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A dark laugh escaped my mouth. “Welcome to the club, bitch,” I muttered to myself, snatching up a tray to catch up to Corvus at the end of the serving line. Barely paying any attention to what I was putting on my tray. I’d have Rook give it all a good sniff before I ate any of it, though I didn’t expect a repeat offense from the former queen of Briar Hall.
On a whim, I filled a bowl of the potato soup, slipping it onto Brianna’s table as I passed. “You should try it,” I told her. “It’s not half bad when it’s laxative free.”
Rook smirked at me as I slid into the table, but I couldn’t smile back, sensing something that was majorly off.
I couldn’t place it for a minute, but a glance at Grey made it pretty obvious. He sat across from me next to Rook, his tray stacked high with completely untouched food.
“Grey?” I asked, and he blinked, taken aback as though he hadn’t even noticed us sitting down.
“Everything good?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Just…” he pushed his tray away, grimacing. “Stomach’s bugging me.”
“Never stopped you before,” Rook said, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the table, getting a better look at his brother. “What’s up, Bro?”
“I said I have a fucking stomachache, Rook. Leave it.”
Rook lifted his hands in truce, reaching into his jacket for a quick nip of whatever was in his flask this morning.
Grey’s gaze tracked above our heads, to the big round clock on the wall, and his jaw clenched.
A girly shriek rose above the din of lunchtime conversation, forcing all other sound to hush. I spun, ready to launch off the bench. Rook and Corv were primed, too, but Grey…
He didn’t seem surprised.
I searched the crowd, finding the girl standing at the edge of the room like she’d just jumped from her seat. She pointed animatedly at our table. “Oh my god. Oh my god!” she squealed, practically fucking vibrating.
“It’s him! You guys, it’s him!”
The girl next to her got up, snatching the phone from the vibrating chick’s hand to look at what set her off. She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, eyes flitting between us and the phone.
No. Between Corvus and the phone.
The girl pointed straight at Corvus, her face tainted with a scarlet flush. “It’s Primal Ethos! Corvus James is The Bone Man!”
Somehow, I found Corvus’ hand on the bench next to me. His cold as stone under my touch. If he got any paler, he’d turn into the skeleton he’d worked so hard to hide from the world.
“Corv,” I hedged, my pulse racing as the cafeteria exploded in a raucous outcry of sound. Students rushed to see what the girls were talking about. Phones chimed under tapping fingers, searching. Eyes watching, wide and incredulous. All of them on Corvus.
On The Bone Man.
Fuck.
“Oh my god, can I, like, have your autograph,” a brunette asked, hurrying over with a sharpie while she pulled down the neck of her shirt to expose the tops of her round breasts. An eager gleam in her eyes that had my darkness roaring to the surface.
I was on my feet in a second, shoving her until her fat ass hit the tile. “Get the fuck back,” I hissed.
Corvus rose behind me, the entire bench scraping over the floor as he pushed free of the table, the screeching sound sending the cafeteria back into a buzzing silence.
“Wait,” the girl on the floor whined, but Corvus was already gone. Storming from the cafeteria in a wake of a hundred whispering voices.
