Page 3 of Martyr

He glanced away, then, because he didn’t have anything better to do to distract himself, he crouched down and reached for his duffle. A flash of orange and neon yellow caught his eye and he paused with his hand on the bag.

They were tucked beneath Grady’s bed, which was why neither of them had seen them, but even from the shadows under there, the colors were bright enough for Nix to easily make them out. They were so bright, in fact, that he certainly would remember them if he’d spotted them in the room before.

It was unmistakable they were the same shoes he’d just seen on the security footage. The ones whoever had shoved him into the stall had been wearing.

Nix felt himself go cold.

“Is there no one I can trust?” Grady had been nice to him these past couple of weeks, had included him whenever he spent time with his friends on campus or at meals. Hell, just yesterday, they’d had lunch together in the small cafeteria and everything had seemed fine between them. He hadn’t even brought up the Demons again.

Apparently, he hadn’t been as forgiving with Nix for spending time with them as Nix had believed.

“Songbird?” Lake started to lower after him, and Nix practically jumped back up to prevent him from catching sight of the shoes as well.

Was Grady most likely behind the attacks? Yes. But that didn’t mean Nix was going to toss him to the Demons. He’d speak with him first, confirm things on his own. It wasn’t like he trusted Lake any more than he did his roommate. Not now. After everything.

Besides, Grady had shaken him up a little, but he’d never really hurt him. Even Lake and the others had pointed out the pranks seemed more like that than any real harm. Considering Nix had just learned firsthand that everyone who came into contact with the Demons ended up hurt, he couldn’t even blame Grady for his animosity.

He’d tried to warn Nix off nicely and he hadn’t listened. Now he was bleeding from the neck and trapped in more ways than one. Ways he still couldn’t fully comprehend. It was clear, however, that if Nix ran now, Grady would be discovered, and if Lake found out he was behind what had happened in the stalls…

It was impossible to tell if that comment he’d made about cutting off hands had been in the heat of the moment or from the heart.

Maybe he hadn’t learned his lesson—no, he definitely hadn’t, if Nix was really considering putting himself through more risk just to protect someone else. Someone else who had in their own way betrayed him too. He should know better after what he’d just discovered about Branwen. But…

Lake was right. He couldn’t give up. He needed to see this through, if only for his own peace of mind. If someone else got hurt because of him, if whoever had done this to Branwen and pushed her to lie got away with it because he’d given up, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.

Nix took a deliberate step back, squaring his shoulders when Lake’s brow furrowed. “You won’t let me go?”

“No,” he confirmed.

“And you want me to move into the Roost?”

Lake grew suspicious. “You know I do.”

“Then tell me everything,” Nix demanded. “Everything you know. Everything that happened between Bran—” He stopped himself and tried again. “—Iris and Yejun. How do you know she was working with the hacker? How did you find out?”

It seemed like Lake was going to refuse to answer, but he must have realized how serious Nix was and changed his mind. “West caught her drugging Yejun.”

“What?” He had to have misheard. “No, she wouldn’t…”

“We’re not sure how many times it’d already happened,” Lake continued. “She’d only been invited over to the Roost a couple of times, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it once or twice in his private studio. He claims he can’t remember if he ever passed out there with her or not. His work ethic means it’s not odd for him to burn himself out by staying up for three days straight. Crashing because his body is exhausted isn’t abnormalfor him, so he wouldn’t have found it odd if he took a random nap.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She was trying to get into his multi-slate at first, but when she drugged him here, she was found in his room.”

“Doing?”

Lake shook his head. “Our guess is plans changed when she and her boss realized she wasn’t smart enough to hack into his device. She was going through his finished paintings, looking for something specific.”

“What?”

“Art by the Sang family is considered invaluable, did you know that? There’s a piece hanging in every building that has any importance or stature on this planet. Dozens of Yejun’s work are displayed in the Club House, and my uncle had asked him to paint something specific for his office there…Do you see where this is going, Songbird?”

Branwen didn’t have the skills to hack into Yejun’s multi-slate herself, but she couldn’t exactly steal it and give it to the person who could. There were security cameras all throughout the school buildings, ones Yejun would easily be able to access if he’d gotten suspicious. The hacker wouldn’t have been able to come to them either.

“You said you caught the hacker trying to break into the system inside Essential,” Nix recalled. “How’d they get close enough for that?”

“They didn’t. One of Yejun’s paintings did.”

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