Chapter 30
ELLE
Beckett Dupont is waiting outside my dorm room when I get out of astronomy, which instantly makes the hair on the back of my neck raise.
Does he know it was me in Sutton’s apartment that day?
Or worse—did his dad tell him about me?
A shudder ripples through me at the thought.
When we were growing up, my dad was retired from his previous life, so we weren’t necessarily privy to the bloodshed and violence that molded our parents and their friends.
Still, Asher made up for what we weren’t experiencing by getting into physical fights with practically everyone he ever met, his anger an unchecked flaw proving nature matters as much as nurture.
Even Quincy, who prefers quiet and peace, has been known to use her fists when she needs to. But for whatever reason, the urge seems to have skipped me—not just because I’m averse to blood in general, but because it just seems like so much effort to hurt someone.
Except in the quarry eight years ago, though that was self-defense.
Violence changes you. It’s a callus that grows over time, and you’re almost never better off for it.
Beckett’s sorry state is proof of that. The cave incident seems to have taken its toll.
Lexington, Meg, and Percy trail close behind as I approach him, watching as he stretches out his legs.
“Can we help you?” I ask.
He glances up, the skin around his eye smooth, slightly raised, and shiny. Scarring from my brother’s fists, I imagine. Exhaling, Beckett presses his palm against his forehead. “God, I can’t escape you people, can I?”
I point at the little whiteboard hanging outside our door where Aurora’s written our names in giant pink bubble letters. “Coming to my dorm will make that pretty difficult.”
“Not here for you,” he replies. “Should’ve known you’d be the one to greet me though. The universe has been quite cruel to me as of late.”
“Karmic retribution got you down?”
Meg snorts.
Beckett’s glare is icy. “Your brother almost killed me, you know. A little sympathy would be nice.”
“Oh, well, that’s where you’ve been misled. I’m not nice.” Flipping my hair over my shoulder, I turn to the door and slide my key into the lock.
“She really isn’t,” Percy adds.
I shoot him a dirty look, which just makes his brows raise as if to say See? Told you!
“I’ll never understand what he sees in you,” Beckett mutters.
“Percy’s not into Elle,” Lexington says.
“And I wasn’t talking about Percy,” Beckett snaps. He pauses, frowning. “Who the hell is Percy?”
A pale arm extends straight into the air. “That’d be me. Perciville Whitmore. We had calculus together freshman year.”
“Not sure that necessitated an introduction,” Lexington interjects.
Meg leans forward in her chair, gripping her knee as it spasms slightly. An occasional extension of her spinal cord injury—surfer’s myelopathy caused during a gymnastics stunt in high school, she told me a few weeks ago. “Could we take this conversation inside? The hallway is freezing.”
“There’s no way Beckett is coming into my room,” I say.
“Okay, then you chat with him out here, and we’ll wait for you in there.” She rolls forward, pushing the door open.
Aurora, wrapped in a light pink bathrobe with matching slippers, is standing there with an unplugged curling wand. She leans out into the hall as the other three filter into the room, instantly spotting Beckett, and points the wand menacingly at him.
“I thought I told you to fucking leave,” she growls.
My eyebrows arch, and I move to the side a little. I’ve never heard her raise her voice, let alone the animalistic sound that just came from her.
“And I said I would after you heard me out,” he says, wiping his hands on his khakis.
“There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear,” she snaps. “You almost killed the two people I love most in the world. I want nothing to do with you.”
“How many times do I have to say I didn’t do anything? I was the one who got Lucy out of the caves, for fuck’s sake.”
“And where was Foxe?” Aurora’s voice is pinched, slowly unraveling as it climbs in pitch.
A door down the hall opens, the RA poking their head out to see what the commotion is.
“After the grotesque things your friends, your club members, did to him? The only reason he’s alive at all is because my uncles helped get him out of there. All you did was fuck up.”
Beckett groans, leaning his head against the wall. “Don’t you think I know that?”
Aurora’s face is almost the same color as her robe. “If you know, then you shouldn’t have even come here.”
“I was just trying to apologize.”
She clenches her jaw. “Yeah, well, I don’t accept.”
Turning around, she stomps back into the room, slamming the wand on the desk she’s using as a vanity.
The others have settled on and around my bed—Lexington sits on a pillow on the floor next to Meg, whose leg has stopped moving.
Percy’s sprawled out on my mattress but has at least managed to kick off his shoes and coat.
Exhaling, Beckett gets to his feet, brushing off his backside. He takes out a folded piece of paper from inside his blazer, holding it in my direction.
“If this is a written apology, I doubt she’s going to want to—”
“It’s for you,” he says. “From Father.”
Pressure closes in around my heart, squeezing the ventricles so tight that I think the organ might burst. Eyeing the note, I take a step back and shake my head.
“No, thanks.”
He gives me a long, bored look. The detachment in his eyes sends a chill crawling up my spine. “How long do you think you have before he tells Sutton about you two?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The rumors came from somewhere,” he says. “Just ’cause the full extent of them hasn’t made the rounds on The Delphic Pages yet doesn’t mean it’s not going to. There are people waiting in the shadows to expose you.”
My mouth is suddenly arid. “Expose me for what exactly? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Not sure everyone else will see it like that. Plus, there’s no telling what story Father will concoct. He loves hyperbole.”
I ball my hands into fists. “What does he want with me?”
“Don’t know, don’t really care.” He must not like the look in my eyes, since he straightens a bit and sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “There’s this prophecy he’s spent his whole life trying to avoid, and your presence here threatens that. Threatens us.”
“The curse, you mean. Is that why he tried to get you to kill my brother?”
Beckett winces slightly. “Yes. And I was stupid enough to listen to him. Trust me, I’m paying for it dearly, even if your roommate doesn’t believe it.”
“Yet you’re still doing errands for him.”
“I can’t outrun everything.” He lifts a shoulder, brushing off the sleeve of his black blazer. I notice the red symbol embroidered on the breast pocket—a theta at the center of a poppy—and wonder if he’s still involved with his former student organization.
As he starts down the hall, suspicion claws at my sternum. One of my feet shifts of its own accord after him, but I call out and wait to see if he’ll stop first.
He pauses at the door leading to the stairs.
“Do you think your dad knew who I was?” I ask, inching closer and lowering my voice so the group in my room won’t overhear. “In LA. At the Grandeur Playhouse. Is that possible?”
“Anything is.” Beckett meets my gaze, unflinching. “Anything, Elle.”
He leaves me alone in the hall with that cryptic message, and I wander back to my room, closing the five of us inside as a million different thoughts swirl around my brain, trying to make sense of the clear warning.
The six of us, actually, because when I join my classmates on my bed, Aurora props her computer up on hers and turns the screen my way, revealing Foxe’s beaming face.
It’s a little surprising that she’s interacting with him in front of us, but I don’t question it.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite cousin.” Foxe grins easily, seeming more like himself than the last time we talked, and I almost let that soothe the disrupted parts of my soul.
Almost.
“I’m telling Asher you said that.” I settle against the headboard, tossing Meg a fruit snack pack from the stash I keep under my pillow.
Percy pouts as he settles next to me. I tear open another package and dump the gummies into his hand, then pluck out the orange and blue ones for myself, leaving the gross red ones behind.
“Dammit, you’re still a bad secret keeper, huh?” Foxe says.
“I don’t know, I think she’s pretty good at it,” Lexington replies, pulling a copy of Othello from his messenger bag. He cracks the spine and opens to a random page, fanning himself with it. “She’s definitely hiding something.”
“Lots of things, if I had to guess,” Meg adds.
My eyes narrow. “Et tu, Brute?”
“If you’re fucking the professor, I think we all deserve to know,” Percy says.
I choke on a fruit snack. “What?”
Aurora’s eyebrows shoot up. “The professor?”
“Dupont,” Meg tells her. “Total babe if you’re into the stuffy, awkward type. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure he’d know how to satisfy you, Elle.”
Lexington grunts. “Is this where you offer your services instead?”
“Why, aren’t you just waiting to offer yours?”
Percy sits up, his mouth full of red gummies. “Wait, you guys are trying to fuck Elle? I didn’t know that. Give me a minute. I can probably switch my preferences from blonds to brunettes.”
“There’s a perfect solution to this, you know,” Foxe offers, reclining on the sofa in his apartment. His foot kicks a plant on the coffee table, and I just know Aunt Violet put it there to discourage him from putting his legs up. “Orgies. Everyone fucks Elle.”
“I’m going to pretend you’re not selling out your own flesh and blood right now,” I mutter, flipping him off.
“But it’s a solution!” he cries.
Aurora cocks an eyebrow at me. “No wonder you didn’t want to study in the library. You guys are not quiet.”
“I’m also not trying to fuck Elle,” Meg says, her cheeks darkening slightly. “I was just saying the professor might not be up to the task. I’ve never seen him date anyone.” She looks at Lexington. “Have you? I mean, you’ve known him the longest, and your parents are friends.”
“Our parents are associates,” Lexington replies. “I wouldn’t call any of them friends. Even among the married folks, I don’t think there’s much love between the founding bloodlines. It’s mostly just a game of chess, each of them playing to keep as much power in Fury Hill as they can.”
“Blah blah,” Percy says. “Answer the important question: Does Dupont fuck or not?”
On the laptop, Foxe lets out a low laugh. One I haven’t heard in ages. “Where the hell were you all last semester when I was drowning in boredom?”
“Attending classes, probably.” Meg shrugs.
We all look expectantly at Lexington, who drapes his arms over his knees. He meets my gaze, hesitating, and I feel a familiar pinch of jealousy in my chest.
Do I want to know who Sutton has been with before me?
Not particularly. It doesn’t matter, and it’s not like I’m a virgin. But the masochist buried somewhere deep within me is a bit curious, so I just lean back, waiting for Lexington’s response.
He rolls his eyes. “Again, I’ve never seen Sutton date anyone. Man, woman, nonbinary—doesn’t matter. Does that mean he doesn’t date? No. But you all know how Pythia and Avernia are. I wouldn’t want to drag anyone into that scrutiny either.”
“Not to mention that whole thing with his brother being linked to Death’s Teeth,” Percy notes.
I sit forward a little. “I thought he was a Curator.”
“He was. Is? I don’t know.” Percy shakes his head. “But those deaths and vandalism sites last semester were riddled with Death’s Teeth paraphernalia. Their insignia would be carved into the students or drawn on the walls in blood or—”
Meg clears her throat, glancing at Aurora and Foxe, the latter of whom is listening intently despite his face paling. “Maybe we should change the subject.”
“But the Curators who kidnapped people are dead.” Percy frowns.
“That doesn’t mean everyone wants to relive the events,” Lexington says, throwing his book at Percy’s face. “Dumbass.”
Percy grunts as the book connects with his nose, leaving a red mark on the bridge. “Sorry for trying to keep everyone informed. You guys are such haters.”
“Because you’re annoying,” Meg says. “And we came here to run lines, not for a history lesson.”
We don’t have our parts yet, but we’ve been meeting up frequently outside class since auditions anyway, if only to strengthen our performances for the final itself.
Lexington and Meg break off into their own pair to go through a scene between Bianca and Cassio, leaving me with Percy.
“Go on,” Foxe says from the laptop, waggling his eyebrows. “Ask him. You know you want to.”
I toss Aurora a look. “Can you turn him off?”
“No,” Foxe says, grinning wider.
Her cheeks blush the color of her robe, and she closes the computer before he can say anything else. She flops back on her bed, rolling over to continue reading some thick thriller book in silence.
A part of me wonders if she and Foxe are mending things between them more than either wants to let on, but I don’t ask. It’s none of my business.
“All right, Percy. Tell me what you know about Death’s Teeth.”