Page 11 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

And Liam, he seems… the same, but worse. A bruise on his cheekbone has turned his skin yellow and green, and there’s a healing cut on his full lower lip. Dark circles under his storm-gray eyes. I must’ve caught his jaw, because it’s red. The only injury that seems recent.

“Should I even ask how you got into my apartment?” I force myself to maintain eye contact, but I’m disconcerted. Flustered.

Skylar Buckley isn’t the type of girl to get flustered, yet here we are.

First the missing student, now Liam has made a move.

A brazen one, at that.

I’ll be honest—I was fine with how things were.

Did I hate having no friends? Yes.

But as far as Liam and I went… his active avoidance was fine.

And now it’s not.

His blond hair is longer than when I saw him at Howl, longer even than last year. It’s grown out to hang just above his eyes, and lighter from the time he must’ve spent in the sun this summer. The rest of him hasn’t changed much: he’s lean, tall, handsome.

The sort of beautiful I’d expect Hades to be—beautiful enough to lure Persephone to his underground kingdom, anyway.

He watches me. “You’d never believe me if I told you.”

True. Anything from scaling the outer wall and slipping in through the window—like he used to do at his childhood home in Rose Hill—to picking the locks.

“Get on with it, then,” I sigh. I’m tired, I want him out of my apartment, and if he stays, I might be dumb enough to ask him to do that again. Maybe not the biting, or shoving me against a wall, but… “What warning?”

He scowls. “You’re pretty callous for a girl with a target on her back.”

I step forward, into his space. “A target on my back, huh? Says the guy who put it there.”

Liam shakes his head once. “That’s not what I’m referring to.”

I wince, then slip around him. Some memories do better when they stay buried. He follows me to the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of water and drink the whole thing. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

This.

Liam is in my apartment to warn me, but he hasn’t yet spit it out.

“Don’t walk home alone,” he orders me, filling the doorway. “Why do you even live off campus, anyway?”

“For the wine, of course,” I mutter.

He scoffs. “You’re being ignorant.”

“I’m being normal,” I snap. “You don’t get to walk in here and be bossy, making demands—”

“I’ll demand any fucking thing I want of you,” he growls. “You owe me.” His frown turns into a smirk. “In more ways than one.”

This time, I can’t stop the shudder that crawls up my body. I slam the glass down and point to the door. “Get out.”

He sees too much, but his expression doesn’t change. It reveals nothing—not curiosity, not kindness. I resist the urge to touch my ear or my cheeks. I refuse to let him know me any more than he already does.

“Just don’t do anything stupid,” he says. “So I won’t have to punish you for it.”

My heart skips a beat or five.

But I don’t have to ask again. He nods once, gaze sweeping up and down my body, and turns for the door.

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