Chapter Eight
Haide
“What do you mean?” I seethe, but it’s too late. Creed’s smug face hovers too close to mine, and I can’t seem to carve enough distance between us to make him evaporate.
“You will go to Rathe University.” His words hang in the air like concentrated venom. “You will learn how to control your damn self.” His pupils dilate like twin voids consuming light. “And you won’t fucking complain.”
I scoff a laugh, shaking my head. “You clearly don’t know me well.”
“And I have zero desire to.” He steps even closer, glaring down at me with his icy blue eyes. “There is something off with you, island girl, and I do not like it.”
“Good. I don’t want you to. Can you pass that feeling onto your little bro because damn. He’s a bit much, isn’t he?”
Creed glares down at me, and I feel a sort of pressure roll across my forehead.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?” He smirks. “You don’t even know what I’m doing, do you?”
“I know if I gut you, you won’t be able to do it.”
His brows snap together and he looks down at the blade pressed right against his cock. The blade that he didn’t even hear me pull free from its sheath.
“Careful, Creed. Wouldn’t want to lose what I’m betting is your strongest… appendage.”
The man-boy sighs and gives me the space I want, but he shuffles back only a few feet.
“Do you even know what your powers are, Haide? Do you even know if you have any? Because I know the island blocks all magic that could threaten its purpose. You were born there, so something tells me your powers haven’t even fully formed.
” He pauses and when I say nothing, his smirk sharpens. “That’s what I thought.”
“Fuck you. I could kill you with my hands before you even had time to throw your little spells, or whatever, at me.”
“I’ll just take your word for it,” he deadpans, clearly completely unthreatened. “And you need to take mine as a royal decree. You’re going to that school.”
“Your royal decrees mean absolute fuck-all to me. I’m not from here. I don’t want to be here, so just send me back and all will be better.”
“That’s not going to happen. I need my brother here, and he seems to think you’re more than the pain in the ass I see.”
“I am not his mate.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
Wait, what?
My shoulders drop. “Really?”
“Really.” He doesn’t blink. “I don’t sense his beast stirring the way Knight’s did when London came along, but it could be because you come from the island.
Maybe it’s blocked you from more than just your powers.
Then again, maybe he’s mistaken obsession for something more.
I honestly don’t care so long as he is safe, which means I need him near.
That means keeping you near and making sure you can, at the very least, learn how to act like a gifted and not cause him even more problems.”
“Yeah, not really selling me on this whole school situation.”
“We are gifted, Haide. You might come from a place where we send the worst of our kind, but they are stunted there. Here, they are not. We are not. We can creep into your mind and control you. We can make you see what we want, do what we wish, and you will be none the wiser. You will be a puppet to our pleasure if that is what we see fit. Even the help could take you out without so much as an ounce of energy.”
“They could try.”
He glares. “The point is, whether you believe it or not, you are prey. At Rathe U, we turn prey into predator.”
My mind starts to catch up to his suggestion.
It’s ridiculous, honestly.
Me? Go to…school.
I’ve never been to school.
That’s the point though, isn’t it? Everything I learned I either taught myself or learned from the exiled on the island. Gifted who were stripped of the very thing that made them what they were—dangerously feral and unforsaken, but powerless. And liars, most of them.
A spark of—something—lights in my chest, but I snuff it out. The feeling not exactly a welcome one.
“I can see it in your eyes, Haide. You want to know what else you’re capable of. What lies you’ve been told all your life. Learn what no one has cared to teach you. The truths and lies of the gifted world. Rathe U can give you all of that and more.”
My eyes narrow, and while I can’t read his damn mind, I can read his expression, as stoic as it is. “What’s in it for you?”
“I told you, I need my brother here.”
“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not it. You just want to keep me on a leash.”
“If you’re really Legend’s mate, which I highly, highly doubt, then you already have one. And it’s bound tight around that pretty neck of yours.”
“He’s not my mate.”
“That’s one thing we agree on.” His blue eyes pierce mine, and the familiar pressure against my forehead returns. “Are you ready to make it two?”
“You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Trying to get inside my head?”
He smirks. “Not trying. I’m in.”
My lip curls. This time, when I draw my blade, he’s ready. He pins me against the wall with a thud. His chest presses against me, his mouth lowering until it’s pressed against my ear.
“Nice try, brat.”
“Fuck you.” I look at his face the best I can from this angle. “I’m not playing into your bullshit. I don’t want to be here. Send me back.”
“That’s not an option.”
“I swear to the fucking gods—”
“Yet.” He cuts me off, and with that one word, my mouth slams shut.
Creed smirks knowingly.
He widens his stance, hands folding in front of him like some privileged fuck, and I have to hold in the urge to roll my eyes.
“If you can dig deep into that empty skull of yours and find even a tiny bit of self-control, pretend you’re a good little gifted girl, I will make you a deal.”
“Just fucking say it already.”
“Stop driving my brother into a manic state. It’s weighing on him. Agree to stay where we put you.”
“And what do I get out of that?”
“Besides the opportunity to find out if you’re worth more than your skin as a gifted?” He raises a brow.
I raise one right back.
“Fine,” he clips. “Agree and when the time comes, I will help send you back where you belong myself.”
My head jerks back. That’s unexpected. I take a step back, watching him closely.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” I ask, cocking my head.
“I might not know jack all about your little world, but don’t underestimate me, King Deveraux.
Because if you do, it will be a mistake you can’t come back from,” I warn.
“Don’t forget, I come from a place where there weren’t just snakes in the grass but in the very air you breathe.
I know a trick when I see one, and I won’t be played into submission. ”
He hums, hands clasped behind his back as he circles around me.
“There is a Royal Gateway on campus accessible only to those we let through. It is a living, breathing portal created and protected by the enchantment of desire. A safety net that allows us to get where we’re needed in the event we find ourselves drained, or worse.
When entered, it takes you where your heart demands.
Agree, and I’ll shove you through the second the time is right.
Legend won’t know you’re gone until it’s too late. ”
My throat runs dry. The more I study him, the less I’m convinced it’s a lie. “What’s the catch?”
“To enter the gateway, you have to be able to open its doors.”
“And let me guess…you need power to do that?”
“Along with the blood of a royal. I can offer you one of those, but the other…well. That’s up to you, isn’t it?
” He smirks in triumph. “So, what’s it gonna be?
Go back to that cesspool you call home as the girl you are now—assuming you can make it there on your own.
” He pauses. “Or go to Rathe U and figure out if there’s anything worth a damn under this skin of yours? ”
My pulse pounds widely and I glare at the bastard. “I think I hate your face more than the other one.”
Creed chuckles as he steps back. “Remember that, brat. Because I can promise you this: If you’re toying with my brother in some way I’ve yet to discover, my face will be the last thing you ever see.”
And with that final anticlimactic threat, he snaps his fingers and reality bleeds into nothing.
…
My muscles shriek. Something pulses with agony. My head? My hands? My—I rocket to my feet.
The sleeping platform beneath me groans like tortured bones, and I’m caged within some sort of rectangular tomb with walls that stretch toward a ceiling painted like false galaxies.
A smaller sleeping platform crouches across from mine, occupied by a girl with golden hair who blinks at me in annoyance.
That son of a bitch!
“Who the hell are you and where the fuck am I?” I snarl, though I’m pretty sure I already know. Instantly hunting for weapons, exits, and anything useful in this pastel hellscape. “And did he just leave?”
“Welcome to Rathe U.” The girl huffs, hauling herself upright. Her head is a tangled nest of blond, cropped close to her chin, and there’re some strange cuffs around her wrist. “I’m Elena and I’m guessing you’re my housemate.”
Housemate?!
“Creed said nothing about a housemate. I don’t like people.”
“Yeah, well. We don’t exactly have a say here, now do we.” She drives her soft square cushion down over her head and rotates to her other side. “And I wouldn’t speak of our kings by name. Or get any delusional ideas about them. Royals don’t talk to us ordinaries.”
Ordinaries?
Ah, yes, now this I had heard of from whiny exiles. There’s a little power scale those born of Rathe live by, inadvertently pitting them all against one another based on the magic that runs through their blood.
Ordinaries are considered the lesser of them because of powers so, well, ordinary.
An exiled Fae male once said that he was an ordinary.
Weird, considering his power sucked the life out of those he murdered, which led to him being sent to the island in the first place.
A power bank is no joke. They literally suck the energy out of you and into themselves.
If that’s not a superior power, I don’t know what is.
Pathetic, the weight these people put into what our minds can do.