Gant
It’s been one week. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours since Madame Benoit advised Elle to become my protégé.
It’s been exactly twenty-four hours since I’ve had Sylo tied up in the old greenhouse, hidden in the surrounding forest and guarded by Zoi. And it’s been exactly twelve minutes since I made Sylo call Elle and ask her to meet him at the theatre’s small studio room instead. The theatre is just a kilometre from where we’re waiting. And I’ve been waiting patiently. Productively, even.
Sylo lays spread eagle on a stark white table in his underwear, his wrists and ankles bound. I’m half perched beside him, one leg bent on the table, the other stabilising me on the black earth of the forest. I swear it’s moving, creeping with things obscured by the darkness. No surprise there, the old greenhouse is infested with them and a myriad of other things that never saw the sunlight.
This section of the forest used to be a part of Beaulieu’s campus, but after a land dispute with some conservationists in the mid-nineteen hundreds, the school was forced to return a few thousand square metres to the forest. In the process, they lost the old chapel and the original greenhouse. Instead of spending the money to demolish them, the buildings remained standing. Trees and roots broke through the stones and panes of glass, integrating the building back into nature slowly but surely in a thin layer of moss. With the tight trees and the grimy green glass walls, it’s damn near impossible to see inside the greenhouse.
The table, though, is well illuminated by hundreds of dripping candles that keep Sylo’s stony face in full view.
To his credit, he’s not bitching or pleading or making up fucking excuses. He knows what he’s done, and he’s not apologising for it.
Yet.
A crawling sensation alerts me to an odd-looking centipede crawling up my pant leg. I swear the creatures in this forest just look wrong. Like they belong to a different age. Perhaps one where humans still hadn’t figured out fire yet. I kick my leg and send it flying. It lands on my target with a soft thud right on Sylo’s pale stomach. Its thick legs scurry towards the dark hole of his navel as it looks for a place to hide. I can tell Sylo wants to cry out, and so can Zedd, because he readies the gag to shove into Sylo’s mouth.
But Sylo doesn’t cry like he used to. He’s playing big boy now.
When the creature realises, it”s far too big to fit, it re-emerges and slinks off between Sylo’s legs, maybe to settle in the darkness of his asshole.
Bae emerges from the darkness into the candlelight with a munch of one of Zedd’s latest creations. This time it”s crispy garbanzo beans loaded with spices. I don’t miss Sylo’s little flinch at the crunchy sound. Anyone who could eat in here had a stomach of steel.
Then again, I’d slept in here more than once.
Two honey eyes glow a step behind Bae followed by soft padding and laboured breathing. Panting really.
Zoi’s already salivating in anticipation of his next bean, the plain ones Zedd made specifically for him.
“I think he’s telling the truth about that hickey,” Bae says boredly in between bites before tossing a few to Zoi. “I doubt he gave it to Eloisa.”
“You’re just wasting your time, Gant. If I’d done it, I’d gloat.”
“But you agreed to be her tutor.”
“I can’t help it that she wants to spend an entire hour with me, multiple times a week. All alone—”
Sylo’s blood splatters across my cheek and étienne’s that’s hovering over his head the moment my fist makes contact with his lip.
“She’s got you this fucked up?” Sylo laughs, his teeth soaked in red. “If I’d have known it was this bad, I would’ve tried something sooner.”
I don’t get to land another hit, because étienne extends his arm and Sylo’s gaze flicks to the black sleeve hovering above him.
For a second his eyes drift to étienne unsurely and it’s the first time I see raw fear. Not the masked kind he gives to me. Because Sylo’s known me too long. Two years to be exact, and that’s long enough. But éti’s newer and éti’s disturbs him.
We all watch in silence as étienne’s sleeve seems to move of its own accord. Then, in a flicker of candlelight, we see it, the massive, hairy black spider making doughnuts around étienne’s elbow. Then his forearm. Then his wrist.
The short intake of air that rasps from Sylo’s throat makes Zedd’s eyes water with laughter, but Bae eases back into the shadows. Zoi, on the other hand, is utterly transfixed by our eight-legged friend. He jumps onto the table and pads up Sylo’s torso to watch intently.
Between his breathing and Sylo’s, I can’t tell who’s panting harder.
“What did we tell you about playing with those things?” Bae asks.
“That it’s creepy,” étienne says calmly as the spider begins its descent on a silvery string to Sylo’s face. “But I like creeping things.”
We know.
“Because you’re weird as fuck,” Sylo says, his wide eyes flickering to mine. Mixed in with his thinly veiled terror is pure despisal because he’s about to break his icy facade, the one he’s upheld so well since we were eleven. “I told you I didn’t do it. What the fuck else do you want? You can’t keep me here much longer. They’ll start a search soon.”
Like I give a fuck about that. It’ll take days before they finish searching the campus itself and move on to the outskirts.
“Stop pretending like you don’t already know what I want,” I say boredly. “It’s tiring.”
Sylo presses his lips thin before eyeing the spider again. It’s moving agonisingly slowly, seemingly through midair. “This is low,” he rasps. “Even for you.”
“Don’t get self-righteous,” I say calmly. “You tried to use my weakness against me too. You’re not better than I am.”
“She’s just a girl.”
‘It’s just a spider.”
The hatred that blooms in those icy irises almost takes me aback.
“You can’t compare a phobia to pussy.”
“And you can’t compare something you’ve never experienced. Something you won’t ever have because I won’t fucking tell you for a second time that Elle’s off limits.”
“And you have?” he sneers. “She hates you. She practically came running into my arms. I bet she’d let me into that hot little hole before—”
Zedd’s phone light lights up the dome ceiling that’s cast in shadow, too tall for the flickering flames’ light to reach.
We all pause to watch the moving nest. No less than three hundred spiders are creeping along the gauzy web.
“Did you know this breed prefers company?” I ask. “Lots of it. See that string? The pulley? It won’t be hard to inaugurate you into their nest.”
“N-nest?”
“I used to stutter too,” étienne says as he raises a candle toward the pointed ceiling, toward the nesting spiders who are attempting to scurry away in protest.
Of course, they can’t. There are too many webs. Too much confusion. Too many of them.
Hundreds of them.
“You’re out of your mind…I have had more cunts than I can count. Couldn’t tell them apart without the lights on and yet you’d do all of this for that fucking ginger?”
“No,” I say, hooking the loop around his ankle to the pulley. “I’d do a lot more.”
étienne reaches for the dangling rope, then Sylo’s bound ankle.
The contact immediately makes him kick out.
“Fine! I’ll stay away from Elle. Happy?”
“Eloisa Ginhart,” I correct him. “No nicknames. Use her full government name.”
“Whatever! Eloisa Ginhart.”
“What reason will you give her? As to why you can’t tutor her?”
“The truth. That she belongs to you and only you. Please. Just get him and that spider the fuck away from me.”
Hmm, still not good enough.
“Do you bend your knee to the Untouchables?” I cock my head as the spider continues to descend. Its fuzzy legs, as thick as my fingers, are only a few centimetres shy from Sylo’s nose now. “I’ve ignored you for two years now and it’s made you bold. Cocky. That’s what I get for giving a pass to the albino side of my family.”
“I don’t have albinism!”
“Despite the lack of sun, your brains have still scrambled, Sylo.”
“It must be the lack of melanin,” Bae notes.
“Do you bend the knee?” I raise a brow.
Sylo’s eyes cross as he gazes up at the spider’s leg just a hair away, then at the dark ceiling again.
His refusal to look me in the eye is an answer enough, but still, I wait. We all do.
“Your rope’s running out,” Zedd says. “Literally.”
“Fine! Fucking fine! I can deal with you lot for one year. Next year is my turn anyway.”
“Who says I’m handing you my sceptre?”
I’d known Sylo a little under two and a half years thanks to our mothers’ estrangement before our birth. We’d met at the academy and while we’ve become acquainted, we haven’t exactly become family. I wouldn’t pass him a drink, much less an entire school.
His eyes finally flick to mine. “No one. I’m taking it. That’s a promise.”
I smirk at that because it’s exactly how I‘d taken mine from the previous head. Maybe Sylo is more capable than I thought.
“Good. éti?”
“Your Grace?”
“Clemency is, but what?”
“A sign of weakness.”
The rusty pulley whirls and Sylo screams, flailing as the spider on étienne’s arm finally reaches its target before he’s hoisted legs first into the air.
But his screams are ringing with another.
Elle’s.
She’s being dragged into the greenhouse by a masked Hale kicking and cursing.
Her face of terror contorts to shock, then outrage, then… disgust, and not by the spiders.
Sylo’s infected her with the ‘ick’ as she watches him thrash like a fish out of water in his underwear. He’s hovering about a metre over the table now, and the distance is growing longer the more étienne pulls, hoisting Sylo higher.
Elle’s lips move like she’s utterly dumbfounded, but she knows exactly why he’s here.
She knows exactly what she’s done.
“Lovely of you to join us,” Bae says, extending the bag of beans to Elle as Hale lets her go and whips off his mask. “May I offer you some refreshment?”
Zoi howls pleadingly for a taste and Elle stumbles backwards, her gaze laser-focused on Zoi’s glowing eyes.
“Get away from me,” she hisses at him and Hale both, but when they stand firm at the exit she has no choice but to stumble closer to the table. But she stops short at the sight of Sylo again, frozen in the middle.
In limbo.
That’s exactly where she is mentally too, because she’s finally realising that her only options are the ones I’m giving her. Which is to say, none at all.
“Mannerless,” Hale says winded, as he reaches into the pretzel bag.
“Couthless,” Bae agrees. “One simply does not turn down refreshment.”
“Or an invitation to such an extraordinary event,” Hale adds. “I asked her so very politely to join me in the forest and she said no.”
Good girl. I’d have been livid if she went with Hale willingly.
“I had to chase her for a half acre. She’s fast.”
“That she is,” I say, strolling forward. “The audacity of her to liaison with my cousin, of all people.”
She pales at the word cousin.
What? Did she think I wouldn’t find out?
“Shameless.” Hale nods.
“Audacious,” Zedd says.
“Vulgar,” étienne coos.
“Unbecoming of a first lady,” I say.
“You’re out of your mind, but I already knew that,” Elle says, her eyebrows knitting with fury. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”
“You.”
“You send your lunatic masked friend to give me a heart attack. To hunt me like a damn wild animal.”
“Forgive me dove. I know you only like it when I chase you.”
She ignores me, gesturing to Hale, who waves like a beauty queen. “Just for him to bring me to…” She pauses, her expression growing more freaked out by the second. “What the hell is this place?”
“My sanctuary,” I say simply. “And your fresh hell.”
“Tell him!” Sylo cries. He’s dangling like a chandelier now, the pulley squeaking in protest. “Tell him I didn’t give you that hickey.”
Elle’s big green eyes flash to me. “Is this what this is about? That stupid hickey?”
“I told you I’d find out on my own one way or another, but you just wouldn’t listen.”
The table rattles, the legs squeaking ominously as Sylo’s fingers are pried away from the edge. “Please Eloisa Ginhart! Tell him!”
Elle looks conflicted. The sympathy in her eyes as she flinches at Sylo, quickly turns into pure hatred as she focuses on me again.
She has no choice but to focus on me because I’ve blocked Sylo from view entirely. We’re almost nose to chest now.
“Please!”
“He dances so well,” étienne says fondly as he admires the roving creature.
The spider. Not Sylo.
Elle squeezes her eyes shut and then glares up at me. “He didn’t give me the hickey.”
My heart stills its rapid pace by a fraction. I can’t withstand any sort of betrayal from Elle. Not like my father did. Especially not with my own flesh and blood.
Her admission is all the confirmation I need to stop feeling like I’m about to die all over again, though she isn’t off the hook.
I want answers.
Now.
“I’ll tell you once you let him go.”
I don’t budge and neither do any of the others.
With a roll of her eyes, Elle strolls past me, climbs up onto the table and undoes the harness around Sylo’s ankle.
He falls with too much grace, tucking and rolling until he lies out flat on his back again, heaving. But then his chest seizes, his eyes crossing at the arachnid on his chest. The furry eight-legged creature, Elle, has no problem touching as she collects the spider on her opened palm and hands it back to éti without so much as a flinch.
Sylo gapes at her in awe, his ragged breathing slowing. “You aren’t afraid of spiders?”
“When you can’t afford a pet, you find free ones. I’m sorry you had to get caught up in my shit. But if Gant’s your cousin, I assume you’re used to it.” She goes to untie a sash around his ankle, but he moves his foot away.
“Please don’t touch me,” he mutters lowly before his gaze jumps to étienne. “Don’t give that fucking psycho another reason.”“Tell her,” I interject, hating their friendly banter.
Sylo’s lip stiffens and Elle glances between us.
“Tell me what?”
“Go on,” I say encouragingly.
“I’ve bent the knee to his highness,” Sylo mutters, his eyes shooting daggers at me. “So that means I follow the king’s orders now.”
“And the king forbade it,” I say.
“I don’t care what the king says. I’m not one of your chess pieces.”
“I put you on my chessboard, so you’re a part of the game. Simple. Move or don’t, but I’ll knock down anyone that interacts with you. Anyone that gets close to you.”
Her expression hardens.
“You may not care what I do to you, but you have a soft spot, an inclination towards losers.” I spare a glance at Sylo. “And you can’t rescue them all so I wouldn’t bother involving them in the first place. Unless of course, you have no conscience?”
I know a witty reply is on the tip of her tongue, but she bites it.
“Get out,” I say to the others before snatching the back of Elle’s grotesque blazer, as she tries to follow behind Zedd, Bae and Zoi who sprints happily through the door with a wag of his tail.
I grip her blazer tighter and realise that she didn’t get a chance to change into her leotard for her lesson with Sylo yet.
Good.
“Not you,” I hiss in her ear.
étienne looks mournful as he frees Sylo”s ankles before they both slink silently into the darkness.
When the door shuts, I circle to Elle”s front, and my heart begins its erratic beat all over again.
“Who?”
“No one.”
“I knew you were a liar.” I can’t control them, my fingers that reach for her, for her left breast that’s also thudding madly over her heart.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieks, but it’s too late.
I’ve freed my tit and clamped her arms above her head in one hand.
The red mark is darker now with hues of purple.
“Who?” I hiss, pressing her against a filthy glass wall to pin her in place with my hips as she struggles to free herself. “Who touched you? Who put their lips on you?”
“I told you no one!” She stomps her foot, and I watch the recoil of her breast, momentarily mesmerized. But then I see that fucking mark and I grip her tighter, my anger, my outright betrayal blooming twofold.
The seconds tick by and when she realises the only way out is if I allow it, she stops struggling.
“No one touched me. Not directly. You saw them pour food onto me. Some of it was hot, and it burned me, okay? It’s a fucking burn!”
It feels like an eternity passes before I can say anything at all, because no relief washes over me.
I told them they couldn’t do it until the end of the period for a reason.
No hot food.
Elle’s snorts bring me back to the present. To her face, glaring at me in disgust. “Are you mad that someone ruined what you think is yours? That someone made it ugly? Or that they disobeyed you? Because it sure as hell isn’t because you give a damn about me.”
I slip my hand from her wrist, down her back and around her waist, pressing her in close and making her go up on her tiptoes as I press a kiss against her thundering heart. Over that burn, I’ll burn the whole school down over.
“It would take a lot more than burns to make you ugly, dove. Doesn’t matter if you’re covered in them.”
She’s momentarily stunned. Then her fists are pounding against my chest. Not baby blows either. She’s slugging me hard enough to leave bruises and I want her to bruise me.
“I wouldn’t have it at all if it weren’t for you! Everything is because of you!”
“Like the email?” I can’t help but ask and she strikes me harder.
I hope it feels good for her.
“I wouldn’t have sent the email if you hadn’t broken my phone.”
“I wouldn’t have broken your phone if you’d have given me the passcode. See? We can play this game for hours.”
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
“Why? What do you even get out of this? Out of holding me?”
“You. I get you.”
She swallows, trying to find the lie in my words, but she can’t because I’m not lying. I don’t lie.
“I don’t know why I want you, but I do. And I’m going to have you.”
To my surprise, she doesn’t try to squirm out of my grasp at the declaration.
“But you’re right that I allowed the burn to happen. They weren’t supposed to leave a mark on you. Hurt you. Not like that. So hit me harder.”
But her fists resting against my chest don’t start up again. Instead, they fall lank by her side, like my approval makes her want to do the exact opposite.
I pull her by the waist closer to the table, to the congealed mass of flickering candles. I break one off, holding the flame between us, and the light reveals the confusion in Elle’s eyes.
“What are you—”
“Take it.” I force it into her hand before pulling my shirt over my head whilst keeping an arm locked around her waist at all times like it’s my lifeline.
“Gant?”
“Do it in the same spot. Over my heart.”
“Do what?” But she already knows as her eyes dart from the flame to my bare chest.
I squeeze her tighter, bringing her and the flame closer. “Make us match.”
Her eyes widen, a terrifying realisation overtaking her features. “You’re actually insane. Truly unhinged.”
“You’re just noticing?”
She says nothing.
“Why don’t you want to?” My fingers dig into her hip bone, trying to force her out of whatever distant thought she’s travelling down. “Don’t you think I deserve it?”
I do.
I want to hurt Elle. But the thought that someone else did, enough to leave a scar, ignites indescribable fury within me. It leaves a scar on me too. Whether she marks me or not, it’s there, burned right over my heart exactly where hers is.
She shakes her head slowly. “I’m not like you. I don’t like seeing people in pain at my hand. Even if they deserve it.”
“So you’re above it all?” I try to goad her. “You’re morally superior- fuck!”
My hard cock digs into her navel as I slam into her, pure bliss washing over me at the scalding then cooling wax that coats my nipple. I fist a hand into her hair and breathe in her scent as she struggles against me, so much so that she drops the candle and I extinguish the flame with my boot.
When she stops wriggling and my cock stops twitching in a threat to erupt, she tips her head back to look at me, but it only gives me access to her neck. I can’t help but lick her erratic pulse, swirling my tongue over the goosebumps until her skin’s so warm that they eventually disappear.
And once again she lets me. Allowing me to feast on her until her pulse eases, but never quite returns to a normal pace.
Minutes tick by as our eyes bore into each other and it’s like we’re travelling down the same road of emotions until we finally slow, slipping into begrudging acceptance and then finally exhaustion.
“I’m tired, Gant,” she whispers finally. “Really tired.”
I say nothing. Because I’m suddenly exhausted too after the rollercoaster, I know I’ll get back on come sunup.
“Why don’t we have an interlude?” she whispers. “A pause.”
“We don’t pause until I say so.”
“Then say so,” she says, leaning back to look up at me with those eyes that are too familiar and too different.
“Give me something to say so. Give me a reason.” There’s a plea in my voice because I want to pour my energy into another form. Into another being. For now.
“You want me to hurt, right? So, hurt me.”
“What do you mean?”
I think I already know.
She strokes my nape, her fingertips massaging the back of my scalp hesitantly at first, then with more conviction.
“Stop pretending. It’s tiring,” she echoes my earlier words to Sylo. “And we’re already tired. Aren’t we? We can rest for a bit. Together.”“And while we rest?”
“Make me bleed. Isn’t that what you want?”