Page 23 of Mayhem

Ronan finally stood, closing the book he had stopped reading several minutes ago. He moved without any of my urgency, which usually meant he had already decided what needed to happen and was waiting for me to stop entertaining myself long enough to agree. “We’re taking this to Hunter.”

Nichlas nodded before Ronan had even finished. The relief was immediate enough to annoy me. He thought Hunter meant safety. He thought getting upstairs and putting another King between himself and Echo would somehow reset whatever had happened in that hallway.

I turned toward Ronan. “No.”

That got a proper look from him. “Desmond placed him under protection himself.”

“I know.” I looked back at Nichlas, taking in the split lip, the bruising beginning around his throat, the way he kept checking the library entrance even with us standing around him. Desmond’s protection should have made him feel untouchable. Echo had managed to ruin that in a single afternoon, and I wanted to know how far she could push it before he stopped believing in protection altogether.

Ronan’s voice stayed calm. “That wasn’t trivia.”

“I know that too.”

Nichlas looked between us, his panic rising again as he realized Ronan was not immediately overriding me. That was when the idea came. It wasn’t a particularly useful one, but usefulness had already stopped being the point. I leaned closer to Nichlas and lowered my voice like I was giving him something he needed to hear. “She asked about your room yesterday. Housing too. Wanted to know whether you were still in Thorne.”

His eyes widened so fast I almost laughed. “What?”

Ronan went still beside me because he knew perfectly well I was lying. Nichlas didn’t. He was already pale enough that the bruising around his mouth looked darker, and when I kept my face straight, his attention snapped toward the library doors again.

“That’s bullshit,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction behind it.

“Probably.” I let the uncertainty sit there instead of rescuing him from it.

“Kai.” Ronan’s warning had more weight this time.

I glanced at him and smiled, then turned back to Nichlas. He looked genuinely sick now. “She knows where I live?”

“I didn’t say that.” When he started protesting that I had just told him exactly that, I stepped back and let him hear himself. “I said she asked. Maybe she knows. Maybe she doesn’t.” He couldn’t tell whether I was lying, and I could see him running through every door he had locked, every hallway he had crossed, every time he had assumed the men around him meant Echo couldn’t reach him. That was the interesting part. I hadn’t actually done anything to him. I had only given his fear somewhere new to go.

Ronan caught the back of my sweater and pulled me away before I could add anything else. I let him move me because fighting him in the middle of the library would only distract from watching Nichlas deteriorate. “You’re playing with fire,” he said quietly.

I looked around at the shelves and scattered students before turning back to him. “I’m standing in a library.”

His grip tightened briefly at the back of my sweater. “Desmond is protecting him.”

“And Echo isn’t Desmond.” I tipped my head toward Nichlas, who was still staring toward the entrance like she might materialize there if he looked away for too long.

“No, she’s the woman who got around two men we assigned to him and left fingerprints on his throat.” Ronan’s tone didn’t change, but that description did something unpleasantly good to my attention. Echo had gotten through our people, put her hands exactly where she wanted them, and walked away before anyone managed to stop her.

Nichlas apparently heard the same sentence very differently. “You need to get her off campus.”

I looked at him. He meant it. He wasn’t asking for more coverage anymore. He wanted her removed entirely, which made me wonder what he thought she would do if she stayed. “Do we?”

“Yes.” His answer came too quickly. “You don’t understand what she’s like.”

That made me want to see her again even more. I pushed away from Ronan’s hand and studied Nichlas for another moment, trying to imagine the woman from the hallway becoming the person who had reduced him to this. “What if I want to see what she does?”

Nichlas went completely blank.

Beside me, Ronan closed his eyes for half a second before looking at me again. He knew me too well to bother asking whether I was serious. The answer was written all over me by then. Echo had gone from a transfer we needed to identify to the most interesting thing that had happened on campus in months, and Nichlas was practically handing me a trail directly to her.

Ronan pointed toward him. “Hunter. Now.”

“You should go.”

His eyes narrowed. “We.”

“I heard you.” I glanced toward the doors, already calculating how much distance Nichlas could put between us before I followed without making it obvious. “I’m not stopping you.”