10. echo
echo
The pounding started before I had finished deciding whether Hunter Hansen was deeply annoying or genuinely delusional. I had been awake for almost an hour with my phone beside me and yesterday’s conversation replaying in pieces every time I tried to focus on anything else.
Hunter had said I could have Nichlas if I behaved.
Simple enough on the surface. The problem was that men like Hunter tended to hide entire rulebooks inside one word and then act offended when everyone else failed to read the invisible pages.
I had agreed because Nichlas was on the other side of it, and I could tolerate a lot when there was a body waiting at the end.
My phone buzzed again across the bed. The family thread had been active since before six, which meant somebody had gotten restless and infected everyone else with it.
Runo had asked whether I had found Nichlas yet.
Aeron wanted to know whether I had eaten breakfast. Slash had asked for my class schedule twice, then followed that with a question about campus security that felt suspiciously specific.
Samael had skipped the small talk entirely and told me to call when I was awake.
I had answered all four of them with the same message.
No one’s dead yet.
That had bought me twenty-three minutes before Samael sent another message asking whether I considered that a check-in.
I did need to call them. Nichlas had gone from being an ex I had finally tracked down to a protected problem sitting inside something much larger than I had expected.
Desmond Hansen’s name had changed the entire conversation yesterday.
Hunter had made it clear enough that protection at Aldrich meant access, consequences, people willing to make problems disappear because somebody important wanted them gone.
My fathers would have questions as soon as I mentioned any of it, and I still hadn’t decided how much I wanted to give them before I understood the situation myself.
The pounding came again, hard enough that whoever was outside clearly had no interest in waiting for me to become sociable. I pushed off the bed and crossed the room, dragging a hand through my hair as I went. “If you keep doing that, I’m eventually going to assume you’re asking for violence.”
“Echo, open the fucking door.”
Priya sounded personally offended by the existence of hinges.
I pulled the door open and found all three of them crowded in the hallway.
Priya had a garment bag hooked over one arm and a shoebox wedged against her hip, Devon was carrying another bag that looked expensive enough to irritate me on sight, and Maren had folded clothes stacked against her chest. Priya took one look at me and sighed like I had already ruined her morning.
“Girl, you fucked up.”
I stepped aside because there was no point pretending they were going to wait for an invitation. Priya came in first and headed straight for my bed, with Devon and Maren following behind her. “I’ve been awake for less than an hour. Give me at least one useful detail before the lecture starts.”
“We were coming up here to get you for breakfast because you disappeared yesterday and never came back to explain why,” Priya said, laying the garment bag across my comforter and immediately reaching for the zipper.
“Then Carter stopped us downstairs with all of this. He knew our names, knew your room number, and handed everything over with instructions to make sure you wore it today. Devon asked who it was coming from, and Carter said Hunter Hansen like that was supposed to answer every question anyone could possibly have.”
Devon set the second bag beside her and leaned against my desk. “It answered enough of them.”
Priya looked over her shoulder. “You took the bags without even asking what was inside.”
“You were standing beside me saying nobody argues with the Kings unless they want their semester to become interesting in a way that ruins their GPA.”
“I said people here have survival instincts. That’s different.”
Maren lowered the folded clothes onto the bed and looked between them. “You both agreed to take everything upstairs within about fifteen seconds.”
Priya ignored that and pulled the blazer free. She held it up toward me with the kind of expression people usually reserved for evidence. “Do you understand how weird this is?”
I took the blazer from her and ran my fingers over the inside seam.
The uniform had the same general shape as mine, though somebody had altered almost every part that mattered.
The waist was cleaner, the shoulders fit closer, and the fabric had enough structure that it would sit properly instead of shifting every time I moved.
The skirt underneath had been adjusted too, along with a shirt that looked like someone had actually considered the existence of breasts while cutting it.
“This wasn’t done this morning.” I turned the blazer over in my hands. “Someone had my measurements.”
Priya stared at me like I had chosen the wrong part of the situation to be concerned about, but Devon straightened at that.
Maren opened the shoebox while pointing out that Aldrich had taken uniform measurements during enrollment, which meant somebody with enough access could probably pull them without asking me.
“Probably,” I said, looking at the blazer again and trying to decide whether Hunter had arranged this after our conversation or whether somebody had already been preparing for the dinner before I ever agreed to anything. Either option meant more planning than I liked.
Maren lifted one of the shoes out of the box. “These definitely aren’t standard.”
I took the shoe from Maren and turned it over in my hand.
The heel was thinner and higher than the block pair I’d been wearing, with a sharper toe and enough height to make running inconvenient.
Whoever had chosen them cared more about how I looked crossing a room than what I could do once I got there.
“I’m not wearing these. I can work around a heel when I need to, but there’s no reason to spend an entire school day in something designed for standing around looking expensive.”
Priya sat on the edge of my bed and watched me put the shoe back in the box.
“I think you’re missing the part where none of us were given the impression that the shoes were optional.
Carter handed us everything, told us you were expected downstairs for breakfast, and then somehow managed to make it sound like we were responsible for getting you there.
So before you decide you’re protesting footwear, can you explain why Hunter Hansen has apparently reorganized our morning around you? ”
“He made me a deal yesterday. Nichlas is under protection here, and Hunter controls enough of that protection that going through him is currently more efficient than wasting time trying to get around him.”
That brought all three of their attention onto me properly. Devon had been leaning against the desk, but he straightened as I pulled the altered shirt from the bed and checked the stitching along the side. “What kind of deal gets you custom clothes the next morning?”
“One where Hunter thinks agreeing to his terms means I’ve agreed to considerably more than I actually have. I’ll correct that when I see him.”
Priya studied me for a few seconds. “And Nichlas? Because he came out of the east wing yesterday with a split lip and marks around his neck. I’m guessing the timing isn’t a coincidence.”
“I found him. He betrayed me a long time ago and almost got me killed, then disappeared before I could settle it. I came to Aldrich because I finally tracked him here.” I folded the shirt over my arm and picked up the skirt.
There was no reason to dance around the part they would discover eventually.
“Yesterday was the first conversation we’ve had since then.
He still thinks being scared excuses what he did. I disagree.”
Maren’s face tightened. “When you say settle it, what exactly are you planning to do?”
“That depends on how entertaining he is before I’m finished.”
Priya stared at me, then glanced toward Devon. He opened his mouth and apparently thought better of whatever he had been about to contribute. Good. The conversation had finally reached a useful question.
Priya brought it back to the other problem. “Where does Malakai fit into all of this? Because people saw him following Nichlas yesterday, and then neither of you showed up anywhere for a while. Now Hunter is sending clothes to your room. Those things feel connected.”
“He followed Nichlas because he wanted to see what I was doing. He interrupted me before I could put a knife into him, dragged me into an empty classroom, and we fucked. Afterward he took me to Hunter, Hunter found out why I’m here, and we made the deal.
That’s the entire sequence. You can stop trying to reverse-engineer it from hallway gossip. ”
I gathered the clothes and headed for the bathroom while Priya was still looking at me like she needed another minute to reorganize several assumptions.
“I’m changing. If Hunter expects me at his table, he can explain the rest himself.
I’ve already spent more time discussing yesterday than I intended to. ”
By the time we reached the cafeteria, I had already decided the shoes were staying in my closet after today.
They looked good. I could admit that much without developing feelings about them.
The problem was that every step reminded me somebody else had chosen them, somebody else had decided how I was supposed to look walking through Aldrich, and I had never responded particularly well to people arranging pieces of my life without asking.
Priya seemed pleased with the result, though.
She had spent most of the walk downstairs adjusting the cuff of my blazer and telling Maren the tailoring was unfairly good while Devon kept insisting we were going to miss the only decent breakfast potatoes if they didn’t walk faster.