Page 56 of The Teras Trials

I am a mess. I go to reach for myself, and Leo’s hands snake through mine and wrench both my arms high until I’m stretched out beneath him. Weakly, desperately, I thrust, trying to grind myself against his belly. I am swollen, leaking, eager; Leo thrusts without stopping, until my mind is blank and frustrated tears prick the corner of my eyes, and I whisper my own prayer up to him, to Leo, the closest thing to divinity I have ever touched. Please, please, please. I want the oblivion. I hook my feet behind Leo’s back, and then I beg for him to touch me, and when his hand wraps around me I curve and moan and arch. Leo empties himself into me. We lock eyes. Connection and a closeness, a communion between the two of us. I come quickly after, my consciousness briefly ejecting itself, to float in bliss above my body.

He looks at me, for a long while, eyes heavy. And we don’t speak. There’s nothing to say, really, nothing that can be said. It is a perfect and protected moment. Why sully it with words and hopes and fears?

Leo leans forward. We kiss. And then we let sleep take us, a suspended limbo between the moment of pleasure and the horror of the new day.

Part of me hopes I don’t wake up.

17

LESSON SEVENTEEN

But I do, of course. And when I wake I am alone, as if nothing happened the night before. The sheets beside me are mussed up and coldly damp. Leo is long gone.

It’s still early when I wake. No bells have rung. Out the window, it’s barely light. It’s tempting to roll over and go back to sleep, but I force myself up onto the cold boards, just to read the books they’ve left us up here in case something useful is hiding there, or in case all my knowledge of Latin and Greek has simply escaped from my mind.

Mainly, though, it’s because the nerves set in the instant my eyes open, and when I try sleeping, the only thing to get my mind off the trials is the thought of Leo fucking me. Of the sweet pleasure and the release. I realise belatedly it was one of the first times I’ve ever fucked in a bed. No back alleys. No awkward, half-standing sessions. A bed. A closed door. I put my head in my hands because I can feel the flush on my face.

Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare get attached.

This is not a good coping mechanism to develop.

So, as I said: I get up, and dress—in uniform, this time. It looks good on me, though the vest curls oddly around my hips, and something about the get-up makes me appear five years younger. I spend a few minutes trying to put my hair in some style that won’t make me look so damn young, and then decide there are more terrible things to be worried about today.

Before I can spiral, I step out of the room, and wish we had a pot of coffee up here. I expect the sitting room to be empty at this time, but I hear the boards creak with weight. Peering in, I’m surprised to see Bellamy on the ground, arms around his knees and staring into a warm, crackling fire.

“Morning,” I say.

He jumps, sucks in a startled breath before he glances back at me. “Morning.”

I creep in without another word, and now being awake seems silly. It’s too cold, and I could use the sleep. Studying random texts for the sake of it is a fool’s errand. But now that I’ve announced myself, I can hardly leave Bellamy here. I take a seat by the window and search through the books. There’s Plutarch’s Rise and Fall of Athens, a translated copy of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, Varro. I fiddle idly with Catullus, just for the fun of reading something about sodomy before the sun has fully risen.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Bellamy says suddenly. His voice is heavy and croaky, deep drawl seemingly stuck on something in his throat. I freeze when he says it, because the tone makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong. I wonder how long he’s been awake. I wonder if he heard the noises Leo and I made, the squeaking betrayal of my bed. Would that be the end of this friendship? I already pushed it far yesterday, when he learned about Thad’s note.

But Bellamy doesn’t turn any accusing eye on me. He just slumps sadly into his hands. He hasn’t bathed, by the look of him; sweat, the smell of liquor, a general sense of despair.

I close the book and move to the floor. “What is it?”

He glances at me, shrugs. He doesn’t have the words, so I try to supply them for him. “The trials?”

“Of course,” he scoffs.

I ignore the tone. “Did you. . . have a dream?”

Bellamy swallows. “No,” he says, but I think he’s lying. “Just kept laying there. Looked down, saw her in my arms, and thought. . .” he shakes his head and looks away from me. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was expecting. I think part of me thought they’d be academic tests. Not physical. Not teras. And now, what the hell am I meant to do with that? I have to accept it, because I can’t leave. But that means eating a fat load of shit about the goodness of this place.” He sniffles, mumbles something I can’t quite catch. “I mean, Jesus, Cass, am I a fucking idiot? I really thought the University was good.”

It’s so easy, seeing everything in black and white, morality laid out in simple to comprehend categories. I can’t fault him, and I don’t know what to say, because part of me thinks the same. But another part doesn’t. Whether it’s shock or a general apathy, I almost expected this. Then I sit back on my haunches and think of Bellamy’s words. I saw what this place did to Thad, I think of saying, to explain why I’m not so affected by it. But Bellamy’s elder sister graduated, too. Perhaps she was more stable than Thad. Nothing in this world is as easy as ‘good’ or ‘bad’—I also don’t say this. I think of God, who is goodness incarnate, and all the bad, twisted things humans have done in His name. I think of the chapel on campus, and how seamlessly the Church can intertwine the horrors of Satan with the teras, how every graduate of the University can be made agents of Christ in the same vein.

Bellamy has spent so much of his life in London, I don’t think he has the capacity to comprehend the weight of the University’s betrayal. The xenos, and me, and even Thad—we know human nature. The nastiness in it. The capability to put oneself before all others. But Bellamy, Victoria. . . they trusted the institution that promised protection. I worry that Bellamy is going to crack, and this close to the next trial, I’m sure that will kill him.

“It’s because you’re a good man yourself,” I tell him, hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t move away, which is how I know how low he really is. “And good men think justice comes before all, for everyone in this world. You saw the University as a protector, and a necessity, and maybe it still is, even with what we know.”

“But if they’re willing to do this,” he said, “what else have they done?”

That stumps me. I take my hand away and stare into the fire with him. I change tactics, because I need him focused, and maybe a soft and gentle lie will make him feel better. “That’s why you need to secure a place—cause if you don’t, you forfeit it to some soulless bastard. We can’t have any more of them running this place.”

“Maybe soulless bastards are the only ones who make it.”

I turn; Fred is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. She is in uniform, which for women is a grey pleated skirt over stockings, though Fred is wearing a pair of her brother’s pants.

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