I’m not even around the first bend when I hear booted footsteps behind me. He catches up quickly until he’s right at my heels. The air grows thick with unspoken words as we climb the stairs in a heavy silence; the only sound between us is our breaths and the thud of our shoes on the stone steps. When we reach the third level, I expect Sebastian to follow, but when I hear him continue up the stairs I turn back.
‘Are you not coming?’
He halts, one foot on a higher step than the other and looks over his shoulder with a raised brow.
‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll be home as soon as I’ve showered. I was told I smell like shit.’ He shoots me a cocky smirk that surprises me. It makes my stomach knot. I’m used to his sly smirks and his arrogant ones. But that – that’s anoldSebastian smirk. I fight to keep my knees from knocking as a wave of familiarity hits me hard.
‘I’ll make sure to lock my door,’ I threaten, not wanting to make it easy for him when he arrives.
‘Good thing unit leaders are given a skeleton key, Nocthare.’
They’re what?I feel like that’s something students should be told on arrival. Welcome to the deadly academy where you may or maynotmake it out alive, also, the room you thought you’d be safe in, you’re not. A unit leader can unlock your door and step in at any moment. Fucking wonderful.
The second I close the door to my room, my back falls against it and a heavy breath expels itself from my body. My head tips back against the wood and my tired eyes close for just a moment.
His smirk finds its way into my mind. I push my palms into my eyes to erase it, but it doesn’t go away. Stars. I don’t want him reminding me of how I used to feel, I don’t want to see his smile and feel my heart racebecause while I may loathe the person he’s become since Lukas died, I am still a twenty-one-year-old woman with hormones.
With a frustrated sigh, I push away from the door and head to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When I come back out, wearing my sleep shorts and a cotton long sleeve top with my hair brushed and hanging down my back, it’s to find Sebastian standing at the foot of my bed tucking a thick blanket into the corners.
His hair is damp, dark strands sticking to the nape of his neck. Thick corded muscles shift beneath the skin on his olive forearms as he lifts the mattress and shoves the corner of the bedding beneath it.
‘W-what are you doing?’ I ask hesitantly. My eyes fall to my makeshift bedding that’s now in a folded pile next to the bed. They then trail along the floor to where a foam mattress has been rolled out, with a pillow and a matching blanket to the one tucked in nicely over my bed.
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ He tosses a thick pillow to the end of the bed where my head usually lays.
Honestly, I’m not quite sure. My brain is trying to tell me that he wouldn’t come into my room and send me to the floor, but with how nicely he’s making my bed, and how haphazardly he chucked together the one on the floor … I’m beginning to grow concerned.
‘That’s my bed,’ I say in lieu of an answer.
He stands straight and turns to me. ‘Nothing gets past you, does it,’ he deadpans.
When I don’t answer he points down at the folded towel and sweater. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone you didn’t have bedding? It gets freezing up here at night.’
I know.
‘Who was I going to tell? The people who burnt it all in the first place?’
Sebastian’s shoulders stiffen. ‘What do you mean theyburntit?’
‘Burnt, incinerated, seared. Be. On.Fire.’ I over-enunciate each word, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. ‘Come on, Zain, these words should be in a Malachite unit leader’s vocabulary already.’
‘Would you stop being such a brat for once and give me a fucking answer,’ he snaps. ‘Whodid it?’
‘I don’t know!’ I exclaim. ‘I walked in here and found my bedding burnt to a crisp and the rest of the room completely trashed. I didn’ttellanyone because having to sleep with a towel for a blanket has been theleastof my concerns. Why do you even care?’
My breathing has turned ragged by the time I’m finished speaking. It’s probably the longest sentence to him that I have said in a very long time. I didn’t even realise it, but I also moved closer to him as I spoke. So close that I can feel the bristling energy radiating off his body. It hums against my skin. Our rising chests move in tandem with each other, a mere foot between us as I glare up at him, and he scowls down at me.
‘This isn’t for you,’ he scoffs, pointing at the made bed. ‘It’s for my own sanity. So, I don’t have to hear you complain how cold you are all night.’
‘I’m surprised you can hear my voice at all, over your giant ego.’
I catch the flicker in his green eyes, the way his pupils expand, the tick in his jaw. We stare at each other for what feels like minutes, but is only actually a handful of thick, tension-filled seconds, before he shakes his head and curses beneath his breath. The moment he turns away from me and heads for the door, I feel the pressure tugging between our bodies release with a whoosh.
‘Go to bed,’ he commands as one of his large hands grips the edge of the door so hard I fear the wood will crack from the force. ‘And lock your bloody door.’ He swings it shut behind him as he storms out, making the light of the lantern beside my bed flicker and wink out, encasing me in shadows.
TWENTY-TWO
I’ve been laying here awake for what feels like hours before I hear the tell-tale noise of my door creaking open. Through my half-closed lids I spy a sliver of light creeping in from the corridor, before the gap in the door is filled with a tall, wide, male form.
