Page 196

Loren had never seen anyone gather up their books as quickly as Sabrine and Dallas did then. Sabrine hurried off with a quick goodbye and a kiss blown over her shoulder.

Dallas, on the other hand, lingered. Sabrine kept running, not having realized Dallas wasn’t behind her. “What class do you have?”

“None,” Loren said. “I’m just going to get some extra studying in. Catch you later?”

“Sure,” Dallas said.

Loren returned to her books, but when Dallas still lingered, she glanced up, brow furrowing. “What’s wrong?”

Dallas shrugged. “Nothing, I just… Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Still not talking to Darien?”

Loren shrugged.

“The dance is coming up.” Loren had nearly forgotten all about it. “Is your dress finished being altered?”

She chewed her lip. “Just about.” In fact, she’d received a voicemail yesterday. She was already late picking it up. But she told Dallas, “I should be able to pick it up next week.”

“Will you even have a date now?” The question was an arrow piercing through Loren’s heart. The chances of a couple Darkslayers being approved to attend a dance at Angelthene Academy were extremely slim, but Loren and Dallas had both vowed to try. The moment they’d seen the posters taped to the lockers and hallways throughout the school, they’d declared they would go down fighting trying to get Max and Darien to be allowed to be their dates. Of course, that was before the imperator had shown up and wrecked everything…

Loren forced herself to smile at Dallas. “Hope so,” she replied.

Dallas didn’t look convinced. “Yeah, I bet Darien hopes so too.” She drew a deep breath in through her nose, chest rising. “Be careful, will you?” Dallas choked out the question, always too proud to show much emotion, particularly concern. When she spoke again, she looked away, eyes roving the library. “Especially now that Darien’s not around. Arthur thinks all this stuff about aura magic is connected to the Arcanum Well, and if he’s right, that means it would also connect…” Dallas’s mouth twisted with a grimace.

To her. It would connect to her.

Too bad she was already neck-deep in trouble and unable to tell anyone about it.

“Don’t worry,” Loren said. “I’ll be okay.”

Dallas gave her a half-hearted smile. “Catch you later.”

“See you.”

Loren did manage to get quite a bit of reading done, thanks to how quiet the library was. But when thirty minutes passed, she found herself distracted by the voices of three girls who came into the library. The trio of witches sat down at one of the tables not far from hers and began clucking in a volume too loud to be considered library friendly.

Loren suppressed a sigh. She tried to focus on the grimoire spread open before her, but it was hard.

“I saw him outside the gates a couple weeks ago,” the dark-haired one was saying. “It made me wonder if he’s dating someone who goes here.”

One of the other girls tittered. “Pretty sure Darien Cassel wouldn’t date a university student. Or any of the Devils, for that matter.”

“Maybe he was here to off someone,” one of them hissed with a giggle, pressing her hand to her mouth. Loren tried her best to ignore them; their conversation was none of her business. But she caught herself occasionally glancing at their table.

It became nearly impossible to ignore them when the dark-haired one began jabbering on about how hot he was.

Shaking her head, Loren returned to her book, tapping her pencil against the page. The girl kept talking, and when she wasn’t talking, she was sucking on her frozen coffee. The slurping of the beverage moving up the straw was unbearably loud.

Loren’s temples throbbed. She gripped the pencil tighter, nearly snapping it. Her whole body was hot, as if she’d been standing out in the sun. When was the last time she’d eaten?

The girl kept droning on and on. “I’m just saying, if I was the one who was dating him—”

The pencil snapped in two in Loren’s hand. Her brain felt like it was expanding, a balloon filled up with too much air. Warmth flared through her chest, and it spread all the way down to her navel—

A shriek pierced the air, followed by a collective gasp and laughter.