could answer. “That sentence does not make me feel better.”