THE ROOM COMES into focus little by little, the flickering candle, the wooden canopy, a face. And I remember what happened.
“November?” Layla says with concern in her voice.
I turn away from her and shut my eyes. “Go away.”
Someone shakes me. “Get up,” a voice says.
I open my swollen eyes. “Stop.”
“I’ll stop when you get up,” Ash says.
“I’m not getting up. Just leave me alone.” I put a pillow over my face, but he yanks it away from me.
“It’s been a day. Everyone gets a day to feel sorry for themselves. But no one gets two. You need to get up and eat something and drink some water.”
“Feel sorry for myself? Feel sorry for myself? Screw you, Ash,” I say, and my voice wavers. “I don’t care about this damn school or being a Strategia. I just don’t care.”
He sighs. “Well, whether you care or not, your stunt in the dining hall yesterday made you even more of a target than before. So you don’t really have a choice.”
All I want is for this heart-crushing feeling to stop, for my life to go back to the way it was before this school, when my aunt was alive and my dad and I had a quiet life in Pembrook. I put the blankets over my head. “People are already trying to kill me—how much worse can it get?”
“They will succeed,” he says, and pulls the blankets off me. I swipe at him, but he catches my wrist. I try to pry his fingers loose but he grabs my other hand.
“Let go of me, Ashai,” I say.
“No. I will not let you do this to yourself.”
“Well, you don’t get to make that choice.”
His intensity increases. “And what choice are you making? To stay in bed until someone comes and slits your throat? Believe me, you’re not far off from that. Or maybe you want to stay here until Blackwood hauls you off to the dungeon, too?”
I yank at my wrists, trying to pull them out of his grasp.
His jaw is set. “You’re sad and angry and you can’t think past your emotions. But at some point those emotions will fade and you’ll realize you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life. Only by then it’ll be too late.”
I’m getting so mad I want to scream or cry or both. “Why do you even care? It shouldn’t matter to you.”
“It does matter.”
I scoff and try to get my feet free from the blankets.
But he doesn’t let go—in fact, he hoists me out of the bed. I kick at him, but he blocks and turns us around so that he’s standing between me and the bed. He lets go of my wrists.
“Really? You’re going to prevent me from getting into my own bed?” I say, and I’m furious, all that anger I felt toward Matteo and this awful school rushing back.
I try to step past him, but he steps with me. I push, but he pushes back. My heart is racing and I can feel tears returning to my eyes. I want to tear him apart, and this room, and this school.
“You want to hit me, don’t you?” he says. “Go for it.”
He pushes my shoulders.
“Stop.”
“Defend yourself,” he says, and pushes me again.
“Knock it the hell off, Ash.”
“If you’re not going to hit me, I’m going to hit you,” he says. “I suggest you block or do something other than stand there.”
And before I can really think it through, I pull back my arm and punch him hard right in the jaw. And he doesn’t stop me.
My hands fly to my mouth and I take a step backward. I shake out my hand, which now hurts like hell. I focus all my attention on it, trying to keep my lip from quivering. Punching Ash zapped my anger, and now that it’s gone, all that’s left is this bottomless sadness.
Ash rubs his face. “Not bad. I think there’s a chance I’m actually going to have a bruise.”
Tears roll down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He takes a step toward me and I start to cry harder, all my grief pouring out of me. His arms wrap around my body and he pulls me into a hug. I push back, but when he doesn’t let go, I bury my head in his shoulder. Feeling the warmth of his arms around me and his hand rubbing my back makes me realize how much my life here has lacked in basic human comfort. No one touches anyone in this school unless it’s to hurt them.
“Actually, I’m not sorry. You deserved it,” I say.
He laughs into my hair. And when his laugh stops, we’re both silent.
“It was someone really close to you,” he says after a few seconds, but it’s not a question.
I nod against his chest.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, and squeezes me a little tighter.
I take a deep breath. “So am I.”
We’re like that for a long minute until my tears stop and my sniffles become less frequent. When he finally lets go, some of the edge is gone. The loss hasn’t diminished, but the pain and the helplessness feel lighter.
I wipe my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Do you let everyone in this school who’s sad punch you?” I ask, because I’m not sure what else to say to him right now and verbally sparring with him feels more normal than talking about my emotions.
He points to the wet spot on his shirt where my face was. “Only if they agree to snot on me afterward,” he says with a sly grin.
“Are you making fun of me while I’m grieving? Do you have any shame at all?” I say, but there isn’t any frustration in my voice.
“Shame is for other people,” he says. “You know, I’ve never seen anyone fling herself over a table in a crowded dining hall quite like that before. It was fairly epic. I think you startled the hell out of Matteo. You should have seen his face. Even after you were carried out, he couldn’t quite get over the whole thing. Wouldn’t talk to anyone.”
“He’ll have his chance to get even, I’m sure.”
Ash shakes his head. “He knocked you out cold. Blackwood called it even.”
I touch the side of my head where I felt the sharp pain yesterday, and sure enough, there’s a bump. “Oh.”
I sit down on my bed.
“Don’t you dare think about lying back down,” he says.
I take a swig of the water on my bedside table. “If I do, are you going to let me punch you again?”
He sits next to me and smirks.
I look at him squarely. “Why did you do it?”
“Get you out of bed? Who would pine after me if you weren’t around? It would get depressing.”
I shake my head. “Did I really make things worse for myself?”
His smile fades. “Yes. With Blackwood and in general. Between Charles’s death and Nyx being in the dungeon, the school is turning on you.”
“And again, why are you here, dragging me out of bed…caring about any of this? Is it just because I live with your sister? Are you trying to make sure this doesn’t spill onto her?”
“Well, that’s certainly the reason I slept here last night,” he says.
You slept here? is what I’m thinking, but what I say is: “So if I’m such a liability, why don’t you just get me assigned to a different room?” I instantly regret my words. I don’t want to leave Layla or stop spending time with Ash. But I also don’t want to live with the constant fear that they might walk away from me at my weakest moment. I’ve always been sure where I stood with people and who I could count on, but at this school I have no idea.
“Why are you so impossible?” he says.
“You should ask my best friend. She’ll give you a long list of reasons,” I say.
He smiles, but there is sadness in his expression.
“Look, I’m not saying I’m not grateful. I’m so grateful. You and Layla…well, I don’t know what I would do without you. And when you and I were caught after curfew together, it made sense that you guys stood by me. But at this point I don’t understand why you’re helping me, especially if the Lions are as powerful as you say they are.”
“As I told you, Layla’s more moral than I consider healthy. She’s also unshakably curious. Once this situation became a puzzle, she was going to solve it whether you were here or not. And, well, she finds you infuriating, which, as you can tell”—he spreads his arms to indicate himself—“is a quality she greatly admires.” He laughs. “She’s come to think of you as a friend.”
I sigh, and I can feel tears returning to my eyes. It seems like there has been nothing but hostility and death since I came here, so a few kind words go a long way. Not long ago my life was full of love and laughter. “And you?”
He doesn’t answer right away and looks down at his hands. “You remind me of someone.”
“Oh.”
“Someone I grew up with.” He looks over at me. “She was fast and strong and funny as all hell. And there was something so free about her, like the whole world was hers if she wanted it. I used to be envious of her, how she always saw the best in everyone, even when they disappointed her.”
“You guys aren’t friends anymore?”
“She wasn’t Strategia,” he says, and his voice tightens.
“What does that mean? You stopped being friends with her for that?”
“I was told to, warned,” he says, and pauses. “But I was just a kid. I was stubborn, and I thought if I could just keep her away from my Family until I was supposed to go away to school, it wouldn’t matter.” He sighs. “And then one day she snuck into my house while there was a Family meeting going on, and my father caught her. He was furious. I swore to him that she didn’t hear anything. I promised I would talk to her, end our friendship….”
I have a sinking feeling in my gut. “Oh no.”
He doesn’t meet my eyes. “There was a fire in her house the next day.” He rubs his forehead—the kind of tell he never shows. “And a month later Layla and I came here.”
I don’t need to ask if she died, because I can see the guilt written all over him. I’m fairly certain he was in love with her.
I smile.
He frowns. “Don’t you think smiling at a story like that is bad form?”
“I’m smiling because it proves that under all those carefully controlled looks and that distracting flirting you’re capable of real emotion.”
“Wait just a minute, my flirting is not distracting. My flirting is captivating, weak-knees quality.”
“And I’m smiling because that story shows you also think of me as a friend,” I say.
“I do think about you,” he says, even though that’s not what I said, and for a second we just stare at each other. Then all of a sudden he looks away.
I clear my throat. “Where’s Layla?”
“Library,” he says.
I suddenly feel guilty. I’m sure she’s doing research, trying to figure out how to get me out of this mess, and I’m hiding in my bed.
“In the dining hall earlier—” he says, as if reading my mind.
“Yes. I remembered something. A conversation with”—my voice catches—“my aunt. My mom’s sister.”
He nods and it’s clear that he understands she was the one who died.
“She said that my parents’ Families were fighting before I was ever born. And after what you told me about the Lions and the Bears—”
“Your father could definitely be a Lion. That would certainly have complicated their entire relationship and would explain why your parents chose to raise you off the grid. In fact…your mother may have been a Bear with decent status, and your father may have agreed to join her Family when they married, which in turn gives us a better idea of why you were able to get into the Academy so late.” He’s speaking fast and his eyes are bright.
“Maybe my mom’s status got me considered for admission here, but why would they make an exception for me when I lack all the training everyone else has been getting since birth?”
He looks at me like he’s considering the question. “Maybe you weren’t brought up steeped in Strategia culture, but you’ve clearly had training. You bested Nyx in the dark, you’re a phenomenal climber, you picked out my lie on instinct, and you managed to save both Aarya and my sister in your last challenge. Not to mention your skills with knives and swords. You’re a perfect candidate to come here, even if you’re behind in our strategies and history. But why you were sent in as an upperclassman midsemester…” He leans back on his elbow. “And then there’s the fact that Matteo seems to recognize you, and has some sort of mysterious grudge against you.”
“Do you think the Bears killed my aunt?” I say, and my tone shifts.
He frowns momentarily. “I couldn’t say. But clearly you think that’s a possibility or you wouldn’t have done those acrobatics in the dining hall to tackle the most prominent Bear here. But there are a lot of unknowns in this scenario, such as what reason Bears would have for killing one another and holding grudges.”
I shake my head and avoid his eyes, not ready to admit how dark my fears are. That my dad and Aunt Jo must have known they were being hunted and so Dad sent me here. And now Aunt Jo is dead, which means the only person left to find is Dad. I get up and start pacing. They could be closing in on him right now. The gravity of the situation hits me hard.
“Yes?” Ash says.
“I’m acting like a selfish wallowing baby. We need to figure out who I am and stop whoever keeps killing people in this school. And fast.”
“You’re just coming to this conclusion?” he says.
“No. I mean, yes. I mean…whether Bears or Lions are responsible for killing my aunt, it’s all connected to what’s happening here. I’m sure of it. And there is no way I’m waiting around for someone to take out my family one by one.”
He gives me a knowing smile. “Took you long enough.”
“I’m serious, Ash. Tell me what we need to do and I’ll do it,” I say.
“Well, first, we need you to go to the dining hall and eat some dinner without attacking anyone. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”