8. malakai #2
Beside me, Ronan closed his eyes for half a second before looking at me again.
He knew me too well to bother asking whether I was serious.
The answer was written all over me by then.
Echo had gone from a transfer we needed to identify to the most interesting thing that had happened on campus in months, and Nichlas was practically handing me a trail directly to her.
Ronan pointed toward him. “Hunter. Now.”
“You should go.”
His eyes narrowed. “We.”
“I heard you.” I glanced toward the doors, already calculating how much distance Nichlas could put between us before I followed without making it obvious. “I’m not stopping you.”
Ronan watched me long enough that Carter abruptly became fascinated with the paperwork in front of him.
There was no real confusion between us. Ronan knew exactly what I was about to do, and I knew exactly how little he liked it.
He also knew that telling me not to follow Echo would turn the impulse into a certainty if it wasn’t one already.
When he finally spoke, his voice was lower. “Do not touch her.”
I looked back at him. That was a much more interesting instruction than going to Hunter. “That feels unnecessarily restrictive.”
“I mean it.” Ronan stepped closer, keeping the conversation between us now.
“We don’t know who she is, what she wants beyond Nichlas, or why she managed to get this far without us seeing her coming.
Watch her if you’re going to ignore me anyway, but don’t make yourself part of whatever she’s doing. ”
The fact that he thought I could watch Echo Matthews and remain outside of it almost made me smile again. I looked toward the library doors where Nichlas had already started edging away, then back at Ronan. “So do I.”
Nichlas started backing away from us, one hand already reaching for his phone. I watched him go. His shoulders were tight, his pace too fast for someone pretending he wasn’t scared, and every few seconds his head turned toward the nearest aisle or doorway.
Ronan came up beside me. “If Hunter asks, I told you to stay here.”
“You always tell me such boring things.”
“I’m serious.”
I looked at him. He was calm, but his eyes had sharpened in the way they did when he was deciding how much trouble he was willing to let me cause before stepping in.
I kissed the corner of his mouth because I knew it would irritate him.
His hand closed around the back of my neck before I could pull away. “Malakai.”
“I’ll be good.”
“That means nothing when you say it.”
“Exactly.”
I slipped out of his grip and headed after Nichlas before he got far enough ahead to become inconvenient. I’d already spent most of the afternoon wondering what Echo Matthews looked like when she wasn’t nearly running into me in a crowded hallway.
Apparently I was about to find out.
Nichlas left the library looking over his shoulder before he even reached the doors. I gave him enough time to get downstairs before I followed, staying far enough back that he wouldn’t notice me unless he stopped and started looking properly.
He was too busy checking every doorway he passed, his shoulders tight beneath his coat, one hand touching his split lip every few seconds as if he needed to keep confirming that Echo had actually gotten close enough to do it.
Ronan was probably already on his way to Hunter, which meant I had a limited amount of time before somebody decided I should be doing something useful.
I knew exactly what the useful thing was. I simply wanted something else more.
Nichlas cut through the older academic building instead of taking the main path across the quad, moving faster than he had yesterday and checking every doorway before he passed it. I followed him through the second-floor corridor until voices carried from the faculty wing ahead.
Echo already had him against the wall.
I stopped before I came around the corner far enough for either of them to see me.
Her fist was twisted in the front of his shirt, Nichlas’ split lip bleeding again while he talked too fast about the ledger, the people who had threatened him, and how he’d kept her real name and her family from them.
“They were going to kill me,” he said.
Echo’s expression went still. “You were scared, so you picked yourself.”
Nichlas tried to argue that it hadn’t been that simple, but Echo only pulled him closer. Interesting, I muttered to myself. Nichlas was a piss poor excuse of a human, enough that it wasn’t surprising he had betrayed someone. But I didn’t think it would have been someone like her.
Whatever the ledger was, whatever had happened afterward, he had traded something that belonged to Echo to save himself and then disappeared.
The strange part was how much I enjoyed seeing the consequences reach him.
He was protected. Desmond himself had made that decision, which meant I should have stepped in the moment Echo put her hands on him.
Echo switched her grip to his throat, and Nichlas’ fear sharpened immediately.
She watched his face while she squeezed, not hard enough to finish anything, just enough to make him understand how easily she could.
There was intent in it. She wasn’t losing control.
She was choosing each second. When Nichlas tried to use her fathers against her, I saw the change in her before I understood the words.
He thought he had leverage. Echo laughed in his face.
That was when I stopped pretending this was only curiosity.
I wanted to know her.
I wanted to know what made a woman laugh when somebody threatened her with the men who raised her.
I wanted to know why she had crossed the country for Nichlas and why, now that she had him in front of her, she was taking her time.
I wanted to know why she had looked at me in the hallway like she could already see something worth testing.
Nichlas said my name.
Echo paused.
The reaction was small, but I caught it. She knew who I was now. Somebody must have told her after our little collision, and apparently learning I was one of the Kings hadn’t convinced her to stay away from the man we were protecting. If anything, she seemed more interested.
Nichlas kept talking, trying to frighten her with Hunter, with us, with whatever version of our reputation he thought might save him. Echo stepped closer instead. She said something too low for me to hear, and Nichlas went pale enough that I almost smiled.
Then her hand moved behind her. Echo’s hand moved toward the faculty display beside them. She pulled the narrow metal letter opener from its stand before Nichlas realized what she was reaching for. The letter opener came forward so smoothly I nearly missed it.
I crossed the remaining distance before she could bring the blade forward.
My hand closed around her wrist, forcing it away from Nichlas as I pulled her back against me.
Echo reacted immediately. She twisted hard, her free hand coming up toward my face, and I caught that wrist too before she could connect.
She was strong enough to make the movement interesting and angry enough not to care that she was outmatched in size.
“Let me go,” she said, fighting my hold instead of wasting breath sounding frightened.
Nichlas had flattened himself against the wall. Blood still marked his mouth from earlier, and he stared at the letter opener in Echo’s hand like he had just realized how close he had been to finding out whether she meant everything she’d said.
I looked at him over Echo’s shoulder. “Go.”
Nichlas hesitated and Echo stopped struggling long enough to turn her head. “Don’t you fucking move.”
He looked between us as I tightened my grip around her wrists and kept my attention on him. “Run like a good boy while I’m still helping you.”
Nichlas pushed away from the wall and disappeared down the corridor at a pace that was only technically short of running.
Echo surged forward the second he moved, and I caught her around the waist, hauled her back against me, and took the letter opener from her hand before she could decide to use it on me instead.
“You let him go.” She twisted in my arms and finally managed to turn enough to face me. Her eyes were bright with fury, her breathing hard, and there was a smear of Nichlas’ blood across one of her knuckles. “I wasn’t finished.”
“I know.”
Her expression shifted for half a second, anger making room for curiosity, and I felt the same pull I had in the hallway earlier. Up close, she didn’t look rattled by being caught. She looked annoyed that I had interrupted something she had been enjoying.
Footsteps sounded somewhere beyond the stairwell.
I caught Echo by the arm and pulled her toward the nearest classroom before whoever was coming could turn the corner.
She fought me for the first two steps, then followed when she realized where I was taking her.
The room was empty, lights off except for what came through the narrow windows in the door.
I pushed it shut behind us and locked it.
Echo immediately reached for the handle and I put my hand over hers and stopped her. She looked at my hand, then up at me. “Move.”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You always this annoying?”
I leaned closer, still holding her hand against the door. “You always pull knives on protected men between classes?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead she looked down at the letter opener I had taken from her, then back at me, and the corner of her mouth lifted.
The room was small enough that Echo only had to take two steps before her back met the door.
She was still furious about Nichlas, and I could see it in the way her chest rose under her shirt and the way she kept glancing toward the hall as though she might decide I was only a temporary inconvenience.
I still had her letter opener in my hand.
She looked at it, then at me, and whatever she saw on my face made some of the anger shift into something more curious.