17. Blake
Blake
T he scorching hot water burns through my soul like a flood of hell lava, but I don’t care.
I need it to cleanse the stench of death off my skin.
I usually prefer my showers on the cool side.
It keeps me focused, but this past day and night has been an epic failure on our part, and it ended in utter chaos.
I rest my hand on the cool tiles above my head, leaning into the shower spray, my eyes closed as I just stand there, incapable of moving, incapable of thinking.
My mind, usually a fortress of logic and cold calculation, is a ruin.
A storm of variables I failed to account for.
I retrace every step, every decision since Venetia arrived.
The attack on her room, the clues in the admin building, the tunnel, the tomb.
Each piece was a deliberate move on their part, a breadcrumb trail designed for me to follow, to analyse, to be distracted by.
They didn’t just outmanoeuvre us; they used my intellect as a weapon against me. Against her.
The water turns from punishing heat to tepid, and I finally move, scrubbing my skin raw as if I can physically remove the stain of my miscalculation. The image of the dining hall is burnt onto the inside of my eyelids.
And then there were 4.
A vicious taunt.
Why us? Why did we not get poisoned by whatever took those students out?
We were all in the dining hall at breakfast, so how did we escape?
Or didn’t we and now it’s a time bomb waiting to go off?
Who left the message? Someone had to have remained alive.
My mind goes over the list of students who were left, but I’m drawing a blank.
I’ve been seriously fucked with and it’s pissing me off.
I shut off the water and step out, the air cold on my wet skin.
I dry myself and stare at my reflection in the steam-fogged mirror, my confidence shattered, and for once, not by the man who claimed to care about me.
Not by the man who told me my thought patterns were odd, that my brain worked differently from others, and that I had to conform.
Not by the man who called himself my father, but was simply a monster who chose to chip away at me when he should have celebrated me.
I clench my fists. No. This time, my confidence has taken a hit from a group of unknowns who seem to know me better than my father ever could.
I wipe the condensation from the mirror with the heel of my hand.
The face that stares back is a stranger’s—hollow-eyed, drawn.
The mask has slipped. My father would have called this weakness.
Your brain is a tangled mess, Blake. Straighten it out, or the world will do it for you. It seems the world has finally obliged.
But my father was wrong. It isn’t a mess.
It’s a fucking weapon. These bastards have taught me how to aim it differently.
They used my patterns against me. Very well.
I will learn to become patternless. Unpredictable.
A chaos they cannot calculate. A cold fury, clean and sharp, slices through the fog of my failure.
They wanted to break me, to show me the flaws in my logic.
Instead, they have shown me the flaws in theirs.
They assumed I was rigid. They assumed I could not adapt.
I walk to my wardrobe, the movements stiff but deliberate.
Ignoring Viper, sitting on the floor next to Venetia, his head leaned back against the mattress, I select a fresh suit—charcoal grey, razor-sharp.
The pure cotton of the shirt is cool against my skin, the familiar weight of the jacket settles on my shoulders.
I am not the man I was yesterday. He was too predictable.
Too confident in the order of things. This new man understands that the only way to beat chaos is to become it.
“You okay?” Viper asks.
“Fine,” I say, running a hand through my hair as I stare in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. “You?”
“Oh, I’m just fucking great,” he growls.
I turn to face him. We lock gazes, and something familiar passes between us. We are as alike as night and day, but this has given us a common ground.
A silent pact. We will burn this world to the ground for her.
“I need to map their thinking,” I say, moving to my desk and pulling out a tablet.
I pull up schematics, historical records, anything I can find on the academy’s original structure.
“They’re operating on a level of historical knowledge and psychological profiling we underestimated.
They know the board. They know the pieces. They know us .”
“They think they know us,” Viper corrects, his voice a low rasp. He hasn’t moved from his post beside the bed. A loyal, lethal man guarding his queen.
“An assumption that has cost them nothing and us everything,” I counter, not looking up from the screen. “An error I will not be making again.”
The door clicks open, and Rafferty walks in, looking just as wrecked as the rest of us, but cleaned up and holding a canvas bag. He lays it gently on the edge of the bed and starts pulling out snacks from the vending machines. It’ll do for now.
I grab a protein bar from the bag and tear open the wrapper. My eyes go back to the tablet. The schematics blur and resolve, a layered history of violence and secrets. Roman. Mediaeval. Seventeenth century. Each layer is built to hide the one below.
I pull up land deeds, benefactor lists, and family trees linked to the original founding of St. Sebastian’s. Hale. Corbyn. Names that go back centuries, but the trail goes cold. Too cold.
I change tactics. I search for the name of the man who built the library, Lord Cravenmoor.
He didn’t just add on a building; he obscured something.
Why? Was it just about the history and the jewels?
Or was there more to it that we aren’t seeing?
Or maybe I’m overthinking this entire fucking thing, and the asset is Venetia, and the gold is hers by birthright.
That’s what everything points to. It’s a theory we have already discussed, but I just can’t see it being that cut and dried.
Especially as this is an age-old plot to…
what? Get themselves a worthy leader? It seems a bit extreme.
Frowning and cursing in my head, I go over and over it, pacing up and down and driving Viper to distraction until he finally snarls he’s taking a shower.
He wakes Venetia up with his loud grumbling, and I turn to her as she opens her sleepy eyes and blinks in the daylight streaming through the window. “Back to it?” she asks with a yawn.
“It’s done,” I say brusquely. “You need to call your father. We need to know what he knows.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Just give me a minute.”
She spots the bag of goodies and crawls over the bed to reach in, pulling out a packet of crisps. She rips into it like a woman possessed, and I watch her devour the entire contents in less than thirty seconds.
“We need proper food,” I declare.
“From where?” Rafferty asks with an annoying-as-fuck smirk.
“The staff room. I bet they have all sorts of food stocked up in there.”
He nods and disappears without a word. He is hurting, but he won’t take kindly to anyone bringing it up unless he does so first.
“Viper in the shower?” she asks.
I nod.
She leaps off the bed and throws on some clothes, black leggings and an oversized tee, before grabbing her phone and shoving her muddy boots on. She reaches the door and says, “I need to do this alone. Don’t let him come and find me.”
“I’ll try my best.”
We share a smile, and then she’s gone, leaving me to my ruminations and the incessant niggling that something isn’t adding up. But what?