Page 18 of Mayhem

Maren looked past me toward the stairs. “You weren’t knocking him over.”

“I could have.”

Devon’s mouth twitched, but Priya was still looking at me as if I had missed something obvious. “That was one of the kings. Malakai Thorne!”

“I’m aware. Priya mentioned their names and I recognized one of the pictures she showed me.”

I looked back again but they were gone. The noise of the hall filled the space they’d left behind. Students moved around us, somebody laughed near the doors, and Devon finally started walking toward the student union again. I stayed where I was for another second.

One of the Kings.

It finally hit me then. The men Nichlas had wrapped around himself so tightly that nobody at Aldrich seemed willing to touch him. The same Kings people kept mentioning whenever his protection came up. The same men whose names changed the way Priya spoke even though she spent most of her time pretending Aldrich’s social hierarchy was something she found funny.

And one of them knew my name.

Priya tugged my sleeve. “Are you coming?”

I started walking with them, but lunch had stopped mattering. Malakai had known exactly who I was before I gave him anything. Maybe all three Kings did.

I’d been careful because I wasn’t going to lose Nichlas again by moving too fast. Malakai knowing my name meant the Kings were already paying attention, and waiting wasn’t buying me anything anymore.

But careful only worked while nobody knew what I was doing. Malakai had known my name before I ever gave it to him. That changed the calculation.

Priya was saying something about lunch again when I pulled my phone from my pocket. I opened the schedule I’d built from what I already knew about Nichlas and checked the time. He had a seminar in forty minutes.

After that, he crossed the east academic building before heading back toward the business side of campus. I’d already watched him do it twice.

There was a section of that route where the hall narrowed near the old faculty offices and the crowds dropped off almost completely between classes. I’d planned to watch it again before deciding whether it was useful.

I didn’t need to watch it again.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and looked toward the business buildings beyond the windows. If the Kings were already looking at me, then waiting wasn’t buying me anything.

I needed to get to Nichlas before they figured out why.

I barely heard Priya when she asked if I was still coming to lunch. I muttered something about needing to grab a book from the criminal studies building and peeled away before she could argue, cutting across the quad toward the east academic wing.

Nichlas would be coming out of his seminar soon, and all I needed to do was be there so I could finish what I came here for. I took the stairs to the second floor and walked past the faculty offices without slowing, checking the time on my phone as I went. I had no elaborate plan for what came next. That was probably the first reckless thing I’d done since arriving at Aldrich, but standing in a hallway waiting for the man who’d nearly gotten me killed felt more honest than pretending I was still gathering information.

A door opened at the far end of the corridor. Students began spilling out in small groups, talking over one another as they headed toward the stairs. Nichlas appeared near the back of them with a man I recognized from the last few days walking several feet behind him.

The minder stopped when one of the professors caught his arm and pulled him into a conversation, and Nichlas kept going without noticing at first. He turned the corner into the narrow passage leading toward the older faculty wing, probably expecting his shadow to catch up in another thirty seconds.

I moved before I could talk myself out of it. Nichlas made it halfway down the passage when he heard my footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder, and everything in his face changed. He stopped so abruptly that the strap of his bag slipped from his shoulder, one hand catching it against his side while the other went flat against the wall.

For a second, neither of us said anything. I’d imagined this moment too many times. In some versions, I killed him before he had the chance to speak. In others, I made him beg until his throat was raw. None of those fantasies had included how small he would look when he finally saw me standing in front of him again.

“Echo.”

My name came out thin.

I kept walking until there were only a few feet between us, and Nichlas stared at me like his brain had stopped somewhere between recognition and deciding whether screaming would help. “Oh, so you do remember me.” I smiled, and the way his face went pale made it spread farther than it should have. “I was wondering if you’d forgotten. It has been a while since you tried to get me killed and all.”

“Echo.” My name barely made it out of him. His gaze jumped over my shoulder toward the empty corridor, then back to me, and he took a step away before apparently remembering there was nowhere useful to go. “What the fuck are you doing here? How did you even get into Aldrich?”

I glanced around us like I needed to check where I was. “I applied. They let me in. Whole process, really.” The joke came too easily, but I liked the way he flinched at it. I liked that he was looking at me instead of through me, that there was no question in his face about whether I was real. For a year I had pictured finding him again, and none of those versions had included the strange little rush of pleasure that came from watching him realize I was standing close enough to touch.

“No. You can’t be here.” Nichlas shook his head too fast and looked toward the stairwell again. His breathing had already gone shallow. “You don’t understand where you are, Echo.”