Page 16 of A University of Betrayal

Bastien led me through wide corridors, and it felt more and more like I was in a baroque palace. Large windows, gold candlesticks, detailed statues and paintings that must have been worth millions. The only thing missing was the servants, who didn’t seem to exist. Until I spotted a butler scurrying past us, his gaze completely paralyzed, as if he was on drugs, too.

We walked through an open double door and entered a room with dark red wallpaper and very large windows. It overlooked the lake I had seen earlier. The moon shone into the room, which was also dimmed by a dozen candlesticks.

And then I spotted the table, or rather the banquet table, around which a few people were sitting, all dressed in fancy clothes and... looking at me.

Shit,I was the center of attention and now there was no turning back.You should have jumped out of the window. Damn it, Larissa.There weren’t even any bodyguards here to stop me from escaping, and I had been stupid enough to go with Bastien.

I was surprised to see Adrian sitting right at the front, looking at me intently.Adrian DeLoughrey was here.Of course he was. He was probably the reasonIwas here, too. I had been playing with fire, and now he had shown me what it meant to be a thorn in the DeLoughreys’ side.

Bastien led me to a chair directly across from Adrian and made me take a seat, which didn’t change the fact that the others were staring at me. I recognized Adrian’s platinum blond friend sitting next to me, an empty chair between us.

Diagonally opposite me, next to Adrian, sat a woman with black hair and turquoise-green eyes, probably in her late twenties. She looked as if she could hardly save herself from admirers. With her dark red lips, she smiled kindly at me, and I returned her smile hesitantly. What else could I do? I didn’t know her.

Bastien sat down in the seat to the right of the blond, the only one who didn’t seem to be staring at me – I would thank him later, maybe he would help me get out of here.

Opposite him, to the right of the woman... I froze.

The man with the coat, the companion of the homeless psycho who had attacked Bayla and me. And now he was sitting here, at the DeLoughreys’ table.

What came next? What if itwasjust a dream?

The man who looked only slightly younger than Bastien was staring at me most intently, and I couldn’t help but stare back in fear. His eyes were brown now, no longer black, which made him appear more human. I had to admit that he didn’t look bad, even if the staring scared me. He smiled at me too, but I refused to return it.

I just wanted to get out of here.

“How are you, dear?” asked the woman, who I assumed must beCamille.She was the first woman I’d seen here. The thought that she had seen me naked worried me slightly. I wondered what she had thought when she had seen my hips or the sides of my breasts.

When I didn’t answer her, she looked searchingly at Bastien. “Bastien, how much does she know?”

“She thinks she’s intoxicated,” he replied and began to eat. The blond guy did the same, and then they all started.

There was chicken, and lots of it, plus a lot of cooked vegetables and other meat, which had to be the cooked version of all endangered animals.

I felt absolutely no hunger, but would it be considered acceptable if I didn’t eat? Could they force me to? What if they wanted to poison me?

I looked at the empty glass in front of me.

“Oh, Jesus,what do you think of us?” Camille laughed with amusement, as if she had read my thoughts. “Do we look like the Copelands?” Now everyone had to smirk. Everyone except me, of course, because the joke completely passed me by. Adrian and the weird guy at the end of the table weren’t laughing either, but I just tried to focus on the woman.

“Nicolaj is coming back next week. What do you think he’ll say about this girl? Untrained, practically a newcomer,” someone remarked critically.

Camille’s face straightened, and she looked across the table.

It was only now that I spotted the second bodyguard next to the scary guy in the coat. He had also been on campus. His brown hair was now a little shorter than last time.

“I’ll take care of her,” Camille said with a serious tone, giving me a delighted wink.

She wouldn’t doanything...

“We’ve already worked out who’s going to train her,” Bastien said firmly.

What on earth did he mean by that?Training?

Camille just rolled her eyes and put a bloody piece of meat on her plate. I lost my appetite for good.

I caught Adrian staring. He looked away immediately, and I wondered what was going on in his head. I wondered if he could help me. He had had so many chances to kidnap me. When we had been alone on campus at night, in the hallway of Vanderwood, in the messy art room of the university… But he had always let me go... or rather, taken me away. What if he had zero to do with any of this?

I realized I was back to square one. Nothing made sense.Absolutely nothing,and I wasn’t dreaming either. That was a fact by now.