I still wore the tattered dress from last night’s performance. He pushed up the hem and dived between my legs, his tongue flicking over me with relentless speed. I bent my hips toward him, needing, wanting, hoping. A flame darted from my palm to lick the pillow, and I snuffed it out before Trey noticed.
He lifted my hips, bringing me closer to him. His eyes flicked up, meeting mine, arresting me there. Fire and ice locked together – each needing the other to survive.
A hard lump formed in my throat. In all the times we’d slept together, it had never felt like this before. It felt… like having the god inside my head during my dreams – invasive and raw and too, too real.
He’d become the air I breathed.
I can’t do this. I can’t let him go.
I opened my mouth to tell Trey to stop, but the words wouldn’t come. There was no word for what I was feeling, because I desperately didn’t want him to stop. The orgasm built inside me as the heat thrashed against my palms, desperate to escape. I needed him, like water or sunlight, but my need could risk everything we’d fought for.
I need to be strong.
My hand flopped over the edge of the bed, searching for something to break the moment.
As Trey’s tongue beat a furious path across my clit, my fingers closed around the spine of a thin volume. I gripped it and swung. The flimsy pages fanned across Trey’s face.
“What the fuck—”
The book flopped onto my stomach. Trey tore himself from me, his hands slack at his sides. I’d hoped to surprise him, but the look of horror on his face told me I’d done worse than that.
I glanced down at the book I’d flung at him. It wasn’t a book really, more of a pamphlet, and it had fallen open on a familiar scene. Bright faces stared out from computer labs and walked amongst leafy grounds. Scrawled across the page – the pen pressed so hard it broke through the page – were the words:
NO FUTURE. NO HOPE. NO TOMORROW.
The college prospectus. The one Trey defaced because he was the smartest guy at Miskatonic Prep and he would never be able to go to college.
Mood officially killed.
Trey’s mouth froze in a hard line as he stared down at the page. I caught the slightest tremble in his shoulders – the only sign that he’d been affected by it at all. But I was his mirror and I knew what would hurt him, and this sliced him open and tore out his heart.
I slammed the prospectus shut and tossed it into the corner of the room. It hit the shelf, knocking over Ayaz’s paint bottles.
I’m sorry, the words danced on the tip of my tongue. But I wouldn’t apologize. I needed to keep him distant, for both our sakes. He’d understand one day.
Trey shook his head. “Why did you do that?”
“I needed you to stop.”
“You could have said that.” Cruelty edged into Trey’s voice – my old bully putting his defenses up. How I wanted to take it back, but I wouldn’t. It brought me the distance I needed. “You didn’t need to hit me over the head with my own shattered dreams.”
“Don’t be like that. Youaregoing to college.” I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. His head rocked, his eyes staring dead ahead but not focused on me. Trey had gone somewhere inside his head, somewhere I couldn’t follow. “And you’re going to be an engineer and work in renewable energy and fuck your father and his evil plans. Not just you, butevery studentis getting out of this hell.”
“No, we’re not.”
“You’re not afraid, are you? The god says—”
Trey’s eyes flicked to the discarded prospectus. He shook his head. “We can’t, Hazel. Seeing that page confirms it. I’ve spent my whole life inflicting misery on others because I thought that was what I had to do. Because I didn’t know there was another way to be. Now I know. Iwantto be different. I can’t doom another person to this fate. If I save the students of Miskatonic Prep, then other innocent people will become the god’s children. They’ll be tainted by his power. They’ll do more evil things. We can’t do it.”
I smiled. “What if those children were locked away where they couldn’t do harm? What if those children were your parents?”
Trey reeled, touching his hand to his cheek as if I’d slapped him. He froze, his eyes glazing over, going deeper into that place inside himself where he kept all the evil things his father did to him. His legacy of blood and violence and greed – the legacy he was strong enough to overcome, even if that meant a little more blood had to be spilled.
Two orbs of pure ice searched my face, different in color to mine but shining with the same defiance. Trey lowered his hand, placing his fingers over mine. Fire sizzled beneath my skin.
When Trey spoke again, his voice was made of flint. “If my father is so desperate to obtain the god’s power, then this is merely granting his wish. Yes… you’re right. As long as there’s a way to stop them using their powers in the world, our parents are the perfect choice for the god’s children.”
Chapter Thirteen
