Page 8 of Reign

“You seeing Ivy before exams?” I ask casually.

“Nah.” Rio steps into his pants then goes for his belt. “Meeting her after, though.”

I make a sound, though if you ask me, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to communicate. All I can see is Ivy’s diluted blood circling down the shower drain beneath Callie’s bare feet.

After buttoning his shirt and throwing his blazer over his shoulder, Rio says, “Whatever you have planned this morning, she better be worth it. You haven’t even shaved. Do you think she has?” He winks.

Hell. He thinks I’m kicking him out to receive some pre-exam fuck from some faceless co-ed, like we used to do before senior year reared up and sank its fangs into my neck.

Or, before Callie showed her face at Briarcliff.

Her eyes, rimmed in gold and filled with shattered jade, fills my vision until I blink them back, but the beauty of her refuses to be dimmed.

Growling, I follow Rio out of his bedroom, my glare so tangible, it should be leaving marks on his back.

Rio opens the door, where Tempest is not so surprisingly leaning against the frame. He tips an imaginary top-hat the moment Rio notices him and jumps back in surprise. “Howdy.”

“You assholes keep ruining my morning. This is your booty call?” Rio turns to me. “I’m disappointed, man. I was hoping you were back to your old ways. Then, at least, we could all get back to ours.”

“Go find Ivy.” I spit the words out before my better judgment can properly contain them, but Rio, senseless, ignorant jackass that he is, doesn’t blink at the undertone.

“Great idea. She follows our rules. I can fuck her and not have Mommy and Daddy be angry at me.” Rio says, then dips around Tempest before I can think of a proper retort. Or better yet, before I can grab him by the back of his collar so I can drag him back in here and invert his goddamned nose.

“I see he’s his usual maggot self,” Tempest muses as he strolls in, shutting the door behind him.

I dart a final look at the door. “He’s not our problem.”

Tempest grows serious. “Talk to me.”

I gesture to our kitchenette, where we start to sit on the two stools, but I pop off, unable to contain the tight wiring of my body for one meager second. “What do you know about last night?”

“Last night?” Tempest cocks a brow. “I studied, drank a tumbler of smuggled whiskey, then curled up in my bed and slept like a milked kitten. But I assume my bedtime routine isn’t why you texted me so early.”

I get to the meat of it. “Sabine killed Ivy last night.”

Other than his body going still, Tempest doesn’t react.

“I was there. So was Callie. I’m convinced the bitch was aiming for me, but…” Callie stood in front of the blade “…she changed her mind last minute and stabbed her current princess instead.”

“Why in the fuck would she do that?”

I shrug, but it doesn’t convey nearly enough meaning, so I scrape a hand down my face instead. Fathoming the unexpected death of Ivy rubs me raw, but adding Callie on top of it—a girl who dove in front of me, whose vanilla-scented hair cascaded over my face with the force of her jump and the heat of her haggard breath dampened my neck as she clutched me—is another thing entirely. I don’t feel things for girls. I never feel the need to claw them off my body and throw them behind me, teeth bared for battle.

Yet I wanted to do all that and more for her. To end her heartbreak. To rewind those moments until I’m holding the knife and cutting out Sabine’s heart instead.

“I’m not so dense as to believe murder doesn’t happen in our ranks, but to do it so outrageously? Sabine believes she’s invincible, Temp. She doesn’t think anything will come of this.”

Tempest stares at the dark marbling of the countertop, his gaze hooded and unreadable. “Who else knows?”

“No one other than Callie.”

He sets his jaw. Looks up. “Good. We’re gonna keep it that way.”

“No,” I correct, “We’re going to kick down Sabine’s doors and drag her out in front of all our members and behead her.”

“That’s a quaint image, but you and I both know if you take her actions to the king, nothing will come of it.”

“I’m so sick and fucking tired of nothing coming of shit! First, my sister’s mutilated and nearly killed. Then Piper dies. Now Ivy. We swore to lay low until the right time, and I was with you on that oath—but this? This makes three. I can’t let this go on any longer.”

---