Elle leaned over to whisper to Nix, “You were clearly having some weird mental breakdown from your potion withdrawal.” Elle reached into her pocket and took out a vial of illusion potion.
The same potion that had started all of this. The potion the Oadess family gave her since childhood, so she would look like a cygnus shifter like the others. Yet, it had shifter poison in it…
Elle nudged the vial over to Nix. Nix fought the temptation to shove it down Elle’s throat. “I would say to take it, but…” Elle’s gaze flicked to Nix’s red hair. “I think people have noticed now.”
“I still feel bad about this morning,” Nix said. “I want to apologize to Persius, face to face.”So I can pour the protection potion on his skin.
From behind Nix, Bael’s eyebrows were high and arched on his forehead as he witnessed Nix “playing nice.” His calculated red eyes took in her every move and every word, analyzing it for her endgame goal.
She was grateful that he did not say anything in front of the cygni group, who may or may not have vandalized her room and set it on fire.
Then again, she had burst into flames in class. What ifshehad started the fire in her sleep? But if she had accidentally started the fire, her nightgown would have turned to ash like her school uniform… Was she now gaslighting herself?
“I hear you’re a dragon shifter, Ugly Fuckling,” another girl at the table said. “Is that true? You’ve been lying to everyone, parading around and pretending to be a cygnus, to be one of us, for years?”
Nix ground her teeth at that. “Iwasn’t the liar.”
Elle flinched, but her expression soothed into one of innocent confusion. “The rumors about Nix being a dragon shifter cannot be true,” she lied so easily. “How silly. Just because she dyed her hair red?”
“Not just her hair,” another girl at the table said. “Her whole face is different. Did you get plastic surgery like the mortals?”
“Yeah, for the Ugly Fuckling you look…not that bad,” the girl sitting on the other side of Elle told Nix.
“What a compliment,” Nix commented dryly.
“Truly such kind praise,” Sarasa, the one cygnus shifter Nix actually liked, rolled her eyes and shot Nix an amused smile that said, “Can you believe these bitches?”
“I heard you breathed fire onto Atticus Graeves,” another cygnus at the table said. “So, youarea dragon shifter. Only dragons breathe fire.”
“That’s just a false rumor,” Elle stressed, flinging her hand in the air as if to wave away the conversation from such a topic. “Nix is a cygnus, like us.”
“No,” Nix said. “I’m not.”
Elle’s vibrant blue eyes widened at how Nix did not follow her lead. She scoffed as her cheeks pinkened. “Nix.”
“Why lie anymore?” Nix asked, genuinely curious. “What’s the point?”
Elle opened her mouth but seemed at a loss for words.
“Iama dragon shifter.”
The women at the table stiffened and tensed at her admission. Bael stepped forward and stood directly behind Nix.
Elle’s mouth opened and formed a dramatic O when she saw the academy’s infamous sex demon behind Nix. Nix had never even known Bael existed in the past, but Elle knew everyone at the academy.
Nix used to tease her and say Elle must have a binder with notes on every student. Did she? Did she know everyone because her father was behind the student disappearances?
“Move,” Bael muttered to a cygnus shifter, so he could sit next to Nix. Apparently, he had gotten impatient just standing there.
The girl squealed in excited fear and scooted as far away as possible, making room for him.
Bael sat backwards, back of his elbows on the table, and leisurely leaned his back into the wood. This way, he faced only Nix. He could turn his head and see Elle as well, if he wanted to, but he stared only at Nix. Silently and intensely. With unadulterated lust in his eyes.
Sigh.
“You could have hurt Atticus,” a girl whined about Atticus Graeves and how Nix had “breathed fire” onto him.
“Only if I were lucky,” Nix replied evenly.
