Huffing, I drop my gaze to the floor, sinking lower into the armchair. “I didn’tchooseto go there, which you would know if you’d let me speak last night instead of berating me.”
“Berating you?” He shifts on his feet, an incredulous expression etched into his face, but lets out a sigh. “Fine, all right. Tell me what happened.”
So his dad didn’t tell him anything?
I should feel a twinge of relief, but for some reason, that just makes me more anxious.
“We went to a party in the Apollodorus,” I offer, though I can instantly tell that’s the wrong thing to say. His face reddens, and he clenches his teeth, but I keep going. “No one knew who was throwing it, just thatThe Delphic Pagessent out an invite. As it started winding down, we wandered past the exit and kept going down, just to see what was there. If the rumors about a Death’s Teeth meeting were true.”
His nostrils flare. “So youdidgo on purpose.”
“Yes, okay, fine. But not to participate. We just wanted to watch from a distance.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me, Sabrina, Percy, and Lex.”
“Lex,” he spits, his anger mounting. “Is he the one that convinced you to go?”
“Not that it matters, but no. Sabrina was. Lexington was just along for the ride.”
“I’ll bet he was.”
Squinting, I frown at him. “Are you seriously jealous right now?”
His jaw shifts. “Feelings aren’t logical. And I may have heard a rumor about the party you were at. Someone said they’d seen you kissing another student, and I guess… Fuck, I don’t know.”
I swallow, guilt burning my insides. “I didn’t kiss anyone.”
“You didn’t.”
“It wasn’t like that. I was just…proving a point to Sabrina. No lips touched. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
To us.
Sighing, he leans forward with his elbows on his desk, dropping his face into his large, veiny hands. “You make me regress into a person I don’t recognize, Elle. It’s daunting.”
“So that’s why you’re mad?”
“No,” he says quickly, letting his hands fall. “I’m mad because I tried to keep you from the scope of Death’s Teeth, and not only have I failed to do that, but I’ve made you a target too. I’m mad at myself.”
A lump forms in my throat, singeing the tendons inside. That word, “fail,” again. He used it when he told me about his sister in the observatory, and it’d felt like he’d placed a cinder block on my chest without warning.
I know what it’s like to crumble beneath the weight of your perceived failures. How easily everything can shatter if you don’t succeed in your dreams.
“What exactly is Death’s Teeth? Everyone keeps saying they’re this secret organization, and I’ve read about their supposed vigilantism and sex parties in the school’s periodicals, but there’s not much written about them. Are they…actually dangerous?”
“Yes.” He leans back, pressing his lips into a firm line, studying me with that gemstone gaze that makes my insides flutter, as if wondering how much he should tell me. “Death’s Teeth was born out of fear. An initiative to restore faith and order in the town after Cronus Anderson debauched it with his greed and bloodlust. Some say they concocted the whole prophecy about your family, planting seeds in the minds of our people to make them hate the ancestral line, because they needed someone to blame for the death and sickness.”
“And what do you say?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. These days, they front as a vigilante terror group, made untouchable by their blood oathsand anonymity. It’s not a very large organization, you’ll notice, as it would be very difficult to maintain their secrecy otherwise.”
“If everyone knows about them, how are they a secret?”
“The secret’s in the identities of the individuals. Even I don’t know everyone. Only the Director does.”
Tilting my head, I peer at him. “What’s your role? Are you… Do you participate in the sex stuff?”
