Page 54 of Vengeful

I knew that. First year was always the most difficult. The students who didn't die, often dropped out. To actuallyfinishthe year, you had to be dedicated, smart and hard-core stubborn. The fact that Hunter, Parker and Slade all made it through spoke for itself.

I had to do it too. At the risk of sounding cliché, failure was not an option.

"Which ones won't?" I asked rhetorically. I glanced ahead to where Chloe sat with Dane. Zachary sat in the seat opposite her. She appeared outwardly calm, but inside she’d feel turmoil, the same as me.

"Has there ever been a year where everyone survived the trials?" I asked.

He looked thoughtful. "Once or twice. For the record, there's never been a trial where no one survived."

His words were punctuated by a distant flash of lightning.

"There's a first time for everything." I looked out the window. Heavy clouds were rolling in. The wind had picked up, judging by the way branches were tossed around the tress we passed. "I'm guessing they've never been cancelled due to bad weather."

"Never," he agreed. "I remember once they considered moving the trials to the middle of winter, to add snow to the level of difficulty. Luckily they kept it at the end of the year. and thatwe aren't in the northern hemisphere. Otherwise you'd be facing a blizzard."

"No thanks." Fat drops of rain scattered against the glass. Fuck, that was just what we needed.

"Use it to your advantage," Slade said. "Rain will reduce visibility. It will slow everyone down."

"Including me." I turned back to him.

"Then you concentrate on moving smart, not quickly." He made it sound easy. "I'll be right there with you as much as I can."

"I know you will, I just…"

"I know," he said when I couldn't find the words to finish the sentence. "Everything comes down to this. By the end of the day, you'll be the one to take over from your father. Your future will be set. It's a big deal."

"Unless he changes his mind," I said. "I could do the trials first and he might still decide to give it to Chloe. Or Zachary. Or insist Kennedy take it. Or…” I shrugged.

"Fuck knows who else. Frankie is a distant relative. He might give it to her. She's competent, smart—"

"Frankie would never take it," he said confidently. "That's way too high-profile for her. She doesn't want to take sides. Not openly anyway. She wouldn't want to make herself a target."

"Like I am," I said bitterly. "Sometimes I think I'm too young to have so many enemies."

He actually laughed. "Don't think of them as enemies. Think of them as allies you have to prove yourself to. This is the last hurdle to doing that. When you beat Chloe, you'll have Reuben and Caleb's respect. Getting that is three quarters of the battle. With me and the twins on your side, we'll convince them to come around."

"You make it sound so easy," I told him. We both knew it wouldn't be. Nothing ever fucking was.

He turned his hand around under mine and laced our fingers together. "Don't worry about any of that now. Focus on today. The trials should only take a couple of hours. It will be over before you know it."

"It could be over right now," I said softly. "All I have to do is ask the driver to stop the bus and let me off." I could walk away from all of this. Step out into the rain and never look back. I could take up a hobby, like knitting, and never think about being a Bell ever again.

"You won't," Slade said. "You haven't come this far to walk away now."

"Did you ever think about walking away?" I asked.

"A bunch of times," he admitted. "By the time I did my trials, I'd been working for a couple of years. Killing was nothing new. I'd done it several times already. But those were hits on people who deserved it. People like Brutus and Zachary. The other students in my year were nothing like that, for the most part. We were just living our lives. Trying to, anyway. One or two were assholes. One guy liked to hurt women. Another was a serial killer in the making. They should have been expelled long before they got to the trials. They weren't, so we dealt with them. It shouldn't have been up to us to do that."

His expression was reflective, troubled. A mirror of my reflection when I looked at myself in the morning. If this life didn't kill us on the outside, it killed us a little bit more each day on the inside.

"It's barbaric," I concluded. "What would happen if we all refused to take part?"

"That happened once." His eyebrows dipped slightly. "The whole year refused. They were failed and expelled. No other university would take them after that. Brutham Academy is definitely not for the faint of heart."

"And they want to open another campus in Dusk Bay," I said sarcastically.

"Dusk Bay is the perfect place for it," he said. "A lot of people there are already shady as fuck. It’s a beautiful place to visit though. Some of those cliffside mansions are incredible." He sighed wistfully. "A guy can dream."

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