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“How does it work?” I ask.
“She can put things in your mind. Can make you think you want something, or see something. Her brother has a similar gift, but he’s honed his gift differently. His favorite ruse is changing his face so you see someone else when you look at him. Oberon knows how many Fae females he’s tricked into sleeping with him that way.”
Bane? I’d almost forgotten about her twin brother. Compared to Inara’s love of the spotlight, he seemed content creeping in the shadows. “That’s . . . that’s horrible.”
She shrugs, her expression darkening. “How do you think Inara’s been able to control the prince? Keep him coming back to her again and again?”
I swallow, the memory of that night I was inside his head floating to the surface. Then there was his tense struggle in the classroom that day when Inara tried to service him.
Ugh. If what Eclipsa says is true, that’s basically sexual harassment, if not rape.
His conflicting emotions toward her suddenly make a bit more sense.
“Look,” I say, holding out my red Everlast boxing gloves for her to unstrap. “I’m just tired of having no control over my life.”
She nods as she slips off my gloves. “I get it, I do. But control doesn’t always mean safety. I’m sure that poor shadow had no idea she’d wake up in a few hours to an escaped basilisk. Now”—she points to the adjacent black mat near a wall covered in mirrors—“Less talking, more stretching.”
I follow her lead to the smaller mat, contorting my body into the Lord of the Dance pose. The concentration needed to keep from falling on my face is almost enough to still my mind. Almost.
But the images of my next-door bedmate turned to stone, her mouth spasmed wide with fear, won’t leave. After a few more poses, I break the silence with a question. “What if her death wasn’t an accident?”
Eclipsa unfolds her graceful body, canting her head so that her silver braided ponytail falls over one dark eye. “What do you mean?”
I give a detailed account of my dream, how the basilisk seemed interested in me, at first. Plus I mention the selkie that wasn’t drugged at the Selection, in case they’re somehow related. “Both incidents led to someone around me dying,” I point out, half in realization. “And the orc.” I tuck an errant strand of sweat-damp hair behind my ear. “That can’t be a coincidence, right? What if, in both instances, I was meant to die, but something protected me?”
My fingers itch to stroke the pendant hidden between my breasts, but I busy my hands retying the silver band around my braid instead.
Eclipsa isn’t the only one who’s allowed secrets.
She doesn’t say much, but her demeanor changes after that. Her gaze sweeps the gym, body rigid and alert. And when I shower, she stands guard near the gross plastic curtain instead of washing off.
After I change and towel dry my hair, she takes me aside. “Go pack your bags.”
My heart freefalls into my stomach. This is it. I’m being expelled. Maybe the deaths are my fault for some reason. Maybe Eclipsa knows about my pendant and that’s somehow attracting the creatures. Whatever it is, I feel sick. The walk back to my dorm seems like miles instead of a few hundred feet.
Inside, I silently pack my bag (singular). Totally dejected.
Everything I own—a few borrowed clothes and toiletries—fits easily in the black Nike duffel Mack gave me. Ruby rouses from where she passed out on the safe, flies drunkenly toward me, and opens her mouth to no doubt yell something obnoxious.
But when she spots Eclipsa, posted stoically against the door frame, Ruby’s lips slam shut and her eyes go wide.
“Why is there a Winter Court assassin in our room?” Ruby whisper-yells next to my ear. The pungent scent of brambleberry wine nearly bowls me over.
“She can hear you,” I whisper-yell back.
Tears sting my throat. Mack isn’t here, and when I passed Evelyn’s open door on the way here it showed her room empty too.
I won’t even get to say goodbye to my two friends, the entirety of the people in this academy who will actually care that I’m gone.
Now that I’m faced with the reality of leaving, I understand a quiet truth: I want to stay here.
Sure, it’s dangerous, and we’re treated like dirt. But I like my friends. I like the academics. I even like being a shadow and the purpose it provides me. And the idea of becoming a weapon, of taking back the power I’ve never had . . . intoxicating.
Only all of that is gone now.
We traipse across the snow. As a whisper of warmth settles over my cheeks, I crane my head up to see the ghost of a sun. I mean, it’s buried behind a curtain of dirty gray winter clouds, but it’s there. Its fiery outline visible.
Just my luck, the day I get kicked out is the day the sun returns.
