Orchid tries to comfort me, but I can’t be. I’m so distraught that I’m bawling and making a terrible mess of myself. I really am not one of those girls who can cry gracefully. Bay is, though. It’s one of our many differences.
Finally, I just stop crying. Inwardly, I’m just as upset as I was when I was bawling, but I’m able to hide it now.
"We all are feeling terrible about our own issues right now," Orchid says. "That's why I thought that talking about the possibility of the future might help. We all need some hope."
“Hope,” I repeat bitterly. “Right now, I don’t have any hope that the future will be any better. Death seems to follow me wherever I go.”
“Then death is following all of us,” she argues.
I just shake my head. The little boy haunts me like a ghost, and I don’t know if I can handle living in a world where humans are able to die when they could have been saved if a fairy hadn’t been afraid to reveal just who she is to them.
Chapter 18
I end up going to bed and wake up starving. In the kitchen, we barely have any food at all, and I snack on stale bread and cheese that is questionably turning moldy. Disgusting, yes, but I’m too hungry to care at this point. Besides, it almost feels like a penance.
I finish the bread first and eye the cheese when the back door opens, and Bay flies in. She halts when she sees me and then eyes the cheese on my plate. She takes a whiff and waves her hand before her nose.
“If you eat that, you’ll get sick.”
“Maybe I deserve to.” I will myself to pick up a chunk of cheese, but my arm doesn’t move.
“Don’t,” she shouts.
“Don’t eat it? I’m hungry.”
“No, don’t be a martyr. Well, and yes, don’t eat it.” She sits across from me.
“Bay—”
“Don’t.” She holds up a hand. “We are going to pretend it never happened.”
“But—”
“I’m serious.” She grabs her purse and dumps out an array of cookies. “Dig in.”
“Where did you get these?” I eye the delicious assortment and pick out a cookie covered in cinnamon sugar. One bite to reveal the soft buttery cookie inside the coating and I close my eyes and hum my appreciation.
“Does it matter?”
I open my eyes to see her smirk.
“A peace offering,” she says, leaning over and breaking off a large piece of my cookie.
“Hey!”
“A peace offering is meant to be shared.” She winks.
“Did you hear about the professor?” I ask.
A sad look crosses Bay’s features. “Professor Luna. Yes, I heard.”
"Her course was starting to get really interesting, too, don't you think?"
“It was a lot harder of a course than I thought it would be,” Bay admits.
“You were struggling?” I ask, surprised.
“Yeah. I’m sure you weren’t, though.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong.” The first cookie’s demolished, so I reach for another one that looks like a chocolate lover’s dream.
“Really?” Bay blinks a few times. “I would’ve thought…”
“It’s such a personal subject, illumination. I understand why there weren’t any group projects, but it’s hard to open your mind, to allow yourself to see every little thing about you.” I shrug. “I’ve said before that people have a mixture of light and dark in them, but seeing my own darkness…”
“You aren’t that dark,” she protests.
“Neither are you,” I return.
Bay gives a small smile and then grabs a peanut butter cookie, takes a bite of it, and then a bite of the chocolate one in her hand.
“Hey!”
“I’m so dark, but fire and brimstone,” she says, talking with the cookie bites in her mouth yet, “having them together is to die for. Try it!”
I do, and she’s right. I can’t deny that.
And just like that, things are better between us, and mostly because Bay’s a much better fairy than I am.
Two days pass before the head of the academy makes a statement that classes will resume. There are security guards everywhere, escorting fairies to class. We have a strict curfew, and we’re to eat all meals at our cottages. We have to call a guard to order our food, and it will be delivered. It makes for seeing the guys in person hard, and what’s worse is that all group projects are done. We aren’t allowed to work on anything because they don’t want fairies in the library or loitering anywhere on campus. For our safety, they claim.
It feels like we’re in a penitentiary instead of an academy.
But the worst part of it all is the whispers wherever I fly. The glances, the murmurs, the glowers, they all make me feel as if I’ve done something very wrong. Maybe it’s my guilty subconscious because I haven’t had a chance to truly apologize to the guys yet, but I feel as if everyone is judging me.
“You know who did it, don’t you?” a girl fairy murmurs to another. I’m flying behind them, on my way to Telepathy.
“Isn’t it obvious? He never should have been allowed to attend here in the first place.”
“I heard that the other guy only killed one person last year. Remember the slew of murders? And he did the rest of them and let that Thistle guy take the fall for them all.”
“That Damon guy really is a sick and twisted fairy, isn’t he?”
“As dark as they come. Why is it that the hottest fairies are always so dark?”
Before I can recover from my shock, they’re already entering their classroom. I go to follow them, to rip off their wings verbally, but the guard taking me to class, Cosmo, coughs.
“I just want to—”
“Rosemary, you’ll only make it worse for him.”
I draw up short. “Does everyone think Damon did it?” I ask desperately.
Cosmo says nothing, just draws in a deep breath.
“Do you all think he did it?” I ask.
“There’s no reason to suspect him,” Cosmo
