Chapter 9
Periwinkle
In our shared dorm bedroom, Raze has usually preferred to stick to the shadows—although my most delightful memories are of the times we’ve spent together in physical form.
We haven’t had that kind of intimate fun since we got back from our first mission. During the few days we’ve spent at the school, Raze has hardly seemed to be in the dorms at all. I was starting to worry that he’d asked for a new room.
So when I walk in after lunch and sense his presence coiled in the shadows beneath his bed, I want to break out the streamers and confetti.
As I turn toward him, he materializes so he’s standing by the side of the bed. His dark gaze, the eyes that can kill tempered by his contact lenses, rakes over me with an intensity that leaves my skin tingling.
“No one hassled you in the cafeteria?” he asks.
I shake my head and step toward him with a smile. “People keep whispering and gossiping, but they seem to have decided it’s mostly better to leave me alone. Other than Fen and Brine, of course. I ate with them, and everything was fine.”
“That’s good. No one should be picking on you, especially after everything you’ve done for other shadowkind.”
There are lots of things I’d like to do with this other shadowkind right now. Simply snuggling would be scrumptious.
But when I take another step toward him, Raze’s posture tenses just enough that I notice. He hasn’t moved toward me at all, I realize.
Apprehension wafts off him, vodka-sour. He’s purposefully keeping his distance—as far away from me as he can get in the small room.
I stop, my throat constricting. “I’m glad I can count on you to look out for me.”
Raze’s voice comes out gruff. “Always. If you need anyone put in their place, I’ll be happy to teach them the lesson they deserve.”
His teeth flash against his tan skin in a brief motion that’s almost a grin, but it fades just as quickly as it formed.
I want to walk right up to him and wrap my arms around him, to thank him with the gesture as well as my words. But if something about being near me is making him uncomfortable, I won’t push.
The depressing reminder that even he is bothered by the accidental connections I created reminds me of my resolve to do whatever I can to sever them. I offer him another smile and return to the door. “I’ve got a little more work to take care of. You can have the room to yourself.”
“Peri!”
When I glance back at him, Raze looks pained. A twisted, bittersweet current flows from him to me. “It’s your room too. I never want you to leave.”
He doesn’t exactly want me here either, though. Lies can’t travel through the tap between us.
“I know!” I say brightly. “I really do need to get something done.”
I step into the hall and go off in search of a certain wintery fae.
Hail doesn’t respond to my knock on his bedroom door. When I push my awareness toward his ice-tinged part of our connection, I can tell he’s not in there. I venture out of the dorms and on to the cafeteria I just left, the last place I saw him.
The room is set up like a casual restaurant today, with checkered tablecloths and a few students walking around refilling glasses now that everyone has ordered.
Hail is leaning back in his chair where he’s sitting with several other students, including Gloss, who’s trailing her fingers along his arm in a gesture that makes me bristle for reasons I can’t explain.
I’ve always tried to be friendly or at least peaceful with the disdainful shadowkind woman… but suddenly I’d like to blast that hand right off her.
Somehow I don’t think the administration would accept “she was petting my teammate” as reasonable justification.
I don’t get any sense that Hail is all that affected by her touch anyway. His poise shows only his usual disaffection. The emotions I taste through our heightened connection are all bland-toast boredom and a little over-salted egg uneasiness.
A pretty poor breakfast, let alone lunch.
Am I really going to walk up to him with Gloss and her fawning friends right there? They cut people apart with just their words.
I hesitate in the doorway. Maybe I can use our connection to my benefit for once.
Concentrating on Hail, I summon a surge of urgency, an anxiety about something undone that needs to be addressed.
I’ve only been stewing in that feeling for a few seconds when Hail’s head ticks toward me. Our gazes lock.
A shiver that isn’t exactly unpleasant passes over my skin, but I ignore it and jerk my head toward the doorway.
The winter fae’s mouth twists with reluctance, but he says something to his companions and gets up from his chair. I slip out the doorway before they can see me waiting for him.
Hail ambles into the hall after me with his hands slung in the pockets of his dark jeans and his gaze even more searing than it was at a distance. “What do you want now, Cream Puff?”
He’s still not back to calling me pipsqueak. That’s some kind of victory, isn’t it?
But the fact that Hail is the most annoyed by the bond I’ve forced on him is the exact reason why I picked him for my proposition. “I have another way we can try to get rid of the mark and break the connection.”
A jolt of exhilaration, sweet but tangy like lemon soda, passes into me, although Hail’s eyes narrow. “I’m not going to say no to that. Is it something we can do here in the hall?”
A few other beings meander out of the cafeteria. An itch of self-consciousness wriggles through my nerves. “Um, let’s find an empty classroom. It might take a while and look a little strange.”
Hail’s expression stays skeptical as he follows me down the hall. “What exactly are you thinking we’re going to do?”
I peek through a doorway and determine the room beyond it is unoccupied. As I motion Hail inside, my stomach knots.
Looking at him right next to me, tense as his gorgeous face is, I’m struck by a pang of loss. Which makes no sense at all, because this is the closest he’s been to me in days.
I can’t ignore the niggling question that rises up. What if this bond isn’t a mistake?
I tip forward with a swift inhalation. Hail’s crisp, foresty scent that fits him so perfectly fills my nose.
He blinks at me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I— Checking for tingles.”
“What?”
I don’t think he wants to hear a full accounting of my internet research into fated mates. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just making sure.”
I tap my fingers against his arm, but there’s definitely no zap. Smelling him didn’t make me any tinglier than I already was with him so close, which is quite a bit. And unfair, since if he’s at all tingly about me, he’s suppressing that feeling very well.
Maybe because I’ve completely bewildered him. “Look, Cream Puff, either tell me how we’re supposed to break this bond or—"
I guess there’s nothing else to do but lay it out.
I lift my chin. “When I was talking to Riva—you know, the woman shadowblood?—we came up with an idea. Since the marks formed when I was feeling really happy, maybe if we provoke enough negative emotions between us, that’ll sort of… burn it away. Make it fade. Or something.”
“Or something,” Hail repeats, but his tone has gone distant rather than cutting. He studies me for a few seconds that feel horribly long. “Why did you decide to try this experiment with me? Don’t you think that lug of a basilisk shifter would jump at the chance to help you?”
I open my mouth and close it again. I don’t have any gentle way of answering that question either. “I figured that you’re the one who has the most negative feelings toward me already, so it’d be easiest for you.”
Something shutters behind Hail’s dark eyes. He looks down at himself, toward the glowing spot I know is hidden behind his shirt, and then back at me.
I hurtle onward before he needs to reply. “So if you can just dwell on all the things about this situation that annoy you, and I’ll do the same as well as I can, we’ll see if it has any effect on the connection between us.”
Hail releases his breath in a rush. “All right. Fine. That should be simple enough.”
Of course it will be, for him. I start to push away the ache his words prompt in my chest and stop myself.
No, that’s exactly the sort of emotion I need to focus on. All the ways his remarks have stung me over the past few weeks. All the cold shoulders he’s given me. All the times he’s acted like I couldn’t possibly do anything important.
Don’t think about how his attitude softened in the last couple of days before I threw my supernatural energy at him and left him marked. Don’t remember the flutter his kindness could send through my pulse.
I set my jaw and think back to the most painful memories I can summon. Hail has always shunned me more than he’s outright attacked me, but there’s still plenty of discomfort and frustration in those recollections.
Hail must be able to sense at least some of the anguish I’m dredging up through our connection. As his expression tightens, the trickle of sensations coursing off him widens into a flood.
There’s so much of it, cloyingly bitter like cough syrup and as searingly sour as a rotten grapefruit.
My lungs squeeze; a shudder runs through my bones. Tears I try to blink away spring to my eyes.
He hates me so much. How could he have treated me like I really matter when I disgust him?
I brace myself against the deluge and delve deeper into my own sorrows. The noxious emotions Hail is pummeling me with amplify my own distress.
I’ve been such an idiot. Of course he never really liked being around me. Was he outright agonized all this time—
All at once, the surge of emotion dwindles to a dribble. Hail’s voice breaks through my concentration, a little choked. “That’s enough.”
I stare at him and realize my cheeks are chilled—with dampness. A whole torrent of tears has streaked down my face without my even noticing it.
With a rough sound, the fae man propels himself toward me. He slides his thumbs across my cheeks to wipe away the last of the tears, and I really tingle then.
His jaw clenches alongside another swell of sensation, bitter and sweet churning together. “I know you didn’t mean to do it. It’s not really you I’m angry with. Just… that it happened… what it means… You did a lot of good things too.”
I don’t know how to answer his sudden shift in attitude or the waft of concern mixed in with his conflicted feelings. It isn’t as if he can separate me from what happened or the consequences.
I’m better off focusing on the concrete details. “Did it work at all? Is the mark any fainter?”
Hail grimaces. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel any different.”
He lets go of me to tug out his shirt and peer down at his chest. The shake of his head confirms his comment.
Despair wells up inside me, so heavy it’s hard to breathe. That was the only new idea I had, and it got us nowhere.
“Hey.” Hail touches my face again, a gentle graze of his fingers. “It means something that you gave it a shot. I’ll try—I’ll try not to beat you up so much with the shit I’m feeling.”
I smile stiffy. “You can’t help what you feel. You should be able to feel it without worrying about me or anyone else.”
He sputters a laugh. “Lots of beings should have lots of things they don’t get.”
His hand lingers against my cheek. An unexpected warmth blooms beneath his cool fingers and winds down through my chest.
I want to ease closer. I want him to touch me more.
I want to drink in every spark of heat he can offer—like the flame that’s flickered inside him just now with a tang of lust.
Hail jerks himself back from me. He swipes his hand over his face. “It’ll be easiest if I stay as far away as I safely can until we get this figured out.”
He strides off without another word.
I stay in the empty classroom for a few minutes longer, giving Hail the chance to create that distance and sorting through my own muddled emotions.
I’m an expert on feelings. I’ve consumed heaps of them.
So why are my own like a plate of spaghetti dumped on my head?
I’m about to give up and head out to check my schedule for my afternoon classes when Gloss appears in the doorway.
With a toss of her sleek black hair, she sets her hands on her slim hips. Her sharp eyes pierce into me. “You still think you can steal him away from me when he doesn’t even want you. I’ve supported him for months; he’s going to be by my side. Why would you even deserve a shadowkind like him?”
“I—”
Her voice drops to a silky hiss. “Your supernatural tricks won’t mean anything if you’re not around to work them. Too bad your powers are so out of control.”
“What—”
She doesn’t give me a chance to speak. In a blur of frigid air, she hurtles into me.
Icy shards rake through my flesh, dispelling smoky blood. Pain erupts all through my limbs and torso.
I cry out, and another glacial blade plunges straight into my throat. My voice cuts off with a thicker gush of essence.
Footsteps thunder in the hall. Someone’s yelling. There’s plenty to yell about.
But all I can do is crumple to the floor under Gloss’s onslaught, my mind blanking out with agony.