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I caught sight of Owen ahead of me and picked up the pace. Might as well wish the man good luck before the worst happened, right? But before I could reach him, he split off from the crowd, ducking quickly into a narrow stairwell. That particular staircase led to the basement, but I had only ever used it once. It ended in an awkward place downstairs, where I’d had to work my way through what felt like a maze of corridors to get to the large training room.
Huh. That’s weird. What’s he going down there for?
I knew for a fact that the Combat finals weren’t taking place until the end of the week. With Beedle’s luck, he’d insisted that it go that way, if only to get the rest of the tests out of the way before another disaster struck.
He might have been paranoid, but on the other hand, what the hell was Owen doing?
I couldn’t miss my finals. It would end me. Maybe Owen just wanted to use the bathrooms down there. Maybe he left his notes in a locker or something. I tried to put it out of my mind, but I couldn’t. For one thing, I’d had enough of secrets and sabotage—but for another, if I could just put a couple more minutes between me and my finals, maybe I could remember everything I’d spent the past weeks study. Maybe.
I stopped at the top of the stairwell and waited until I heard his feet on the stones below. Then I crept down after him as quietly as possible, but I couldn’t tell how quiet I actually managed to be. My blood rushed so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t hear anything else at all. I steadied my breathing when I reached the bottom, expecting to turn right, toward the gyms; then I saw Owen disappearing around the end of the corridor to the left.
Now I was beyond suspicious. There was literally nothing that way, not unless you wanted to get lost in the administrative corridors. I raced after him with soft feet, gliding over the stones so my footsteps made barely a whisper. I turned the corner just as he went around another one. I forced myself to go just a little bit faster. All it would take was one short corridor for me to lose both Owen and my way back.
I turned a corner and took three steps before I realized he wasn’t in front of me any longer. Before I could turn around, something hard and heavy collided with the back of my skull.
Stars exploded in my vision. Then I didn't see anything at all.
The last thing I felt was the stone floor smacking my face.
“Damn it, Piper.”
The plaintive whimper cut through my unconscious haze. I was bouncing slightly, just enough to nauseate me. My head and feet hung limp, but there was a stone vise around my waist. I was lying across stone. Living stone. Owen.
“I didn’t want to do that, you know,” he continued pathetically, his voice a rough scrape. “I really liked you. Not just because you force everybody to like you with those stupid pheromones either. I actually liked you. You could have done this with me. You could have been on the right side of this war.”
He sighed and shifted my weight, the stones of his shoulder grinding against my ribs. I wanted to cry out, to fight back—but I was still groggy as hell, and he could crush me between his massive stone hands. Besides, I was curious. What the hell was he talking about? Do what with him?
“Then those losers showed up, and I didn’t stand a chance. Of course a girl like you would hook up with those alpha pricks. Could have bonded with anybody, Piper. Literally anybody. I was right there! But you couldn’t even see me, could you? Because you were surrounded by assholes. Nothing a cunt likes better than a bunch of big-headed assholes.”
Wow, this kid was bitter. I wasn’t even mad. I was kind of impressed at just how delusional he was.
Then he chuckled, and it was one of the scariest sounds I’d ever heard. Completely cold, and way off-center. “You know, they told me that demon girls were different? That you didn’t have to be a Chadley McChadlerson to get laid by a succubus? Fucking liars.”
Great. He’s one of those. I rolled my eyes and hoped his monologue would wrap up soon because I was getting a wedgie. Of the frontal variety.
“Here we are. Well, Piper, now you get to see what you missed out on. Assuming you ever wake up,” he scoffed under his breath. “Shit. Lazy.”
That was it. Caution flew to the wind. “Oh my God, are you serious right now? You fucking knocked me out, you dweeb!”
“Shut the fuck up, we’re here,” he growled. He tossed me to the floor and pinned me down with one boulder-heavy hand. He twisted a thick wire around my hands and feet with the other, then tied it behind my back so I was arc
hed uncomfortably. We were in a small stone room. I could sense the weight of the castle over us, more oppressive than it had been in the basement. We were farther below ground, I’d bet anything on it.
“Where are we?”
He squinted at me. “I probably shouldn’t tell you.”
I focused, pushing past my fear and anger and the massive headache throbbing in my time to my heartbeat. Persuasion. Throw every fucking thing you have at him, Pipes.
“Come on, Owen, you know you want to tell me everything. Come on. Tell me what a genius you are. I’ll be so impressed.” The words tasted like bile, but I got them out.
It worked. He puffed up and started blabbing. “We’re in the bowels of the castle. The sub-sub-basement. You didn’t even know they had a sub-basement, did you? Well, they do. They’ve cut this stupid school so far down into the mountains, they could have given us all our own rooms.”
Water dripped from somewhere in the distance, and I bit my lip to keep from arguing with him. I couldn’t imagine keeping dorms down here would have been particularly pleasant.
“Why are we here?”
“To finish what I started,” he said proudly. “The magic of this school is anchored to the earth. Ha! You’d think with all the snow around here, they would’ve harnessed ice power. Can’t dispel it if it keeps coming, can you? But they’re all idiots. It’s been so hard, Piper. Can you imagine being a genius surrounded by pleebs for months on end? No, I guess you couldn’t.”
