Page 21 of Mayhem

Footsteps sounded around the corner before he could answer. His minder, probably, finally catching up. Maybe another student with him. I had enough time to hit Nichlas again, maybe enough time to do considerably worse, but I looked at the blood on his mouth and the marks already beginning to show around his throat and realized I didn’t want to.

Not yet.

That surprised me more than anything he’d said. I had him alone. I had spent a year finding him. I could hurt him now and finish whatever I started before anybody got close enough to stop me, but that would mean this was over before I had even figured out how much fun he could be.

Nichlas watched my face as the decision settled, and somehow the fact that I wasn’t hitting him again frightened him more. “What are you doing?”

“Changing my plans.” I wiped the blood from my knuckles down the front of his shirt and stepped back as the footsteps drew closer. “I didn’t come all this way to kill you the first time I got you alone, Nichlas. Turns out I’d rather play with you first.”

His eyes widened, and that expression decided it for me.

I backed toward the other end of the corridor, already wondering how long it would take him to stop sleeping properly, how many times he would check behind himself tomorrow, and how much protection the Kings would have to wrap around him before he understood that none of it was going to make me lose interest.

malakai

Ronan had been trying to read the same page for six minutes, which meant I’d been bothering him for at least seven.

I was stretched across the corner of the sofa with one leg hooked over his, my shoulder wedged beneath his arm while I stole the pen he’d been using to mark something in the margin. He took it back without looking. I waited until he started reading again and pulled it out of his fingers a second time. Ronan calmly retrieved the pen every time I stole it instead of giving me the reaction I wanted.

“You could move,” Ronan said eventually, turning a page with his free hand while the other settled around the back of my neck.

“I’m comfortable.”

“You’re sitting on my leg.”

“I know.”

His thumb pressed into the side of my neck, just enough pressure to make me grin. Ronan had figured out years ago that asking me to behave was useless. Usually he let me get bored on my own. When that failed, he found something else for my hands to do.

I took his pen again.

This time he caught my wrist before I could get it away and held it against his thigh. “Keep it and I’m breaking your fingers.”

“You say the sweetest things when people are around.”

Carter looked down at his paperwork so quickly I laughed, and Ronan finally glanced at me. His expression stayed flat, but I knew him well enough to catch the irritation behind it. I was considering how much worse I could make it when someone stopped at the edge of our table.

Nichlas.

Ronan’s hand loosened around my wrist before I moved. Mine didn’t.

Nichlas looked worse than he had that morning. His lower lip was split and swollen, one side stained with dried blood he hadn’t cleaned properly. The collar of his shirt sat crooked around his throat, and when he shifted beneath the library lights, reddish marks showed above it.

The room stopped being boring.

I sat up and let Ronan’s pen fall into his lap. “What happened to your face?”

Nichlas glanced at Carter and Elias. “Can we talk somewhere else?”

“No.”

His mouth tightened. The split opened again.

Ronan closed his book. That was the only movement he made, but the lackeys noticed it and went quiet. “Who got through?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I was off the sofa before he finished saying it. Nichlas barely had time to lean back before I caught him by the chin and turned his face toward the light. He hissed when my thumb pressed too close to the swelling. I moved his head the other way, checking the cut, then hooked two fingers into the edge of his collar and pulled it down enough to see the marks across his throat.