AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Didn’t seem like the most important thing right now,” I mutter.
“Most important…Val!” She tugs me into a chokehold of a hug, and I let out a surprised grunt. “You’re my sister and you’reengaged!” She grabs me by the shoulders and holds me at arm’s length. “It is Reid, right?”
I snort. “Yes. It’s Reid.”
“Just checking.” She yanks me back into the hug. “I’m still going to give him shit for another year or so, but Iamhappy for you. Good God, that ring ishuge!”
I rest my chin on her shoulder and hug her back, rapidly blinking to fight off the tears. For a perfect, blissful moment, it feelsnormal.
“When did he ask you? How did he do it?”
I pull back, my face heating at the memory. We should probably come up with a different story to tell people. I wave my hands in front of my face. “We can talk about it later when we’re not in a hurry.”
She narrows her eyes but relents. “We can use this,” she says, slipping her necklace over her head.
I cross my arms as I watch her lay the jewelry on the bed, tug a single strand of hair from her scalp, then collect the candles sitting on her dresser.
“We never learned anything like that at the academy,” I say. “Especially not freshman year.”
Her eyes flick to me only for a moment before refocusing on the knife she flipped out of her bracelet.
“Adrienne,” I say, voice louder now as she lines the blade up with her palm. “Where did you learn this?”
“Like you’ve never taught yourself something outside the curriculum,” she scoffs, and it sounds all wrong. Her pitch is too high, her gaze pointedly avoiding me now.
I grab her wrist before she can make the cut. “Where. Did. You. Learn. This?”
“From Calla, okay!” She shakes me off, presses the knife into her hand, then holds her bloody palm between us like a question. “Now are you going to let me help you with this or not?”
Blood drips off the sides of her hand as I peel my gaze back to her face. FromCalla? But the last time she saw Calla, she was a kid, way too young to…
I take a step back, then another.
Anya’s vision about Calla, had it been about this?
“Adrienne,” I whisper.
“No,” she snaps, and she clenches her bloody hand into a fist. “You don’t get to give me that look. You don’t get to decide how I feel about things. How I feel about her. She’s my sister too.”
I shake my head back and forth, back and forth, though I already know what she’s going to say before the words leave her mouth. The spells Adrienne’s been able to do that I never would have mastered at her age, her knowledge that was far too advanced for her, the things she had no business knowing…
“She’s been helping me this entire time.”
I barely hear the rest of her explanation, even as I ask follow-up question after follow-up question.Since when? How? Why?
Finding the note and Mom’s nail in Adrienne’s bed was no mistake.
It was just the only time I’d gotten there first.
They’ve been sending notes back and forth since I arrived at Auclair and told Adrienne the truth about Westcott and Calla.
“Why did you pretend you were as surprised by that note as I was?” I demand. “Why nottell me?”
“Because if I did you would have made me stop!”
“Of course I would have! Adrienne, you—”
“Can’t trust her. Yeah, I’ve got that. You’ve only said it a thousand times. But she is still our sister. And she’s with that psychopath. I’m sorry for what she was willing to do to Reid, I am. But I also believe her when she says there’s more to the story. I believe her when she says she’s trying to make up for it and she wants to help. Doesn’t she mean anything to you anymore?”
