Page 192 of Mud

When I made it home early in the morning, right after sunrise, that’s when I finally began to believe that last night had, in fact, happened. That I’d been to that party and I’d followed Taland and I’d hit him with that candleholder and he’d heard my name.

Madeline saw me only briefly, to tell me that the artifact that Taland had wanted to steal had really been in that Strongroom, and that it was still there, thanks to me. She told me that the IDD would transport said artifact to their own Vault because they were afraid someone of the organization Taland belonged to would try to steal it again from the school.

You could have just taken it to the Vault before you let Taland try to steal it,I thought, but didn’t say—what would be the point?

Why didn’t you, you sick bastards?!

Why would you let an eighteen-year-old go to prison when you could have kept that artifact safe all along?!

The words remained inside my head.

Everything had changed within the hour, and I didn’t sleep for three days and three nights straight because I couldn’t believe it still.

I was no longer going to have a happy life. I was going to remain under Madeline’s clutches, all by myself. There was no way she was going to let me out of her sight, and without Taland, I wasn’t strong enough to evenwantto oppose her.

But Hill offered me a position as an agent when he came to visit me, when he came to tell me that my testimony wouldn’t be needed at trial, after all.

They’d found proof in Taland’s room, and in Taland’s phone records—enough to prove his plans of stealing that mysterious artifact. More than that—Taland had pled guilty to all charges, and though he hadn’t given away any names of who he was working for, he hadn’t tried to deny it at all. That’s why his trial had been so short.

That’s why Taland was already in the Tomb.

Hill congratulated me.

He said he’d had no idea that I even knew how to protect myself from Taland the way I had. They still thought Taland had closed the door on the agents and that he’d tried to attack me, knock me out, use me as a hostage to get out of the school alive.

They had no fucking clue.

Hill also said he was glad I hadn’t been hurt—though the way his eyes shone when he said this, I didn’t believe it for a second.

Hadhebeen the one to give the order to shoot an eighteen-year-old boy as soon as he stepped into a room?

Probably.

And I hated him with every fiber of mybeing.

But Hill had the power to change my life still. And he said that, when he heard about how I’d knocked Taland out with that candleholder, he just knew that I was meant to be an IDD agent.

I accepted because what other choice did I have? If I was at the IDD Academy, I wouldn’t be home with Madeline.

If I was training to be an agent, if I had a job at the end of the training program, I wouldn’t have to see Madeline on the daily. I wouldn’t have to think about Taland, the look in his eyes, how I’d betrayed him, how I’d become everything I despised with my whole being.

I accepted because I couldn’t stand myself, and I was sure that I’d have no time for any of that.

I did.

The memory of the look in his eyes when Taland realized that I’d betrayed him haunted my dreams every single night since, until I stopped dreaming altogether.

Chapter 36

Rosabel La Rouge

Present day

The water spit me out like it had a taste of me and decided I was the vilest thing it had ever touched.

I slammed against the hard ground on my side, barely breathing, wet, afraid, half paralyzed by the cold, by the lack of air in my lungs. They burned now when I breathed. They burned and it was ice-cold, but the need to see Taland was too strong, so I blinked my eyes against it all. The need to know what the hell had happened overrode everything else I was feeling, the pain of that fall included.

Then the sound of something falling the same way as I had made me raise my head—it had come from somewhere to my left. My entire body shook as I pushed myself up on all fours, forced my eyes to blink faster, to see what that was,whoit was, and I finally did.

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