Page 118 of Destined Dawn

“It was shit,” Renzo says, eyeing up the others like that was their fault.

“My room is probably the same,” Spencer mutters.

“Then it’ll have to be mine,” Tristan says, already heading off across the meadow.

“Won’t they have trashed yours too?” I ask, trotting to keep up with him.

“I’m still the Lord Protector’s son even if I am a traitor. I suspect no one will have dared touch it.”

We go back the way we came, past all the onlookers, and inside the more glamorous of the dorm buildings – you know, one of the ones with paint work, light bulbs and curtains. Tristan’s room is up on the top floor and we find the door to his room undisturbed. In fact, the entire room appears untouched when he unlocks the door.

Azlan makes us hang back nonetheless, searching for bugs.

“Bugs?” I say.

“Not the insect kind, sweetheart,” Stone says, “the kind that listen to you.”

“Oh,” I say watching as Azlan looks under the bed, underneath the mattress and behind the blinds.

“I can’t sense any,” he says, “and I can’t see any either.”

“It probably doesn’t matter anyway,” Tristan says, tossing his jacket towards the desk chair. “They must know we’re here. They know about the prophecy, Rhianna and the five of us.” He spins around waving his hands, then halting and changing the hand gesture to something more crude. “If you’re watching this dad, you can go to hell!”

“Isn’t that where he came from?” Spencer mutters, flopping down on the bed.

“Probably. Only seems fair that we send him back there tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” I ask him, placing Pip on the floor. “He is your dad, Tristan. It’s okay to feel conflicted about this.”

“I spent my life wishing he was dead,” he says, staring into my eyes with a steely determination and once again I’m reminded of all those healed bones and unseen scars inside Tristan Kennedy’s body.

Hell, it makes me even more determined to kill Christopher Kennedy.

The dark magic soars in my veins at the very idea, hot and violent, and I close my eyes trying to drive it away.

“Okay, Piglet?” Tristan says, coming closer.

“I … I just don’t like the idea of killing people. Even if they are shitheads.” Am I lying? My dark magic likes the idea a lot.

“Yeah,” he says. He walks back to his desk and starts to rummage through the contents. I follow him over, intrigued. I think I know Tristan Kennedy much better than I did, but there are parts of him which are still a mystery to me, parts that still seem conflicting. Partly, I realize, it’s down to that mask he’s always worn, one I’ve come to understand was necessary growing up with a dad like his.

I peek over his shoulder, curious about what Tristan Kennedy keeps in his desk drawer, somewhere I can tell by the worn-out patch on this otherwise pristine carpet; he must have spent an awful lot of his time here. On one side of the drawer, there is a neat line of rolled-out joints, a bag of marijuana and several scribbled notes and diagrams in Coach Hank and Spencer’s hands. On the other side, sitsanother row, this time of carefully sharpened pencils as well as a pad of sketching paper.

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the pad. He’s printed his name neatly in the top right-hand corner of the cover – it seems at odds with his nonchalant attitude.

“What?” he says as he scrutinizes each joint in turn.

“What’s the pad?”

His eyes flick that way and he drops all the joints but one back in the drawer and attempts to shut it. “Nothing,” he mutters. Which of course only piques my curiosity even further.

“If it’s nothing, can I see?”

“No,” he says, positioning his body between me and the desk.

“Why not?”

“It’s private,” he says, and am I imagining this or is Tristan Kennedy actually blushing?