Jeremee’s room.
My heart plummets as the males cringe back, and through their torsos, I spot Glenn. He stands straight, shirt rumpled, arm blocking the bunk behind him. His blue eyes widen.
“Avery,” he breathes.
A whimper behind him in the lower bunk, like a little animal’s. My chest cracks open as he shifts, and there is the small, waxen face of Benji, poking above the covers. The child watches me with empty eyes, drawing up a too-long sleeve to wipe his nose, the neck of the tunic too wide for such a small body because it was never meant to be worn by a child. Because it is one of Jeremee’s tunics. Tears burn my world.
Standing between us, Glenn watches, attention on the boy despite the muscle clenching in his jaw.
“What can I do for you, Bee?” he asks softly, the whole room hushed now.
The child does not blink. He does not shrug or cry or scream, and suddenly I wish he would. Instead, he rolls over, his back to us. My heart sinks, and I feel the weight of many gazes on me once more. Glenn steps forward.
“How did you get in?”
“I—” My mouth fills with pebbles. The oath. Slipping the ring inside my pocket, I try again. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“But you did,” a roommate says.
“It was an accident.”
“Is this some sort of forbidden magic?”
“Get out,” another growls.
Keeping my eyes on Glenn, I swallow. “Please, I didn’t mean—I will leave. I promise. I didn’t intend to—”
“There are a lot of things you did not intend to happen,” he says. “But they happened anyway.”
Tears roll down my cheeks and when I turn, I notice the coiled body language of those around me, the poses of creatures ready to pounce. I need to get out. I need to get out before their anger spirals deeper. Yet I remain in the circle of the males, no one moving.
A male points a tattooed finger. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard of a double-sworn faerie before, have any of you? No, it’s odd. Odd, unless you’re a spy for the fae. A spy disguised as a Crest.”
A murmur goes through the males.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Glenn snaps. His hand clamps around my elbow as he forces his roommates to part. But they must know, they have to, that I did not do this on purpose, that I am grieving just as much as they are, that fighting among ourselves isn’t helping anyone but the High Fae. So as Glenn opens the door, I look back at the males who obscure the silent child in an adult’s tunic.
I start. “I am so, so sorry that—”
Something wet smacks into my face.
“Hey!” Glenn shouts. “Enough of that.”
Someone spit on me. Someone I used to eat meals with, laugh with as we were all brought together by my friend’s magnetism. But he is gone, and so is that shared connection.
The door slams shut.
The ripping of fabric, and a cloth is pressed into my hands. I wipe my face with the scrap of Glenn’s shirt.
“Thanks,” I murmur, eyes stinging.
He leans against the door, arms crossed, as we stand in a hallway. He gestures to the band of Reign silk around my breasts, the pants that start above my hips, the exposed stomach.
“You don’t have sleeves to…”
“It’s quite ridiculous, I know,” I say, forcing a smile.
He does not return it. “What was that? You appeared out of the air like…well, like a fae.”
