All they bring is bloodshed and violence in their wake.
They must not be allowed to thrive at Avernia, lest we lose the rest of our founding families at their expense.
Warnings I grew up hearing but paid no heed to, considering the Andersons weren’t even a part of Fury Hill.
Until Quincy enrolled at Avernia.
Changing the course of history again, the same way her ancestor did.
“How?” I ask. It’s all I can manage. “How were you there that night?”
“We came to visit Q for family weekend,” she says, the tears pouring now.
My forehead pulses, stirring the nausea again.
“Something happened with Asher, so my parents ended up leaving early with him. I convinced them to let me stay behind because I knew Q was going to some party, but that was the night I got lost in the forest.”
“And you just…happened upon me?”
“I made it to the lake before anyone else was there,” she replies. “It was dark, I was scared, and I saw you… I’d heard rumors from our tour guide about the caves being off-limits because of nefarious gang activities or something, but I figured it was mostly bullshit. I didn’t think I’d actually stumble upon any of it.”
Running my hands over my face, I try to place a teenage Elle there in my mind. She says I opened my eyes, indicating I was conscious at some point outside, but the memory of it past what they did to me inside is fuzzy at best, pitch-black at worst.
“You were tied up,” she continues, her voice growing softer. “Soaked to the bone. I didn’t know if you were even alive. You stirred, I think, and I hid, terrified that you’d be angry or drawattention, and I’d be next. A half hour passed, so when I finally got phone signal, I called my dad, since he was coming to pick me up anyway, and he’s…familiar with that sort of thing.”
“The messes left by cults?”
“Cleaning up unsavory acts,” she says, shaking her head. When she meets my gaze, hers is glassy. “My dad never talked much about his past—well, neither of my parents did—because they wanted to focus on the future instead, but everyone growing up knew what he’d made his money doing in his early adulthood. Everyone was scared of him, and I knew that if I asked, he’d help me.”
“So you were just going to have him clean me up and be done?”
She nods. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t move you myself, so I resigned to wait while we were rescued. That’s all I’ve ever done really: let my parents step in and fix my messes. It’s why when I left Hollywood?—”
“You kept the whole scandal a secret,” I finish, closing my eyes. “Yeah, I get it. Constantly needing help feels infantile after a certain point.”
“I just got tired of being a disappointment,” she adds. “Everyone else in my family holds their own no problem, but it’s like there’s something missing in me. Like whatever desperation I have for attention and the spotlight pushed out my independence. So when I made some mistakes in LA, I thought, okay, now’s my time to fix them. To get my shit together. But the thing about mistakes is that if you’re navigating them without any sense of direction, they’ll just snowball out of control.”
My mind is still looping on that night eight years ago and the fact that she was there all along.
She maybe even saved me. Or tried to at least.
But…
“Bellamy,” I say, lifting my chin. “Did you see what happened to her? The journal said she fell into the lake.”
“No.” Her voice hardens. “She was pushed.”
I pull my hands into my lap, digesting that. And the implication.
“Elle.” Emotion burns in my chest, a thousand different revelations vying for prominence, but the only thing I can really focus on right now is her. She’s still crying silently, as if afraid of what the noise might do to the stagnant air around us.
With her in the room, I can’t fucking breathe. Can’t think about anything except comforting her, making the tears stop, kissing her happy again.
The truth about my sister’s death is staring me in the fucking face, and it’s not even her eyes I’m thinking about.
Christ. I’m pathetic.
Standing on wobbly legs, I clear my throat and round my desk, grabbing Elle’s face in my hands. I brush the tears away, unable to just let them stain her skin.
