Guilt was the only thing that kept him where he was. “Did you need something?” he asked in a bored tone.
She smiled up at him. I could feel his jaw clamping. Chanelle gathered her long mane of perfectly shiny hair over her shoulder. She braided it absentmindedly.
“I know it’s not the big day anymore, but I can skip some classes if you want to...hang out.”
“I’ve already told you why that’s not happening.”
She reached out and clutched the hem of his Academy T-shirt. He swiped her hand away and stepped back to create distance between them.
“How can you be so awful to me after everything?” she said. Here came the waterworks. I knew he hated it when women cried. It was a stupid macho alpha thing, but it was hard not to be endeared by it sometimes. Once he’d found Sophie shedding crocodile tears over a failed potion in the lab. He’d stood there for fully thirty minutes trying to coach her through it even though he had no idea what he was talking about.
At the moment, he really wanted to walk away. “I don’t know what more I can say to get you to understand,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have to understand!” she shouted. He bristled.
“Lower your voice.”
Her eyes grew wide and then narrowed into vile little slits. Even I was shocked by the coldness in his tone. “You think that human is going to be able to hold her place in the Council?” she said. “She’ll break in a second.”
“Whether she does or not isn’t any of your business,” he said. “And if she does, then she’ll do it with me beside her.”
I thought the tears were real this time. Misguided, but real all the same. “She can’t give you what you need.”
He smiled. It was sad but there was something wistful about it too. “Maybe she won’t be able to give me what you all want for me,” he said. “But she’s given me something I never thought I would feel again. Hope.”
Chanelle snorted. It was annoying that she managed to do it so delicately. When I did it, I sounded like a choking cat. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew that was exactly what Kai was thinking. For some reason, it made him chuckle to himself.
“It’s just a silly infatuation,” Chanelle said. “She’s new and brash. You’ll figure out soon enough that she can’t last.”
“If that’s the case then you have nothing to worry about.”
“She won’t make it through the games. Save yourself the heartache and end things now.”
He gave her a smile. It was serpentine. A flash of his thoughts rose to the surface of the dream. He would make sure I won. Even if it meant taking out the main contenders one by one before the games began so that the only people left were ones I could easily handle. Chanelle saw his conviction and withered.
He turned away from her, satisfied that the thing he saw in her eyes was beyond worry. It was honest-to-goodness fear. What made Kai relieved was that he truly didn’t care. Just before he was about to spread his wings, Kai turned back to her.
“I’ve been more than patient,” he said. “The next time you do something to hurt her, don’t expect me to look the other way.”
He flew off before she could answer. The image started to dissipate. I slipped into a dreamless sleep surrounded by the green glow of Kai’s angelfire.
30
Sophie stood over me when I woke. “Do you have anything to tell me?” she asked with a big grin on her face.
“Umm...I can see up your nostrils?” I tried to turn over, but she wedged me in when she scooted onto the bed.
“Don’t try and change the subject! You were out all night.”
I pulled the covers under my chin and squinted at her. “Nothing happened.”
She looked at me like she didn’t believe me. Her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “Are you trying to tell me that you went missing from school for a whole day and almost half the night and nothing at all happened?”
I went over everything in my mind. I got up to the point where he told me he loved me and sat bolt upright in bed. “Lex?”
“I...” It seemed too intimate a thing to just blurt out. But if I couldn’t tell Sophie, I couldn’t tell anybody. She went perfectly still after I said it. And then she shrieked so loudly I thought she might have busted my eardrum.
Her lips moved but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. There was definitely a ringing in there. “Soph,” I said. “I can’t bloody hear.”
She took a couple of long, deep breaths. “Tell me everything.”
“Can I get a shower first?”
“No!” She thought about it. “Okay, but be quick.”
I should have told her before. When I came back from the bathroom, she’d roped Diana in as well.
“Spill.”
They sat with rapt attention while I told them everything. I was still reeling from the strange dream I’d had last night. It left me feeling both light-headed and ravenous. Like I’d used up a good portion of my magic even though I’d just been asleep.
By the time the girls let me off the hook, I barely had time to go to the Grove and get breakfast. I was due to meet Giselle for yet another session of getting my butt kicked. Since it was a Saturday, the Evil Three joined us.
Giselle paired me up with Harlow for some drills. We were supposed to be practicing evading each other while we phased in and out. I kept getting distracted by green light that appeared and disappeared across my vision. It was because of this that Harlow kicked me in the gut so hard I almost threw up.
“Sorry,” she said. She helped me up.
“Do not apologise,” Giselle barked.
Harlow shuddered at the sound of her voice. “I don’t miss this,” she said. “I have nightmares that start out
