Page 64 of Martyr

Was it the hacker? They’d ruled him out because it didn’t really make sense, but there were no guarantees with any of this. Nix could be making all the wrong calls and trusting all the wrong people, and he wouldn’t know until the end. Since that was how it was going to be no matter what, however, he was justgoing to keep moving forward and trust his gut. It was pretty much the only thing he could do.

“Have you been listening to the gossip?” Grady asked. “It’s gotten worse ever since people saw you’ve got a claiming mark. Everyone is trying to guess whose it is, though Lake is pretty high on the list.”

“I have ears, unfortunately.” The talk hadn’t died down over the course of the week either. It hadn’t necessarily gotten worse, but still. “I can’t wait for the next big thing to happen so the attention will leave me.”

“Good luck,” he snorted. “The Demons have been surrounding you like birds of prey. People are wondering if it’s out of protectiveness or possessiveness. One asshole is even running a bet.”

“On what?”

“Whether or not you’re going to try to make a break for it.”

“Where’d you put your money?”

Grady shook his head. “I don’t bet on the misfortunes of others. Tacky. Whether you like it or not, Nix, you’ve sold your soul to the devil, and there are tons of people who’d kill for what you have right now.”

“What’s that?”

“The Demons. All three of them. My guess, whoever is messing with you is a follower of theirs. Someone who thinks they’re above everyone else and hates you for proving them wrong.”

Nix quirked a brow. “You make it sound like I’m something special.”

“You are,” he said. “Look, I may hate them, but that doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge the Demons aren’t the most influential people on the entire planet. So long as you don’t piss them off, your future is now set for life. The price is steep, andI wouldn’t be willing to pay it, but plenty of people would say otherwise. You included, apparently.”

“Why do you hate them so much?”

“I told you,” Grady replied. “They’ve hurt someone I care about.”

Nix had already asked Grady if he’d ever heard of Branwen before and his roommate had said no at the time but… “Iris Cherith. Were you friends with her?”

“The girl who always hung around Yejun?” He shook his head. “No, why?”

It didn’t look like he was lying…Nix ran a hand through his hair in frustration. All this guesswork was going to drive him mad before the hacker—or whoever the fuck was out to get him—got the chance to.

“Do you think it could be her?” Grady snapped his fingers. “She’s no longer a student here, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She was obsessed with them last year. There’s no way she’d be happy about you taking the limelight.”

Them?

“I thought she was only close with Yejun?” Lake hadn’t even been on planet. “Did she and West know each other as well?”

“Oh, no I don’t mean like that. She was friends with Yejun. She just followed West around sometimes. Looked like she was stalking him. That girl had something off about her, but it still seemed sudden when she was expelled.”

Branwen had been stalking West?

Did West know?

Wait, but West thought she was named Iris, and no one had mentioned anything about stalking to him. All Nix knew was she’d tried to knock Yejun out with sleeping pills, and had potentially done so in the past. That, and she’d hidden some sortof device on a couple of Yejun’s paintings to sneak them into the Club House.

“You said there was something off about her,” Nix said. “Like what?”

“She was a loner until Yejun and her became close,” Grady began, glancing up at the ceiling as he thought. “No, wait, that’s not true. She wasn’t always. The first two years, she was actually pretty sociable. She attended all of the freshmen events, for example. I think she had a small group of friends she hung around with. But those two students ended up transferring at the end of sophomore year.”

Nix vaguely recalled Branwen mentioning something about how the university wasn’t going to be the same that summer. She’d told him that a couple of her closer friends had decided to go elsewhere, but had given the impression that there were still plenty of other people she still had.

“After that she was pretty quiet,” Grady continued. “She was always on her phone whenever I saw her. Figured she was still talking to those same friends, just over the multi-slate now.”

What if she hadn’t been though? What if she’d been chatting with this King, aka, the hacker?

Nix was convinced they were one and the same.

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