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“Wait!” a familiar voice shouted.
I lifted my eyes and nearly dropped the knife in shock.
“Sol?” I said, wondering how in the world he was right in front of me. I then narrowed my eyes and kept the knife pointed at him. I didn’t get along with the Kings, and I especially didn’t trust them. If he was here, things at Stormcloud had grown worse. My jaw clenched as I drew in a shaky breath through my nose, attempting to still myself as much as possible.
Sol held his hands up, showing that he didn’t mean me any harm. I didn’t know if I could trust him or not, though. What if this was a trap?
“Put the knife down, Theo,” Sol said in a steady voice. He looked tougher than he did last time I saw him, like he hadn’t been getting much sleep.
I swallowed hard, trying to push down the lump in my throat. My fingers tightened around the blade of the knife, sweat coating my palm. I was caught between fight or flight mode, and the back-and-forth made my head throb.
“Why? What are you doing here?” I asked him firmly. I didn’t even know how he managed to find me out here, but Sol was the mysterious one. He had his ways.
Sol glanced over his shoulder in a manner that even made me wary. Something had happened. Something bad.
“I need to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 21
BIBA
A heavy haze settled over me as I sat in my mathematical solutions class, trying to focus on the numbers written on the chalkboard at the front of the room. I was so exhausted that the numbers blurred together, making it even harder to understand what the teacher was mumbling on about. I could fall asleep right then and there.
I hadn’t been sleeping well at all lately. Fear clutched me every second, sending my mind into a nervous spiral. Something terrible was coming. I could feel it in my gut, which constantly churned with unease. It wasn’t all in my head, though.
Sol had disappeared. I always kept my eyes peeled for him in case he wanted to talk again, but he wasn’t around. At all. He wasn’t in his room or any of his classes. He just vanished, and I couldn’t help but think the worst.
The thought of him lying dead in the woods or even his locked room made me want to throw up. Maybe things were complicated between us, but I cared for Sol. I wanted good things for him because I believed that he was a good person. Honestly, he probably had the purest soul out of the Kings.
He didn’t cast me out. He didn’t watch me get beaten and humiliated in front of the school. During every moment Sol and I were together, he never hurt me. He showed that he had a heart, and that heart possibly wasn’t beating any longer.
It had to have something to do with Zephyr and Arvo. Sol’s disappearance had their names all over it, and not only was I worried for Sol, but I was petrified for myself as well. I wasn’t under Zephyr’s protection any longer, but I might be under his scope. What if I was the next to disappear?
“Until next time, class.”
I shook myself out of my thoughts, telling myself not to assume the worst. It was so hard not to, though. What the hell was actually going well in my life? Nothing.
I grabbed my things and followed the stream of students out of the classroom, trying to ignore the feeling of eyes on me. Maybe I was imagining people’s stares being directed at me, but why wouldn’t they look? I was seen as Zephyr’s ex-toy. I was a disgrace, a laughing stock. Even walking out of my room was hell because of the stares and whispers.
It wasn’t like I cared about having some high social status, but I didn’t want people to whisper about me or give me weird looks. At this point, I just wanted to be normal, but I couldn’t do that. To survive and get through this, I had to be extraordinary.
But how could I do that when it was hard to even get up in the morning? With each step down the hallway, I felt like I was dragging myself along, hardly able to pick up my feet. If someone attacked me right now, I wasn’t sure I had the strength to fight them off.
Zephyr and Arvo didn’t even have to physically do anything to me to hurt me. Just by outcasting me, they broke my heart. They broke my spirit by letting their new toys beat me into the ground right in front of them. Now, I felt broken in general because I was so fearful of what possibly came next that I couldn’t sleep. That was the power of the Kings.
