Chapter 9
Dev
I walked the new girl back to her room in silence.
She seemed to prefer it.
Actually, she seemed to prefer I didn’t exist at all.
Her hands were clenched so tight in those leather gloves I could almost see the imprint of her nails through the material.
“So, how do you know K?”
“We don’t have to talk,” she said sharply.
I paused. “Is that a hard question?”
She whipped a glare at me that said I’d already crossed several invisible lines.
I almost smiled.
“I don’t need an escort,” she muttered. “So go back and tell K that.”
“So you know your way around already?” I asked mildly.
She stopped. Looked around. The corridors twisted in every direction, each one identical and miserable.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Fine by me. But if you get lost and wander into Chaos Wing? K will be pissed.”
“Chaos Wing?” she echoed.
“Caught that one, huh? That’s where they keep the serial killers. The real crazies.”
“Awesome,” she said under her breath.
“Don’t worry,” I grinned. “They only let them out on the full moon. I’ll keep you safe.”
She went pale—but stayed a little closer to my side.
Good. She had some survival instinct.
We turned the corner into Night Wing, and I stopped dead.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
She nearly crashed into me. “What—?”
I pointed.
Sitting right in front of her door was a whole raw chicken.
Pink. Bloody. Limp.
And arranged around it, in a messy little halo, were wildflowers.
She froze. “Is that…?”
“Yep.”
“A chicken?”
“Mm-hm.”
“With flowers?”
I nodded, resigned. “Welcome to Darkmoor.”
We both stared at it. Blood had soaked into the already pathetic carpet. The flowers still had clumps of dirt on them, like someone had ripped them straight from the ground.
“Is this… a threat?” she whispered.
I snorted softly. “No.”
“Then what—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
God save me. “He was probably trying to be… thoughtful.”
She blinked at me. “Thoughtful?”
I didn’t elaborate. If she knew it was Ash, she’d never sleep again.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said. “You go in.”
“Dev—”
“It’s fine.” I didn’t quite meet her eyes. Mostly because I could feel him not far down the hall, watching from the shadows like a feral cat with a crush.
She hesitated, then crouched.
Carefully—so carefully—she lifted one of the flowers that hadn’t been soaked in chicken juice.
A rose. Dark red. Thorn stem broken, petals still damp with dew.
Stolen from the back gardens, no doubt.
She held it close to her chest like it meant something. Like no one had given her anything soft in a very long time.
Then she nodded once, slipped into her room, and locked the door.
I let out a slow breath and looked down the hall.
“Ash,” I muttered under my breath, “you absolute menace.”
And started cleaning up the damn chicken.