Page 31 of Chaos Crown

The vision vanished, taking hope with it.

“What? Sorry, Elise, I’m out of it.”

“I’ll say. You lost half your breakfast again.”

I looked down. Half of my breakfast bagel was gone, and from the unrepentant smile on Amy’s face, I knew where it went. She liked to say losing my food was my fault. I should stop ordering better than her.

“What’s up?” Paris asked.

I shifted back to the sight that caught my eye. “That’s what’s up. Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been here before? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not interested in round two.”

Amy, Paris, Elise, Zara, and Presley followed my line of sight. Five pairs of eyes hardened at once.

Adriel, Nathan, and Ethan kicked back on the deck. It was the first day of the new semester, and Paris wanted us to spend it doing our morning ritual of Bagel Glory and sunshine. I wasn’t expecting to come out onto the deck and find it haunted by Crows.

“—wasn’t us,” Adriel said. “The whole thing makes me sick, man. I saw that video of them kicking that red-haired guy’s ass. Brutal. That’s not what the Crows are about.”

“Then, what are they about?” asked a shaggy guy in glasses. The three of them were gathering a listening crowd. Against my will, I was one of them. “I heard you guys are a gang. Steven Ellis wants to split the town and bring back Crystal Canyon. Jeremy and Micah decided to back up Daddy’s construction plans by rolling through with his gang to fuck with our people.”

Adriel, Ethan, and Nathan burst out laughing. “A gang? Us? Nah, man, you’ve got that all wrong. We’re a fraternity,” Adriel said. “One of the underground ones at Hunter’s Crest College. We all got in it freshman year. The day you become a brother, you get a crow tattoo. It was just fun and games at first, but you know how it is with the rich boys.” Adriel tossed him a wry grin like they had an inside joke. “Jeremy started throwing his money around. Why should the older brothers treat him like a scab when he could buy their whole lives and burn it down for fun?

“Him, Micah, Gael, Jonah, and the rest of them got a little too hardcore. They got off on acting like the kings of campus. With that fucking tattoo on their necks, they gave the whole fraternity a bad name. Now they got people thinking we’re some kind of gang?” He tossed his head, feigning actual disappointment. “I’m glad you ran those jokers out of here. They got everything they had coming to them.”

My jaw clenched seeing students exchanging glances, dislike bleeding away. They were buying this.

“If you’ve got nothing to do with Jeremy or his father’s company, why are you here?” I called. “Because I’m counting the minutes until you bring up smoke shops and nightclubs, and how Bedlam would be so much better if we modernized.”

Adriel slid to me. “You know I’ve got nothing to do with that because I couldn’t give two shits about this Crystal Canyon crap. What’s it got to do with me? After I graduate from here, I’m looking at grad schools on the East Coast. What you all do with your town is your business. Change it or keep it the same. You won’t hear my opinion about it, because, once again, I don’t care,” he said, all smiles.

Couldn’t put it past him, it was a nice smile. Bronze kissed his skin. Steel hardened his jaw. Sunlight bleached blond streaks in his brown waves. If he wasn’t going full-time as the duplicitous, sweet-talking banger I knew he was, Adriel would kill as a model.

I gave him a smile to match. “East Coast? Very cool. Which schools were you thinking?”

His grin twitched for a moment, as if he wasn’t expecting such a pleasant response. “Top choices are Columbia and Yale.”

“Ooooh, definitely Columbia. That’s where my father went. He swore there was nothing like living, studying, and partying in New York.”

He laughed. “Not gonna lie, New York is pretty tempting after living the small-town life. I might go your dad’s way too.”

“Good luck.” I turned back to the remains of my breakfast.

“That’s something, at least,” Zara said. “They don’t care about the vote and they’re not here to start that Crow/Bedlam Boy rivalry all over again. No more attacks. No more Riot Royales. We can just chill this semester.”

“No, we can’t,” I replied, tone mild. “Everything that came out of his mouth is pure bullshit. Tuition for Columbia University is eye-wateringly expensive, and he just said he’s not one of the rich boys. I bet Daddy Ellis’s money would go a long way toward that student loan debt.” I chanced a peek over my shoulder. Adriel was still watching. “This guy is much smarter than Jeremy Ellis. What he does next, we won’t see coming.”

Amy shuddered. “Yikes, that’s ominous. You’ve gotten super intense lately, Rainey. Is everything cool with you? Are you fighting with your boyfriends?”

Bringing up the Bedlam Boys got my mind off Adriel and the Crows quick. Things had been weird between us in the weeks since we counted down the start of the new semester. Roan made a full recovery, but walked out of the hospital with some scars he was immensely proud of.

Jeremy and his Crows were radio silent the entire time. With Zoey officially declared missing, maybe Jeremy thought she was lying low before she struck the Bedlam Boys their final blow. Or maybe he thought she was missing because the Bedlam Boys got rid of her.

Either way, he and his brother holed up in their Hunter’s Crest mansion dealing with their legal problems, and the ankle monitors made sure of it.

The six of us moved back into our house on campus, and things had been chilly to say the least. Cairo only spoke to me to pick me clean about any and everything I remembered about Cavendish, Zoey, and the others. Otherwise, I didn’t exist and I certainly wasn’t allowed in his bed.

Jacques ended his morning sessions with me. No matter how much I provoked him, and I was getting outrageous with my attempts, he brushed me off without uttering a number. It wasn’t surprising that a genius knew when he was being baited, but he was in for a surprise if he thought I didn’t know why he held back.

I felt in my heart that Jacques didn’t blame me for losing Rainey, but he lost her all the same. He opened himself up to her on accident, then she was gone. After that, how could he open himself up to me on purpose?

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