Page 54 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

His energy is aggressive, unlike what I’ve seen from him before, and I shift to face him, revealing Nera standing in front of me in the process.

His eyes pan from me and flare when they land on her. They thin into slits as he watches me hand her phone back.

I cross my arms over my chest. “Are you allowed to talk to students like that?”

“Get out.” His words slice through the air like a knife.

I take a look around at my surroundings before facing him again. “This isn’t even your classroom, why do you care?”

I’m still not certain that he doesn’t want to fight because his posture is stiff and locked as if ready for battle. If he wants a fight, I’ll happily give him one. I won’t have a clue why we’re throwing hands, although at least it’ll be brief.

It’ll only take me a few seconds to dislocate his kneecaps and finish this.

“Let’s just go,” Nera says, pushing me towards the door. Novak moves slightly to the side and I throw him a warning look as I pass him, but he doesn’t even glance at me.

His eyes are fixed on Nera.

He extends his arm between us before she can follow me out. His hand doesn’t touch her but it’s still enough to stop her in her tracks.

“You stay.”

I don’t know Nera very well. In fact, as Sixtine's best friend, I’ve intentionally ignored her over the years.

But Novak’s demeanor feels volatile right now, so I turn towards her and lift an eyebrow in silent question.

She nods back. “It’s fine, you can go. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hum angrily when I remember what she was trying to talk to me about in the first place. That reminder erases any concern I might have been feeling for her, and I turn on my heels and stalk off.

Chapter 18

Phoenix

I roll my suitcase into my bedroom in my parents’ Hampshire house.

Technically, it’s my second bedroom. I moved out of my old one after Astor’s death and started using one of our nondescript guest rooms instead.

It’d been impossible to stay in a room that held so many memories of him and I together.

A room where I also had constant flashbacks of time spent with Six. I couldn’t sit on the ground where we’d all played cards, or sleep on the pillow on which she’d laid the flower crown, or look up at the ceiling where we’d stuck stars and watched them glow at night.

I walk down the hall and to what was, and still is, Astor’s room. I open the door quietly, as if someone might be asleep inside when I know it’s empty and has been for seven years.

The room remains completely unchanged, down to the maths textbook still lying on his desk.

It’s kept like this on my mother’s orders, a shrine to him and a sanctuary for her. The only reason it’s not currently littered with bottles of alcohol is because the housekeeper cleans up after her every day.

I close the door silently, looking at the picture of Astor hung right beside it in the hallway. Like every time I look at a picture of him, I’m unnerved by the fact that I’ll never again look at his face and see one that matches mine in age. We’re twins, but death has frozen his face in time while mine grows older.

I turn away from it and head towards my mother’s boudoir, deciding it’s time I face the reason I’m most likely here.

Two days ago, I received a cryptic text from my father ordering me to come home this weekend. I assumed it had something to do with my mother’s health, that the last few years were finally catching up with her, so I came, albeit begrudgingly.

I knock and enter, closing the door behind me. Making my way further into the suite, I’m not surprised to see it’s completely plunged in darkness. The velvet drapes are drawn closed like they usually are, suffocating all the natural light and bathing the room in dullness.

My mother lies on her lounge chair, sleeping. Or rather, passed out thanks to a combination of pills and booze. I place a hand on her shoulder and say her name, but she doesn’t wake up.

I shake her with a bit more force and her head lolls to the side, jerking her awake as I sit next to her.

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