8. malakai
malakai
Ronan had been trying to read the same page for six minutes, which meant I’d been bothering him for at least seven.
I was stretched across the corner of the sofa with one leg hooked over his, my shoulder wedged beneath his arm while I stole the pen he’d been using to mark something in the margin.
He took it back without looking. I waited until he started reading again and pulled it out of his fingers a second time.
Ronan calmly retrieved the pen every time I stole it instead of giving me the reaction I wanted.
“You could move,” Ronan said eventually, turning a page with his free hand while the other settled around the back of my neck.
“I’m comfortable.”
“You’re sitting on my leg.”
“I know.”
His thumb pressed into the side of my neck, just enough pressure to make me grin. Ronan had figured out years ago that asking me to behave was useless. Usually he let me get bored on my own. When that failed, he found something else for my hands to do.
I took his pen again.
This time he caught my wrist before I could get it away and held it against his thigh. “Keep it and I’m breaking your fingers.”
“You say the sweetest things when people are around.”
Carter looked down at his paperwork so quickly I laughed, and Ronan finally glanced at me. His expression stayed flat, but I knew him well enough to catch the irritation behind it. I was considering how much worse I could make it when someone stopped at the edge of our table.
Nichlas.
Ronan’s hand loosened around my wrist before I moved. Mine didn’t.
Nichlas looked worse than he had that morning. His lower lip was split and swollen, one side stained with dried blood he hadn’t cleaned properly. The collar of his shirt sat crooked around his throat, and when he shifted beneath the library lights, reddish marks showed above it.
The room stopped being boring.
I sat up and let Ronan’s pen fall into his lap. “What happened to your face?”
Nichlas glanced at Carter and Elias. “Can we talk somewhere else?”
“No.”
His mouth tightened. The split opened again.
Ronan closed his book. That was the only movement he made, but the lackeys noticed it and went quiet. “Who got through?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I was off the sofa before he finished saying it.
Nichlas barely had time to lean back before I caught him by the chin and turned his face toward the light.
He hissed when my thumb pressed too close to the swelling.
I moved his head the other way, checking the cut, then hooked two fingers into the edge of his collar and pulled it down enough to see the marks across his throat.
Those were better.
“Who touched you?”
“Nobody.”
I squeezed his jaw until his lips parted around a sharp breath. “Try again.”
Ronan stayed where he was, one ankle resting over his opposite knee. Calm. Watching. He looked more annoyed than worried, which was fair. Somebody getting hands on Nichlas wasn’t interesting by itself. Somebody doing it after Hunter doubled his coverage was.
Nichlas looked at him first, apparently hoping Ronan would save him from me. Ronan lifted one eyebrow.
“Echo,” Nichlas said.
I stopped.
There were a lot of Echos in the world. Probably. I’d never cared enough to check. There was only one currently enrolled at Aldrich who had looked at me that afternoon like she was deciding whether shoving me into a wall would be more satisfying than climbing me.
I released his chin slowly. “Echo Matthews?”
Nichlas’ face did something strange at hearing the whole name. Fear, mostly, but there was history underneath it.
That made me interested all over again.
Ronan leaned forward and braced his forearms against his thighs. “The transfer?”
“Yes.”
I looked back at Nichlas. “Why?”
“She’s fucking crazy.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“She came at me in the east wing. She knew where I’d be.” He wiped at his mouth and looked at the blood on his thumb like it was evidence we should care about. “She followed me. She grabbed me, threatened me—”
“You’re still leaving something out.”
Nichlas’ gaze snapped to mine.
I smiled. “Who is she to you?”
“No one.”
I caught his chin again, harder this time. “You’re really bad at this.”
His nostrils flared. “She’s my ex.”
Ronan made a quiet sound beside me. Not surprise exactly. More like something had finally clicked into place.
I stared at Nichlas for another second before letting him go. “Your ex crossed the country, enrolled at Aldrich, found you, and choked you in a hallway.”
“She didn’t come here because she misses me.”
“Shame. I was enjoying the romance.” Ronan gave me a mild warning with my name, but I was already looking at Nichlas differently.
An ex didn’t cross the country, transfer into Aldrich, memorize someone’s routine, and leave marks around his throat because the breakup had been disappointing.
Whatever Nichlas had done, he knew exactly why Echo was here. “What did you do?”
Nichlas’ face closed immediately. “Nothing. It’s complicated.”
I laughed and leaned back against the edge of the table, watching the muscles in his jaw tighten.
“People usually say that when the simple version makes them look like an asshole.” He still didn’t answer, which was better than an answer in some ways.
Every time Echo came up, he got worse at hiding what she meant to him and better at confirming that she had a reason to hate him.
Ronan finally stood, closing the book he had stopped reading several minutes ago. He moved without any of my urgency, which usually meant he had already decided what needed to happen and was waiting for me to stop entertaining myself long enough to agree. “We’re taking this to Hunter.”
Nichlas nodded before Ronan had even finished. The relief was immediate enough to annoy me. He thought Hunter meant safety. He thought getting upstairs and putting another King between himself and Echo would somehow reset whatever had happened in that hallway.
I turned toward Ronan. “No.”
That got a proper look from him. “Desmond placed him under protection himself.”
“I know.” I looked back at Nichlas, taking in the split lip, the bruising beginning around his throat, the way he kept checking the library entrance even with us standing around him.
Desmond’s protection should have made him feel untouchable.
Echo had managed to ruin that in a single afternoon, and I wanted to know how far she could push it before he stopped believing in protection altogether.
Ronan’s voice stayed calm. “That wasn’t trivia.”
“I know that too.”
Nichlas looked between us, his panic rising again as he realized Ronan was not immediately overriding me.
That was when the idea came. It wasn’t a particularly useful one, but usefulness had already stopped being the point.
I leaned closer to Nichlas and lowered my voice like I was giving him something he needed to hear.
“She asked about your room yesterday. Housing too. Wanted to know whether you were still in Thorne.”
His eyes widened so fast I almost laughed. “What?”
Ronan went still beside me because he knew perfectly well I was lying. Nichlas didn’t. He was already pale enough that the bruising around his mouth looked darker, and when I kept my face straight, his attention snapped toward the library doors again.
“That’s bullshit,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction behind it.
“Probably.” I let the uncertainty sit there instead of rescuing him from it.
“Kai.” Ronan’s warning had more weight this time.
I glanced at him and smiled, then turned back to Nichlas. He looked genuinely sick now. “She knows where I live?”
“I didn’t say that.” When he started protesting that I had just told him exactly that, I stepped back and let him hear himself.
“I said she asked. Maybe she knows. Maybe she doesn’t.
” He couldn’t tell whether I was lying, and I could see him running through every door he had locked, every hallway he had crossed, every time he had assumed the men around him meant Echo couldn’t reach him.
That was the interesting part. I hadn’t actually done anything to him.
I had only given his fear somewhere new to go.
Ronan caught the back of my sweater and pulled me away before I could add anything else. I let him move me because fighting him in the middle of the library would only distract from watching Nichlas deteriorate. “You’re playing with fire,” he said quietly.
I looked around at the shelves and scattered students before turning back to him. “I’m standing in a library.”
His grip tightened briefly at the back of my sweater. “Desmond is protecting him.”
“And Echo isn’t Desmond.” I tipped my head toward Nichlas, who was still staring toward the entrance like she might materialize there if he looked away for too long.
“No, she’s the woman who got around two men we assigned to him and left fingerprints on his throat.
” Ronan’s tone didn’t change, but that description did something unpleasantly good to my attention.
Echo had gotten through our people, put her hands exactly where she wanted them, and walked away before anyone managed to stop her.
Nichlas apparently heard the same sentence very differently. “You need to get her off campus.”
I looked at him. He meant it. He wasn’t asking for more coverage anymore. He wanted her removed entirely, which made me wonder what he thought she would do if she stayed. “Do we?”
“Yes.” His answer came too quickly. “You don’t understand what she’s like.”
That made me want to see her again even more. I pushed away from Ronan’s hand and studied Nichlas for another moment, trying to imagine the woman from the hallway becoming the person who had reduced him to this. “What if I want to see what she does?”
Nichlas went completely blank.