Page 15 of The Devil We Crave
I gently open the door to her room and peer in. Wren is still sleeping, and the big glass of water and the Tylenol I left on her bedside table are still there. I'm turning to leave when I hear a small, pathetic groan.
“Lena?”
I grin when I turn back to see her bleary eyes above the edge of her duvet.
“Hey.” I smile as I walk over and sit on the edge of the bed. “How’re you feeling?”
“Oh, just fuckin'peachy,” she groans in a scratchy, hungover voice.
My brows knit. Again, I know she’s going through it right now, and there’s a line between being a concerned friend and being an annoying dickhead. Still…
“You, uh, went a little hard last night?”
Wren winces and slowly nods. “It would appear so.”
“You want to talk at all?”
She groans as she sits up a little and hugs the blankets to her chest. “I need caffeine and a metric fuck-ton of carbs and cheese before I do anything.”
I smile and hand her the painkillers and the glass of water. “Take these first. Drink the whole glass.”
“I don’t deserve you,” she groans, giving me puppy-dog eyes as she pops the pills and starts chugging the water. When she’s done, she inhales and exhales deeply, then grins a lopsided smile. “Okay, now coffee?”
“Hell to the yes.”
I head back to my room to change out of my pajamas. Then Wren and I make our way downstairs to the huge kitchen of Morvaine Manor to caffeinate.
But I’m fairly sure that all the caffeine in the world won’t burn away the throbbing reminders of the man in the mask, the knife at my throat, or the lingering, aching pulse in my core.
4
YELENA
Knightsblood University has beenaround since the 1700s, and a lot of the original buildings on campus are named after the various founders.
Ravencroft Library, for instance, is named for Thaddeus Ravencroft. Pembroke Hall and Blackwood Hall, two of the academic buildings, are the same.
The ultra-creepy Morvaine Manor, which houses The Order, was once the mansion that Silas Morvaine lived in.
Wren and I groan as we gulp down coffee. Then we top off our mugs and follow the sounds of voices into one of the house's large common areas.
“He’s a fuckingmenace, is what he is.”
Across the room, a fellow member of The Order, a tall, dark-haired guy with a sculpted face somewhere between a supervillain and a Balenciaga model paces in front of the large fireplace, a storm brewing in his intensely blue eyes.
Jude is a junior and heir to the Nikolayev Bratva. We’re not super close, although technically we're family—his dad is my dad’s uncle, which makes us first cousins once removed, plus his mom and mine also used to dance together in the Zakharova Ballet. His father, Kir, actually still owns the Zakharova Ballet and the Mercury Theater in midtown Manhattan that houses it.
A few other members of The Order are sprawled on various couches and armchairs in the common room, talking and drinking coffee or tea. Some even appear daring enough to try to eavesdrop on Jude’s clearly private, growled conversation with a huge, bearded Viking of man sitting in a large armchair, a big cup of black coffee looking petite in his massive, tattooed hand.
The Viking would be Theo Ulstäd, my second cousin and technically Jude’s nephew, despite them being the same age. He and his sister Aurora, who also goes to Knightsblood, were mostly raised in Japan, since their parents are part of the Mori-kai Yakuza family. So it’s been pretty fun getting to know them better since I started college.
Lucia is here too, of course, not just because she’s pledging the club later this year but also because of her basket case of a roommate. She grins when she spots Wren and me and pats the empty spots on the leather couch next to her.
Theo smiles and gives me a fist bump as I walk past him that almost knocks me off my feet. I mean, the guy is pushing seven freaking feet of muscle. He’s huge in this country. Most of Japan probably assumed he was an actual giant.
“A fuckingmenace,” Jude hisses again as he slowly continues his pacing. “He needs to be put down like a rabid dog.”
“Who is he talking about?” I whisper to Lucia as Wren and I flop down on the couch next to her.
