Page 20 of Revenant

Heat flashes in Bastian’s eyes as if I’ve just challenged him to swing first. He squares up, jaw tight, every inch of him ready to bite back. “Oh, don’t act all high and mighty,” he snaps, matching my fury for a beat. “As if you’ve never gotten carried away.”

It happens, sure. I’m not pretending I’m some saint. But that doesn’t give him a free pass tonight. His recklessness has been getting worse, not better, and I’m done pretending it’s just a one-off slip.

“Everything’s going to be fine.” Bastian says it with that maddening, laid back confidence, as if he didn’t just blow the whole damn night to pieces. He shrugs, unbothered. “Prycey boy can handle it, yeah? Same as you did earlier. By tomorrow, it’ll all be back to normal.”

“If she comes back on campus. And that’s a big if, Bas.” I drag a hand down my face, trying to scrape together a plan—anything we can do right this second—but my mind’s a bloody wasteland. Not a single decent idea.

“Oh she’ll be back. They always come back.” He raises his eyebrows twice like this is still some kind of joke.

“Bastian, always the optimist,” Koen says, his voice dropping into that dangerous calm of his. Which can either mean the bomb’s been diffused, or it’s about to detonate.

“What happened to the girl?” Eryx asks, his eyes cutting toward me as if I’m the one who screwed up.

I laugh. “What? Can’t even say her name?” I challenge.

“Actually, yeah,” Elias barks, cutting in before Eryx can continue. “Let’s put a pin in this whole Bastian fiasco, yeah? How about you explain why you’re suddenly all chummy and having a little dance with her?” His fuse is burning down to nothing.

“You can’t deny the similarities,” Bastian adds—because of course he does—clearly not understanding he needs to be seen and not heard right now.

“They’re uncanny,” Koen says, still sounding like he can’t quite wrap his head around it—never mind the fact he’s been randomly eye-fucking her from across the fire all night.

“Similarities?” Elias gapes, like that word doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he saw tonight. “It’s like staring into a bloody mirror showing us a past we buried six feet under. It’s the same fucking person!”

“It’s not Veil, Elias! Chill the fuck out!” I snap, his ignorance grinding on my last nerve. “Her name is Alicent. Alicent Calder, and you would know that if you, I don’t know? Ever showed up to meetings or answered your damn phone!”

“How is this my fault?” he questions.

“It’s everyone’s! We knew she was being admitted, but you’ve been MIA doing God knows what, Bastian’s out here humping and feeding on anything that so much as twitches, Eryx is moodier than usual—and that’s really saying something—and Koen, who genuinely can’t contain himself, is making every situation she’s in ten fucking times worse.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Bastian growls.

“And you reckon you’re so much better than us, do you? That it?” Elias fires back.

Yep. The bomb’s about to go off.

“In this situation? Yeah, I think I’m handling her being here a lot better than the rest of you.”

Koen rolls his eyes hard enough to strain something. “Oh, right. Cuddle her, dry hump her, pant in her ear—yeah, stellar handling on your part, Pryce. We’ll have another Veil on our hands in no time.”

I don’t know what crawled up his ass, but when Koen gets like this, there’s no stopping him. He’s usually the reasonable one, but right now he wants a fight—and he’s about to get one.

“Oh, spare me. As if you haven’t been undressing her all night.” I shoot back, laughing sarcastically. “Couldn’t take your eyes off her. What’s wrong? Jealous? Come on, bello. You know I’ll let you watch, maybe even sneak a taste if you’re a good boy.”

“Enough!” Eryx roars, shutting everything down. Koen scoffs under his breath, but he doesn’t say another word—because he knows I’m right. “We were supposed to be scouting for recruitment. Or did you lot forget that part?”

“My girl is all in,” Bastian says, smug as sin.

“The one who ran screaming into the woods?” I deadpan.

He shrugs. “Eh, she just needs a little time to adjust.”

Eryx sighs as if he’s just aged a century. “You should’ve waited for Pryce.”

Bastian snorts. “Yeah, right. You should’ve seen him lose his mind when Alicent stepped past the border. Proper possessive,” he croons, singing the last word as if this is all a big joke.

Elias acts like he hasn’t heard a single word we’ve said, still stuck on the fact that Alicent is a carbon copy Veil. The one person we all have a reason to loathe. “Veil always had something up her sleeve,” he whispers. “But this…this is a whole new level of manipulation.”

“She’s dead, E. That’s not her. Once you talk to her, you’ll see that.”