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Summer

I climb out of Connor’s bed and pull on my clothes. Connor watches me, the sheets hanging low on his hips. “You really have to go?”

I nod, pulling on my yoga pants and my sweater. “Alice is home tonight, and we’re hanging out.”

Connor sighs heavily and dramatically drapes his arm over his face. “But baaaaaaaaaabe…” he groans, drawing out the word.

I laugh and kneel on the bed, bending to kiss him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I pull back and sit on the edge to put my sneakers on.

“You want me to walk you home?”

“No, I’ll be okay. I’ll text you the whole way, and Alice is waiting, so I’ll be fine.”

“Promise?” Connor asks. I can tell he’s feeling uncertain about it, but he’s trying to give me the independence he knows I need.

I nod and get up to pull my jacket on. Connor climbs out of bed and slips on his boxers. I open his door and walk into Luke, whose fist is in midair, obviously about to knock.

“Oh, sorry, Summer. I didn’t think you were still here,” Luke says, a flush touching his cheeks. He probably does trust me, but it’s a vulnerable thing that hangs between us, and he will naturally have nagging doubts.

I smile at him. “I’m just leaving.”

Connor is pulling on his jeans behind me. “Hey, Luke. What’s up, Brother?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to play video games with Rafe and me. We ordered food.”

“Of course.” Connor smiles, slinging his arm around me. I kiss his jaw.

I press a kiss to his jaw. He’s such a good brother. He smiles down at me and leans in to give me a very heated kiss goodbye. When he breaks it, Luke is gone. I lick my lips and whisper, “I’ll see you later, big guy.” Connor nods and swats my ass as I leave.

I decide to stop at the headmaster’s office before I go home, wanting to drop off the list as soon as possible. If it holds clues, I want to make sure he has it as soon as possible. Whoever this person is, they need to be caught before someone else gets hurt. I knock on his office door, silently praying that this weird daily ritual will soon be a thing of the past.

“Enter.” Though I came here expecting to see him, I’m still somewhat surprised to find him in his office on a Sunday afternoon. I step in, but he doesn’t even look up as I approach. “Miss Tuatha De Daanan.” I inwardly cringe at that. Who fucking else would it be?

“Hello, sir.”

He finally looks up at me. “Yes?”

“I spoke to Luke about EverydayEmrys .”

He lifts his chin. “And?”

I pull the printouts from my bag. “These are the bot logs with the deleted messages.” I round his desk and spread them out. “I’ve only skimmed it, but I believe there are more messages.”

The headmaster picks up the first piece of paper, his eyes flicking rapidly across the page.

“Some of these make less sense than others, and sometimes the account has only posted these weird symbols.” I point out one of them. It looks like an incomplete circle with a line slashing through it, another line meeting it perpendicularly.

The headmaster stands and shifts everything but the printouts to the edge of his desk. He spreads the pages out and then changes the order of them. He rearranges them a few more times before the symbols appear to connect.

I frown as I watch him work, racking my brain for any sliver of information. This aloof, powerful, dangerous man may be one of the most intelligent beings I have ever met. I may not have realized what he is capable of until now, but the killer knew. Why else send a message like this? Most beings would never have put it together.

The headmaster brushes the pad of his thumb along the bottom of his ring, slicing it. He draws a rune on one of the papers, and the symbols illuminate before lifting from the page, glowing and hovering before us. I stare at the rune. It’s beautiful, so perfectly designed and crafted that it takes a few moments for me to notice the symbols that have now come together to form what looks like words.

My stomach twists as I look at the words. “Sir?” I whisper shakily.

“Some of this is inverted Ancient Daoine Sith,” the headmaster says, his steely gaze sliding to me.

His brows draw, and he looks back at the word before holding his hand out. I glance at his hand and then place mine in his palm. His long fingers gently wrap around my wrist, and I watch intently as he draws another rune on the back of my hand. The touch of his warm blood and rough fingers against my skin makes me shiver. The rune glows faintly, and the moment it turns translucent, I realize what it does. He has given me the ability to manipulate the symbols in front of me. I tilt my head and start moving them around, trying to crack the code. The letters are so familiar, but there is something not right about them.

“This is in an old dead sorcerer language. It says, Who needs light when darkness thrives ?” the headmaster says, making one of the sentences pulse.

“This one is in Ancient Greek. Swallowed whole by the abyss ,” I say, reading it out loud.

The headmaster follows, noting the next one. “ Stars will bleed .”

I look back up at the puzzle of the message written in Ancient Daoine Sith, and it finally clicks. Not only is it inverted, but it’s also incomplete. I sift through the papers until I finally find the missing piece. “And the light, ousted.” I point to a section, feeling the blood drain from my face. “And this says, From the mountains to the sky, ” I release a shaky breath, “ I’ll make their blood run down her face. ”

“Who?” the headmaster asks, mostly to himself.

A tear slides down my cheek, surprising me. I have no idea why I am so upset, but I am suddenly overwhelmed with sadness, grief, and guilt. Quickly, I swipe at the tear and ask, “Could the fae have lost during the rebellion?” I take a shaky breath, trying to think past the emotions swamping me. “But even if they did, I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me. I’m nothing and no one. I wasn’t even born.”

The headmaster looks at me, his gaze hard. “There must be something we’re not seeing.”

I shake my head. “This was a mistake. I should never have come here.” I close my eyes. “You were right at the start of the year. I’m trouble. I don’t know what this means or why it is happening, but I’ve only brought pain and suffering to this school.”

The headmaster turns to face me, gripping my arms. “The killer caused this. Not you.” I stare at him, trying to find an ounce of comfort in his ice-cold gaze. “You are not at fault.”

A soft sob breaks from me, and before I know what I’m doing, I am burying my face against his hard chest. He stands stiffly, and I can feel his angry gaze burning a hole in the top of my head, but I can’t bring myself to pull back. His grip tightens, and then he releases me to wrap his strong arms around me. My body shakes and my tears wet his shirt, and though I don’t feel comforted in the slightest, I do feel safe.

“It’s not your fault, Miss Tuatha De Daanan,” the headmaster repeats, his voice a fraction softer than before. His large body surrounds me, and I feel his power singing beneath his skin. In the safety of his arms, I allow myself to stop fighting and shielding. It takes a while, but eventually, I cry myself out. I take a deep breath and step back, blushing when I notice I’ve left makeup stains on his crisp white shirt.

“Oh, I-I’m so?—”

The headmaster stops me by waving his hand, removing all traces of the soggy mess I had made of his shirt. My lower lip quivers again, and I look away, refusing to let any more tears fall.

“I will do everything I can to protect you,” he says, and it sounds a bit like a vow.

I look up at him to find his fierce gaze locked on me. “Thank you, sir.”

I know he means it, but he wasn’t able to protect the others. He has an entire school to care for, and I am just one person.

“I will continue reviewing these logs,” he says, turning back to his desk and silently dismissing me. I leave his office, my mind whirling.

From the mountains to the sky. I’ll make their blood run down her face.

A chill runs down my spine. As if the words summoned it, the memory of how I found Alicia flashes into my mind. I can still feel that poor girl’s blood covering me and her dead eyes staring at me accusingly.

I walk faster, and I am nearly running by the time I get to Kelpie Hall. I slam the door behind me and bolt up the stairs, bursting into our dorm, out of breath and trembling. Alice’s small body slams into me, pulling me from my terror.

“Hi!” she yells, wrapping around me. When she pulls back, her smile falls into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head and squeeze her tight, not wanting to let her go.

“Oof,” she groans. “You’re not freaking out about the engagement, are you?” she asks, her voice muffled against me.

I release her and pull back to look down at her, slowly relaxing. “What? No!”

Alice takes a deep breath, reclaiming the air I had squeezed out of her. “Okay, good. Tell me everything. Wait.” She hurries into the kitchen, and I take off my jacket. Alice comes back with two margaritas and hands me one. “Have a drink and then tell me everything. Now that it’s just us, I need the nitty gritty.”

My lips twitch, and I take a deep drink. The tequila burns a trail down my throat. As the heat pools in my veins, muscles I didn’t realize were tense relax. Alice grabs my hand and pulls me to the couch.

“Okay, first of all, who do I kill about you getting engaged without me being there?”

A laugh bubbles in my throat, and I take another drink. It figures that Alice wants to be as involved as possible. “Well, if you were there, it would have been considered a threesome. I don’t think Connor is comfortable taking the wife sharing that far.”

“Ew. Gross. Okay, whatever. You guys did it the mushy, intimate, only-the-people-directly-involved there way. Leave out those details, but tell me everything else, and start at the very beginning.”

I nod and take another sip of my margarita. “Okay, well, it started with a pretty huge fight.”

Alice chokes a little on her sip of margarita. “You and Connor… fought?”

I nod, swirling the cocktail umbrella around my drink. “A big one. Like we almost broke up.”

“Fuck. Okay. Why?”

I exhale heavily. “Well, I don’t think this information has been circulated yet, but… another body was found.”

Alice’s breath hitches. “Fuck. When?”

“Friday night.”

“Fuck,” Alice says again, slouching back on the couch. “And Connor found them?”

“Yeah. He was with Rafe. I don’t think Rafe let him go in, but they were the first ones there. Anyway, Headmaster Emrys told Connor that I’m the target. Connor realized I knew and had been keeping it from him. He was… devastated.”

Alice lifts her glass to her lips and gives me a hard stare over the rim. “Huh. Who could have predicted that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, shooting her an annoyed look. “You were right, but it was seriously rough, Al. I thought he would end it, and things were really awkward. But he surprised me once again and forgave me. And then he proposed.”

Alice stares at me for a long moment. “Wait a minute. Just like that?”

“After sex. He was still balls deep,” I say.

“Ew, but damn, you really do have the twenty-four karat pussy. Only you could go from almost breaking up to being engaged the next day,” Alice muses.

“It’s Connor. He’s too good for me. He’s so forgiving.”

Alice snorts. “Well, he is an angel.”

I roll my eyes. “Anyway, I’m not keeping things from him anymore. Well… mostly.”

Alice lifts a questioning eyebrow.

“I couldn’t tell him about the Torin stuff.” I exhale. “And I know who runs EverydayEmrys .”

Alice sits up so fast, I’m surprised her drink doesn’t spill. “Fucking what?!”

I nod and take another drink. Alice stares at me, waiting impatiently. “I can’t tell you, Al.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me? You gotta!” Alice says in outrage.

“I can’t. I promised. Besides, the important thing is that I’ve found who it is, and I have the bot logs.”

“Okay, what did they show?” Alice asks, obviously still annoyed that I have top-tier gossip I’m not sharing with her.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. I can’t face it tonight.” Alice’s scowl deepens, and I try to head off the inquisition I know is coming my way. “Tell me what you’ve been up to for the past few days.”

Alice eyes me grumpily but allows the change in subject. “Well, I was preparing for my exam in the greenhouses, and today I went to Dr?culea.”

“You did?” I ask, shocked she hadn’t told me sooner.

Alice licks the rim of her glass and nods. “They had a vote about me being queen or whatever.”

I gape at her. Why hadn’t she told me? “Al, I would have come with you if I’d have known.”

Alice takes a huge gulp of her drink. Whatever has happened, it is obviously bothering her more than she’s letting on. “My father orchestrated it,” she hisses.

I watch her face, trying to read her. “I take it that it didn’t go well?”

Alive exhales heavily. “He’s been made Steward until I graduate. He’ll spend that time trying to subvert the Blood Call.”

“Okay. But nothing has been decided for sure?”

Alice drains her glass. “Yeah,” she says eventually after a prolonged, heavy silence. “I don’t know why I care.”

I shuffle closer. “You know I’ll support you, no matter what.”

A tear slides down her cheek. “I know. Fuck. They hate me. Why do I care?”

I lay my head on her shoulder, just being here with her. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

A comfortable silence falls between us, both of us processing. “He’s just… lovely,” I say, changing the direction of the conversation. I look down at the engagement ring, a tiny edge of unease sitting at the back of my mind. “This is fast, right?”

Alice hums thoughtfully. “Does it feel fast?”

I rub my thumb along the ring. “Well, I mean, we’ve only been together for what? Eight months?”

“Does it feel fast?” Alice repeats the question, obviously not satisfied with my answer.

“Sometimes,” I answer honestly. But I’m not sure if it feels fast because I never anticipated this being my life or because it actually is fast.

“Because you don’t want to marry him?” Alice asks, and I wince. Everything in me repudiates the question.

“I love Connor.”

“Then what’s holding you back?”

“I’m not holding back. I just… What if it doesn’t work out?” I ask with a deep sigh.

“Why wouldn’t it work out?” Alice asks.

“I… I don’t know.”

Alice shifts to face me, taking my hand. “Okay, a different question. What if it does work?”

I nod, looking back down at the beautiful ring. “Right.”

I feel Alice watching me. “Is there someone else?”

I meet her gaze, taken aback by the question. “Alice, I love Connor.”

Alice smiles. “Good. Well then, you’re going to marry Connor.” She squeezes my hand. “You’re going to be happy.” She squeezes my hand again. “You’re going to have a million of his crotch goblins.” My lips twitch. “And you and I are going to grow old together.” We burst out laughing, and she pulls me into a hug. “This is right, Sum. We can overcome our pasts. We can decide not to let them define us.” Her words help, at least for the moment. I hug her tight, thanking the realms for the best friend in the world.

A few margaritas later, after our conversation devolved into incomprehensible snorts and giggles, we both stumble to our rooms. I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. My fingers tap against my phone at my side, and I pick it up. I open the conversation with the stranger, staring at the call button.

Then my phone screen turns black except for the words,

Incoming call:

Unknown.