Chapter 19 Ophelia
I don’t say anything while I clean him up.
His jaw is split at the corner, a bubble of blood bright on the line where someone hit him.
I press the wet cloth to it—harder than I mean to, but he doesn’t even blink.
It’s always like this with him: he can’t let anyone know it hurts, not even me. Especially not me.
He sits on the edge of the bed, shirtless, his whole body a map of old violence and new.
He catches my wrist before I can take my hand away, his grip tight enough to grind the bones together. His eyes are black, so dark they look like holes in the world.
I think he wants to say something—maybe thank you, maybe fuck off—but he just stares at me, breathing slow and measured, the way you do when you’re about to take a punch and you don’t want to flinch.
“You should go,” he says. His voice is rough, splintered by angst, but still steady. “If you want out. Now’s the last chance.”
I shake my head and giggle, because I know he doesn’t mean it. He’d chase me down even if I took the window and sprinted naked across the quad.
He sees the answer in my face, and for a second the line of his mouth softens. Then he lets go of my wrist and sighs before he slaps his thighs.
He stands, his thumb running down my cheek and says, “We have to move. Now. Ten minutes, tops.”
I’ve never seen him scared, but there’s something wired and bright in his eyes. Not fear exactly, but something like it. Something worse, maybe.
He grabs his duffel from under the bed and starts throwing in clothes, not caring what lands inside. Everything is black or grey or blue, so it doesn’t matter. He moves fast, no wasted motion, like he’s been running this drill since birth.
I have nothing to pack, but hopefully wherever we are going, Cai will take me shopping. Wearing his clothes is getting old.
I can hear him in the next room, opening drawers, dumping papers into a folder.
There’s the click of a lock, the snap of a lighter, the hiss of a zipper.
In the bathroom, I start with the toiletries.
Under the sink is a bag big enough to fit most stuff.
Even as he shouts that we have five minutes left, I keep packing, even though my hands won’t stop shaking.
Once I’ve grabbed enough until my hands are overflowing, I dump them in my bag before pulling a fresh t-shirt over my head and stepping into some sweats.
He comes back in, duffel slung over one shoulder. There’s a handgun in his waistband, the grip showing just above his jeans. He looks at me, at the bag on the floor, then at my face.
“You ready?” he asks.
I nod, even though I’m not. Not even close.
He tosses me a pack of pills and I drop them in my bag. “Last minute sweep.”
We work together, stripping the room in under sixty seconds. He unplugs the chargers and packs them, turns off lights. He goes through the room twice, checking for bugs, for cameras, for anything that could be used against us.
The air in the room is thick, suffocating. I open a window a crack, but he snaps it shut immediately.
“We go out the front. Act normal. If they’re watching, don’t give them a reason.”
I hate when he talks to me like I’m a child, but I know he’s right. I zip up my bag and sling it over my shoulder.
At the door, he pauses. He looks at me, really looks at me, like he’s trying to memorize the way I stand, the way my jaw sets when I’m about to cry.
“If you want out,” he says again, “you go now.”
Rolling my eyes, I don’t answer. I just open the door and step into the hall.
The corridor in the Feral Boys wing is empty, silent. It’s become a ghost town since I moved in, but that makes it better to escape. Less eyes watching. Less people that I don’t know if I can trust.
If Caius is worried enough for us to run, there’s a reason, and I will trust him until he tells me why.
We walk in silence out the door and down the hallway. Caius’s hand is on my lower back, not pushing but guiding, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
At the stairwell, he stops. Listens. Every muscle in his body goes tight, like he’s expecting a gunfight or a firing squad or worse.
Nothing. Just the distant hum of the cafeteria, the clatter of trays and the drone of morning announcements.
We descend two flights, then duck into a side corridor. The windows here are frosted, but the sunlight still slants in, casting long stripes across the floor.
He pushes open the fire door, and we step into the cold.
The sky is grey, low, like it’s about to dump snow or ash. We keep our heads down, walk fast but not too fast, out the back and across the maintenance lot.
We cut a line straight down the center of the path, students peeling away from us like they know whatever we’re running from is infectious. Maybe it is. Maybe being marked makes you radioactive.
Caius keeps hold of my hand, fingers crushing mine so hard I lose circulation. I wonder if he even knows he’s doing it. He walks faster and I half jog to keep up with him.
People are whispering. I can’t hear the words, but the shapes of them are obvious: “Board’s favorite,” “hunted,” “crazy bitch,” “Montgomery.” I eat the words.
It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re breaking out.
A group of juniors huddles under a tree, their faces upturned. One of them, the pretty girl with the lisp and high cheekbones, stares at me and mouths the word “whore.” I don’t break stride. I don’t even blink. I wish I could tell her that it doesn’t hurt, but I’d be lying.
The further we get from the dorms, the less human it all feels. Like the world has emptied itself out, just so it can watch us leave.
Caius is sweating. Not from the heat, but from whatever is pressing the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I glance at him, study the way his jaw locks, the pulse at the side of his neck.
He’s running on fumes, but he won’t slow down.
I think about telling him to rest, but the words die in my mouth.
This is how you stay alive—by acting like you can’t fucking die.
We pass the chapel. I hate this building more than the others; religion has no place here. A shadowed figure is waiting in the shadow of the arched door, hands in his pockets, head low.
As we get closer, I see who it is.
My father. He’s smaller than I remember, or maybe just shrunken by the last few days. There’s a bruise on his cheek, a fresh one, blooming purple down to the jaw. The tie around his neck is wrinkled, knotted too tight.
He steps out when we’re almost even, blocking half the path.
I stop first. Caius stops a beat after, like his body has to be reminded not to keep moving forward.
“Ophelia,” my father says. The sound of it is brittle, ready to shatter if I touch it.
“Don’t,” I answer, not even looking at him.
He tries anyway. “I didn’t know—about any of this. I thought—"
Caius cuts him off. “Of course you did, you fuck. You signed her life to The Academy and now you’re here. Why? They sent you to scare her?” His voice is low, his fist clenched, body tense.
My father doesn’t look at him. He looks at me. “They’re going to kill you, O. You and him, both. If you don’t go back, if you don’t finish it…”
I don’t recognize his voice. He sounds like he’s rehearsing lines from a script he never studied. I should feel something. I should care. But the only thing I feel is the way my hand aches from Caius’s grip.
My father looks at the fading bruises on my skin, his eyes skittering away after a second. “They told me what they did. What they made him do.” He takes a step forward, then stops himself. “You don’t have to run. I can fix this. I’ll make it better.”
Caius shifts, putting himself between us, like I’m in danger from the man who never once protected me. He says, “There is no fixing it. You know that, or you wouldn’t be here.”
My father’s shoulders slump. His eyes dart to the chapel door, then back to me. “They think I raised you to be a disobedient little bitch. They’re threatening to kill me, too. I need you to listen. Please.”
“Why?” I say. “So I can make it easier for them to bury me?”
He flinches, but only for a second. “No. I—" He looks up at Caius, then at the security camera pointed at the quad, and I see it. The fear. Not for me, but for himself. “Please, O. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“I hope they do kill you,” I say, calm as ever. “Would save me the trouble.”
He opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. He just stands there, face blank, as if he’s already been erased.
Caius turns, tugs me forward. “We’re done here,” he says.
My father doesn’t follow.
At the far end of the quad, two security guards appear, black uniforms sharp against the green. Their hands hover at their belts, radios at the ready.
I feel the tension spike in Caius’s arm. “Just keep walking,” he whispers. “Eyes front, chin up.”
The guards angle to intercept, but they’re too slow. We hit the parking lot, feet crunching gravel, and the only sound is our own breathing. My chest hurts, but I don’t let it show.
He points ahead to the only vehicle in the lot and we walk a little faster, chests heaving by the time we make it.
Caius pulls out the keys to a battered old truck, the kind that’s all engine and no safety features. It smells like gasoline and old leather.
“For a rich boy, you drive a piece of shit.”
“My mom bought it for me.” He says, patting the hood fondly. “Once we’re safe, I’ll park her in the garage and restore her. 1979 Little Red Express. It’s a collectors, but I’ve let it go over time.”
He throws the bags in the back seat, then opens the door for me. His hands are shaking now, but not as much as mine.
Inside, the heat is on full blast. He pulls out of the lot slow, careful, and doesn’t say a word until we’re half a mile from the campus.
Then he looks over at me, his eyes black and unreadable.
“You scared?” he asks.
I think about it. About the brand on my shoulder, about the blood on his mouth, about my father and the Board and the way they all looked at me like I was already dead.
“No,” I say, and it’s almost true. “Not with you.”
He laughs, a dry, cracked sound. “You shouldn’t trust me. You know what I am.”
I look at him, really look, and for the first time I don’t see the monster. I see the boy who never had a chance. The one who’s been trying to survive since before he was old enough to spell his own name.
“Yeah,” I say. “But you’re all I have.”
He doesn’t answer. He just drives, fast and silent, eyes on the road, jaw clenched.
I lean back, close my eyes, and let myself breathe.
I feel almost safe.
Not happy.
Not free.
But safe, with him.
It’s enough.
As we pull away, I look back at the chapel.
My father is gone. Not even a shadow left.
I thought it would feel like victory.
Instead, it just feels like death of who I was.
The highway is empty except for us and the world we’re leaving behind. Every mile the tires eat is another nail in the coffin of my old life, and I can’t decide if it’s a funeral or a birth.
Caius doesn’t talk much, not even to me. He drives with both hands on the wheel, eyes locked on the white lines, jaw set. He keeps checking the rearview, but there’s nothing there but dust and the outline of Westpoint, growing smaller with every minute.
I want to say something, but the words don’t form. I just listen to the engine, the rush of air through the half-cracked window, the rattle of something loose in the dashboard.
He waits until we’re ten miles out, then thumbs the center console, blue light flickering on the dash. “Slade,” he says.
The phone rings once. Twice. Then a voice, low and amused, comes through the speakers. “Thought you’d be dead by now, cousin.”
Caius cracks a smile, barely. “Not yet. I need a favor.”
The laugh on the other end is dry as bone. “What’s the job?”
Caius glances at me, then back to the road. “Need a perimeter. Couple weeks. Maybe longer.”
“Who’s the threat?” Slade asks.
“Board. Vicious Kings. Anyone from the old crowd.”
Slade whistles. “That’s not a small ask, Cai. You burn the whole place down or just piss him a little?”
Caius shrugs, a tension in his shoulders I’ve never seen before. “Doesn’t matter. Just need it done.”
“Send the address. I’ll handle it,” Slade says. “You want muscle, or just eyes?”
“Both.”
There’s a pause. “You okay?”
Caius looks at me again, and for a second his eyes aren’t dead-black, but soft and uncertain. “Yeah,” he says. “Got what I need.”
Slade hums. “Let me guess, now you understand why we broke the Law.”
“I do,” Caius says. “Would do it again.”
“Good man. I’ll call Noah, see if he can spare the time. You want a place at Pineridge?”
Caius hesitates. I watch the muscles in his forearm tense and release, like he’s fighting an invisible opponent.
“No,” he says finally. “Not yet. If it gets bad, we’ll go to ground.”
Slade’s voice is low, almost kind. “You got it, cousin. But—just in case—you want us to take care of the source?”
He means the Board. My father. Anyone who ever tried to own us.
Caius is silent for a long time. Then, “No. Not unless they come for us.”
Slade laughs again, a sound that would be charming if I didn’t have a feeling the man on the other end was someone who would kill and not think twice. “Always knew you had a soft spot.”
“Fuck you,” Caius says, but he’s smiling now, just a little.
“Text me the address you need secured. Stay alive, Caius… and take care of your woman.”
The line goes dead.
We drive in silence for a minute, the world rushing by outside.
I finally ask, “Who was that?”
He glances over, and this time he really looks at me. “Slade. My cousin. One of the Pineridge boys.”
One of the defectors.
“You trust him?” I ask.
He nods, once. “With my life. With yours.”
I think about that. About all the times I tried to trust and love my father. About all the times I’ve let myself believe it would be different this time.
And now, my life was in the hands of a boy who ruined me and his cousin who is one of the most hated men at the Academy.
Am I out of my Goddamn mind? I must be.
But then I look at the way his hand never leaves the wheel, the way his eyes never leave the road, the way he talks to me like I’m more than a trophy or a debt.
And I decide to believe him.
Because the alternative is nothing at all.
The sky gets darker as we drive, sun dipping behind clouds heavy with rain. There’s a chill in the air, but the truck is warm, the seats worn soft by years of use.
Caius reaches across the console and takes my hand. Just holds it, fingers laced with mine, tight enough to hurt.