CHAPTER THIRTY
ZADE
I stand in the doorway of the lecture hall, but my mind is still stuck on the phone call I had with my father this morning.
He reminded me of my place, reminded me of the family legacy, and most importantly, reminded me that Briar was landing at the private strip today.
And now, here she is.
Briar is clinging to my left arm like a second skin, her fingers wrapping around my blazer with a possessive grip that usually doesn't bother me.
Today, it feels like a shackle.
She's smiling, talking about her trip to Asia, her voice a steady stream of upper-class chatter that I'm completely tuning out.
Because the moment I stepped through the door, my eyes found the front bench.
The Witch is back.
She's sitting there, looking pale but entirely too upright for someone who was bleeding from the skull forty-eight hours ago.
She isn't wearing the bronze seashell frames.
My hand twitches inside my pocket, my fingers brushing against the velvet case Mio had tried to hand back to me in the parking lot.
"She told me to give them back, Zade. She said she doesn't take charity."
The stubborn, prideful little shit.
She'd rather ruin her eyes with cheap lenses than owe me a single dime.
"Zade, are you even listening to me?" Briar asks, her voice tilting into that high, pampered whine that usually gets her whatever she wants.
"I'm listening, Briar," I lie, my voice flat, dead, and entirely devoid of the warmth she's trying to coax out of me.
I keep my eyes locked on Alice, watching the way her shoulders tense up.
She doesn't look at me.
Instead, she looks down at her notebook, her knuckles turning white as she grips her pen.
But then, Marcus catches my eye.
The motherfucker is sitting three rows back, his face a mask of pure fury.
Ever since the bathroom incident, the tension between us has reached a boiling point.
Yesterday, we almost went to blows in the locker room because he Knew i took her to my apartment....
He called me a hypocrite, a monster, and a bastard who breaks everything he touches.
He isn't entirely wrong.
When Alice slides out of her seat and walks over to Marcus, asking him if something is wrong, my blood turns into pure liquid fire.
The urge to rip him out of that seat and throw him out of the window is so sudden, so violent, that my entire body tenses up.
Briar notices, her grip tightening on my arm as she follows the line of my gaze.
"Why are you here, Alice?!" Marcus's voice cuts through the quiet of the room, sharp and full of a venom that makes the Witch flinch.
I see the exact second her confidence cracks. She takes a step back, her lower lip trembling for a fraction of a second before she covers it with that familiar, icy mask.
She retreats back to her front bench, looking smaller than she ever has.
Good. Marcus needs to push her away.
He needs to stay the fuck away from her, and she needs to realize that the elite of Oakhaven don't play nice with girls from the slums.
But then, Alice finally turns her head.
Our eyes lock across the crowded, tiered rows of the lecture hall.
The blue-grey of her eyes hits me like a physical punch to the chest.
It's the same look from the kitchen—the one that makes the entire world fade into a hazy, unimportant blur.
There is so much raw accusation in her stare, so much unspoken hurt, that the guilt in my throat rises like a water fountain again, cold and suffocating.
She sees Briar clinging to my arm.
And for the first time, a sharp, distinct pang hits my own chest.
It's a foreign, terrifying feeling. I want to shake Briar off.
I want to walk down those steps, grab the Witch by her waist, and force those expensive bronze glasses onto her face just so she can see that I am the only one who gets to look at her like that.
But I don't move.
I stay completely frozen, my jaw gritted so tightly that the bone aches.
Alice is the first to look away.
She breaks the eye contact, dropping her gaze back to her notebook as if I am nothing more than a stranger who happened to cross her path.
"Zade? Who is that girl?" Briar asks, her eyes narrowing as she glares at the back of Alice's head.
She recognizes the shift in the room.
She isn't stupid; she knows me better than anyone on this campus, and she can smell the smoke of a fire I'm trying desperately to put out.
"Nobody," I say, my voice dropping into a low, gravelly rumble.
"Just a scholarship student who doesn't know her place."
The lie tastes like ash in my mouth.
I lead Briar up the stairs toward our usual seats at the back, but my gaze never truly leaves the front bench.
The game has changed.
The board is resetting, and with Briar back, the crossfire is going to get lethal.
Alice thinks she won because she escaped my penthouse.
She thinks she's free because she threw my charity back in my face.
But as I sit down, feeling the heavy weight of the glass case in my pocket, I realize that this nightmare is just beginning.
And neither of us is walking out of this palace alive.