Page 36 of Dance of the Phoenix
And because I was an indecisive bitch, all I said was, “Logan is the son of my foster parents. Those who took me in after my father first went to jail.”
Ragnor studied me, waiting, but when I said nothing more, his anger rose again. “And?”
“And nothing,” I lied, pulling out of his arms, choosing to wrap my own around myself. “That’s all there is to it.”
In the end, I chose self-preservation.
I chose to leave things in the same tangled mess with Ragnor as they were before this conversation.
And when pure frustration made him glower at me for a few long moments before he stormed off into the town house, I knew he was realizing the very same thing.
After a tense training session followed by icy silence on the way back to the League, it was finally time to discover what pairing decisions had been made.
Margarita, the other contestants, and I congregated back in the gym after the private sessions. After a few words about the decision process, she finally said, “The pairs are as follows: Haneul and Yelene, Cassidy and Zoey, CJ and Neisha ...” She paused, displeasure spreading through her face, before she continued, “Oberon and Sulien, Logan and Aileen.”
She suddenly threw me a murderous look that lasted barely a second before she smiled professionally at everyone. The change was so instantaneous that I almost thought I’d imagined it, but knowing Margarita, I doubted it. “Now that this is settled, starting tomorrow, you’ll have your morning session in your assigned pairs for the last week of training. The afternoon private session shall remain unchanged. Dismissed.”
As the participants began to depart, my eyes found Logan’s. His were thunderous when they met mine, and before I could approach him, or call his name, he stormed off, not unlike Ragnor had done earlier that evening.
My blood ran cold, and I could feel myself growing pale. Logan’s behavior wasn’t a surprise, but it just hammered in the point that he might be willing to kill himself in the Hecatomb rather than cooperate with me.
The Hecatomb was a mere few days away. We did not have time for this. And yet, despite my fears, I could never reprimand Logan. I did not have that right.
When minutes later I arrived at Ragnor’s suite door, I suddenly found it impossible to bring myself to unlock it and let myself in.
I couldn’t stay in his suite until we mended things—ifwe mended things at all. Perhaps Ragnorwasright, and I did need space more than I’d realized. Perhaps I had also unknowingly projected it.
In the end, it was about more than our scuffle from before or my past with Logan. It was about the fact that this whole Hecatomb was my fault and that I might’ve dragged people to their deaths.
Just like I had years ago with my father.
As Logan had once predicted, once a monster, always a monster.
Part III
Chapter 16
Logan
My life could be split in two: before Aileen Henderson—and after.
When I was a mere thirteen-year-old boy, my altruistic parents decided to join the foster care system. Being young, but nottooyoung, I understood what it meant, and I did not like it. Not one bit.
“Am I not enough?” I asked Mom once, tears in my eyes, a few days before the fateful phone call that would change my entire existence. “Why do you need another child?”
“Logan,” Mom said softly, pulling me close for a tight, loving hug. “You’re enough. You’ll always be enough. But your father and I ... we always wanted to give you a little brother or sister. A sibling to be there for you when we’re not.”
My shoulders slumped as I hugged her back. “I don’t need a sibling,” I whispered. “All I need is you.”
Back then, I didn’t understand my parents’ concerns. I’d been their “surprise” baby, born to my mother when she naturally conceived at the ripe age of forty-seven. They loved me and cherished me so much, so they never wanted me to end up alone at a young age when they died.
It was a pessimistic thought, inconceivable for a little boy who’d known nothing but love and happiness his entire life.
My opinions as a naive child fell on deaf ears, and four days after that conversation, Mom’s phone rang. We were in the kitchen, and I was eating breakfast before heading off to school. I saw Mom answer the phone, and her eyes widened as multiple emotions filled her face.
Shock. Hope. Exaltation.
Intuitively, I knew. But when Dad sent me off to school with a kiss to my forehead, while Mom was still on the phone, I refused to believe what my instincts were telling me.
