Chapter 33 Ramsey
RAMSEY
There’s something wrong with that fucking cat.
Should we just eat it?
I glance at the mangy white scrap of hatred and fur that’s lying on top of the bookcase behind Nyx.
She doesn’t seem to care that it’s looming over her like fucking Batman or something.
Its tail hangs over the edge, slowly flicking back and forth over as it watches me with those split color eyes—one blue, one green.
I don’t think we should take the risk. Do you think it knows we’re talking about it?
Chances are low, but never zero.
Why isn’t she shooing it away?
It is small and angry. She is small and angry. They are kindred spirits.
I try to cover up my laugh with a cough, which draws her attention away from the open book she clearly hasn’t been reading if her incessant pencil tapping is any indication. “You want to talk about it?”
She sighs and leans forward, resting her head on the table. “Why can’t people just leave me the fuck alone,” she mutters.
“What’d the Headmaster say?”
She sits up and crosses her arms, slumping in the chair across from me. “Apparently I can stay—for now—with the caveat that if I have any more incidents like that again I’ll have to wear some power-dampening… handcuff things when I’m not actively wielding during classes.”
“How can they even consider that when you haven’t done anything wrong?”
“Oh it gets better. Brandt got a hold of the deliberation transcript somehow: Preston and Corvus voted to let me stay. Marcus and Cyrus agreed to vote with them so long as Cyrus was hired on as another “coach” to “assist” Carrick—but really it’s to keep an eye on me.
Renard and Soren voted to keep me indefinitely at Council headquarters so they could test my powers like some fucking lab experiment.
” She curls her lip in disgust. “Then your father voted for me to be removed from campus, and Vivica agreed so long as I stayed at her coven house since “they’re the only coven that’s strong enough to support me”. The vampire dude abstained.”
Fuck.
Can we kill him yet?
Regicide is generally frowned upon.
He started it.
“Fuck.”
She laughs drily. “Yeah.” The cat drops from the top of the bookcase and lands on the table in front of her with a thud.
Its yowl sounds like something between a croak and nails on a chalkboard before she shushes it.
“Stop being such a butthead, dude, you’re too loud.
” It merely starts purring as it climbs into her lap and kneads its paws on her—my—hoodie.
The sight of her wearing it settles the anxiety I’ve been trying to ignore since finding out what Luther did.
Like I can keep her safe, even if I’m not there.
“He asked if we were dating, and some other stupid shit, but Brandt shut him down.”
My heart skips a beat, and the dragon stills in my mind, listening intently. “What did you say?”
“That it depends on who told him because people will gossip about anything. Then he tried to talk shit about you not having control of your dragon.”
I cross my arms over my chest to hide the edge of disappointment. “Bet he loved that,”
“They all did. I don’t think I answered a single question straight up.”
“So what happens now?”
“I’m on probation, basically. They’ll all be here for the Governor’s Gala in a few weeks to observe me like a lab rat, and then the Crypteia. After that, no idea.”
“You’ve made it this long with all the other bullshit. That’s nothing.” She shakes her head lightly and kisses the cat’s head.
“I’ve been getting flashes here and there. From when I was out of it,” she admits quietly. The vulnerability in her eyes when she looks at me makes me want to pull her—and fuck it, even the cat if she insists—into my arms and keep her there until it’s gone.
But I can’t. She’s not ready for that. “What do you remember?”
She clutches the cat closer to her chest and stares at the table, lost in something I can’t see.
“How fucking effortless it was. I—my power—wanted out. More than anything. It found the nearest source of power at the Foundation Stone and just…threw magic at the wards. When Brandt tried to keep it contained, it found another source.”
The silence is heavy between us. “You didn’t kill anyone. Still got you beat there.” She shakes her head and laughs under her breath, and my chest tightens when she looks at me like I’m forgiven.
“It’s not even the magnitude of what I did—I’ll process that eventually. The part that scares me the most is how easy it was to justify it. I needed more power, so I took it.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“I would have,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “I don’t believe that.” Her eyes water, and it pleases my dragon when she wipes them away with the sleeve of my sweatshirt—like she’s marking me, just like I’ve marked her with my clothes.
“There’s no way to know if I would have stopped—” But I’m not letting her go down this road. Fuck knows I’ve already been there, done that.
“Nyx. You’re not like the rest of them,” I jerk my head in the direction of campus and the ruthless jockeying for power and influence beyond those doors. “Okay? You’d have stopped in time.”
She nods and dries her eyes again, but I don’t believe for a second that she heard me. “You want to know what else was fucking weird?”
“Fuck, there’s more?” I deadpan, and she laughs under her breath again.
“You know my creepy tarot deck?”
“You mean the stack of sentient paper you’ve been feuding with?”
She narrows her eyes. “Are you teasing me?”
“I would never.”
“Liar. Anyways, when I got back to my dorm yesterday after the hearing, the box was on the floor, in the middle of my room. That’s like the fourth time it’s randomly appeared somewhere.”
“That’s even weirder than the fucking cat.” Who’s now looking at me with death in his eyes as she scratches its chin.
“I don’t know, he’s growing on me.”
Guess it’s here to stay, then. The dragon merely rumbles in displeasure and she opens her mouth, but hesitates.
“What?”
“Can I ask you a shitty question?”
“So long as you’re not asking me to cat-sit.” When she smiles, I think I actually get butterflies. But they die in a fiery blaze when reality comes crashing down.
“What’s the deal with your father?”
Well. She did warn me.
“I haven’t asked because none of my business… but, I think it’s kind of my business now, if I have to face him on the Council.”
“Yeah…yeah.” I rub my hand over my face, tracing the five jagged scars marking me as an exile. “So he’s an evil piece of shit.”
“Obviously.”
I take a steadying breath, and notice the cat’s still looking at me.
Like it’s waiting for me to confess, too.
But this is the part I fucking hate. This is the part no one knows about the fallen dragon prince, except for those that were there on the worst day of my life.
Quietly, I reopen those old wounds, and tell her everything.
“I grew up hearing my father tell us that our family was destined to rule, because we’re the last true descendants of the original Fae.
He said it was our duty to lead, because we were the strongest.” His voice echoes through memories I’ve tried to bury beneath anger and pain.
“He held out for my epiphaneia to the very end. Even when my brother had his just after his twentieth birthday—we’re only eleven months apart.
The morning I turned twenty-one, he burst through my door, dragged me out of my room, and threw me down the stairs where my mother and little brother, Atlas, were waiting.
Along with the leaders of all five shifter clans. ”
My throat closes as I become lost in the memory.
“While everyone watched—while my mother watched, and did nothing—he accused me of betraying our bloodline. He called me his greatest shame, that it was an insult to his legacy to even share air with a worthless failure who couldn’t wake his dragon.
He called on everyone to bear witness as he stripped me of my birthright as crown prince and gave it to my brother. ”
“Ramsey—” I shake my head, cutting her off. I just need to get it out.
“But that wasn’t enough for him. See—shifters breed true.
Most of the time, the kid takes after whichever parent is the stronger shifter.
Our family has always bred true, no matter what.
We are always dragons. But he didn’t want to risk any more defective dragons challenging the new rightful heir to the throne.
He said any child of mine would be nothing more than a weakling bastard, cursed to bear the shame of my failure.
So he exiled me. You know what that means?
” I ask. She shakes her head, and I see the glint of tears streaming down her cheeks, but she doesn’t say anything.
“When a shifter is exiled, it’s like they no longer exist to other shifters.
They’re not allowed to. Usually it’s because they’ve committed a crime so heinous, that execution would be a mercy.
Because being cut off from your pack or clan, from your family, your community, ensures a slow, lonely death.
And the one who exiles you is required to mark you as one.
” I gesture to my face. “He wanted to remove the stain of my existence from the world. And he all but guaranteed it by disfiguring me.”