Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3) (2 page)

I was outnumbered.

I might have been willing to give Jayden a chance: he
had
given me back a memory of something that the others had been hiding from me, and his men had been following me around for months now without once harming me in any way, but I wasn’t sure that I could betray everyone else to do it.

At the end of the day, the choice was a clear one. I could put myself in danger and betray all of the people that cared about me, or I could leave Silas in danger and betray myself. I knew the options, but knowing the options didn’t make it any easier to
decide
, so I continued to put it off, waiting for something to appear out of nowhere and change things—to tip me one way or another. Graduation had been a non-event, because I no longer cared about normal human things. My life was no longer what it once was; I no longer cared about getting a job with the Zevghéri; I no longer cared about getting a job in the human world; I no longer cared about the fact that my dead father was both alive and
not
my father.

I did care that my brother wasn’t my real brother, and that my
real
brother was a faceless ghost, shadowing my every step… but even though I cared, there was nothing to be done. The messenger had won. For now, at least. He had succeeded in dividing me from one of my pairs, while Kingsling and Weston had taken care of the rest.

He had won.

I slammed the door of the car, the sharp sound cutting through my pensive mood and drawing my attention back to the present.

Hollow Valley University
.

I read the words with a frown twisting my features. The sign itself was bigger than your average community college administration office, and yet the campus would have been completely invisible unless you were standing right before it. It had taken us half an hour to drive there, through half-hidden, mountainous roads; and in half an hour, we had left the unsuspecting human world behind. While the school had a breath-taking view of the natural beauty surrounding Mount Baker, the façade was cleverly painted in neutral greens and earthy browns, becoming almost invisible behind the screen of towering pine trees that converged over the mountainside. The campus stepped up into the mountains, naturally settling into its surrounds as though it had been there for centuries. In some places, tree roots had even begun to smother the outsides of the buildings, holding the structures together in a vice-like embrace, sending out smaller roots to feed into the cracks created between the mortar. Steel reinforcements had been added to prevent the buildings from collapsing, but even those were beautiful, in their own way. Moss-covered vines had been sent forth from the invading trees to capture the unyielding steel, winding down to the ground and disappearing into the gaps in the pavement.

As ancient as the outside looked, it was clear that this college had been well-endowed with the gift of Zevghéri fortune. The conservation of some of the buildings alone would have cost a fortune.

“Pretty, eh?” Poison trudged up the path beside me, slinging a duffle over her shoulder. “Remember what I told you about pretty things, cupcake?”

I chuckled, shaking my head at her. “I think it was me telling you, but I’ll heed your warning, Wise One.”

She smirked. “Pretty illusions usually exist to cover up something dangerous; it’s nature’s bait… but that doesn’t mean that all dangerous things are
bad
. I intend to make the most of my time here, and since you’re my unwilling comrade in arms, you’ll also be making the most of your time here. Now,” she hoisted the duffle from her shoulder and lugged it at me, “help an illegitimate bastard out, would ya?”

I wouldn’t say that I caught the duffle so much as the duffle caught me, but after I picked myself up off the ground and shouldered the thing, the result was more or less the same.

“I don’t intend to just go to college and have fun like nothing else is going on,” I grumbled.

“Did I just hear the mouse squeak the forbidden words?” Clarin groused, appearing at my other side carrying the amount of luggage a small family might have packed for a month-long camping trip.

Despite the ease of his tone, he shot his eyes to me in anger, and I lifted my chin at him, daring him to start another fight on the subject. The previous few months were a blur of sorrow, pain and confusion. I didn’t remember our graduation. There were
many
things that I couldn’t remember. There wasn’t any room left inside my head because my every waking thought was occupied trying
not
to think about the look on Silas’s face as the bullet had torn through my shoulder three months ago. He had known that he would be forced to shoot me. He had revelled in it. He had wanted to convince himself that he was too dangerous to be allowed freedom. That thought alone would make it easier for him to stay locked up with Weston. He wanted me to think about the fact that he had shot me, instead of thinking about all the ways in which I could possibly save him.

He was an idiot.

One of the bags stuck halfway up Clarin’s arm began to slip, dragging on the straps of at least five other bags hanging beneath. If it had been my arms, they might have popped off, but Clarin bunched up his biceps, hauling the bags up again. He looked like an angry, Mayan warrior, his tattoos glistening with a light sheen of sweat.

“Nope,” Poison interjected, breaking our stare-off. “Not today. We won’t have this fight today. It’s our first time on campus. I’ve been dying to get out of high school ever since high school
started
, and now I’m finally,
finally
free, and I will
not
have Seraph’s suicide-mission-talk, or Clarin’s overprotective act get in the way. Understood?” Instead of allowing us to answer, she jostled her bags into her arms and stormed off toward the campus, her head high, her silky blond hair brushing against the exposed skin between her shoulder blades.

“Peace?” Clarin cut his eyes to me sheepishly.

“Peace.” I sighed, setting off after Poison. “Why did you bring so much stuff?”

“I’m gay,” he needlessly informed me, as he was wont to do—especially after my valcrick had made him question his sexuality for the briefest moment of time. “Gay people have a lot of baggage.” He waggled his brows at me, and I laughed.

“Quit playing into the stereotype, Clarin.”

It may have sounded like a joke, but the more I got to know Clarin, the more I recognised what was hidden beneath the confidence that he projected. He camouflaged his insecurities behind enough bolster to make you forget that he was a simple person with flaws and vulnerabilities just like any other person. Part of the bluster was the way he joked about being gay. Things couldn’t have always been easy for him. He knew who he was now, and he had support in the form of his friends… but I couldn’t imagine how much work it would have taken to get there; to get to a place of security, of confidence, of sureness. Especially without his mother.

Especially
with
his father.

Sometimes, his struggle leaked through. He didn’t like when I saw it.

“How about this?” he asked, turning serious.
Oops
, his eyes had narrowed on my face, as though he knew exactly what my mind had been dwelling on. “I’ll stop lugging baggage around once everyone stops looking at me like a side-show that they can’t quite piece together—once they stop saying that Weston killed my mother because of me, because I disgraced the perfect Voda-genes by turning out ga—”

“
Clarice!
” Poison snapped.

Clarin quickly fell quiet, turning his head in the direction of our angry friend, who had apparently been listening the whole time, and had now stopped walking. She dropped her bags and glanced around at the bare scattering of students that were filtering into one of the residential buildings. Some of them had turned around, surprised at her sudden exclamation. She stormed over to Clarin, grabbed both of his cheeks, and planted a kiss right on his mouth.

I fell back in shock as a half-laugh, half exclamation of horror escaped my mouth. I slapped a hand over the lower-half of my face to cover up the sound. Clarin remained frozen for a moment, and then he looped an arm around Poison’s back and dipped her dramatically. The students around us started to stir, some of them whipping out their phones to get photographic evidence. I’ll admit, they were quite the sight. Poison was wearing ripped jeans and knee-high boots, her loose sweater falling off her shoulder to reveal one of the more elaborate hints of lingerie that I’d yet witnessed from her. I snapped my gaze back to their joined mouths and realised that they weren’t actually kissing—more like mashing their mouths together without moving.

In fact, it looked like they were trying their hardest not to laugh.

Someone whistled loudly, and Clarin pulled her upright again, a huge grin on his face. He started laughing uncontrollably, like the kiss had been the funniest thing in the world—not your usual reaction to a kiss from a girl like Poison, I was sure. Poison wiped her mouth with the back of her hand unnecessarily, and dipped into a bow.

“Thank you!” she cried out loudly to the gathering crowd. “Thank you all!” She gave a smaller, more sarcastic bow to Clarin. “You’re
welcome
!”

“I’m sorry,” Clarin said, doing that muscle-curl thing to pick up all of his bags again. “I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I asked, as Poison returned to her fallen luggage. “That it’s illegal to get it on with your cousin in most countries?”

“Forgot that labels don’t define us,” Poison filled in, taking the lead and forging a path through the sudden swell of people that surrounded us. “The best way to confuse society about which box to place you in is to jump into all the boxes at the same time. Now Clarin is gay, but a little bit straight; available, but a little bit incestuous; and totally hot, but a little bit disgusting on account of the incest thing.” 

“Hey, Seraph,” someone nudged me as I passed, “I’ve got a spare bunk in my dorm room if you’re looking for a new brother.”

I ground my teeth together, giving the guy my back. I had grown adept at hiding my reaction to the bullying that I received during the last month of high school, but I hadn’t been exposed to it over the break and I wasn’t particularly overjoyed at the prospect of needing to recondition myself. I had been secretly hoping that people might have forgotten about me during the busy transition from high school to college… but how hard could it really be to forget a girl secretly posing as one of Weston’s bastards—and therefore claiming to be borderline Zevghéri royalty? Not everyone recognised me, but those who did made their whispered words achingly obvious as I walked by, attempting to ignore them.

“Orgy in the music department,” an unfamiliar guy announced to me as we neared the building. “I heard the Adairs like sharing. Practise room C!”

An angry retort was on the tip of my tongue when Poison spun around, pointing a finger of warning at my chest.

“Don’t make me kiss you, too,” she threatened.

The ridiculous statement was enough to lighten the sudden weight that had begun to press against my chest, and I laughed, walking into the building with my chin tucked to my chest. I understood why the other students were angry. They hated that I had been placed upon a pedestal, allowing them to think that I was better than them in some way, because I was an
Adair
.

Now I was a Black, and their new favourite sport was tearing me down. The problem was, they weren’t simply trying to bring me down to their level; they wanted to make up for the superiority that they had been fooled into seeing by sending me into the dirt. I was suddenly no better than trash.

“We’ll do mine first,” Poison declared, pulling the campus map out of her pocket. “Girls’ residential building is this way.”

She strode up the staircase two steps at a time, lugging her bags around as though they weighed nothing. I knew from experience that her skinny form was a mirage. She was stronger than most of the guys her age, because what she lacked in muscle-mass, she more than made up for in a passion so vicious it somehow managed to inject iron into her bones. We passed through the first building and into a courtyard that linked up to the girls’ residence. There was a busy reception on the first floor, and the woman shot out from behind her desk at the sight of Clarin.

“Boys’ residence is on the other side of campus,” she informed him in a knowing tone, catching one of the loose straps poking out from his mass of baggage.

“I’m a hermie,” he told her, completely deadpan.

“A what?” She released his bag, taken-aback, as Poison snorted.

“A hermaphrodite.” Clarin dragged out the word with deliberate slowness. “I got a bit of everything down here.” Some of the bags escaped his arm as he reached down to cup his groin. “The name’s Clarice.”

I couldn’t help it… I burst into laughter. It was too much—Clarin claiming to be
Clarice
in that deep voice of his. I doubled over as Clarin picked up his bags again, trying to bite back his smile at seeing me lose it.

“Ah…” The reception-woman cleared her throat, apparently at a loss. “Um, well… I suppose… er—ten minutes. You have ten minutes to get your friends settled, and then I expect you out.” She spun and clacked away, her heels hitting the tiles in an efficient sort of way.

“Poor woman,” Poison muttered on a laugh, turning and continuing on to the elevator.

“Don’t you need to check-in or find your dorm assignment or something?” I asked her, trailing behind.

“It’s all online, cupcake,” she hit the button to go up. “You’d know that if you weren’t
insisting
on being boring and staying with Tariq back at the mountain house. Your brother can look after himself, you know. He’s super popular, and he gets along with Tabby great. They both like to pretend everything’s cool without actually acknowledging their problems or talking about their feelings. Was your—his mom like that too?”

“Yeah, I suppose our mom was like that. But anyway, you know I can’t leave him alone,” I mumbled, as we piled into the elevator.