Chapter 6
Six
Byron
When I reach the Lucent Community section of the academy’s library, nothing’s waiting for me except the few bookcases of spiralbound record books. I turn slowly, thumbs hooked in my pockets, posture relaxed. Just browsing the shelves, nothing more.
Behind my nonchalant facade, tension twists through my chest.
Elodie told me to meet her here. Where is she?
It’s just like her to leave me waiting while she takes her time, isn’t it?
I don’t even know why she picked this spot or if there’s information I could get started looking up. I followed her command like she’s got me on a leash—
A quiver through my palm brings my head swinging around. The blazing pang that shot up my arm last night and drew me to my newly sparked match has faded over the last several hours, but my sense of her presence wakes up when she’s nearby.
Elodie slips into view with a furtive glance over her shoulder. Her dark green eyes light up when she sees me, a grateful smile crossing her lips, and all my disparaging thoughts dissolve in the warm glow that floods my body.
This is my match. The person who’s meant for me. Every particle of my body resonates with the rightness of it—and nudges me to embrace it.
I have to stiffen my legs against the urge to step forward and wrap my arms around her, to enfold her in a literal embrace. I’m a little worried I wouldn’t know how to let go.
I have to remember that she is still Elodie Devine. No matter what’s happened between us in the past few weeks—and even that has been far from idyllic—it doesn’t erase the years of rivalry between us.
She’s my fated mate, but how much can I trust her? Because I don’t think she completely trusts me.
Elodie comes to a stop a couple of feet away, close enough that I could touch her with a lift of my arm but far enough not to invite the contact. I clench my hand.
A deeper consideration tugs at my gut like a snagged claw.
How much should I be indulging any of the headier emotions sweeping through me? Because when my family finds out who my match is…
I shove that thought away. It doesn’t seem fair to make a decision about that when her life is literally on the line.
What kind of heartless scalder would abandon his match to a murderer?
Elodie glides her gloved fingers over the spiral bindings, tugging one volume and another out to check the labels on the covers.
When she speaks, without looking at me, it’s in little more than a whisper.
“Thanks for coming. I wanted to talk to you before you go to The Eclipse, and I wasn’t sure if you were planning to today.
This seemed like a discreet enough spot to talk. ”
And apparently she did have things to look up, not that she’s bothering to explain that even while she’s doing the looking.
I nod as if this is a totally normal conversation. “I’m going to head over as soon as we’re done talking. I assume I’m most likely to hear something significant right after Kenneth’s disappearance.”
“Good point.” Her gaze ticks toward me alongside another little smile, and my pulse jumps with a giddiness that’s totally out of proportion to the tiny show of affection.
“There’s something—someone—else you should pay attention to.
I found out that the company that made Kenneth’s knife is run by the Tadros family. ”
I frown. “The Tadroses will all be club members, but I don’t think I’ve seen any of them there except Grady and occasionally his dad.”
“So pay attention to him.”
It’s hard to imagine the cavalier 16th year who laughs about how the professors finesse his grades out of “due respect” committing himself to anything as serious as a murderous conspiracy.
But even as that thought passes through my head, memories click into place of the times I caught Elodie at the club in her attendant disguise.
Outside a room Grady and his friends had ducked into to enjoy their latest score of enhanced pills or powder. Hovering near him when he held court in the lounge.
I look right at her, studying her expression. “You already suspected something about him. Was he who you came to the club to spy on?”
Elodie’s jaw tightens, enough to tell me I’m reasonably close to the mark. “I’ve been looking into a lot of people. Now we have an extra reason to wonder about him.”
“What was the first reason?”
Her lips part and then press flat for a second before she answers. “I’m not sure. Just an inkling, things I overheard. Nothing definite.”
Is she fucking with me? “You didn’t risk a huge scandal and go to the trouble of sneaking into that place three times just on an inkling.”
Elodie makes a pained face at me, as if it bothers her that she isn’t telling me. Which is infuriating, because if it bothers her so much, she could just tell me.
“It didn’t get me anywhere anyway,” she says, sliding one of the record books all the way out. “Hopefully you’ll have better luck.”
I watch her flip to the index, barely stopping myself from grinding my teeth. “What are you checking now? Something else about the Tadroses?”
Am I allowed to know this much? I’m trying to keep her alive, for fuck’s sake.
“Maybe.” Her golden-brown brow pinches in concentration in a way that shouldn’t be so compelling. “I’m wondering who the Hearsts have been associating with in the past year. Here we go—they’ve got a few entries.”
I wait while she flips through the pages, admiring the intensity of her expression more than I like to admit. There’s a determination in her that I wouldn’t have thought Elodie was capable of.
Where would she even have needed to cultivate that kind of grit when she’s gotten everything in her life handed over on a silver platter?
Everything except getting to keep that life at all, I guess. She had to fight hard just to stay alive last night.
Hell, according to Salvatore, she nearly got herself drowned to save him too. I can’t imagine him admitting that unless it was true.
The thought of the other matches in our union cuts through my appreciation with a wobble of my nerves. I’m supposed to find some kind of balance with Salvatore Cosgrave? With Professor Raith, who lectures like he’s mocking us more than educating us?
I barely know Asher to make anything of him, but the other two are bad enough. What kind of demented family did fate have in mind?
I can imagine how my parents will wince simply finding out that I’m one of four mates around my core match. Does that leave Hannah with the entire weight of the Worth name on her shoulders?
My father’s voice, imagined but far too believable, rings through my head. “You know fate makes mistakes with our family every now and then. She’s got three other matches—she can’t complain if you do what’s best for you and set your own course. All you need is your glim.”
That is what he’d say. But he wouldn’t mean what’s best for me—he’d be thinking about what’s best for the Worth legacy.
I don’t feel I can say what’s best for either just yet.
Elodie lets out a soft noise that makes my pulse jump in alarm. “What?”
She turns the book so I can see. “Kenneth’s parents invested in a new venture with the Kingsleys and the Somersets this past fall.”
The Kingsleys and the Somersets… Is she worried about her friends?
There’s no reason she shouldn’t be. Friendships in the lucent upper class are really more strategic alliances, subject to change with any shift in the currents.
But leaping to conclusions isn’t going to solve our problems.
“We don’t know if any Hearst other than Kenneth realizes what he was up to—let alone encouraged him,” I point out. “People go into business together all the time. Have you seen any sign that Stella or the Somerset twins have it out for you to the point of murder?”
Elodie shakes her head, but with a trace of hesitation. “I don’t think so, but… how can I be sure? I didn’t see any sign that Kenneth wanted to butcher me, but here we are.”
I can’t stop my arm from rising, my hand from cupping her elbow with what I intend to be a comforting squeeze. It’s a safe contact, her sleeve and my glove warding off skin-to-skin contact, but a jolt of heat radiates into me the second our bodies meet.
Elodie looks up, with a flicker of the hunger that entranced me the other day in the club.
My groin twinges. My chest aches with the need to press my mouth to hers.
And what, risk defacing the school library with whatever my glim might be?
I’m not sure I could restrain the temptation even with that caution in the back of my head, except Elodie jerks her gaze away from mine a moment later. The implicit rejection, no matter how fair, hits me like a splash of frigid water.
Is she ever going to really want me? As more than a furtive sort-of hook-up in the back room of a secret club, as a man standing at her side before the whole world?
There’s no way her dad and grandparents wouldn’t prefer for her matches to all be the respectable pale tones of the vast majority of lucent high society. I’ve got a hell of a lot more than a fashionable tan.
What chance is there that Elodie doesn’t share their views?
“I guess I’ll have to keep an eye on them and see,” she says, jerking me back to the subject at hand. “We shouldn’t spend more time together than we need to.”
It’s a clear dismissal. I agreed to the plan of keeping our bond secret last night, but right now the subterfuge feels like an anvil pressing on my chest.
I attempt a smile that might come out more like a grimace. “Right. I’ll get on with my work.”
I brush past her, but Elodie’s voice stops me. “Byron.”
When I glance back at her, she appears to waver. “I know this isn’t easy for you. Thank you.”
All I can do is dip my head and stride off through the library.
She knows it isn’t easy? She wasn’t there when I returned to my bedroom last night and had to re-straighten every book on every shelf before my nerves stopped jangling too loud for me to sleep.
She has no idea about the itch rippling under my skin right now, the rhythmic counting my mind’s already veered into to steady myself.