by KC Kingmaker
I didn’t know how to tell Coralia Hargrave that I didn’t hate her, no matter what she thought. Yes, she frustrated me, but that was only because she reminded me of her sister. Besides being similar in appearance, her actions were also starting to mirror Myria’s.
The kindness she showed me was the last straw.
It was hard to carry on my façade of dismissal whenever her pretty head poked around the side of the hallway. Seeing her made my body do things, though I kept my excitement hidden behind my aloofness. I started to look forward to our little chats, if only because it was so damn boring inside the initiation cell.
If I was being honest, I knew she was doing more than simply saving me from boredom. She was restoring my faith in humanity, which I had thought to be lost long ago after being changed into a monster. Her unflinching resolve to make friends with me—her tormentor and attacker—was beguiling. It showed integrity and willpower I hadn’t noticed was there.
Also, not being around Vivi was helping. The break from the snide bimbo was nice. She had frequently whispered poison in my ears about Coralia, just like she had Myria before her; like she had all humans.
But was Genevieve the one coming to visit me in jail day in and day out? Was she the one trying to fill me with hope and positivity? No.
Coralia was the only person who visited me. Even my Glovemates kept their distance. Dax, I assumed, was still away, while Venn was still angry with me.
I eventually needed to make nice with Genevieve after my blunder from the week prior. I had uses for her. There was a reason I called her to my bedroom all the time, and it wasn’t just because she was a pleasant body to fuck. Though filling her mouth with my thick cock and watching her eyes roll back as I savagely stuffed her gullet, finally shutting her up for a few blessed minutes, was quite satisfying.
Despite all that, it wasn’t Vivi I imagined at night during my imprisonment. I had no explanation for it. I hadn’t been attracted to Myria, so why did Coralia arouse me so?
Maybe it’s because they’re different people, you big dumbass.
It didn’t help my moody disposition by being a dick to myself all the time, but there it was. Myria was kind and supportive. Coralia is sharp and witty. They’re both beautiful, but what kind of person have I always been attracted to?
Not the nice ones. Not the innocent ones.
The ones who fight back. The ones who struggle and have struggled—something I relate to. The ones who visit me in jail, even though I’m the cause of their misfortune . . .
It was my final day in the cell. I’d had plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to scheme and plot my next moves. Once I got out, I would lure Vivi back to me. I would alleviate the tension between me and my brothers, and show them I was a changed man. Even if it was fake.
Is it fake though? The first evening Coralia came here, I chased her out with my barbed tongue. Every night since, she’s stayed longer. I’ve said more words. We’ve conversed.
Her parting phrase that first night has stuck with me. I thought of it the entire next day: “I’m not the reason you’re here, Sunny. You’re the reason you’re here.”
Of course I knew that. If I hadn’t wanted to play a cruel joke on the girl, I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess.
On night six of my confinement, she’d told me she went to the Spectral Realm thanks to me. She had seemed excited about it, though she wouldn’t explain why. Once returned, she was able to manipulate shadows easier. It had irked me when she thanked me, however sarcastically, for giving that to her.
I stayed silent about my supposed loathing for the girl. But my walls were crumbling. She was getting to me.
And now, when I stared out through the bars, trying to peek around the corner of the hallway, I was frustrated she hadn’t shown herself yet. It was getting late. Every night prior, she had arrived before my meager evening meal.
I had already eaten tonight.
Will she abandon me on my final night in custody? Has she had enough of my venom? And why the fuck do I care so much if she shows up or not?
As if reading my mind, I heard the telltale sign of shoes on the stone floor, out of sight, down the hall.
Blood filled my cold, dead heart. I had to tamp down my giddy anticipation. I jerked away from the bars and headed to the back wall, and then sat down to resume my disinterested lounging before she showed up.
I couldn’t let Coralia see how much the mere sight of her affected me.
When she strolled into my view, I let out an exaggerated sigh and rolled my eyes. “Don’t you have anywhere better to be, princess? This is getting sad.” Even if, inside, I yearned to hear what she had to say.
Coralia folded her arms under her ample chest. “You look like you could use some company.”
The corner of my lip twitched. “Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I’m lonely.”
She barked a laugh. “Coming from a man like you? A total attention whore? Sure it doesn’t.”
My scoff turned into a chuckle. She averted her gaze at the sound, and I spotted a tiny, shy smirk of her own. It was adorable when she became embarrassed because it was so uncommon.
These back and forth barbs had become a regularity since she’d started showing up. It was a dangerous game we were playing, and I was starting to think she recognized it too. When she blushed and turned away, her eyes would linger for longer and longer with each passing day.
Still, I enjoyed these meetings. I liked a woman who showed some spine and fire. As arrogant as it sounded, I grew tired of people either treating me like a nobleman or a god. Girls like Vivi, who called me “daddy” and worshipped the ground I walked on . . . as long as I was fucking her well and not pissing her off. Genevieve was fun to dominate, but I had a feeling I would enjoy disciplining Coralia even more. Straddling her curvy body, pinning her hands down above her head as I ravish her and make her moan my name . . .
The lewd thought made my cock quiver against my thigh. I had to reposition myself to get comfortable on the cold stone. For a moment I thought I saw Coralia’s eyes wander between my legs.
Could have been wishful thinking.
She tucked a few strands of black-and-red hair behind her ear and leaned forward toward the bars, eyes narrowing. “What goes on in that wicked head of yours all day, Sunny? While you’re in here.”
I cocked an eyebrow, slanting my skull against the wall behind me. “You wouldn’t want to know, princess. It might just blow your mind.” My words came out low and throaty, just to see how she’d react.
Another flash of embarrassment crossed her features as she focused on my lips. She quickly fixed the expression, but not before I’d dragged my tongue over my lips.
“Try me,” she said, voice wavering.
There were so many ways I could have answered. The low-hanging-fruit response was to tell her all the ways I would one day ravage her sweet cunt and lick her pale, voluptuous body into oblivion. How I would suck the blood from her supple veins until the tingling drain dragged her to orgasm, making her weak and needy, before I filled her back up with my white-hot essence.
“Sunny?”
The daydreams faded and my head jerked to face her. “What?”
“Where did you go?”
I frowned. “Nowhere important. What was the question?”
She chewed her lip. “Now I’m worried about the answer, seeing you lose yourself like that. I asked—”
“Ah, right,” I cut in. “What I think about all day. If you want the honest truth, I think about your sister.” It wasn’t a lie, per se, but I’d been thinking about Myria less and less the more I saw Coralia.
The realization of that dismayed me.
Coralia’s face lit up, her posture stiffening like a board. “Y-You . . . Myria?”
I nodded lazily.
There was a curious yet triumphant twinkle in her eye, as if she thought she’d finally gotten to the crux of her trial. That she’d finally come to the point of all these late-night
rendezvous in my prison cell.
The strangest feeling tugged at my insides: Hurt.
I would have never expected to be disappointed that she hadn’t come to see me—that it was all just a ruse to probe information out of me. My anger, which always boiled close to the surface, swelled. I tried to keep it down, thinking, Why else would she come here? I can’t be a fool and think this woman—one I have not tried to hide my distaste for—would actually care for me. Not after the way I’ve treated her. I know I would never be so forgiving.
“Did you love her, Sunny?”
I flared my nostrils. “You speak of her in the past tense like everyone else. As if she’s dead.”
Coralia squatted so she was at eye-level with me. “Well, couldn’t she be?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You didn’t answer either question.”
“Sorry, what was the ques—”
“Please, Sunny,” she begged, and damn if it didn’t look exquisite coming from her full, red lips. “I have to know.”
I paused for a beat, staring her down, curving my eyebrows. “What is it you think you want to know, princess?”
“Did you—do you love Myria?”
“I imagine I love her as you do. Like a sister.” I tossed my long hair out of my eyes. “Certainly not how Vivi thinks I do . . .” I muttered, trailing off.
“Why?”
I raised my head, giving her a blank expression. That one simple word, that simple question, awakened so many memories inside me. It was difficult to answer.
Never one to give a straight response, especially while I was working out my emotions, I replied, “How well do you know Myria, princess?”
She shrugged, taking a seat on the cold stone floor. Muddying up her pants to get closer to me. “I only know as much as she showed me while we were growing up.”
“And how was that? Growing up together?”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “We were competitive. Then her powers came and she was the golden child. I was the black sheep.”
My lips curved into a grin. “Sounds about right.”
“She never treated me like a leper though. That was my mom and . . . why am I telling you all this?” Her head snapped up from her deep reminiscence.
“Was Myria kind, Coralia? To you?”
“Yes.”
I bowed my head knowingly. “Here, she flourished. In a place that is forever unkind, that teaches students to harness their hate and anger and use them to kill, Myria was a breath of fresh air. A sunflower in a field of wilted weeds.”
Coralia’s mouth formed a small “o.” Are those tears glistening in her eyes? As if she never noticed these things about Myria, or heard them said aloud before?
She was rendered speechless. So I continued, drawing deep within my memories to recall Myria’s fresh face and sweet smile. “Myria vowed to help me find someone in my past life, once we finished the Academy together. She promised to accompany Venn to the Unseelie Court, to convince his family to take him back. She swore to reconnect Dax with his roots and help Quentin remember his past.”
I cleared my throat, keeping my nostrils flared so I could keep my emotions at bay. The painful memories startled me with their power as the words left my mouth. “You see?” I asked, blinking at the wonder in Coralia’s eyes. “Your sister was the heart of Hudson’s Glove. The ultimate support member, filled with lofty ambitions and goals.”
“Holy . . . shit.” Coralia’s breath came out ragged as she sagged.
I sniffed, trying to stave off my sentimentality before it overwhelmed me. “It was one of the reasons I could never fall in love with her. She was too sweet for this place. Too sweet for me. Too . . .” I gestured in the air, trying to find the right word. “Lovable.” My expression turned mischievous, the corner of my lip tilting. “I need a measure of loathing in a woman.”
My eyes locked with Coralia’s for a split second, and I was certain she saw the savage animal inside me, eager to get out.
Coralia’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “That sounds . . . unhealthy.”
I threw my head back and laughed, surprised by her response. “Yes, well, Myria understood. None of the Knuckles in the Glove wanted to ruin the good thing we had by trying to bed the girl.”
“What happened to that good thing?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I think you already know the answer to that. Look where I am.” I threw my arms out wide. “Where’s Dax?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly. And Quentin?”
“Um . . . dead?”
“And Venn? He’s off trying to glue together the schism in his soul, in his own way.”
“How?”
“By loving you.”
Coralia gasped and slapped a hand to her mouth, like it was such a big shock to her.
I wanted to sneer. How could she be surprised by that? You didn’t need to know Donovenn Gable well to understand the starry look in his eyes whenever he saw Coralia; to understand he wore his heart on his sleeve.
“It drives me insane,” I snarled, jerking my gaze away from her, “that those two don’t seem to care about Myria the way I do. The way we all should! It’s clear she was the real glue that held us together, all along. Now our Glove is broken.”
Coralia chewed on her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, Sunny. For all of it. I . . . didn’t come here to be the replacement for my sister.”
“I know, girl. No one plans that sort of thing.” I waved a hand at her. “You had no choice in coming here.”
“Well, not exactly.”
My eyebrows jumped.
“I mean, sure,” she backpedaled, concern etched on her face, “you guys kidnapped me. But I wanted to come here. It was my plan to find Shadowblade Academy, even though I didn’t know it existed.”
“Why?”
“To find Myri.”
I inhaled a sharp breath at her admission.
She leaned forward, resting her forehead on the cold bars and clutching them in both hands. “Please, Sunny, let me help you find her.”
I saw a flash of it then: the couple we could become. Amateur sleuths determined to share clues and leads and find the missing girl. It seemed so lovely. So picturesque and tidy in my head.
Yet I knew it was a farce. I already had leads of my own, and I couldn’t involve Coralia. I wouldn’t. Not if things ended up getting bloody and violent.
Coralia couldn’t be mixed in with the wrong crowd.
And I was most assuredly the wrong crowd.
I put on my customary frown, masking the hurt that clawed inside me. For the first time in a long time I felt vulnerable and . . . weak.
My steely wall rose up around my aching heart. “I’m sorry, princess, but that’s impossible,” I said decisively. “This is Glove business. Even if you are Myria’s sister.” I looked away from her, unable to lock eyes with the pain settling there. “I’ll have to insist you leave me now. And don’t come back.”
Chapter 26
Coralia
MY HEART FELT HEAVY at the rejection from Sunny. It made me sadder than I’d expected. I shouldn’t have anticipated anything less, going to visit him on his final four days in the initiation cell. I had been so close though, to learning more about Myria’s disappearance and joining the search. His acceptance of me had appeared to be on the tip of his tongue before it came crashing down.
Still, even if he wouldn’t let me join the Glove, I’d learned a few valuable things. One, Sunny wasn’t as wicked as he first came off. He cared about Myria, more than anyone else in the Glove did, supposedly. He spoke of her like she was a goddess he worshipped.
And here I’d thought the only person Sunny worshipped was Sunny.
It made me proud knowing Myria had become such a fixture of Hudson’s Glove. She seemed like a precious member of the group. If that’s the case, why don’t Dax and Venn speak of her with the same reverence Sunny does? Why do they hardly mention her at all?
&nbs
p; The friction between the Glovemates was something I didn’t quite understand, as if they all had different ideas about what they were supposed to be. Their collective identity.
Thoughts of Sunny, Myria, and Hudson’s Glove carried me into next week, but I had little time to ponder them.
Midterms had crept up on me.
On the morning of my tests, I woke up feeling frustrated. I scolded myself for how little I’d uncovered since coming to Shadowblade Academy, and the semester was already halfway through. Granted, it seemed I was finally starting to push the envelope open.
In my mind, it wasn’t enough. I needed to do more. I needed to be more aggressive and proactive.
Sunny avoided me the entire week from when he was let out to the day of the midterms. I took my frustrations out on my studies, practicing my shadow manipulation. Charli said I was showing promise. With Venn, I went over alchemy formulas. He was pleased with my progress. No one saw or heard from Dax, which was odd because he was supposed to be my Physical Intent tutor. When Venn brought up Dax’s absence to Jace Hudson, the Wrist gave the same boilerplate response: “He’s away on a mission for the Academy.” He would say no more on the subject.
Tension was rising between Venn and Sunny. They didn’t seem to converse much. And they had been like brothers before I showed up! I desperately hoped it wasn’t me keeping them at odds.
After waking, I took a quick shower down the hall. After dressing in my black-checkered Academy uniform, I poured some kibble out for Bruce Kittenson, who had finally come around over the past week and started to love on me again. At least someone was.
As I sat on the edge of the bed pulling on my boots, he rubbed the side of his head against my thigh with a low purr. I gave him a scratch behind the ear and a boop on the nose, smiling. “Wish me luck, Brucey.”
I stood and checked myself out in the mirror to make sure I was presentable. Flattening my skirt and top over my body, I wrung my hands out and took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves.
