I gasp and hold on to him. “What news, Ash?”
“He had an accident. Our father bought him a demon motorcycle. He’s too young for that. He…” Ashton chokes, buries his face against my hair. “They don’t know yet if he’ll make it.”
“Ash…” I wrap my arms around him. “God, I’m sorry. Let’s hope he’ll be okay.”
“Father is never there for him,” Ashton whispers, “and he gave my brother the bike as a replacement for his love. He did the same to me. I almost died.”
“But you didn’t,” I say. “And he won’t, either. You have to have hope, Ash.”
“A demon motorbike.” It’s as if I can hear Melissa’s voice in my head saying“he stole that bike. And that’s not all. He has killed…”
Of all four of them, Sindri is the only one on whom I have no information, no guilty, criminal secret. Is that normal? Are there so many killers in this school? Or is it just these four?
Bullies, I remind myself.Violence begets violence. Violent people have no limits. It makes sense.
What doesn’t make any frigging sense is why I’m intimate with them, why I’m holding one of them in my arms right now, trying desperately to console him, feeling my heart break for him.
I can’t help it.
I’ve tried to deny my feelings, my attraction, my need for them, but it’s not working. Is this some sort of spell or is it just that beauty trumps reason?
Ashton pulls back, straightens a little, his hold on me loosening marginally. “I have to go see him at the hospital,” he says, his voice a little hoarse. “I’ll get a leave of absence from the Headmaster. Today.”
“We’re going with you,” Emrys says, and they all nod.
“I don’t think we’re allowed to leave school,” Jason says. “But we’ll sneak out. Rys is right. We’re not letting you go alone. Not after the attacks and the surges. You need us there to help if anything happens.”
Ashton looks surprised, but a faint smile tugs at his lips. “That… I’d appreciate that, I think.”
“Then it’s set.”
21
ASHTON
Ihave to visit Toby, my little brother. I can still hear the excitement in his voice when he told me about the motorbike and I remember the dread in my fucking heart when I heard about it, flashing right back to the day I almost met my death on the asphalt. I had careened around devil’s bends and over bridges, going as fast as I could, faster than the wind, as if trying to outrun my fate, my fears, my pain.
To outrun my past.
The only thing I’d achieved was to spend a month in the hospital, hooked up to so many machines and drips that I was kind of a cyborg for a while. Toby had visited withmaman. She had still hung around, back then. He’d been tiny, his eyes round like saucers.
“Will you die, Ash?”he’d asked me.“Do you want to die?”
Mamanhad shushed him. Just as well, since I had a tube down my throat and couldn’t talk. I could barely see at that point, barely hear, still coming out of the coma.
Maybe I had wanted to die, and not for the first time. Not the last time, either. But I had never come so close before. What became clear to me then was that my family probably wanted me to die, too, and to spite them, I had lived.
Kept living. Went against them on everything that counted. And came to this Academy against their will.
It didn’t help much. I still haven’t felt much like wanting to live.
Until Mia arrived. Until the others became a part of my life, too.
Which is fucking nonsense. They all hate me. We have been rivals for years. There is nobody who cares about me, at home or here. My vampires haven’t once checked to see if I’m okay after the shooting. After any fight. They don’t give a damn.
But these people… This girl and these boys are right here, and they have just told me in no uncertain terms that they won’t let me go out alone and put myself in danger.
That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said or done for my sake.