“I know what you did,” he whispered.
I jerked back, eyes narrowing. Not the sweet nothings I’d been hoping he’d whisper. “What?”
Arching a brow, he then turned and swaggered off to join the congratulatory group forming around Lea. I popped my hands on my hips, shaking my head. There was no way he could know. No way at all.
CHAPTER 15
Later that night, I was on the hunt and Aiden was my prey. After training, he’d disappeared. After dinner, he’d disappeared again, and hours had gone by since then. It was a few minutes past midnight, and I knew he wasn’t on rounds. Solos was, and the niggling suspicion that Aiden was avoiding me was turning into full-blown paranoia.
Prowling through the lower floor, I hoped to burn off most of the nervous energy and stave off the beginnings of a headache. Right now, it was just a dull ache behind my eyes, but I had a feeling it was going to turn into a head-splitter.
There was another long night ahead, made worse by where my thoughts were. Of all things I should’ve been worried about at the moment, I knew this wasn’t it, but I hated that there was this wall that had come out of nowhere. And it was a weird wall that…
I weathered a sudden, terrible memory of Aiden staring at the bottle of Elixir I’d held in the kitchen after my first dinner back in the land of the sane. Had seeing that Elixir reminded him of what he’d taken part in? He couldn’t be… feeling guilty over placing me on the Elixir, could he? I’m pretty sure everyone in the world would agree that had been necessary.
“You look pissy.” Lea’s voice rattled me out of my thoughts.
I stood outside a small study that held only a couch and a desk. Bookcases lined the wall, but most of the shelves were empty. The only light came from the little lamp peeking over the back of the couch.
“I’m not pissy.” I was confused, frustrated and paranoid, tired and… okay, I was a tiny bit pissy.
She tucked a stray strand of hair back. A moment of silence passed and then, “I know what you did.”
That was the second time someone had said that to me in a few hours, and honestly, neither of them could really know. Could they? Wasn’t like I wore a sign on my forehead.
I stared at Lea blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She made a show of slowly closing her book and putting it aside. Biting back a groan, I walked into the room and leaned against the desk. “What?” I demanded, folding my arms.
My arch-nemesis stared back at me unflinchingly. Whatever I’d dished out at her over the years, she’d always returned. In some ways, we were a lot alike. We were two alpha females, constantly at one another’s throats.
But it was more than that.
In a flash of disturbing insight, I knew why we’d become sandbox enemies so very long ago. When I was younger, before Mom had yanked my butt out of the Covenant, before Lea and I hated each other, we used to be decent. That is, until one day, I’d said something terrible to her.
Even at the age of ten, Lea had loved her pure-blooded stepmother and half-sister—to the point that the rest of us halfs thought something was wrong with her. Most of the pures ignored their half-blood children, especially the ones who hadn’t birthed or sired the half-bloods. Stepparents in our world were truly step-monsters. But in Lea’s world, her pure-blooded stepmother must’ve loved her dearly. Every Monday, after spending the weekend with her stepmother, Lea would talk about all the wonderful things they’d done together—shopping, watching movies, and getting ice cream. None of us had that with our step-monsters. Lucian used to lock me in my bedroom when Mom wasn’t home.
So naturally, we’d been jealous.
We’d dogged her constantly about her love of her stepmother. Destroyed the dress she had bought Lea by spilling cranberry juice on it. Hid the tiny photo album Lea carried with her all the time. It had been polka-dotted with pink stripes, full of these pictures of her and Dawn, her pure-blooded half-sister. Once I’d found a card Lea’s stepmother had written to Lea, tucked away in one of her textbooks.
I had ripped it to shreds in front of Lea, laughing as she cried.
Then one day, while we were all running laps, Lea had stopped to stare at a visiting pure-blood Council member. Her face had taken on this glow that none of us understood. It looked like respect and wonder. But that couldn’t be right. Because, as halfs, we didn’t stare at pures in open admiration, like we’d cut off our left arm to be like them.
After class, I had found Lea sitting in the courtyard with her friends. Followed by Caleb and a few others, I’d stormed their circle and stood in the middle. And I’d said the biggest, meanest thing I could ever say to another half-blood.
“You have more pure-blood in you than half.”
The same thing Seth had said to me once before.
Come to think of it, I think I may have spit on her, too.
Lea pretty much hated me after that, and honestly, I don’t know how I had forgotten that. Then again, I probably chose to forget what’d started our sandbox hate. I always chalked Lea’s animosity toward me as a product of her general bitchiness, when in reality I had been nothing more than a bully.
It seemed too late to apologize now, and knowing Lea, it wouldn’t change anything, not that I expected it would.
Lea watched me now, head tilted to the side as if she knew where my thoughts had gone. She smiled tightly. “You let up on the air element while we were fighting.”
My mouth dropped opened, but she rushed on.
“I wouldn’t have broken your hold if you hadn’t let up. I felt it lessen—the pressure—and I didn’t realize right away that you did it, but I figured it out,” she said, as if she wanted to prove that she’d been smart enough to see through it. “What I don’t get is why you did it. You could’ve pushed me straight through the ground. Gods know you never had a problem coming after me before. What’s so different now?”
Unfolding my arms, I gripped the edge of the desk. I had no idea what to say. Lea was right. I had let up on the air element, and that wasn’t the only thing she called me out on. A few months ago, if I’d had control over the element then, I would’ve tossed her around the forest for the fun of it, maybe even thrown another apple at her face. Anything was possible.
I tugged on my hair, pulling the thick braid over one shoulder. Lea waited for my explanation and I felt my cheeks redden.
Her amethyst eyes narrowed.
Blowing out a low breath, I rolled my eyes and tossed my hair back over my shoulder. “Okay. You got me. I did let up, and I did it because I remember how much it sucked to be held down like that and be helpless. I hated it when Seth did it to me.”
She paled under her ever-present tan. “He… he did that to you?”
“In training,” I said, dismissing where her mind was obviously going with that. “Anyway, I just couldn’t do that to someone else, even if that person is a stuck-up, tan-as-leather hooch.”
Lea watched me a moment, then cracked a smile. “And that’s coming from Alex, Covenant dropout extraordinaire and psycho Apollyon.”
My lips twitched. “Ow. Burn.”
Turning her head, she hid her grin but quickly sobered as she faced me. “You’ve changed so much, Alex.”
Part of me wanted to deny it, but it was true. As I stared back at the copper-haired girl, I realized we’d both irrevocably changed. There was no going back to the girls we’d been over the past summer.
Lea sighed and her nose wrinkled. “So… this is awkward.”