Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
GWENNA
I wake up from dreams of fire with a gasp.
Sweat drenches my body, my neck, and I sit up, heart pounding. The light is gentle, the sheets are soft and cool, and the room…
The room is not mine.
Consciousness slams into me like a tidal wave. Flashes of last night: the formal hall, the dress, the wine, the stupid shoes and my painfully throbbing ankle.
My arms go loose where they’re propping me up, and I fall back into the pillow.
And now I’m…where am I?
I take a few unsteady breaths. It smells like sandalwood and spice. Masculine, quiet. Sunlight pours through a wide window with a narrow seat and cushion.
And there’s just this one bed. Like a real bedroom, not a dormitory. A few feet a way, on the floor, I see a mass of red silk, and that’s when I realize I’m in different clothes: a T-shirt, sweatpants, too big and baggy to be mine.
A boy’s room. I’m in a boy’s room.
I draw the blankets to my chest and look around. Context clues. Textbooks. Clothes. And then I see it. A framed photograph of a dark haired boy with bright blue eyes and a man who looks almost the same. His father, presumably.
Lanz. I’m in Lanz’s room.
My skull clenches. How did I…?
I close my eyes, pulling my memory back in time. The walk, the room, the bathroom. I threw up, needed air, went downstairs, ran into someone. Him.
I open my eyes again. That doesn’t answer much, but it answers enough.
The terrible thought seizes my mind.
Was I…
As soon as it comes in, I banish it just as easily. There’s no way, I think. I just can’t see that happening. Can’t see him doing that. Besides, who would assault someone just to dress them in pajamas?
All of a sudden, I spring out of bed, like a sudden impulse has come to life in me, and land with a wince.
My ankle hurts —not broken, I don’t think, but twisted pretty badly.
Still, I pull the blankets back in a single tug, smooth them, and slip to the door.
I have to not be in there, I think, get out of here.
But once I’m out on the landing, my breath catches.
The house is ridiculous. Vaulted ceilings, two balcony-like hallways—one of which I’m standing on—that sweep into a massive wood staircase leading to a huge entry hall. Above, a skylight lets in honey-warm morning light and everything smells like cedar and wood smoke.
This is Camlann House.
I pictured something nice. Premium quarters for the star athletes. But this—this is like a mansion and…
…and I shouldn’t be here.
Carefully—gingerly, on my ankle—I pick my way to the stairs, the half staircase down to the main landing, and then the grand sweep down to the hall, the whole thing like I’m walking to dinner on the Titanic.
I look left and right: a study room to the left with bookshelves and armchairs, and more of a living space on the other side, a couch and a massive fireplace almost big enough to stand in, with a coat of arms standing guard atop it.
Swords crossed, purple shield, Latin motto.
“Well, hello there, sleeping beauty.”
I jump nearly a foot in the air at the sound of the voice. It’s low, rough, masculine, and familiar. Kai.
“I, um, hi,” I say quickly. “I don’t—” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know how to explain this.
Kai, for his part, seems equally perplexed but unbothered. He looks me up and down at the T-shirt, the sweatpants.
“You joining the squad or something?” he says, smiling. “Because I hate to tell you, but fencing’s single-sex here at Caliburn.”
I look down at the T-shirt that does in fact say Caliburn University Fencing.
“No, I just…”
I press a hand to my forehead, take a wobbling step back.
Because I’m wearing short sleeves. On top of everything else. I might as well be naked.
“Whoa, whoa, easy,” Kai says, and crosses the hall to steady me.
If he noticed the burn scars, he hasn’t shown it. But how could he not? I pull away from his hands like a reflex.
“My bad.” He goes palms-up. Cocks a look at me. “Hungover?”
“Something like that.” My head is pounding in time with my ankle.
“I’ve got just the thing.” He gestures for me to follow, takes a step .
I hover a moment, uncertain.
“Coffee,” he explains.
Fuck me , I think. It had to be coffee. The one substance that could get me to stay.
I’m sold.
Limping, I follow Kai through the living room to a back arch door that leads to a kitchen. More huge windows. A giant stainless steel fridge. A massive island with stools. And pantry cabinets that are, when he opens them, perfectly organized.
“You can sit,” he says over his shoulder. “You won’t get arrested.”
“What about you?”
Kai snorts as he pulls down a mug and fills it from a coffee pot that’s tucked in the corner.
“Be the least of my problems right now.”
He hands it to me.
“Technically no girls allowed,” he says. “But I think we can make an exception for almost dying.”
“Almost…” I trail off, my single sip of coffee going ashy in my mouth. “What?”
“You…” He blinks. Like he’s calculating. Seems to change tack. “You didn’t wear that to the formal hall, I hope.” He eyes me up and down.
“No,” I say. “I…” I don’t even know where to start. I need another slug of caffeine to get my brain working. “I wore the red one,” I say, “with the lace.”
“Mmm,” Kai says, nodding his approval. “I know.”
He pulls out a mug of coffee that must be his, takes a long drink, and fishes a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, sticking one between his teeth.
“Relax,” he says, “I won’t light it. So long as you’re here, anyway. ”
He pins it between his index and middle fingers, rests his hand on the counter. Almost as if he’s waiting for an explanation.
“I went,” I say, “and then I ran out, and I tried to go back to my room and…”
Suddenly it all pours out of me. The dinner, no one speaking to me, Elena disappearing and coming back, the drinking game, getting sick, passing out?—
And then I pause, realizing I’ve said too much. But Kai holds up a hand.
“You don’t need to explain,” he says. “If you’re here for innocent reasons, I’ll take it on good faith. Lord knows we’re all about that.”
It hits me. He’s not pressing me, not judging, letting me have my own space in this room, even when I’m very much not supposed to be here.
And it warms me inside, just a little bit.
At least until a heavy tattoo of footsteps pounds closer from the living room.
“What did you do?” It’s Kingston—his expression cold and dangerous, levied right at Kai. He sees me, I can tell he sees me, and yet he won’t look at me.
Instead, he’s taking measured, fury-filled steps across the kitchen toward Kai.
I’ve never seen Kingston like this, never seen him feel any kind of strong emotion. It’s disarming, so disarming I almost forget that I’m very much not supposed to be here—and I don’t even know how I got here in the first place.
“Are you serious?” Kai scoffs. “For once, nothing?—”
“Don’t!” Kingston growls. “Don’t lie to me this time. I know that you?—”
“Okay,” Kai says, putting his palms up. “Okay, I should admit—the charges to daddy dearest’s card? Those were mine.”
Daddy dearest? They’re…brothers? I dart my eyes from one to the next. They don’t really look anything alike, other than being tall, strong, and white. The similarities end there, especially temperamentally.
“I don’t even care about that,” Kingston mutters. “That’s his problem to deal with—with you. I meant her.” Now his eyes turn to me; that warm, enveloping stare paradoxically freezes me in place.
“It wasn’t him,” I say. I don’t know Kai well, but he did spend God knows how many thousands of dollars of his father’s money on me, and I don’t like people being falsely accused of things besides.
“Wasn’t it?” Kingston says, pivoting back to Kai. “So what, she just decided to break in in the middle of the night? Sure, a likely story.”
“ It wasn’t him ,” I say, my voice harsh and loud in my raw throat.
Kingston and Kai both stare at me now, and I shiver, unused to being held in place by two men who look like that, who look at me like that. Kingston blinks, presses his lips together, folds his arms.
“Then, what are you doing here? Pardon my asking.”
“Hang on, hang on,” comes a voice from outside the room. Another set of footsteps—a quicker clip, almost panicked. Lanz rushes in, breathless, his dark hair sticking at all angles, bare-chested and in a pair of sweatpants. I’m so astonished I forget to look away, out of modesty.
And I have to say, I never thought of fencing as a sport with impressive physique behind it.
But Lanz—Lanz looks good. Not absolutely jacked, but long, lean muscles carved from his shoulders down to the flare of his waist, the V just disappearing into the top of his gray sweatpants.
Gray sweatpants. I look down at my legs.
They’re identical. They could be a uniform, I suppose, but? —
“It was me,” Lanz pants. “I—it’s a long story.”
“I believe we’ve got time,” Kai interjects mildly, picking up his coffee.
Lanz glowers at him, swallowing and catching his breath.
“I found her outside,” he says, “last night. Outside Broceliande. She couldn’t stand. She fell over. She looked sick. I didn’t know where else to bring her.”
And then Kingston spins, with ferocious precision, toward Lanz.
“So you thought the best solution was to drag a half-conscious freshman girl here? Do you know what would happen if someone found out? If they’d seen you? Out all night with…”
“He wasn’t out all night.” I didn’t even hear Callahan come in, but there he is, in a T-shirt and basketball shorts, his glasses on. “He slept with me. On the floor,” he clarifies, nodding at me. “She was in his bed.”
Lanz’s cheeks are flushed and pink. He throws a long look at Cal, then back to Kingston.
“They tried to poison her,” Lanz says.
My heart drops into my stomach.
“They did?” I say, at the same time as Kingston. He slides a look at me for a half second before going back to Lanz.
“What do you mean? Who’s they?”