She stands.
I’m still crying.
Quietly.
Shakily.
Furiously.
“You’re a real bitch,” I say, because if I don’t say something sharp I might break open entirely. “I never suspected you tocome at us so hard. I expected more cloak-and-dagger from you.”
My throat burns.
“But no. You took a rifle and made the kill shot.”
That one lands.
She doesn’t answer.
Just turns and walks away, ponytail swinging, shoulders straight, every step controlled even now.
And I hate that too.
I hate how intact she still looks.
By the time she reaches the doors, Kane appears outside them like he’s been waiting for the smoke to clear before assessing the damage.
He looks at Stella.
Then at me.
Then at the whole ugly wreckage of the table.
“Damn, Stella,” he says low enough that I barely catch it. “That was a bloodbath.”
She says something to him—something about making sure I get home, helping with my bag—and then she’s gone.
Gone.
Just like Tristan.
And I’m left sitting there in a boot, crying in the library, with my books half-falling out of my arms and the absolute certainty that Drew Travers is somewhere on this campus about to be unbearably, infuriatingly right.
And somehow, impossibly, that might be the part I hate most.
By the time I make it out of the library, the sky has split open.
Rain slams down in silver sheets, hard enough to bounce off the stone paths and turn the lamps along the quad into blurred halos. The whole campus looks smeared—gold light, darkbranches, wet brick, the kind of storm that makes everything feel farther away than it is.
Kane is standing under the arch just outside the doors, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, shoulders hunched against the weather. He takes one look at my face and whatever he was about to say dies in his throat.
Good.
I don’t think I could survive sympathy from another one of Tristan’s people right now.
“I’ll walk you back,” he says.
The words are low.
