2. Summer
Chapter Two
Summer
“ W ant me to go with you?” Alice asks from my side, and I am desperate to tell her yes. I need her with me. But this year is different, and we don’t have any overlapping classes. I don’t want her to get behind, and I’ll need to get used to going places alone.
I shake my head. “I’ll see you later,” I say, and it’s possibly the most words I’ve strung together in a long time.
Alice squeezes my hand. “Are you sure?” she asks, and I can sense her uncertainty about leaving me.
I nod and turn toward the headmaster’s office. The walk seems longer now, probably because people can’t help but stare in horror as they pass.
I am about to knock on his door when I hear his low voice from behind it. “Enter.”
I swallow and step into his office. It looks exactly the same.
The same ancient books line the shelves, each radiating power.
The desk still sits at the back of the room, littered with papers and magical objects, and the male sitting behind the desk is as terrifying as always.
Though the emotion I feel now isn’t terror, perhaps because I know what true terror feels like.
Power billows from him as his steely gaze locks on me. “Take a seat, Miss Tuatha De Daanan.”
I don’t lift my eyes to him, but I can feel him tracking me, his gaze clinging to me as I walk across his office and sit in one of the chairs opposite his much grander armchair. I stare at my lap, unable to look up .
“You look at me when we speak. Or have you forgotten?”
Slowly, I lift my gaze to meet his mercurial silver eyes.
“You have lost yourself to your grief,” he says.
It is not a question. There is no warmth or concern in his voice, only a cold, clinical fact said with derision.
His stare becomes too intense, and I can hear the distaste in his voice.
I look away, feeling the cold creep through me, shutting my body down.
A long, silent, excruciating moment passes before I break it, unable to sit in it any longer. “Is there a reason you summoned me?”
The silence descends on us again, his stare crushing me under its weight, waiting for me to meet his gaze.
If the quiet weren’t so loud, if it didn’t make the memories so sickeningly vivid in my mind, I probably would have held on to it for longer, but I’ve been unable to be in complete silence since it happened. I look at him again.
“You made a promise,” he says, and my heart stutters.
“And you have broken it.” That poor, brutalized organ completely shatters beneath the lash of his words, beneath his dark, oppressive stare.
“You made a promise, Miss Tuatha De Daanan. You’ve broken it,” he repeats as if he didn’t think he’d wounded me enough the first time.
I stand from my chair, my eyes stinging. “If there’s nothing else,” I say, my voice shaking, betraying my emotion.
I stand and grab my bag, walking toward the door. I grab the handle but stop, my feet rooting to the floor as he breaks the silence again.
“He would be so disappointed in you,” he says coldly.
Every syllable pierces me, made worse by the fact that I know it is the truth.
Not that he would be disappointed in how I have handled his death, but by the fact that he loved someone so miserably broken and wrecked. Someone who didn’t deserve him.
His words rip into me, and my hand squeezes the handle, but I don’t turn it.
I close my eyes, the tears forming familiar trails down my cheeks.
“And yet he can’t be. He’s dead,” I say, my body shutting down even more, repudiating the words, denying the truths, both mine and his.
Such hideous, hateful truths. Truths that match my soul.
I am desperate to get home, but the second I leave the headmaster’s office, I walk into a mass of hard muscle.
My bag falls to the ground, and my books scatter.
My body knows who it is even before I hear the growled curse.
I pull back and look up at Max, his startled eyes locking with mine.
He recovers quicker than I do and kneels to pick up the books, avoiding my gaze.
I just stare at him, once more frozen in place.
He’s not there anymore, Summer. He’s gone.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking,” he grumbles, gathering the loose pages that have fallen from my bag. I just stare.
He’s not there anymore, Summer. He’s gone.
I cringe at the memory and finally regain the ability to move. I walk around him, leaving everything behind me.
“Summer,” Max calls from behind me, but I just keep walking until his large hand wraps around my wrist.
I stop walking but continue to look ahead, unable to see his face contorted with pity.
“I . . . Shit,” he curses. “I’m sorry.”
I tug my arm free. Max releases me with little resistance, but my muscles still complain from the effort. I keep walking.
He’s not there anymore, Summer. He’s gone.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t?.?.?.” he calls behind me, but he doesn’t complete the thought.
My walk home passes in a haze. The tears silently track down my cheeks, my vision blurry from the unshed ones that stubbornly pool in my eyes.
I don’t know how long it takes me to get back to Morningstar House, but the second I’m inside, I crumple into a pile on the floor.
Sobs rip from my throat as I feel every single molecule of heartbreak.
I’m not sure how long I scream and cry into the void, but at some point, Alice comes home.
She helps me to my feet and leads me upstairs to settle me into bed.
Climbing in with me, she curls around me and holds all my broken pieces together.
It’s only once the sobs ease and my breathing calms that she helps me out of my uniform and into comfy clothes.
She brushes my hair, washes and moisturizes my face, doing anything she can to make me feel even slightly better, but nothing truly helps.
Alice leaves me only long enough to heat some clear broth.
It’s the only thing I will eat, and the only thing that’s kept me alive.
She patiently feeds me until I push at her hand, and while she tries to get me to eat a few more bites, she finally gives up when I turn away from her.
The bed shifts as she climbs in beside me, and I close my eyes, the exhaustion tugging at me, the darkness immediately overwhelming my senses.
There is that one moment of blissful darkness before the nightmare starts.
The damp scent of the cave burns my nose, and the ropes painfully chafe against my ? —
“Little fae.”