Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THEA
It’s late, and Slade hasn’t come to my room.
Did our encounter on the couch scare him?
I’ve long given up pretending I’m asleep and pace the rug instead.
Rain sprinkles outside, and I stare at the dock, longing for better weather to get out of this dang house.
The lake is choppy and agitated, the jagged ripples breaking across the surface violently, and as I press my forehead to the window, I wonder if it’s some kind of omen.
I run to the door, my pulse hammering. Yanking it open, I scurry out and down the hallway until I reach the stairs. There’s a louder, high-pitched splinter, and Edmond’s voice echoes along the mezzanine.
“Sir, no, not the lamp.” Crash. “That was five thousand dollars, Slade!”
I jog up the first few steps, pausing when something heavy and thick smacks against the wall in Slade’s suite.
“Destroy it if you must, sir. But it’s not your fault … No! I will not ‘go away.’ What do you want me to do?” Edmond’s voice gets more intense, and by the time I’m three-quarters of the way up the stairs, he’s at the top. He descends.
His eyes widen when he sees me paralyzed on the treads. “Thea, turn around. He’s in no mood tonight.”
I edge to the side slightly, enough to peer around him. “Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine. Now come. I’ll warm you up some tea to help you sleep.” He moves around me, quietly descending past and flicking a hand toward the security guards who have entered the home and stand at the foot of the stairs.
Edmond’s pinstriped pajamas dart away, and I study the lines briefly before turning the other direction and quickly ascending the rest of the way.
A groan reverberates from Slade’s suite, and when I reach the door, I slow, peeking around the frame.
A lamp lies in pieces at the foot of the bed, the cord ripped from it and strewn at the room’s threshold by my bare feet.
His framed posters have been torn from the walls, the glass in one shattered, and the other frame broken in the corner.
As I creep into the room, the bathroom door is splintered, off its hinges, and thrown to the floor. My heart pounds, and for a second I wonder if I should run back to my room to avoid this.
Then I see him.
He’s hunched forward on the edge of his bed, facing away from me. Elbows dug into his thighs, his shoulders rising and falling in labored breaths. His glasses hang in one hand, his other massaging his brow.
As I enter, I kick some glass, and gasp when a thin line of blood blooms on the side of my big toe.
Slade jerks, lifting his head and spinning around.
Gosh. His eyes—wild and bloodshot—glare at me. Sweat clings to his face, the sheen catching the light. His shirt is unbuttoned, or torn open, exposing his muscular bare chest and—I swallow the bitter tang clawing up my throat—a scar. Mangled and fleshy, but years old at this point.
He stands, and that snaps me out of my perusal of him. “Get out,” he says quietly.
His shirt flutters open with his movement, and I stare at his scar again. “Who … who did that to you?” I whisper, looking around the room.
He fists his glasses, placing them back on his face. “I said get out!” He yells this time, grabbing a corner of his bed and shoving it away with both hands. It thwacks against the wooden floor.
I flinch, and he steps back. “Please, Thea.”
I step forward, and his nostrils flare. “I’ll leave—I will. Just tell me if you’re okay?”
His head dips, chin to chest, and he blows out a pent-up sigh. With a trembling hand, he runs it through his hair.
I take another step, and when he doesn’t react, I take another.
Then another. I approach him like I used to do with my father.
His rage doesn’t scare me. It probably should, but I’ve dealt with it before.
When Phil came home drunk, I had to read his behavior, gauge how drunk he was, and measure the heaviness of his footfalls.
That’s how I knew if he had had a bad day, whether the bottles of alcohol were going to relax him or rile him up.
Finally, I reach Slade. My hands shake as they move toward the rough fabric of his torn shirt.
His chest heaves, and something wet drips onto my fingers as I curl them around the edges and peel it open.
Stunned, I study the two letters that now make themselves known, and when I can’t possibly take looking anymore, I move my fingers over the scar.
I trace the path down his sternum until I bump the pale raised skin that slashes across his chest.
Inch by inch, I slip my touch around his scar, streaked with sweat. His muscles clench, drawing tight when the pads of my fingers dip deep into the hollows of his abs. Head still down, he watches my skimming touch. His brows pull together in a deep V, and his lips part. He looks bruised. Raw.
I move to push his shirt off, allowing the fabric to shimmy down his shoulders and onto the floor. His face snaps up, and he snatches my wrists with both hands. He tilts his head, and then pulls me close, his mouth a breath’s beat away.
Spicy liquor invades my nostrils as he exhales. “You need to leave.”
For the first time, fear slithers up my spine. “Why? What happened, Slade? Are you drunk?”
He snarls. “They happened. And no, I’m not drunk. I wouldn’t do that to you, Thea.”
I try to move away, but his grip on my wrists tightens. “Do what to me?”
“Your father was a drunk, was he not? Isn’t that how you ended up here?”
His words are a cold jab, and I sneer. “How would you know that?”
He hooks a finger underneath my chin, angling it upward. “I did my research on you,” he whispers.
I swallow.
“The girl who drives me mad. The woman my mind chases obsessively.” He takes a single finger and traces my Cupid’s bow. “I covet the men who’ve had you. I feel for those who want you. And I hate the man that will marry you.”
I gasp at his words first, but then his hand moves to my neck eliciting another.
The heat of his palm buries me. He doesn’t squeeze, only splays his fingers wide enough to make my heart stutter.
Then, his thumb shifts back and forth over my fluttering pulse.
My knees wobble, and I nearly sink at his delicate touch.
“You barely know me …” I say. Though I’m afraid that’s not true.
He rips his hand away and shoves them both into his suit pockets. He turns his back to me, the muscles in his shoulder blades pulling and flexing as he paces. “And would you want to get to know me? To be with a man like me?”
My lips part, but he continues.
“Of course not. You’re in college, have hopes and dreams, and I … no matter how much I want to, I can’t leave this life. If tonight proved anything, it’s that I’ve already failed.”
I cling to that. He’s in so much pain, and I can’t fathom what set him off. “What happened?”
Spinning, he turns to me, eyes softening. It’s like he’s finally noticed I’m in my silk pajamas—shorts and a cami with tiny black cherries decorating the cream-colored set. Goose bumps prickle my arms, and I rub at them, lingering on my tattoo. He stares.
For several seconds he’s silent. Doesn’t utter a single word, just stands there, and I’m worried he won’t answer me.
Maybe that’s asking too much of him. This society is a secret of course.
Selfishly I want the information, but also …
something is bothering him, weighted him down with a burden that oddly I wish I could take away.
This man is contradictory—he’s quiet, his love for comics and superheroes enduring, yet he’s hardened by life, or maybe his role as a congressman in a society so perverse and corrupt it eats away at him. How can I help him? How can I temper the wickedness consuming him?
When I look up, he’s in front of me again. He twirls a curl of my hair around his finger. “The Severing. It’s a ceremony for members who are rising to leadership. My grandfather. He’s now one of the Eight.”
I shake my head. From what I’ve heard, Henry DuPont is a Graves wannabe. “I’m so sorry.”
He snorts. “I wish it were me.”
“What? Why?” Who’d want to lead this degenerate group of men?
“To destroy it. From the inside.”
I blink. “And the girls? The GHB?”
“I needed them to trust me because to go through the Severing you need an Offering.”
I shake my head. “I-I don’t understand.”
“The Severing is an act required to enter the Eight. You have to cut yourself free from every loyalty that exists beyond EV. It isn’t metaphorical, but literal.
Members of the Eight select someone that’s irreplaceable to the initiate,” he says quietly, eyes dark.
“Someone they love. Someone they don’t want to give up to the society. ”
The words settle over me like a suffocating fog, and I can taste the truth in them. It makes me sick, and tears stream down my face—how could someone do that to someone they love? My knees finally give out and I sit on the bed, hands trembling against the duvet.
“They rarely go back to their lives, Thea.” His voice stays even, almost detached.
“Most of them are cut off—dismissed by the member who Severed himself. After that, they’re folded into EV.
” He pauses, jaw tightening. “The Eight don’t keep their Offerings.
Not usually. They can’t stand to look at them once it’s done, so they send them off to other chapters in other cities.
Doesn’t matter where. There have been a few exceptions.
Men who kept their Offering close. But mostly, when you’re Offered, you don’t go free again.
And they chose my mother.” He grinds out his words.
“Slade …” I reach for him.