Page 108 of Splitting Secrets
“It’s cold as hell out here,” Raze complains, holding his arm out to wrap around my shoulders when I finally reach him.
I wasn’t bothered by the temperature, my body still heated from my run, but the warmth of his arm has me cuddling further into his side as we walk deeper onto the campus.
Winter semester at Ravenshurst University began last week and as acting Dean, he’s been caught up with late nights and early mornings. It hasn’t left a lot of time for us to spend together, so we steal whatever we can get. Before rolling out of bed, he invited me to his office for breakfast this morning after my run, and I jumped at the chance.
As much as I love living in our new home together, the silence of being alone doesn’t bode well for my constant racing thoughts. There’s only so much redecorating and raunchy sitcom watching a person can do. Lola came along with me when I moved, but she’s hardly kept me company. I had grown so used to constantly having people around me.
So, I spend most of my time in his office, assisting him the same way I had done when we first met when he was my grumpy Psych professor, and I was just his annoying, clueless TA. We’ve made sure to christen every surface of his office and a few other parts of the school as well.
We haven’t spent a single day apart since he moved into my parent’s home all those months ago.
Under Raze’s orders, the walls of the Landry castle have been redecorated to tell the real story of what happened in Nocturne Valley. He said he wants the truth to be common knowledge to prevent any future generations from making the same mistake. Instead of fables being spun about a hostile family and an accidental house fire, the written history of the Landry family includes every good deed and betrayal cast against them.
Ravenshurst University has opened admission to the public, doing away with the grotesque exclusivity clause where only legacies of the six bloodlines are allowed to apply or attend. Thanks to his efforts, admission rates have more than doubled since I started here, despite the dilapidated state of the town.
It’s exactly as it was always meant to be and it took almost two hundred years to make the mistakes of the Midnight Syndicate right.
We have no clue what the future holds for us. Although many died here in Nocturne Valley, there are still members of the Midnight Syndicate out in the world, existing freely, as if they haven’t spent most of their lives contributing to the damage that their secret society caused. But their leaders are gone and their power has been stripped. All we can do now is hope they don’t do something reckless with that freedom.
The reckoning is over. Now, it’s time for healing.
