Page 207 of Rebellious Royals

Then something dark stood up beside me. The air cooled, the smoke cleared, but that form just kept growing.

This was not an accident. I will save yours if you will save mine.

The words sounded like dry leaves on hard rocks. They weren't like a person at all, and I couldn't pick a gender for the voice. The form before me only gave me one single hint. It was dark. It was also huge and no longer shaped anything like me, but I was sure this was Shadow.

"You can fucking talk?!"

Fire is power. Stop this before this stops me.

I was about to ask what it meant by "this" when arms wrapped around my waist and pulled hard. My feet slipped out from under me. My head cracked into the side of that metal window frame, and I grabbed for anything to help me keep my balance.

My arms found a neck, but we were moving. Dark hair. Strong arms. My eyes were watering from all the smoke in the air, but when too-bright green eyes looked over at me, I knew who'd just pulled me from that burning building: Torian.

"Don't you fucking do that again!" he snarled. "I can't lose you, Rain. None of you, do you hear me?"

And I let my head flop down on his shoulder. "Thank you," I breathed, knowing he hated it but hoping he could feel just how much I meant those words.

"Always," he whispered. "No matter how stupid, I will always follow you into it, Rain. Every single time."

Chapter Sixty-Five

RAIN

Torian carried me well away from the gym, to an open area of grass between the buildings. There, he set me down and called for help. Aspen was only a few feet over, being checked on by Nevaeh, of all people. Keir was kneeling by my zez, and yet we weren't alone.

The entire student body had pulled closer. People were staring. Hundreds of them were gawking at the flames pouring from what had been the gym until today. I could hear them talking and see them clustering up, forming a crowd of onlookers, but there were two things I had to handle first.

"Asp?" I begged, clasping Torian's arm in appreciation even as I hurried to her. "Are you ok?"

She coughed and waved me on. "I'm good. Make sure Bracken is?"

I paused long enough to squeeze her hand, then made my way around her and Nevaeh, sliding in beside Keir. "Zez?" I asked, kneeling down to check on him.

"Rain," Bracken sighed before sputtering into a coughing fit.

"Smoke inhalation," Keir said. "This burn on his leg looks bad too."

"It was iron, I think," I said. "A bracket. Zez, how did that happen?"

"I was fixing the training dummy when someone hit me from behind," he said, pausing to clear his throat. "Yeah, that's helping, Keir."

"You were nailed to the floor!" I hissed.

Bracken reached up, palming my face with his soot-covered hand. "I woke up with the smoke pouring in," he said, holding my eyes. "I tried to move and couldn't. I was convinced my leg had been cut off, but it was that bracket."

"Where would someone get iron like that?" Keir asked.

"Any hardware store," Bracken said. "Amazon. A million places, Keir. It was the type of thing used to hold a vent pipe in place."

"I have no clue what you're talking about," I told him. "I do know it was fuckingnailedinto the floor."

That was when a group of girls giggled, close enough that I could hear. My head snapped around to find the jesters watching us. Sure, Aspen and Bracken were on the ground, and I probably looked like a wreck, butlaughing?

"Fuck you!" I snapped at the closest. "You want to know why Torian refused you? This!" I stabbed my finger at them. "This is not what our court expects from those who'd represent us. So you keep laughing at the misfortune of others. Tell yourself it's funny, or that it's just a joke."

"Enemy!" Jack cawed, shooting out of the sky to fly right at the group. "Rain! Enemy-dad. Enemy!"

"Fuck off, bird!" Camila, the girl who'd once tried to hit on Hawke said, swiping the air as if she wanted to knock him out of it.