I leave her office. The hallway is empty. The lilies on the credenza are white and perfect and they smell like a funeral and I walk past them with Grey's heartbeat in my chest and Knox's fury in my lungs and Ashford's thready pulse in my wrists and Ferrix's static in my skull, and my own heartbeat underneath all of it, faster than I can control, hammering against the inside of my ribs like something trying to get out.
I follow the bond south.
Not by choice. My legs make the decision for me—turning left out of the Administration building, down the stone steps, across the quad toward the pull. Toward Grey. The bond is a fishhook behind my sternum, and every step in the right direction eases the barb by a fraction, and every step I don't take makes it dig deeper.
I count as I walk. Not minutes—steps. Seven hundred and twelve from Mother's office to wherever Grey is, because the bond keeps adjusting my trajectory, a compass needle swinging toward a moving target. She's not in Bellamy Hall. She's south and east of it. Near the infirmary, probably. Where Ashford is. Where the others will have clustered, pulled by the same fishhook, gathered around the one person none of them can leave.
Six hundred and forty. Six hundred and thirty-nine.
The campus is quiet. A few students cross the quad in the distance, glancing toward the roped-off amphitheater. The clock tower chimes. Normal sounds. Normal evening. No one looking at the Mors president walking across the grass with his shirt untucked and his hands shaking and four stolen heartbeats keeping time in his chest.
I can feel them getting closer. Knox's fury banking from a roar to a simmer. Ferrix's static sharpening into recognizable patterns.Grey—Grey's fear shifting, changing texture, the metallic taste on my tongue taking on a new edge as I approach. Wariness. She can feel me coming. She knows who I just talked to.
Three hundred. Two hundred. One hundred.
I see them. Clustered on the bench outside the infirmary—Grey with Brittany beside her, Knox standing, Ferrix leaning against the wall. Waiting for Ashford to be released. Waiting for me.
Waiting for the son of the woman who did this to them.
I stop ten feet away. Check my cuffs. Force of habit.
They're wrinkled. The shirt is untucked. The blazer has dust on it. My Stylus is gone and my hands are still shaking and the girl sitting on that bench is looking at me with brown eyes that hold no warmth and no hatred and no fear—just the flat, tired gaze of someone who is done being surprised by the things people do to her.
I don't fix the cuffs.
I sit down on the far end of the bench. Say nothing. The bond settles—five points, close enough, the pain easing to a hum.
We wait for Ashford.
Chapter 27: Everly
They release Ren at seven.
We've been on the bench outside the infirmary for two hours—me, Brittany, Atlas, Felix, and Callum, who arrived from his mother's office forty minutes ago and sat at the far end without speaking. The bond pulled us here the way gravity pulls water downhill: not a choice, just physics. Ren was inside, Ren was the weakest point, and the four of us arranged ourselves around him without anyone suggesting it.
The October evening is cold. The bench is stone and my ass went numb an hour ago. Atlas is standing—he can't sit still, the pacing instinct too strong—but he's keeping his circuit tight, ten feet out and back, his conductor sparking faintly in the dark. Felix is on the ground with his back against the infirmary wall, cards in a pattern I don't understand, muttering numbers. Callum hasn't moved since he sat down. Arms crossed, spine straight, the mask back on but thinner than usual. Through the bond I feel him like standing next to a freezer—cold, locked, humming with something that wants out. He won't tell us what his mother said. I can feel the shape of it sitting in his chest like a stone, but the bond doesn't give me specifics. Just weight.
Brittany is beside me. She brought coffee from the contraband hot plate—two mugs, mine and hers. She did not bring coffee for anyone else. She's been reading a textbook with the focus of someone who has decided that normalcy is a weapon.
When the infirmary door opens and Ren walks out—slow, careful, the bandage on his palm bright white—the bond does something I haven't felt before. It exhales. All four connections ease at once, the tension dropping like a held breath released, and for a second the ache behind my ribs is almost bearable.
He looks terrible. Pale, dark circles under his eyes, his blazer rumpled and spotted with something that might be his own blood. But he's standing. Breathing. His heartbeat in the bond is weak but steady, and when his brown eyes find mine across the flagstones, I feel the blood magic stir behind my ribs. Recognition. Relief that isn't just mine.
"I'm fine," he says. Before anyone asks.
"You almost died," Atlas says.
"And now I'm fine." He descends the steps carefully. "Where are we going?"
"Dorm," I say. "Bellamy Hall. It's closest."
We start walking. All of us—Brittany beside me, the boys behind, a clump of six people moving across the quad like a single organism. I can feel them through the bond, a constellation rearranging with every step. The flagstones are wet with dew, silver in the lamplight.
I walk faster than them. Not on purpose—my legs are longer than Brittany's, and the boys are moving slowly because Ren is moving slowly and the bond won't let them leave him behind. I pull ahead without thinking about it. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty.
Fifty.
My ribs catch fire.
