Chapter 37 Salem
CHAPTER 37
SALEM
She felt like death warmed over.
Salem turned in bed, feeling like she’d gone wrestling with a truck and lost, her body hurting, joints aching, feet throbbing, face swollen. She tried to remember what had caused it, and it slowly came back to her.
The night.
The lighthouse.
The cave.
Caz.
He was there, near her feet, pulling off socks that she hadn’t even noticed, checking her for wounds before looking up at her.
“Hey.” He came to sit by her side, pushing a curl away from her face. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like a zombie,” she croaked, happy to finally have the use of her voice again. She was never going to take this shit for granted.
He brought her a tumbler of water from the side table and held it to her mouth. She drank, thirsty, until almost the entire bottle was finished. Tired, even from just drinking, she fell back into the bed with a groan and looked out the window.
It was dark.
“How… lonnng?” Her words slurred slightly, her eyelids feeling droopy.
“Just a few hours,” he told her. “Go back to sleep.”
“Mmkay,” she mumbled, already passing out.
The next morning, Salem dragged her ass out of an empty bed, woken by the light streaming in from her colorful window. She didn’t know where Caz was, but his indent was on the bed and his pillow was warm. Taking a deep inhale of his scent, she got out of the bed somehow, her limbs feeling stronger than they’d been, and stumbled to the bathroom. Quickly doing her business, she stood in front of the mirror, wincing at her reflection.
She looked like death warmed over. There were bruises on her neck and pillow lines on her cheeks, her eyes were puffy and red, her hair wild, her face swollen. She felt like a hot mess and not the good kind.
Taking a deep breath, she decided to brush her teeth and wash her face. Feeling a little more human after doing that, she decided to check in on Melissa before resting more.
Pulling on one of Caz’s hoodies over her leggings, drowning and surrounded in his scent, she made her way out and down to Melissa’s room, grateful for the empty residences so no one would have to see her like that.
The morning was annoyingly bright, and cracking her jaw with a loud yawn, she knocked on her friend’s door. After a few minutes, it cracked open, and the other girl stared at her through bloodshot eyes.
“Everything okay?” Melissa mumbled, opening the door wider for Salem to come in.
“Yeah.” Salem walked into the maximalist, bright room, in a similar layout to hers. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” Melissa grumbled, climbing back into bed. “I drank too much last night. Never again.”
Salem hesitated before taking a seat on the bed, realizing her friend had no idea what had happened and almost happened the night before.
“I though you were supposed to be at home,” Salem started, not really knowing how to tell her, if she should tell her at all. Melissa was bright and bubbly and happy, and even telling her what had happened could traumatize her. But could she be dishonest? How did it work? She needed Aditi to guide her through this.
“I got a call from the Bar Guy.” Melissa rolled her eyes. “He said it was an emergency so I showed up but he wasn’t there.”
He must have been one of those group people. But Melissa had been seeing him for weeks, which meant she had been the target for weeks. It made a chill go down Salem’s spine.
“So, you drank by yourself?” she asked, curious as to what had happened.
Melissa frowned. “I… I don’t remember actually. I was at the bar and then I woke up here.” Panic started to take over her friend’s face. “Oh my god, this is like the night I got drugged at the bonfire. You guys carried me in but I didn’t remember. Did someone drug me? Did someone…? Oh my god.”
Salem quickly grabbed hold of both of her hands, gripping her tight, and stared deeply into her friend’s eyes. “Nothing happened, Melissa, trust me.”
She saw Melissa take in a shaky breath, her eyes getting moist. “You know what happened, Salem? Tell me. I need to know.”
Well, she didn’t have any choice about it anymore. Slowly, she told Melissa how she had gone on a walk and stumbled upon the cave, how they had both been rescued by Caz and Baron and their group. She left things out about the other club, not wanting to dump everything on her too soon, and explained what she could.
Melissa was fully sobbing by the time she was done, throwing her arms around Salem. “Thank you! I love you so much! Thank you! I’m so glad we’re okay.”
Salem held her back, getting much better at the hugging business than she had once been, rubbing her friend’s back in soothing motions as Caz did with her. “Me too.”
They pulled back and talked a bit more about things, before Melissa told her she would go back home that afternoon until the beginning of the semester. Salem nodded, wondering what her plans were going to be when the new season began.
After a few minutes of making sure she was okay, Salem left Melissa and walked back to her room, the empty halls echoing her footsteps as she moved.
She put in the code and opened the door, only to see Caz lying down shirtless on his side, watching.
It was all the invitation she needed. She had earned her lazy day. They both had.
Wordlessly, she pulled his sweatshirt over her head and threw it to the side, stripping off her leggings and leaving them in the pile too. She went to her side and climbed beside him, loving the way he immediately tugged her close to him, letting his heartbeat under her ear lull her into a sense of safety. After long, quiet moments of settling in, her mind started to work again.
“Caz?” She checked to see if he’d fallen asleep.
“Hmm?”
“Where did you go?”
“Had a meeting with the Order,” he told her honestly. “How’s Melissa?”
“Okay. She’s going home in a few hours.”
There was silence for a few beats after that, before she asked the question that had been on the forefront of her mind.
“What were you doing there?”
A breath expanded his chest, moving her head up and down with it, and she waited for him to explain.
“I was sent there, to infiltrate them with Baron, as a task from the Order,” he told her, referring to the legacy group. It was the first time she had heard him call it that, but that was probably because now he was allowed to. “They didn’t like the fact that this group was not only attacking award-nominated students but also killing them and driving them to their deaths. Your sister being one. My brother being another, though he was targeted because he got too close to exposing them.”
Something confused Salem. “But if your Order knew about this wannabe group, and wanted to eradicate them, why not just do it themselves?”
He stroked the back of her head absently, looking up at the ceiling. “After your father disbanded the group, after what they did to you, they scattered. The Order was never truly certain of who was in the group and who wasn’t, though I’m sure they had suspects. That’s why they wanted me to assist Merlin. It was my first task, to get close to him.”
Now it made sense why he’d been a TA for a psychology professor.
“That reminds me…” He turned to the bedside stand, his frame lit by the colorful lights streaming in from the glass windows. He turned back to her, putting something in her hand. Salem opened her fist and looked down at it.
Olivia’s pendant, twinkling in the light.
Her sinuses began to burn.
He had been the one who stole it, for her.
She pulled it close to her heart and looked up at him, silently telling him everything she couldn’t put into words at the moment. He gave her a soft smile, stroking her hair away from her face, pressing their lips together for a small moment before pulling back.
Keeping the pendant close to herself, she got back on track with the conversation. “And Merlin thought you were shadowing him because you wanted to be a part of his group?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “The man was a narcissist to boot. It wasn’t difficult to convince him of that.”
Salem nodded. She had concluded that about Merlin herself. “Was he the reason you stayed away from me in the beginning?”
“Partly,” he told her. “I didn’t want him to focus on you, but you went and dragged it in all by yourself.” His tone was wry, reminding her of the times she had picked arguments with him in class.
“The other reason was your sister,” he told her. “The Order made a rule after the deaths started happening on campus. Family of the dead, regardless of who they were, were completely off-limits from any games and politics. I was going to initiate in a few months, so I didn’t want to risk it.”
It made sense. But then he had, and in a very public way. “Why did you?”
He huffed a laugh. “Because I saw you smiling at another boy and didn’t think going to prison again was too bad.”
“You’re crazy.” She shook her head.
“About you? Incredibly.”
She smiled into his chest, holding him tight. It had been a ride, such an up and down ride with him, but she was glad to be there, to be alive with him by her side.
“Also,” he said, “I found out why your father did what he did.”
Salem pulled back and looked at him, sobering at his tone. “What do you mean?”
Caz stared at her. “He had been investigating your sister’s death for a while. When Laz died, he got the Order to help him find the truth. That’s when he realized that Mortemia was still operating. And that my uncle had been the one to restart it with the Vanguard name, after being rejected from the Order.”
Holy shit. She inferred what he wasn’t telling her. “The Order didn’t accept him after what happened to your parents and you boys.”
He gave a nod. “The Order has some codes. Not to attack a member, and not to touch families. He violated them both and then wanted acceptance. Didn’t even get a foot in the door. That’s probably when my asshole relatives started digging and revived the wannabe group.”
Salem mulled that over, and another question popped in her head. “Wait, what happens to the Vanguard estate now?”
Caz shrugged. “I’ll probably be able to get it back if I reveal who I am. My aunt is still alive but has no kids. And I have the connections now to get it back.”
Salem leaned over him. “Do you want it back?”
Caz considered that, brushing her curls away from her face. “I’m considering your father’s deal.”
She blinked. “What?”
“He wanted an alliance of the Salazar line with the Vanguard line,” Caz reminded her, amusement on his face. “We’re already pretty good at allying our lines together. What say you, Miss Salazar? Want to have a merger with me?”
Salem felt his amusement but was slightly confused as to what exactly he was asking her. “Just so there’s no confusion, you want us to…?”
“Marry,” he stated simply. “Not right now, but someday. But I want my ring on your finger and yours on mine. I want the world to know about it and I want you to know you always, always belong. To me.”
Salem looked down at his chest, her eyes burning.
She’d never thought, in her wildest daydreams, that something like this could ever happen to her. She had always been the unapproachable, aloof girl, the girl they had called frigid and unfeeling. She had been alone and accepted that she always would be. And then he’d come into her life, like a hurricane, blowing everything around her away, smashing her belief systems into smithereens, until she had been forced to make a new one for herself.
“Salem?”
“Hmm?”
“Stop thinking.”
That alone sealed it for her. There was no one else in the world who could shut her brain up.
She gave him a nod, squealing when he suddenly attacked her, taking her down with him, peppering kisses on her mouth, giving her the affection she had once been famished for, affection she now expected, affection she knew she would always get from him.
She didn’t know what their future would look like. He was now a member of an ancient secret society, his name one that was stained with blood between his family and hers. Things had changed, she had changed, yet the uncertainty of the future loomed over her. It would always, she supposed.
But she felt free, free from shackles, from questions, from demons.
Lying there in his arms, on the land of Mortimer, a land that had witnessed too much blood and death, more than she could possibly know, she felt at peace.
And though the future was uncertain, for the first time it looked alive.