The filmy distortion of my vision clears with a blink, and the moment I look into his crisp blue eyes, the confliction of a frown creasing his brow, my mouth twists and the sobs arch up me.
“You thought it was Harling?” His voice is soft, a whisper, a breath—but it’s a mask stretched over pieces coming together in his mind, of a sword being sharpened. “You thoughtIwas Harling?”
Dray didn’t spend his time thinking about the watch going to Eric. He’s been figuring out what that meant with the cologne, that I thought Eric had it.
Words die on my tongue—
Oliver isn’t done with me, and my gaze is yanked back to him as he takes two crashing steps towards us, like Dray doesn’t have me pinned to the fucking wall by the throat.
“I’m telling Father, with or without you,” he shouts. “So I advise youget your fucking arse in the fucking booth, now Olivia!”
The sheer boom of his shout shudders down the corridor.
I hear the wince from one of the booths, a student hiding out probably, too scared to make a run for it, and a distant murmur that sounds so much like Serena’s voice, an “Oliver, please.”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” That’s his answer to Serena—that’s the swerve of his rage from me to her. “Mind your place andstay the fuck out of it!”
I only realise now that his shout silences the others that Mildred was even speaking. Her whispers are cut off, sharp.
I don’t look at her.
Not as fingertips dig into the bone of my jaw.
“Look at me,” Dray’s dark tone is quiet, a warning, a threat.
I lift my watery gaze to his again.
Shouts are lashing around us, Asta throwing more and more insults my way, but for a moment, I can only see him—and what looks like the faintest flicker of something behind his eyes, something like… hurt.
His jaw feathers.
His grip flexes.
Oliver’s shouts have directed back onto me, “You can kiss the fucking academy goodbye—do you think for a second Father’s going to stand for any of this? Never mind the watch, when he reads that…” His voice drops into a growly sound, “When he reads that paper, Olivia, you are done for—and you know it.”
Dray’s voice shudders, it seethes and trembles with the same rage crystallising his eyes. “Why would you fuck Eric Harling in the blackout?”
A silence strikes down the thick tension.
Then—
“What?” A plainly spoken word.Asta. “What did you say?”
Dray’s grip on my neck flexes, like he’s reigning in his lashes of rage, fighting the urge to smack my skull right into the wall, crush me—
“You fucked him?” Asta’s voice is a pitch too high. It comes with slow, thudding steps on the rug, so I guess that one was bad enough that Landon switched sides—and let her go. “You fucked Eric in the blackout?”
Dray stares into my eyes, my soul, like nothing else exists—but his answer comes, “She only thought she did.” His eyes flash like glass blades, and his lips curl around his perfect teeth. “But that wasn’t the first time, was it? When was the first time you let him inside of you?” His voice darkens with his twisting face, and all I can do is stay frozen, like to even loosen a breath too loud will end with my blood spilled.
I have seen Dray’s rage before.
I have stared into his eyes before…
But I have never seen this.
This is an abyss, a void reaching to suck me in and destroy me.
Dray doesn’t let me stay frozen.
