Page 50 of Soulless Rivalry

“You think Berthie lied about that?” Mia asked and I bit my lip, keeping myself from answering.

Briar only shrugged, looking tired. “No idea. You know the Academy, you know their resources. They could have made any article covering it disappear for all we know.”

My cousin visibly shuddered. “Yeah well, I think it’s just another one of the school’s mysteries. Better left uncovered.”

But that didn’t sit well with me. I kept on replaying Old Berthie’s facial expression in my head. The fear and sorrow in her eyes. I knew in my gut that girls would only keep disappearing, turning up dead in our woods.

I had to put my hands back on that journal. Tonight.

KONSTANTIN

She tasted like cinnamon and vanilla.

I had never been keen on sweet things. When I was a child, Mother would bake us a treat every Sunday. It was her way of being motherly, she’d say. Now that I’m grown I think maybe sometimes she regretted the non-traditional way we’d been raised. Our parents had been strict with us, Father more than her, but still. They weren’t the most demonstrative parents out there but there was no doubt in my mind that they loved us.

Still, when she baked for us, I was never the first in line, that was mostly Mikhail. That fucker had the mother of all sweet tooths. I always ate a piece, but only to make Mother happy. I didn’t care for how it tasted. I wasn’t addicted to those cakes, no matter how many times I would taste them.

Yet, for some fucking reason, one kiss with Elyssa-fucking-Ayaari and I simply couldn’t. Get. It. Out. Of. My head.

I had always thought getting so… intimate with someone would disgust me. I’d waited for it to hit me the moment I put my lips on her and still… nothing happened.

I loved every single second of that kiss, of tasting her lips, her tongue. For the first time since I was a teenager, I’d gotten uncontrollably hard and it had been a bitch to make it go downafterward. I was bursting at the seams to do it again; it was driving me mad.

Because not only did I want to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to stop at that.

“What’s up with you tonight?” Asher’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. I blinked at him before shaking my head.

We were all sitting outside the library after dinner, waiting for Royal to show up so we could head to the Church together. Asher was smoking a cigarette, away from me because I hated the scent and he didn’t want to lose a finger, and Mikhail was engrossed in his phone, unusually quiet.

“What, because I’m not yapping like you there’s something wrong with me?” I rolled my eyes, checking the time on my phone.

“I don’t know, you’ve just seemed weird since—” The door to the library opened and we both turned our heads towards it, thinking it might have been Royal, but it wasn’t. Nope, but it was his cousin. And he wasn’t alone.

A short brunette came out of the library, laughing alongside him. Rhodes was staring at her like she was the best thing he’d ever witnessed and I saw Asher’s shoulders tense up from the corner of my eye.

The girl had a similar look in her eyes when she looked at our friend, gazing up at him like he hung the moon and stars.

As soon as he noticed us, and Asher specifically, Rhodes’s smile was wiped off his face. He leveled Ace with a quick glare before making his way towards us.

I hadn’t asked if they’d had time to hash everything out but, from the looks of it, I would go with no. Rhodes still only hung out with us when he knew Ace wouldn’t be there and every time the latter tried talking to him, he was met with a punch in the face or downright ignored.

It was a damn mess. All that because they couldn’t keep it in their pants.

“Hey, guys. Waiting for Royal?” I nodded in response and he winced. “Yeah, he’s not coming.”

Mikhail finally looked up from his phone, frowning. “What do you mean he’s not coming? We’ve been waiting for that fucker for twenty minutes.”

Rhodes only shrugged. “He left thirty minutes ago to bring dinner to Sinem.”

“Who?”

“The new girl. Pink uniform, long black hair?”

Mikhail blinked, still looking confused, the fucker. I rolled my eyes and sighed. “She has thick thighs and always hikes up her skirt.”

Andthatwas how he recognized her. “Oooh yes, I see. Well, I’m still socking him in the eye next time I see him. It’s freezing out here.”

“Yeah, feel free,” Rhodes laughed and Ace couldn’t take his eyes off him. “This is Glory, by the way.” He gestured to the girl next to him who blushed once all our eyes settled upon her. “I’m tutoring her in calculus this semester.”

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