Page 91 of Martyr

“Should I tell you why Yejun is so upset now?” West finished up with the cream and replaced the cap before dropping the almost empty tube back into the first aid kit box on the ground. Then he stood and motioned for Nix to get up.

“Why?”

“It’s chilly,” he said. He pulled the comforter down and then instructed Nix to get back in. He slid onto the mattress after him, pulling Nix against his chest. “You’re freezing. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Am I?” Nix settled more comfortably in his hold. “I didn’t realize.”

That was right, Nix had strong survival instincts, which meant an uncanny ability to block things out. He was probably in shock. No matter how much of what happened downstairs he believed was consensual, his subconscious knew better.

West may have never hurt Nix badly before, but he’d harmed lovers in the past and had been open about that fact. Was the man currently stiff in his arms afraid of him?

“We aren’t good people, Nixie,” West said quietly, breath fanning against the top of Nix’s blond head. “We’re spoiled and selfish with quick trigger fingers and bad attitudes. Everyone around us is an enemy, a pawn, or both. That’s just how it’s always been.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming on.”

“But,” West emphasized, “we aren’t the only monsters on planet. Whoever dragged your cousin into this isn’t any better than we are. You both just have bad luck, you and…Branwen.”

The sound of Nix’s breathing was momentarily drowned out by the sudden pattering of rain against the window pane, a storm starting up in a blink. Then, he snuggled back into West’sembrace and pulled the comforter tighter around himself. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re not going to let me go?”

Since that much was obvious—and he actually felt somewhat guilty over it—West didn’t bother to acknowledge it. Instead, he changed the subject.

“You wanted to hear the full story,” he reminded. “What happened with Branwen?”

“You can…call her Iris when you’re talking about this.” Nix closed his eyes.

“Iris and Yejun became friends in an art class,” West began. “Yejun doesn’t connect with many people, but she seemed really interested in his style of art, and immediately complimented the differences in his works and his parents. That’s a soft spot for, June. His parents put a lot of pressure on him. He’s never talented enough for their liking and they make it known, albeit privately.”

“What’s up with you three and having shit parents?” Nix drawled.

“Actually, Lake’s parents were amazing.”

“Oh.”

“They had similar tastes,” West continued with the story. “Like the same weird foods, found the same art films overrated. Yejun felt like he’d found someone outside of us he could vent to without fear of it getting out to the public or the Order.”

West recalled being happy for him in the beginning, believing that she was harmless. How could she not be? She was from a different part of the planet, wasn’t a strong presence on campus, and had no connections to Club Essential. There hadn’t been a reason they could see for her to be spying on them or manipulating them.

That was their biggest mistake.

Forgetting that people didn’t need a reason to become a monster.

“Toward the end of last semester, I started to get sick.” It’d been the worst illness he’d ever come down with too. Aches all over his body, high fevers that came and went, accompanied by the chilled sweats. “I thought it was the flu or something. Nothing serious. Then we got word that the Emperor and her Consort were also experiencing similar symptoms and that only made us believe I’d caught something more.”

He hadn’t even been worried about it. He’d felt like shit and could barely move out of bed some days, but it wasn’t a big deal in his mind. It wasn’t even for very long.

“By the third day of feeling like shit, I was in bad shape. I got up to find Yejun to ask him to take me to the hospital since the doctor visits weren’t working. That’s when I stumbled on Iris standing over his body. It was obvious she’d slipped him something because he was lying on the kitchen floor—not exactly a great place for a nap.”

“That’s how you learned she’d been knocking him out to get to his paintings?” Nix asked, but it was clear from the shaky note in his tone he’d picked up on where West was really going with this.

“They’d been in the kitchen brewing tea for me. I found the bottles on her person with the poison. There was also the substance she’d been slipping into his drinks.”

“Is that why you’re always the one making tea?” Nix swiveled his head and frowned at him.

“Sort of.” Yes. One hundred percent, but he wasn’t about to admit the ordeal had gotten to him that deeply. “Anyway, even sick I was still enough to overpower her. We sent the poisons off for testing and held her in the cell in the basement—”

“There’s a cell in the basement?”

“Yeah, this building is a few couple years old. It’s nothing fancy. Just a single corner of the stone basement blocked offwith bars. She stayed there while we investigated—well, while June investigated, at least.”

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