Silence.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.
“I’m not doing anything. You did all of this to yourself. You didn’t even ask me if Tia is okay. Being iced hurts. Ice that cold burns when it touches you. I know you can’t feel it, because you’re an ice mage, but surely somebody explained that to you before.”
I added the second fence post to the first one and knotted it up.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“No. She is hurt and angry.”
More silence.
“Something bad is happening to you, Phillip,” I said. “Tia told me that when you first started going out, you were a kind kid. Now you’re stalking influencers and reading books written by losers.”
“Areston isn’t a loser.”
“Of course he is. Anybody who has to beat his own drum that hard is a loser. Who is the scariest Prime you can think of?”
“Mad Rogan.”
Serendipity. “Do you see Mad Rogan running around Houston telling people how alpha he is? Do you think he’s on Herald, talking about peak protocols?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“He is Mad Rogan.”
I twisted the fence posts. Metal groaned.
“What is that noise?”
“Don’t worry about it. Tia said that when you’d just started dating, she’d had an accident and hid in the bathroom. She didn’t know anybody who would help, so she texted you, and you left campus, bought her tampons and a new pair of shorts, and snuck it to her in the girls’ bathroom.”
Silence.
“ThatPhillip had Tia. This new ‘peak’ Phillip lost Tia and is now stuck in a cistern, trying to figure out how to keep his family safe from the mess he made.”
“What do you want?” he asked. He sounded defeated.
“I want to go home and take a nap. Right now, though, I want to save you from yourself because of that tampon run.”
I pulled his phone out of my pocket, stood on my toes, and tossed it through the gap in the top of the cistern, which Tia had left so he wouldn’t suffocate. Tia had taken his phone after their fight, and I had confiscated it from her. I also explained to her the pitfalls of keeping evidence that can incriminate you for future reference.
“Look at your texts.” I’d charged it on the way to the barn.
There was a short pause. “What?!”
“That’s a picture of you with Mad Rogan.”
I had called my oldest cousin and sweetly asked him for a favor. Bern’s photo manipulation skills were on another level. We’d bargained and agreed that I would bring home his favorite French dip sandwich from Firehouse Subs. He would’ve done it anyway because I’d asked, but there had to be some pretense of a bribe.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yesterday Tia broke up with you, so you got upset and talked to your friend, Ragnar Etterson.”
Ragnar was probably one of the most popular juniors in Heritage High. He was all the things: handsome, smart, and, most importantly, confident. At some point, Ragnar had cracked the high school popularity code. He was that effortlessly cool kid who didn’t seem to need anyone, and people flocked to him. It didn’t hurt that he was Prime Venenata. The fact that he could poison the entire school to death in seconds just made him cooler.
