Chapter 22 Adept
Adept
ANNA
“Iknow it’s Malakai.”
Isabella watched me as I paced, her head going from side to side as if she were watching a pendulum swing.
“Must you stare at me like that!”
“Sorry!” she said in a high-pitched voice and snapped her attention to the floor.
“Why would he let me down there? And see what he was doing? Is he that arrogant?” I asked.
“I mean, what the fuck is happening? First Cody, then Skylar, and now he’s attacked Reece, too?
He has to be behind the other disappearances.
He decided they might taste good or something crazy and accidentally killed them, then poisoned everyone except me somehow to make them be forgotten.
I swear to God, that son-of-a-bitch is going to pay for this. ”
Knock-knock.
Roslyn entered my dorm and I stopped pacing. Isabella took her feet off my bed and sat up in the chair. The expression on Roslyn’s face made me tense.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s Reece,” she whispered. “She was found missing from her hospital bed.”
My face grew cold, and I sat on the edge of the bed.
“How?” I asked. “I tried to tell them what happened and they didn’t care. Why’s Malakai getting away with this?”
Roslyn started pacing in my place. “I don’t know, Anna. This is all complicated. There is no way anyone should have been able to access her in that room. It doesn’t make any sense. I swear to you, we are searching for her. And Malakai is being questioned, but right now, he has an alibi.”
I scoffed. “Alibi? What about what I saw? Doesn’t that matter to anyone?”
“It does,” Roslyn whispered. “If someone is covering for him, we will find out. Stay together, okay?”
Roslyn left.
“Have you talked to Blake about this?” Isabella asked.
“No, I don’t want him to shut me down from looking further into it,” I said, returning to pacing.
“You know what’s odd?” she asked.
“What?”
“Everyone missing has been from our intake group. We all went over the Falls together. Does that freak you out?” she asked quietly.
I stopped. So, she noticed too.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it does.”
I spent most of my time studying and staying in my dorm with my door locked. Roslyn was never there and I had to force myself to stay up late to catch her one evening when she got in.
We’d barely spoken since the night I’d found her in Ezreal Kalmont’s tower, except for when Malakai was being questioned.
Roslyn was an Aurkai, and because of that, there was a barrier between us that, despite our budding friendship, was not to be breached. Seeing her leaving Ezreal’s tower, disheveled, had breached that barrier.
I took a deep breath as I stood before her door, unsure of what I wanted to say to her. All I knew was that I needed to talk to her. I needed a friend.
I braced myself and knocked softly in three short taps. There was a pause before I breathed a sigh of relief when she called out.
“Come in.”
I opened the door, peering in before entering the room. She was sitting at her vanity, her hairbrush in her hand. She smiled at me softly, indicating it was okay to enter.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
I moved into the room, noticing the odd state of disarray.
The other times I’d been here, everything had been in perfect order.
I sat at the edge of the bed; my foot bent under my knee as I angled my body toward her.
I caught her gaze in the mirror as she combed her soft curls.
The same tone as the last time we met still hung between us, and I realized there was no avoiding what I’d seen. Sighing inwardly, I took the plunge.
“So, you and Kalmont, huh?” I said quietly.
She didn’t look up, her hand idly fidgeting with the hairbrush.
“It’s a lot more complicated than it looks,” she muttered.
“When you mentioned there was someone back home, I never would’ve pictured someone like Ezreal,” I said.
Roslyn looked at the floor. “Well, that’s because he isn’t the guy from back home. His name is Asher, and honestly, the entire situation is a mess.”
I heard the shame in her voice and my heart ached as I grappled with what to say. The rumors about him sleeping with a student, and the subsequent rumors that it was me, were practically being shouted through a loudspeaker in our ears.
“I’m sorry that you somehow got caught up in the drama,” she muttered. “It’s not what it sounds like—I’m not sleeping with him. It’s complicated.”
I raised an eyebrow, surprise eating my words. Complicated indeed. I did feel a slight sense of relief, though. Finally, I said, “No need to apologize. It’s not your fault.”
Roslyn tsked, but I caught her bemused look in the mirror. “It kind of is.”
I shook my head. “Whatever. Forget about all that. What’s the deal with him anyway? He’s so odd.”
Odd. Understatement of the year.
Roslyn grimaced in acknowledgement.
“Ezreal is rather unique but incredibly gifted. But you are right. Odd doesn’t quite cover it, I’m afraid,” she added sardonically. “I’ve been a bit of a fool.”
The angst in her voice said everything I needed to know for us to move on from this. I didn’t know Roslyn well enough to judge her for such a thing, and if I did, it wasn’t my place. She was clearly in turmoil with herself, and my knowing her secret was enough damage for one day.
In a way, I was glad it happened. I liked Roslyn, and I wanted to understand her, but if this moment hadn’t occurred, the barrier between us would have held firm.
But now the guards were down.
“My mom was murdered, and I think it was because of me.”
Roslyn turned on her stool, setting her brush on her vanity. She watched me with wide, concerned eyes. She was doing a good job of navigating all of this as one of the Aurkai by not overly expressing shock and focusing instead on my choice to reveal it.
I told her everything. My entire childhood.
I inhaled deeply. “Then, a whole year passed that I have no memory of.”
It was like the absurdity of it was only just now setting in. Then again, in the context of the things that happened here at Nightfall, it didn’t seem all that crazy.
“Could we be any more screwed up?” I asked, an odd relief coming over me at just having said it out loud. I cringed internally—maybe talking about shit did make you feel better.
Roslyn smiled and shook her head. “You have no idea.”
Roslyn’s words were frail, spoken without connection, as her mind was lost deep in some memory.
She stood up abruptly.
“You can’t remember anything? Not a blurry image, a scent, or a feeling?” Roslyn asked.
I shook my head. “It’s as if I went to sleep that night and woke up the next day back in North Carolina and no time had passed.”
I traced the swirling pattern on the quilt folded at the end of her bed.
“That’s terrifying,” she said, sitting beside me and propping herself on her pillows. She tossed one to me and I caught it, nestling it in my lap.
“It’s never made any sense to me,” I said. “Someone took me, kept me fed and unharmed, then put me right back where they’d taken me from exactly one year after my mom was murdered.”
Roslyn reached over, touched her head to mine, and put her arm around me.
“It sounds like your mother was killed because she was trying to protect you from someone. I fail to see how the fault lies with you,” she said.
I leaned across the foot of her four-poster, hugging the pillow tightly against my chest. She was right—someone was responsible for her death, and I needed to know for sure who that was, even if it was me.
But if it were me, someone else had been there that night, and that didn’t add up at all with me flying off the handle and killing her.
“My mother was killed too.”
Roslyn’s words shocked me. She was still, her thoughts somewhere far away.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Wrong place, wrong time.”
A deafening silence held us together, a void we both knew too well.
Grief bore its way into me, anchoring itself within and restraining me, making my strides forward more difficult.
She carried that same weight, a weight that often gave way to sorrow.
It lived in your heart, sometimes bleeding out for others to see.
I thought I’d sensed it within her before, but I wasn’t sure.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
My words pulled her back to me, and she gave me a brief smile. It was one of those sad smiles people give when they’re not okay, but they want people to believe they’re strong.
“Don’t be. Our sadness won’t bring them back. But our strength can protect their legacies.”
Perhaps she was right, but I didn’t know what strength to draw on. The pretense of strength was not the same as real strength. I knew because we were the same. I wanted to be strong for my mom because that was what she’d wanted for me. I would carry that will in her stead—to not be powerless.
Roslyn leaned over, reached under her bed and retrieved a bottle of wine. She twisted a corkscrew and yanked the cork out before taking a long drink and offering me the bottle.
I laughed and snatched it from her hand, copying her with a long swig. It was fruity and burned all the way down. She giggled in an innocent chime that made me give her a crazed look at the sound.
“Want to play a game?” she asked, a mischievous look on her face.
I raised an eyebrow. “Of course.”
“Okay, the topic is: words that describe Melanie,” she said. “I’ll go first, starting with ‘A’. Appalling.”
She gave me a severe look, to which I barely restrained my laughter.
“Wait, you have to give me another drink of that wine before you make me say it,” I said.
Roslyn giggled and passed it to me; a grin stretched across her lips. I took another drink.
I pursed my lips, taking a breath before spluttering out, “Bitch!”
We both roared with laughter as Roslyn feigned disgust, wiping off the wine I spat all over the place.
“Why, I would never have thought such a thing about our dear roommate,” she mocked, “Oh, is it my turn—creepy-eyed.”