Chapter 3
Nix sat curled up on the window seat, his left cheek pressed against the chilled glass as he focused on breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
He’d thought he’d finally pieced it together, that he’d started building something here, something like a life. Was it normal? No, but how many things were in this day and age? Nix didn’t need normal anyway.
But he did need stability.
Trust.
Hope.
How was he supposed to believe in any of that now?
After everything? The events of the past twenty-four hours kept playing on repeat in his mind, but it was as though it was happening to someone else.
Like he was on the outside looking in. Watching some horror flick with a terrible ending where the good guys didn’t just lose, they never uncovered the villain in the first place.
“You were right," he murmured when Briant shifted on the opposite end of the alcove. “I should never have come here.”
His older cousin looked worse for wear, haggard and pale. He’d tried to speak a few times since Nix had arrived, but Nix hadn’t been very receptive.
He didn’t know what to say.
Briant had come to Foxglove for him, and Nix had come for Briant’s deceased sister Branwen. Theirs was a connected misfortune wherein the one at fault was impossible to identify.
Was it Branwen for starting all of this? For luring Nix here to do her dirty work, with little to no clues offered?
Or was it Nix’s, for not only trusting the wrong person, but also leaving his only surviving cousin alone with said person?
Was it Briant’s for coming at all? To a place he hadn’t been invited?
They weren’t close, not the way Nix and Branwen had been. Hell, Briant hadn't even been all that close to his sister; that's why she’d left the note leading Nix here for him instead.
Though…to be fair, it’d recently come to his attention that Nix had mistaken how close they’d been as well.
In the end, he hadn’t really known her at all.
“They’re worried about you.” Briant stared at the closed bedroom door, cupping a steaming glass of amber tea in a large glass mug. There was a matching cup set on the end table, along with a half-filled pot. West had brought it not too long ago. “It’s unexpected.”
“Because they’re Demons?” Nix stupidly asked, figuring he owed a break in the silent treatment, even though he wasn’t feeling up to it. “Or because one of them hospitalized you not too long ago?”
Yejun had apologized, but Nix didn’t expect Briant to let bygones be bygones. A part of him wasn’t over it yet either, though he was trying.
Things between him and the artist were rocky at best, but it was better than it’d been; had been in the process of improving every day.
There was no point in staying angry forever.
Nix bore mating bites on his neck from both Lake and West. The Demons were a full package.
He couldn’t take two of them and leave out the third. And he didn’t want to.
Yejun Sang might not have sunk his teeth into Nix’s flesh like the others, but his claim was every bit as strong. Nix knew that. Yejun knew it too.
Lake must have foreseen this happening when he’d chosen to give Nix the mark without consulting any of them beforehand. He must have known it was the best way to trap them all, force Nix permanently into their lives, no matter what any of them wanted.
In the beginning, he’d been mad about that.
Now…
“Juri insisted they were just using you,” Briant surprised him by admitting, and Nix finally found his mind clearing enough for those words to fully register.
“He told me he was doing all of this in part to make it up to us…I had my doubts, considering he was holding me hostage, but it’s crystal clear now. ”
Briant held up the mug, staring at the tea for a long moment before he took a sip. “Their feelings for you are real.” He turned his head and met Nix’s gaze. “As are your feelings for them.”
Nix had known how Briant saw them, and if he hadn’t, Juri had made that stance clear at the Club House. “I’m not brainwashed.” He snorted at the sound of that. “Maybe I am. Either way, I’ve made peace with it. I like them, cousin. I like them a lot. I won’t leave them.”
“Even if it means you continue to put yourself in harm's way?”
“Especially then.” If they were in danger, that was even more of a reason for Nix to stick around. “They need me.”
“You need each other.”
Juri had kidnapped Briant and locked him up in an old hotel waiting to be renovated. He’d left him food and water, but little else, obviously expecting things to move quickly once he went to Nix with his plan. He’d forced Nix to help, but it’d blown up in his face at the end.
“Someone poisoned him,” Nix said, trying not to picture the horrifying event. “Do you have any idea who could have done that?”
It was a long shot. Juri had spent that entire day on campus, so it wasn't like Briant was the last person to have seen him.
“I don’t,” Briant replied. “But I know other things.”
Nix frowned. “Like what?”
“Juri told me stuff.” Briant glanced away. “I think he was trying to clear his conscience, but it was also apparent he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. He used me to get some things off his chest.”
“He confessed to you?” Nix held his breath, almost afraid to get his hopes up.
He’d been close and wrong before.
Many times.
There hadn’t been enough on Juri’s laptop or multi-slate. Nix was still sorting through the tiny bits he had learned, but if Juri had told things to Briant…confessed things he hadn’t left evidence of behind…Knowing had to be better than not knowing, right?
Would it help rid him of this sticky feeling in his chest?
“I know what he did to Branwen, Nix.” Briant closed his eyes, seemingly in pain. “He used her to…”
“To what?” As bad as he felt pushing him, it couldn’t be helped.
Juri had been his friend. The closest one he’d made here, even closer to him than Grady. There’d been a comfort in that, in having someone with no ulterior motive Nix felt like he could rely on. There’d never really been someone fully in his corner before, and he’d thought…
But it’d all been a lie. Another to add to the very, exhaustingly long list.
“The people here can’t be trusted,” Briant said. “Growing up this close to Club Essential, they’re raised in the art of manipulation. Getting a leg up on the people around them is a survival instinct. It’s not like back home.”
Nix didn’t really have much to compare it to. He’d always been a loner.
“Was I naive to think I could make friends here?” Nix asked before he could help it, smiling derisively at his own foolishness, before his cousin surprised him with his response.
“No. Branwen was the naive one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Juri used her.” Briant got up and went to set his cup down next to the untouched one, turning to sit on the bed afterward.
He dropped his head into his hands. “She changed her first name because she wanted a fresh start. That’s also why she chose this school, so far from home.
According to Juri, she’d already begun to befriend Yejun by the time the two of them met. ”
“And you believe that?”
“Yes, because Juri admitted the only reason he approached her initially was for that connection.”
“How’d he do it?”
“He borrowed a friend's account, one that had been jailbroken and set to the King tier. He’d learned her Enigma account name and found her. They began talking under the guise of it being a coincidence, but really, he chose her on purpose.”
King-tier members had access to all known accounts. Others needed to scan a code or meet in a chat room and exchange info, but not the Kings. With a user ID, they could find and contact anyone.
Nix hadn’t been able to figure out how Juri had gotten his hands on the Serendipity account, one set to the King tier.
That whole account had been a thorn in their side this whole time, first believed to have belonged to Rase, then later Dew.
If what Briant was saying now was true, it sounded like Juri had borrowed it from the latter, meaning Dew had a connection to it after all.
Even if those first messages had been included in the files Juri had kept, anything that took place in an open chatroom was automatically deleted.
How had Juri approached Branwen before they’d started chatting one-on-one?
Had he lied and said he’d spotted her on campus and was smitten?
Or had he entered a chat room he knew she’d be in and attracted her there?
Lured her in, made her let her guard down, the same way he’d done with Nix?
They may never know, not with both Juri and Branwen gone, but Nix could easily see how Juri had tricked her into buying that he was a good guy. The entire campus already thought he was.
A son from a high-standing family in the club, refusing his rights to be a Legacy? Unheard of. It also had the added benefit of making him seem relatable to the majority of the student body. He’d given up his privileges to hang around with them, after all. To be normal.
Nix had believed that was something they had in common, had fallen for the ruse himself.
It turned out, Juri had no intention of ever being normal. He’d always wanted more.
And, in true Essential fashion, he wasn’t above harming and using others to achieve that goal.
“Was it Dew’s account?” Nix asked, just for further confirmation.
They’d linked the Serendipity username to Dew. That’d been the King account Branwen had been talking to, so they’d surmised it was also the account of whoever had betrayed her. Of course, Nix had been doubtful that Dew was his cousin’s type, but Juri…made sense.
“That’s the name he kept saying, yeah,” Briant confirmed.
“Did he tell you how Dew happened to get his hands on a second account?” If he’d been given access to the King tier, someone had to have gifted it to him. Dew had constantly complained about being unable to reach that level on his own.