11. echo
echo
By the time I made it to Criminal Studies, half the building had apparently decided I was interesting.
Yesterday, I could walk into a lecture five minutes late and nobody looked up unless I blocked the projector.
Today, a guy I’d shared exactly one seminar with held the door for me and said, “Morning, Echo,” like we’d been introduced properly instead of ignoring each other since I arrived.
Two girls near the front stopped talking when I passed them, then immediately started again once I sat down three rows behind them.
I caught Hunter’s name once, Malakai’s twice, and something about the cafeteria that made Priya lean across the aisle toward me with the expression of someone sitting on gossip she was physically incapable of keeping inside her body.
I dropped my notebook onto the desk and pulled out a pen. “Whatever you’re about to say, I already hate it.”
Priya ignored that with the ease of practice.
“There are currently four versions of what happened at breakfast. In one, Hunter summoned you because you’re secretly working for him.
In another, you threatened him and somehow survived.
Maren heard you’re sleeping with all three Kings, which feels ambitious considering you’ve been here for five minutes, and Devon heard you’re related to somebody important enough that Hunter had to publicly acknowledge you. ”
“I like that nobody landed on breakfast.”
“You didn’t have breakfast with them. You got dressed in clothes somebody clearly picked for you, walked into the cafeteria, and sat at a table people here have been trained not to breathe near.
” Priya flipped open her laptop but kept her attention on me.
“Then Malakai spent the entire time looking like he wanted to climb into your chair with you.”
That part was probably true enough that I didn’t bother correcting it. “He has boundary issues.”
“Apparently contagious ones.”
The professor walked in before Priya could turn that into another interrogation, and I spent the next hour trying to care about behavioral classification while the room continued behaving like I’d grown another head overnight.
Nobody openly stared for long, which was almost worse.
Every time the professor turned toward the board, somebody looked over.
When we broke into smaller groups, a student who had never once volunteered to work with me moved his chair over before anyone asked and offered me the article he’d already highlighted.
I took it because refusing useful work out of spite would have been stupid, but I still watched him for a second longer than necessary.
Whatever Hunter thought he’d accomplished by dragging me into his orbit, Aldrich had noticed.
That mattered more than I wanted it to.
The class finally let out just before noon.
Priya caught my elbow as we joined the crowd spilling into the hall, Devon and Maren waiting near the stairwell with coffees and the strained patience of people who had clearly heard the same rumors and resented having to wait until I was free to bother me about them.
I was halfway through telling Devon that no, I hadn’t joined a cult and yes, Hunter was still an asshole, when I saw blond hair at the far end of the corridor.
Nichlas had been walking toward us.
He stopped.
The reaction was small enough that most people wouldn’t have noticed it.
One foot checked midstep before he shifted his weight back, his hand tightening around the strap of the bag over his shoulder.
His gaze moved over the four of us, then settled on me.
I could almost see the questions stacking up behind his glasses.
He’d watched Hunter call me to the Kings’ table that morning and had no idea what I’d told them.
Nichlas stayed where he was for another few seconds, long enough for somebody behind him to mutter something when he blocked the hallway.
He stepped aside, but instead of continuing toward us, he turned down the nearest side corridor and disappeared.
Maren followed my gaze. “Was that the guy from yesterday?”
“Old acquaintance.”
“You have a lot of old acquaintances who look like they’re about to throw up when they see you?”
“Only the memorable ones.”
Priya looked between the empty corridor and me, curiosity sharpening, but she let the question die when I started toward the stairs. That was one of the reasons I liked her. She wanted information badly enough to itch for it, but she knew when I’d stopped being willing to provide any.
Outside, the quad was crowded with people cutting between buildings before lunch.
Devon complained about a professor who had moved a deadline without updating the portal, Maren wanted food before her next seminar, and Priya was still trying to convince us that somebody needed to go with her to a party Friday night because she refused to be the only person drinking around finance majors again.
I listened with half my attention while the other half went back to the hallway.
Nichlas had changed direction because I was there.
He’d been afraid of me before Hunter ever spoke to me. That wasn’t new. What had changed was the uncertainty around everyone else.
Until yesterday, he could tell himself the Kings were a wall between us. Malakai had physically stopped me. Hunter had made the rule clear. Nichlas knew where the protection stood, and cowards did better when somebody handed them boundaries they could believe in.
Now he’d watched those same men put me at their table.
Priya was halfway through describing the party host’s absolutely intolerable girlfriend when I spotted Nichlas again across the quad.
He’d taken the longer route toward the business building, keeping enough distance between us that he probably thought I wouldn’t notice.
His head turned once in my direction before he immediately looked away.
I let Maren drag us toward the student union for lunch and listened to Priya complain about rich people who served cocktails with ingredients nobody could pronounce.
Nichlas could spend the afternoon wondering what Hunter had promised me, what Malakai knew, and why the Kings had suddenly stopped treating me like a problem they intended to remove.
For the first time since I found him at Aldrich, I didn’t need to close the distance to make him afraid.
The library had always been one of the few places at Aldrich where people mostly minded their own fucking business, so naturally Malakai ruined it.
I’d been there maybe twenty minutes, long enough to spread my notes across half the table and convince myself I was going to finish the case analysis before dinner, when a hand appeared beside mine and stole my pen.
I looked over to find Malakai dropping into the chair directly beside me instead of taking any of the four empty seats across the table.
He turned the pen between his fingers, glanced at the page I’d been writing on, then looked at me like he’d been invited.
He hadn’t even brought a bag. Apparently his entire plan for the afternoon was showing up and becoming my problem.
“Give it back before I put it somewhere expensive to remove,” I told him, holding out my hand while he kept inspecting the pen as if it had personally offended him. Malakai smiled, clicked it once, then used it to underline a sentence in my notes that I absolutely had not asked him to touch.
“You keep threatening my body like you aren’t already familiar with it,” he said, and I reached for the pen before he shifted his hand just out of range. “Also, this part’s wrong.”
I stared at the line he’d marked, then at him. “You’ve been sitting here for twelve seconds.”
“Closer to twenty.” He leaned farther over my work, shoulder pressing into mine because apparently there wasn’t enough room in the entire goddamn library for him to exist anywhere else.
“And I didn’t say the source was wrong. I said you were.
You’re treating the escalation like it started when he hit the witness, but he’d already made three decisions before that which changed the outcome.
You skipped the setup because the violence was more interesting. ”
That got my attention despite myself. The case involved a repeat offender whose final assault had been written up as a sudden escalation after an argument, which was exactly the kind of lazy explanation professors loved because it fit neatly into a discussion board.
I pulled the page closer and reread the timeline while Malakai remained planted against my side, still holding my pen hostage.
“He changed the meeting place that morning,” I said after a moment.
“Bought gloves two days earlier. Left his regular phone at home.”
“And picked a location where the camera had been broken for a month.” Malakai tapped the paragraph with my pen.
“He didn’t get angrier. He got prepared.
Whoever wrote this is trying to make intent sound accidental because ‘loss of control’ is easier to explain than somebody deciding in advance how much damage they’re willing to do. ”
I turned my head slowly. “Why the fuck do you know that?”
His eyebrows went up. “Know what?”
“Any of this.” I gestured at him with the page, because the man currently stealing office supplies and sitting so close his knee kept knocking mine was also the same lunatic who’d fucked me against a wall after interrupting my attempt to carve up an ex.
Those two facts had not suggested academic nuance.
“You look like you should be majoring in aggravated assault.”
Malakai laughed loudly enough that somebody two tables over looked at us. He looked back at them until they decided their book was fascinating, then finally handed me the pen. “Chemical engineering.”
I stared at him for a beat before I could stop myself. “That’s fucking disappointing.”