by Sofia Daniel
He gave me a tiny smile. “I can make you a cup of tea in my room, if you like.”
Butterflies took flight in my stomach. The drunken evening aside, I’d never spent much time alone with Prakash. This might be an excellent opportunity to get to know him.
We walked up the stairs to the top floor, passed Cormac’s room, and entered a huge study bedroom nearly twice the size of my best friend’s.
My gaze roved over an array of beautiful landscape and architectural paintings to a photo of Prakash with a stunning woman wearing colorful, gold jewelry. From the way his gaze wandered to her instead of the photographer, it was clear he loved her very much.
“Is that your mother in the photo?”
He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“You asked that same question the first time you came here.” He gestured for me to sit on a leather sofa.
My stomach twisted into knots, and my gaze lingered over his full, kissable lips. Had I come here for a cup of tea or to make out?
Chapter 12
Prakash only wanted to give me a cup of peppermint tea to soothe my stomach. I told him what I had heard on the stairs, mostly as a way to get him to open up about his relationship with Corrine, but he changed the subject. Instead, I focused on the hot drink calming my insides.
Afterward, Prakash and I walked down to lunch. I sat at the royal table, looking out for signs of Cormac, but he wasn’t there, and neither was Geraldine.
Bianca glowered at me from the table she now shared with Bruce and the auburn-haired twins. I ignored her and focussed on my minestrone. Hopefully, Cormac and Geraldine hadn’t gone missing together to take incriminating photos.
“Are you feeling better?” asked Prakash.
“A bit,” I replied. “Throwing up the contents of my stomach seems to have gotten rid of most of the nausea.”
“Maybe when we get a chance to visit the hideout, I’ll talk about Corrine after a few drinks.”
My heart softened. At least he wasn’t completely shutting down. “That bad?”
He grimaced. “Worse than you can imagine.”
I picked up a slice of bread and dipped it into my soup. If only my memories could return. Then I’d be able to build on what I already knew without bothering Prakash for information he might have already shared.
Cormac strode through the dining room to the head table, and whispered something to Miss Claymore, who stood. Then the pair rushed out together, presumably to the scene of a student misdemeanor.
“This place is so strange,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Prakash picked up his knife and fork.
“The bullying is more intense than my previous school.”
He cut a slice of his roasted vegetable quiche. “My school in Switzerland was bad, but it was nothing compared to the brutality of the Brittas Academy.”
“What do you think makes the difference?”
“A combination of jealousy and a high-pressure atmosphere.” He popped the quiche into his mouth and chewed with his brow furrowed, as though trying to work out the best way to elaborate. After swallowing, he said, “Everyone’s parents pay over the odds for tuition fees, yet scholarship students get paid to access to the same education at our expense.”
“Right…” I’d worked that out on my first day when he had accused Mom and Dad of selling me out.
“The school doesn’t deliver on its promise,” he continued. “The good students remain good, the excellent remain excellent, while the outstanding are the ones who scoop up the lucrative scholarship and academic sponsorships.”
“You’re just as academic as any scholar.” I took a spoonful of my soup. “No one gives you a hard time.”
“Because my parents paid my way.” He paused again and glanced up to the right. “Everyone knows the importance of having scholars here. The school would lose its prestige without you all, but some people think you got a better deal than most.”
My tongue darted out to lick my lips. Had they hacked into Mrs. Benazir’s files and discovered my eighteen-thousand-pound bursary? “I don’t understand.”
“You got your sister a free ride into a place where she didn’t belong.”
I lowered my head. “She could have achieved my grades if she’d worked at it.”
“But she didn’t.”
A sigh escaped my lips. “Are you saying that what happened to her was my fault?”
“Not even a betrayer like Ashley should have been subjected to that sort of abuse.” Something in his pocket beeped. “I’ve got a meeting with Mrs. Benazir. See you later.”
He walked out of the dining room, leaving me wondering how much of Ashley’s predicament had been my fault.
Later that evening, I found Cormac in the scholars’ common room, standing in front of the boxes of tea. My heart jumped into my throat. If I didn’t bring up the subject of his relationship with Geraldine right now, I might lose my nerve.
“Cormac.” I grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. “What are you doing?”
He gave me a wide grin. “Have you come to scold me on my tea-making skills?”
I leaned forward and whispered, “I saw you.”
His face dropped, and all the color drained from his cheeks. He swallowed several times and said, “Willow, I—”
“Why are you dating Geraldine?” I blurted. “You were the one who warned me that the girls were the worst perpetrators of that game.”
He grimaced. “That was you in the stairwell?”
I raised my chin. “Did you give her the dick pics?”
His cheeks flushed. “Willow!”
“Did you?”
Cormac turned around and placed a teabag in his mug, added an outrageous amount of milk, and poured hot water over the mix. “Don’t you think that’s rather personal?”
My shoulders slumped. “You’re right, but when I heard what Geraldine said, I couldn’t help thinking about what happened to Ashley.”
He placed an arm around my shoulder and steered me to the nearest sofa. “Geraldine is actually a kind-hearted soul beneath her heartless exterior.”
“How can you explain her offering all the boys in the common room ten-thousand pounds for my virginity? She and Bianca stole my clothes in the girls’ changing room the week after and invited a crowd of boys to watch me squirm.”
Cormac sat heavily on the sofa. “The financial offer was a joke.”
“The boys took her seriously enough.”
His eyes widened. “Willow, did anyone—”
“Sebastian rescued me.”
“I remember that evening,” he growled. “Garraway pinned you against the wall. If I hadn’t turned up, he might have—”
“Sebastian’s not like that. I trust him.”
Cormac folded his arms across his chest. “It’s the same with Geraldine and me.” He sipped his weak tea. “I know she hurt you, but you must understand that Bianca is the driver of all the malice. Geraldine’s trying to be a better person.”
“You believe that?”
He blew out a long breath. “It’s complicated. Without revealing things Geraldine told me in confidence, I can tell you that I believe she’s trying to get out from under Bianca’s influence.”
I shook my head. It was more likely that Cormac had been blinded by Geraldine’s beauty. A little voice in the back of my mind asked me whether I was suffering the same problem with the kings. Sebastian and Prakash were hiding things, and Leopold seemed desperate to tell me the truth.
“Has Geraldine approached you about the forensic samples?” asked Cormac.
“No, but—”
“Because she’s happy to give the police anything to prove her innocence. She wasn’t the one who did that to you.” Before I could protest, he added, “Geraldine’s guilty of playing along with Bianca’s madness, and it was wrong of her, but there’s more to her than the spiteful bully.”
“Cormac…” My words dried up in the back of my throat. My b
est friend despised the kings and believed them to be predators. It would be hypocritical of me to scold him for doing what I did to him—putting his trust in someone I deemed unworthy.
“I pray each night that you’ll be safe with those three,” said Cormac.
Our eyes met in the kind of meeting of souls that might have been romantic if we hadn’t fallen into a surrogate sibling relationship. There was no way to describe what we had. It wasn’t quite a bromance, but it was something close.
“How about I watch your back, and you watch mine?” I held out my hand.
He wrapped it in his larger hand and gave it a firm shake. “It’s a deal.”
Once we’d come to a tentative truce, Cormac relaxed and told me all about the clandestine meetings he had shared with Geraldine since the beginning of the academic year. A light shone in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before, not even when he thought I was ribbing him about his inability to make tea.
“She came up to me at the end of last year after Corrine… you know.”
I nodded.
“And she said she couldn’t stop thinking about teasing my sister about her infatuation with the kings and wondering whether that contributed to her…” He dipped his head.
“You became friends then?”
He shrugged. “I think Geraldine might have approached me intending to play the pull-a-pig game at first. She would blow hot and cold, but we emailed each other every day in the summer, and we made a deep connection, you know?”
My throat dried. I didn’t understand anything about their relationship, but I let him continue speaking.
“Things moved so fast, it was a whirlwind. She said it was the same for her, too.”
“Right.” I folded my arms, imagining Cormac having the same skeptical reaction to me talking about the kings.
“We’re going to Gretna Green in the summer.”
I choked on air and fell back into the sofa. Gretna Green was a place in Scotland historically famous for runaway couples desperate to flout the English marriage laws. “What?”
“She wants to make things official before we take our relationship any further.”
“Why?”
He stood and walked over to the cupboards and took out a packet of chocolate-chip cookies. “Geraldine isn’t like the other girls. She believes in keeping that sort of thing for marriage.”
My mind whirled back to the memory of Geraldine on her knees in front of Leopold, sucking his dick like it was made of white chocolate. Leopold all but told me he’d had sex with her afterward. Suspicion tightened my belly like a vise, but I held my tongue. I was still a virgin, yet I’d been to bed with two men. There was no guarantee that Geraldine had had sex with Leopold.
“We’re going to the Maldives for our honeymoon.” He opened the pack and offered me a cookie.
I shook my head. “That sounds expensive.”
“It’s twenty-thousand.” Cormac leaned into my ear and whispered, “I’m not in the same position as you with a house to maintain, and Mrs. Benazir caters for us throughout the year. I barely need to spend my bursary, and I’ve already contributed my half.”
Realization kicked me in the gut. Ten. Thousand. Pounds. “Um… isn’t that the same amount Geraldine offered the boys to take my virginity?”
“I wasn’t there, but I believe that’s what she said.”
“Don’t you think the number is a bit of a coincidence?”
His brows drew together. “It was just a nasty joke.”
I bit down on my lip. In an academy like Brittas, there were three kinds of students, the mega-rich, who could afford any exorbitant fee, the upper-middle class, who used the academy as a means to strive for a better position in life, and scholars like Cormac and me, paid to keep the academy at the top of the Elite Board register.
Geraldine’s mother was an official in the World Bank. Well-to-do, but not wealthy. Certainly not the type to approve of wasting ten-thousand pounds on a stupid bet. I glanced up at Cormac. “Are you sure about Geraldine?”
“Don’t worry about me.” He patted my wrist. “I know what I’m doing.”
The look in his eyes told me what he had left unsaid. To him, my relationship with the kings was just as precarious. But they weren’t asking for money or nude pictures.
“Trust me.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pressed a kiss on my temple.
“Alright.” What else could I do but stand by his side and kick the shit out of Geraldine’s smirking face if she ever betrayed him?
Tensions between Sebastian and Leopold intensified to the point where they barely spoke directly to each other, and most of their comments were directed at either Prakash or me. Anyone looking at the royal table from the outside would still notice their solidarity, but I’d spent enough time with them over the break to see that whatever was between them was tearing them apart.
No matter how much I asked Prakash and Leopold what Sebastian was keeping from me, neither of them would betray their friend’s confidence. Instead, I spent more time with Cormac in an attempt to stop Geraldine from destroying my best friend.
The following week, Cormac and I met Miss Claymore outside one of the academy’s small function room for the meeting with the Board of Governors. Her broad shoulders curled into themselves, and she wrung her hands. I would have pointed out her nervous body language to Cormac, but we were already too close, and I didn’t want to point out the insecurities of a good teacher.
“Did you read your itineraries?” she asked with a barely audible tremor in her voice.
I glanced at Cormac, who gave the deputy head a confident nod. Turning to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile, I said, “Yes, Miss.”
“Very well.” Miss Claymore placed her fingers on the door handle. “The board is already in place. Please answer their questions to the best of your abilities.”
We stepped inside to the mingled scent of freshly-brewed coffee and expensive colognes. Twelve distinguished-looking men and women sat around a boardroom table drinking tea from the kind of gold-edged china cups I’d only seen in London department stores.
Among them were Leopold’s mother and Bianca’s father. Both their eyes narrowed at the sight of me, and Mr. Byrd’s lips tightened into a grim line.
My throat dried. Mrs. Brunswick disliked me, and Mr. Byrd probably wanted me dead. The worst part was that this was the emergency meeting called to discuss my supposed drink-driving accident.
Miss Claymore spread her arms wide. “Welcome, governors.”
A tense silence stretched out for several heartbeats, and the thud of my frantic pulse filled my ears. I exchanged a nervous glance with Cormac. Had the negative newspaper article caused the school that much damage?
“Where’s Mrs. Benazir?” asked a bald man with an aristocratic drawl.
I chewed my lip. Mrs. Benazir had most likely delegated the task of facing a furious Board of Governors to her deputy.
“She had a meeting with the Elite Board,” Miss Claymore replied, her voice tight with what I could only guess was resentment.
All the disgruntled people around the table relaxed. My shoulders loosened, and I exhaled. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“I’d like to introduce you to our top-performing students. Cormac Gibbons and Willow Evergreen. Cormac currently averages ninety-six percent. Through the expertise of our staff, Willow’s grades rose from eighty-five percent to ninety-eight.”
I held my breath at the misrepresentation. Miss Claymore made it sound like the school had dragged me from obscurity to academic excellence, when in fact, I used to average ninety-eight and dropped my grades as a result of another assault committed through a lack of discipline and control.
“Very nice.” An older man in a three-piece suit drummed his fingers on the desk. “But some of us shareholders want a report on what we’re getting for our investment.”
Swallowing hard, I surveyed the crowd. What on earth was going on? It almost sounded like Mrs. Be
nazir was running Brittas Academy like a company instead of a school. I pushed aside those thoughts and focused on Miss Claymore’s reply.
“Mrs. Benazir prepared some handouts for the meeting.” She gestured at a box on a table in the far corner of the room. “Miss Evergreen, could you give the board members a copy each?”
I brought over the box and handed out green, glossy dossiers decorated with the same Brittas Academy emblem as the one on our blazers.
After I had handed out the last dossier, Miss Claymore gave a shaky speech on the quality control methods she employed to maintain a high level of education at the academy. I furrowed my brows and glanced at Cormac, who gazed at the deputy head with concerned eyes. Hadn’t Mrs. Benazir briefed her on the financials?
One of the female board members hissed. “What is the meaning of this?”
I glanced in her direction. She pulled out photo after photo of the same nude woman in different positions. A man on her right flipped to the back of his dossier and found a similar array of naked pictures.
One of the board member’s head snapped up. “That’s you!”
My mouth dropped open, and all the blood drained from my face.
“You’re the girl in the photos.” The bald man from earlier held up a picture of me lying on my side, seemingly asleep. My wet hair was splayed out on the grass with some strands falling into my face, but the photo was unmistakably me.
Angry chatters broke out around the boardroom table, and everyone who hadn’t already perused the dossier snapped it open.
Cold, blind, numb panic overtook my senses, and the box slipped from my hands, spilling all kinds of nude photos of me across the floor. They’d all been taken at night, all been taken on the same patch of grass, and all been taken while I’d been unconscious during Ashley’s initiation.
“W-wait, I can explain!” Words tumbled from my mouth. “Some girls abducted me from my bed and forced alcohol down my throat. I didn’t agree to any of this, and t-they nearly killed me. The police are treating it as a sexual assault, and they’re investigating—”
