"I don't need anything," I said, pushing past him without meeting his eyes. I couldn't bear to see the same guilt and grief mirrored there, couldn't stand another moment of his careful concern.
"Logan-"
"Don't wait up," I cut him off, already at the front door.
The blast of winter air hit me like a physical blow as I stepped outside, the snow immediately soaking through my thin shirt. I welcomed it, tilting my face up to the falling flakes, letting them sting my skin. The cold was clarifying, the only thing that felt real anymore. I stumbled down the driveway, away from Covenant House and all its ghosts. Away from the constant reminder of my failure. Away from the empty seat at the table where she should have been sitting.
The campus was deserted; most students had gone home for the holidays. The few stragglers hurried past, bundled against the cold, giving me a wide berth. I must have looked like a madman, wandering through a snowstorm in nothing but jeans and a shirt, my face bruised and bloodied from my own self-inflicted violence. Let them stare. Let them whisper. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered except finding her, and I'd failed at that, too. My father's men had found nothing. The Trivium had found nothing. All our resources, all our power, and we couldn't even protect one purple-haired girl who'd trusted us to keep her safe.
The pub appeared through the curtain of snow, a beacon of warm light and noise. The Boar's Head. A dive bar just off campus where students went when they wanted to slum it, where the drinks were cheap and nobody cared. Perfect. I pushed through the door, the sudden heat and noise washing over me. Christmas music blared from speakers, competing with drunken laughter and conversation. The place was packed with holiday idiots, people celebrating with friends and family, everyone wrapped in the warm glow of festive cheer.
I hated every single one of them.
How dare they be happy? How dare the world continue turning, people continue living their mundane little lives, while Cadence was out there somewhere, suffering? The rage that had become my constant companion flared hotter, fuelled by alcohol and grief. I shouldered my way to the bar, ignoring the startled looks and muttered complaints.
"Whiskey," I barked at the bartender, slapping a handful of notes on the sticky bar top. "The whole bottle." The bartender, a middle-aged man with tired eyes, raised an eyebrow.
"Think you've had enough already, mate."
"The bottle," I repeated, adding more cash to the pile. "Now." He shrugged, reaching for a bottle of cheap whiskey from the shelf behind him.
"Your funeral." Yes, it would be. It should be.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, squinting at the screen. My father's name flashed, along with the notification of three missed calls. I declined it without hesitation, slamming the phone face-down on the bar hard enough that the screen probably cracked. I didn't care. Nicholas Bale, with all his criminal connections, all his underworld resources, had failed just as completely as I had. His promises to "tear the city apart"had found nothing. His assurances that he would "find who did this" had proven empty. Just like everything else about him.
The bartender returned with the bottle and a glass. I ignored the glass, twisting off the cap and taking a long pull directly from the bottle. The whiskey burned, but not enough. Nothing burned enough to cauterise the wound inside me. Around me, the pub pulsed with Christmas cheer. A group of guys near the bar were particularly boisterous, their laughter grating against my nerves like sandpaper. Students, probably. The kind of carefree, privileged pricks I used to be before Cadence disappeared and showed me what real pain was.
"To Christmas!" one of them shouted, raising his glass in a toast. His friends echoed him, clinking glasses and laughing. I took another long drink, trying to drown out their voices, trying to sink deeper into the numbness I craved. But the alcohol wasn't working fast enough. The images kept coming, Cadence walking alone on that dark street. Cadence being grabbed, struck, dragged into a van. Cadence bound and gagged in the photo that haunted my dreams.
"You were warned." Those words had been burned into my brain, a constant accusation. We had been warned. The notes to Cadence, the attack at Halloween, the threats that we'd dismissed as rivalry or jealousy. We should have protected her better. I should have protected her better.
"Maybe you should slow down, mate," the bartender suggested, not unkindly.
"I didn't ask for your fucking opinion," I snarled. He shrugged and stepped away, muttering something under his breath that I didn't catch. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered except the burn of alcohol and the momentary, fleeting relief it brought from the crushing weight of guilt.
One of the rowdy students bumped into me as he reached for his drink, jostling my arm and sending whiskey sloshing over the rim of my glass and onto my already-soaked shirt.
"Sorry, man!" he said with a drunken grin. "Merry Christmas!" Something inside me snapped. The fragile thread of control I'd been clinging to all day, all week, all month, simply disintegrated. I turned slowly, fixing the guy with a stare that made his smile falter.
"You think this is funny?" My voice was dangerously soft. "You think ruining things is a joke?" The guy held up his hands, backing away slightly.
"Hey, it was an accident-" I didn't let him finish. I lunged forward, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the bar.
"You ruined it," I hissed, not even seeing him anymore, seeing only Cadence's face as I drove away that night. "You fucking ruined everything."
"Get off me!" he shouted, shoving back. His friends moved in, surrounding us. I welcomed it. Welcomed the coming violence like an old friend.
The first punch caught me in the jaw, snapping my head back. I tasted blood and laughed, a sound so hollow it barely resembled human. I swung back, my raw knuckles connecting with someone's face. Pain shot up my arm. Good. More. I needed more. They came at me from all sides, then, three or maybe four of them. I fought back with the reckless abandon of a man with nothing to lose, landing as many blows as I took. A fist slammed into my ribs. An elbow caught me above the eye. I stumbled and fell to one knee, then forced myself back up, swinging wildly.
"Stay down, you crazy bastard!" someone shouted. But I couldn't stay down. Didn't want to. Each blow was a penance, each burst of pain a reminder that I was still alive while Cadencemight not be. I deserved this. Deserved worse. A punch to the stomach doubled me over, driving the air from my lungs. Another to the side of my head sent me crashing into a table, glasses shattering around me. I slid to the floor, blood in my mouth, the room spinning. Still, I tried to rise, my body refusing to surrender even as my mind begged for oblivion.
"That's enough!" A new voice cut through the chaos. "Back the fuck off!"
The kicking stopped. I rolled onto my back, blinking blood from my eyes, to see Jake Sutton standing over me, his Syndicate House Regent authority radiating from him like heat. Behind him stood Kieran Moss, the other Syndicate Regent, and several of their housemen, forming a protective barrier between me and my attackers.
"This isn't your business, Sutton," one of the guys said, though he took a step back. "This asshole started it."
"I'm making it my business," Jake said, his voice cold. "He might be an asshole, but he's our asshole. So back the fuck off before I make you regret it." The threat hung in the air, weighted with all the power and privilege that came with being a Regent. The guys looked at each other, then at the growing crowd of Syndicate housemen surrounding them, and decided discretion was the better part of valour.
