They’re not asking. They’re clearing space, turning themselves into a wall between us and the audience of hungry, useless faces collecting this moment for later.
Silas keeps dragging me away.
Every step feels wrong. Every inch farther from Kadin feels like surrender. My whole body strains backward in his grip, still trying to fight free, still trying to get back to him and make him eat every word he just said.
“He doesn’t get to say that,” I choke out again, voice shredded now, less a scream than a ragged sob of fury. “He doesn’t get to-”
“I know,” Silas says.
His voice is rough, shaking with anger of his own, but it’s there, firm and grounding.
“I know.”
He keeps carrying me anyway, hauling me past the staring students, past the lockers, past the place where Kadin is stillstanding, very much not dead when part of me wants to tear the hallway apart until that changes.
Behind us, with Cheyenne and Maria still cursing at the crowd to fuck off, the whole school watches the wreck of us disappear around the corner, shock consuming nearly every person’s expression.
CHAPTER 32
Octavia
By the time Silas gets me to the Creative Arts building, my pulse is still running too hard to settle into anything even close to reason.
The whole ride there is one long, furious unraveling. Kadin’s words keep replaying in my head in sharp, ugly loops, each one finding a fresh place to cut. I keep talking anyway, because if I stop, I might start shaking again, and I am too angry to let myself fall apart in front of him. Silas says very little. He just drives with both hands tight on the wheel, jaw set, every now and then glancing at me with that dark, controlled intensity that only makes me feel more combustible.
When we get to Creative Arts, the hallway outside the room is empty.
A paper sign is taped crookedly to the door.
CLASS CANCELLED.
We should have been late. The confrontation, the drive, the fact that neither of us was in any state to walk into a classroom and pretend to be ordinary students for an hour should have cost us at least that much. Instead, the universe has handed usan empty room, a locked hallway, and too much adrenaline still burning under our skin.
I barely have time to process that before Silas catches my wrist and pulls me inside.
The room is dimmer than the hall, morning light slanting through the windows in pale bars over paint-splattered tables and stools. The scent of acrylic and charcoal hangs faintly in the air. Behind us, the door shuts with a hard click, the lock snapping shut shortly after.
That sound makes me spin toward him.
“Let me back at him, Silas.”
The words leave me before I even know exactly what I mean. Back into the hallway. Back to Kadin. Back into the fight still clawing inside my chest like it has unfinished business.
Silas turns fully toward me. Whatever answer I expect, it isn’t the one in his face. There’s anger there, yes, but not at me. Never quite at me, even when he ought to be furious that I nearly broke my hand on someone else’s jaw in a crowded hallway.
“No,” he says.
The word is not loud, but it lands like a wall.
Opening my mouth to argue, he closes the distance between us in two strides. His hand comes up and catches my chin, fingers firm enough to stop me from looking away, firm enough to make sure every bit of my attention is his.
“Stop,” he growls.
His eyes are blazing now, not with the blind kind of rage Kadin brought out in the hall, but with something more dangerous in its control.
“You’re giving him exactly what he wants.”
The sentence hits somewhere deeper than the anger.
