Chapter 40
CHAPTER
The Element Wielder houses looked the same as they had last year.
Magic-induced skirts of snow frosted the edges of both alabaster mansions. Garlands bordered the widespread windows, where sheets of fire writhed freely within each double pane and fat snowflakes drifted down to the front steps before both sets of double doors.
Emelle and Lander had gone together, Cilia had run off to get ready with Mitzi, and Wren and Gileon had decided to skip it this year, so Dazmine and I approached the girls’ side together.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I muttered. “It might get ugly.”
Indeed, anytime I even tried to say hi to Quinn in the last year, it seemed to veer on the side of ugly. I couldn’t imagine anyone backing her into a corner and demanding she talk about her very obviously illicit activities.
Or…maybe not so illicit if Dyonisia knew about them, but still.
Dazmine didn’t even pause.
“No. I never liked Quinn even during the rare times Jenia had the three of us hang out together. I want to be there when she cries.”
Ruthless. Dazmine was ruthless, and maybe I needed a bigger dose of that for myself tonight.
I smoothed out my dress, a cardinal red flow of sequined lace with a sharp V-neck and dainty straps that revealed every inch of my brand—the one on my shoulder, at least. My hair itself was pulled back into a half knot, the rest of my curls spreading over the brand on my neck with their usual unruliness.
Dazmine herself wore her braids up in an elaborate swirl, highlighting the bronze column of her neck. I had zero doubts that in her strapless mermaid dress, she would attract a lot of attention inside. Attention she needed.
Quinn had never bowed to small or meek or less than, after all.
I knocked.
An Element Wielder answered the door without looking at us, her head still thrown back over her shoulder as she laughed at someone behind her.
Dazmine and I slipped inside, gave each other nods, and broke apart to begin the hunt before anyone could notice us together.
I squeezed through the mass of mingling bodies inside.
Couples danced to the music of instruments that floated and played above everyone’s heads on an endless loop of elaborate wind.
Others lounged in chairs or on stools scattered along the edges of the room, clinking drinks together and tossing their heads back in the kind of nervous, giddy laughter reserved for more formal occasions.
Across the room, I caught sight of Wilder in a suit and tie doing exactly that.
“Hey, darling!” Rodhi pushed through the crowd to throw an arm around me. He leaned in close to my ear, his breath bordering on drunk already. “No sign of her yet.”
Dammit. Even though we’d all decided it was best if Rodhi was as hands-off in this little endeavor as possible, he was the one who’d secured us these invitations, and I’d hoped he might have pinpointed Quinn’s position for us.
I hugged Rodhi back. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks, though.”
With that, I continued to crisscross through the crowd, smiling at faces I recognized and nodding politely at ones I didn’t whenever their gazes snagged on me for a little longer than would probably be considered normal.
Shit. Did I look too out of place? Maybe I was walking too fast or frowning too hard.
Or maybe you’re a hot girl who seems to be at a formal alone.
I wasn’t even surprised that Steeler’s voice caressed the walls of my mind. In fact, it filled me with something like… relief, knowing that he was somewhere within range.
Hot? I jabbed back. You haven’t even seen me yet.
Not in person. But I may have taken a few small peeks into other people’s minds to find out exactly why they’re gaping at you like that.
They’re not gaping, I scoffed. They’re scrutinizing.
At that thought, I grabbed a drink from a nearby bar and pretended to take a sip, slowing my pace to a muddy crawl. No sign of ruby-red hair. No hint of Quinn’s drawling voice with the slight rasp to it. It was time to go deeper.
Skimming a glance over my shoulder to make sure none of those eyes were still fastened onto me, I plunged into the shadows of a hallway and up a flight of spiral stairs.
Rather than take the staircase to the famous, gated roof where braziers would be flickering beneath the starlight, I snuck down one of the side hallways to investigate the rooms.
I almost stopped in awe.
Unlike the hallways in the Wild Whisperer house, self-burning torches lined the stone walls here, while statues tinkled with water that simply floated back upward in hundreds of little droplets once they hit the floor.
Shaking my head, I crept forward. Some doors were open, and I peeked inside to find couples—or sometimes three or more—twisting and moaning together on one of the beds.
In one, I accidentally caught the tail end of an orgasm that sent flurries erupting from the woman’s bouncing nipples and flames erupting around the man’s—
Okay, yeah, Quinn wasn’t in that room.
Shut up, I told Steeler, feeling his stifled laugh echo inside me.
When I poked my head in the sixth or seventh room, a pack of upperclassmen who were smoking and playing card games looked up.
“Hey, you lost or something?”
Every one of my bones snapped to a halt. Deep within the maze of my mind, memories were swirling into frenzies, dislodging themselves until my eyes swiveled back to the group of men.
There were four of them, all unfamiliar besides…
I didn’t realize I was floating forward until the one who’d asked me if I was lost smirked and jabbed his neighbor, the one I was staring at.
“My buddy here isn’t really into blondes, but…” Water spurted in neat little arcs from his fingers, landing with separate splats at my shoes. “I can show you a thing or two about how to get really wet if you’re up for it.”
In my head, Steeler’s dark, fathomless presence seemed to crouch and pulse with a territorial rage that shivered through my veins.
But my eyes couldn’t unstick themselves from that so-called buddy, who finally looked up with bleary contemplation.
The Object Summoning boy.
Fergus’s friend. The one who’d sent sticks to whack Gileon and stones to pummel Emelle and me.
He had been the reason for those bruises cascading up and down my body last year, not Steeler. He had been in on the plan to kill me along with Jenia and Quinn.
And I’d never even known his name.
Rage curdled beneath my skin, lighting adrenaline inside me until I practically vibrated with it.
I speared into his mind and rifled through the thick, gauzy material that housed his thoughts and memories and all those other vital pieces of him.
His name was Jaques. He’d grown up in Yellowseek.
He had a mommy and daddy who loved him. Who couldn’t wait for him to pass his Final Test and come home.
He’d met Fergus at the Branding Ceremony. They’d caught up afterward, Fergus whining that Jaques had the cooler power, and Jaques had thrived off of that jealousy. Had sought to prove it true by doing anything Fergus asked of him, no matter the consequences to others.
And yet…
Yet…
After Fergus had died, I couldn’t find a single memory of him bullying or abusing others.
No hitting or poking. No yelling or cursing.
No meeting up with Quinn, either. No attempt to revisit any of those past friendships that had goaded him into doing what he’d done.
Just this: cards, smoking, and relatively pleasant friends from a variety of sectors. It was as if Fergus had been a poison rotting his brain and heart from the inside-out, but once that poison had been removed…
“I…” the Object Summoner started, eyes widening in vague recognition. Even if he couldn’t remember actually hurting me, I was sure he remembered planning to do so with Fergus.
“Forget it,” I pushed out on a razor-sharp breath.
My fists had clenched like the rocks he’d once thrown my way, and I wanted to bash them through his skull until it splintered, until his brain oozed through my fingers, but…
I also didn’t. I didn’t want to continue the hurt or feed the cycle of pain.
Maybe, if I let it be, if he stayed away from festering friends like Fergus, Jaques wouldn’t use his power for ill ever again.
I turned to leave when the first man whistled.
“What, you got a boyfriend or something?”
Something that wasn’t quite me bristled at the tone.
“Yes,” I lied. Anything to cut this conversation short and resume my search for Quinn. Anything to get away from the Object Summoner’s guilt-riddled gaze through the haze of his current high.
“Oh, come on.” The man squirted water playfully from his fingers again. “What’s his name, then?”
“That’s none of your fucking business, is it?”
I whipped around as the dark, fathomless presence in my mind solidified behind me and Steeler stepped from the shadows of the hallway.
I’d say it is my business considering you’re in my house, the man wanted to reply. I knew so because my blockade had cracked open in shock and all the thoughts in the room swept over me in the instant before I heaved it up again.
But as the man’s gaze dragged up Steeler’s muscled figure and up to his face—his much-too-identifiable face, for God’s sake—that fury faded. As did the water from his fingers, which trickled down to a slow leak.
“No, I suppose it’s not,” he muttered finally, apparently deciding that Steeler wouldn’t be a fun opponent to get into a raging fistfight with.
“Good.” Steeler pressed his mouth into a rigid line that melted when he looked down at me. “Come on, beautiful.”
His hand clamped possessively around my waist, twirling me around and dragging me back into the hall.
It was only when I’d picked up the pace and marched us around a corner that I let go of the hiss that had been building in my chest.
“Are you serious right now, Steeler?”
“Dead serious.” His attention buried itself into every inch of my body, as if he’d forgotten what the moon looked like but found beams of it shining from me now. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I didn’t let the stutter in my heart reflect as a stutter in my words.
“You just revealed yourself to four students.”
“Yeah, and I changed their perception of my features,” he murmured, absentmindedly reaching out to tuck a rogue curl back over my shoulder. The skim of his callouses against my cheek had warmth pooling in my lower belly. “They didn’t see any ears or teeth. I promise.”
As if it would make me feel better, he flashed those teeth now.
God of the Cosmos, what I wouldn’t do to feel them drag down my neck, between my breasts, to the soft skin of my stomach and…
No. I shook my head. This smoky, sex-addled hallway was messing with my mind. I could literally feel it getting hazy in there, clouding my current mission.
“I don’t care that there are no spiders around anymore,” I whispered up at him.
Even without the ears and teeth, his presence seemed to swell throughout the hall, undeniably out of place.
And though those four men back there wouldn’t have any memory of who he was, they were probably wondering what sector he was in, who he was, why he was here.
“You can’t be here at the Element Wielder ball where anyone could see you. ”
Steeler’s mouth hooked up in a half-smile. “Not even for a dance?”
For a moment, the offer hung in the air above his outstretched hand. A dance. Had we ever danced? What if this was our only opportunity to ever dance again?
Then footsteps clacked around the corner of the hallway, and I pushed against the unyielding planes of his chest.
“Go.”
Something snapped back into place in his face, a kind of hardening that tightened every one of his features. A rough, ragged return to reality that he’d been in too much of a haze to fully grasp until the moment I’d said that word.
Go.
My hands fell through thin air as he melted away, and—
Dazmine nearly ran into me from around the corner.
“Oh.” I let my hands fall. “It’s you.”
Dazmine blinked at me. “What are you—never mind. I was trying to find you. I did some good old-fashioned eavesdropping on a group of third-year Element Wielders and found out that Quinn went up to her room with some guy around the same time we showed up.”
Right. Quinn. I squeezed my eyes shut to clear the image of Steeler’s outstretched hand. “So her room is…?”
“On the third floor in the left-hand corridor, second door on the right.” Dazmine’s smirk broke through her continuous effort to look as if nothing and no one ever fazed her. “God, I’d make a good spy.”
“Maybe Rodhi will recruit you.” I opened my eyes again and almost snorted when her smirk turned to outrage at the mere idea of that. “Okay, let’s go.”
We stole up that spiral staircase again until we were creeping to a halt right in front of the supposed room next to a statue of a naked woman. From the other side, a mingling of deep and high-pitched noises had me wondering if Quinn was fucking or fighting with someone behind that door.
“Remember,” Dazmine breathed out, “I do the talking, you do the creepy mind-reading.”
“It’s not creepy,” I huffed. “But okay.”
I sank behind the shadows of the nearby statue, pressing my back against the wall. Even with Dazmine’s elegant dress, hairdo, and aura, the chances of Quinn opening up to her were low. They’d sink straight to zero if she knew I was anywhere in the vicinity.
Dazmine didn’t give me time to mentally prepare—literally—for the Mind Manipulating I was about to use against my childhood friend.
She just brought her fist to the door and hammered.