Deity (Covenant #3)(25)

I opened my mouth to tell Luke that I wasn’t the one being the bitch, that it was all of them who’d been treating me like a three-headed dog since I’d returned—and even before then—but nothing came out. Besides spending time with Seth, I had isolated myself from everyone.

And sometimes I was a terrible person. I had reasons—good reasons, but they were just excuses. Weight settled over my chest.

In the silence and darkness surrounding us, Luke found me and wrapped his arms around my stiff shoulders. “Well, maybe we do have to tolerate it a little bit. You are an Apollyon after all.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “And even though you’ve been a giant bitch, we still love you and we’re worried.”

A lump formed in my throat. I fought it, really I did, but I felt tears stinging my eyes as my muscles started to relax. My head somehow found his shoulder and he patted my back soothingly. For a moment, I could believe that Luke was Caleb and in my head, I pretended that I told him everything that had happened. My make-believe Caleb smiled at me, held me closer, and ordered me to pull my head out of my ass. That no matter what had happened and everything I learned, the world hadn’t ended and wasn’t going to.

And for the time being, that seemed to be enough.

Aiden was waiting for me when I finally pulled myself out of the sensory room. He didn’t say anything as we headed outside. Both of us had said and probably thought too much as it was. There wasn’t any awkwardness between us, but there was this vast sense of… uncertainty. Although, it could just’ve been I was projecting my own feelings onto him.

We made our way up the walkway, heading toward the dorms. The wind kicked up sand and there was a cold, damp feeling in the air as we neared the garden.

Two pure boys were staring at the marble statue of Apollo reaching for Daphne as she changed into a tree. One elbowed the other. “Hey, look. Apollo is getting wood.”

His friend laughed. I rolled my eyes.

“Alex.” There was something about Aiden’s voice, a roughness that told me that whatever he was about to say was going to be powerful. His gaze moved to my face, then behind me. “What the hell?”

Not what I was expecting.

Aiden brushed past me, solely focused on something other than me. Dammit. I whirled around. “You don’t—oh.”

Now I saw what had cut Aiden off.

Two half guys carried a barely conscious Jackson between them—a hardly recognizable Jackson. He looked like he’d woken up on the wrong side of an ass kicking. Every visible inch of his skin was bruised or bloodied—eyes swelled shut, lips split wide open—and the deep, angry mark smeared across his left cheek suspiciously resembled a boot print.

“What happened to him?” Aiden demanded, taking the place of one of the halfs and practically supporting all of the boy’s weight.

The half shook his head. “I don’t know. We found him like this in the courtyard.”

“I… I fell,” Jackson said, blood and spit trickling from his mouth. I think he was missing some teeth.

A dubious expression crossed Aiden’s face. “Alex, please go straight to your dorm.”

Nodding mutely, I stepped out of the way. I was still pissed at Jackson. He had tried to stomp my head in, but what had been done to him was horrific and calculating. Compared to the fist Aiden had planted in his face when Jackson had…

My wide eyes met Aiden’s for a second before he carried Jackson off toward the med building. My conversation with Seth came back to me.

“So, who did you spar with in class?” he’d asked.

“I always get paired with Jackson.”

My gods, Seth had done this.

It appeared that Seth was avoiding me for the most part, probably because of the whole ham sandwich incident. Our practices were either cancelled or consisted of working on my mental shields. For a whole week, whenever I saw him, I asked him about Jackson. With a look of complete innocence, he’d told me he hadn’t done it. I didn’t believe him and I’d told him just that.

He’d looked at me, expression beautifully empty and said, “Now why would I ever do such a thing?”

I didn’t want to believe that he had, because whoever had done that to Jackson had put him out of commission for a long time. Jackson wasn’t talking, literally. His jaw was wired shut, and I’d heard he needed a lot of dental work. Even though he’d heal a lot quicker than a mortal, I knew he still wouldn’t talk. The boy had had the ever-loving crap scared out of him.


And even though I didn’t want to believe it was Seth, I couldn’t shake my suspicions. Who else would do such a thing to Jackson? Seth had motive—a motive that made me feel ill. If he’d done it, it’d been because of what Jackson had done to me in class. But how could he do something so… violent, so unstable? That question haunted me.

The one good thing was that the weird funk that had settled over me like an itchy blanket faded. A tiny part of me missed Seth’s company in the evenings and the way he always managed to turn me into a human body pillow during the night, but there was another part of me that was sort of relieved. Like there wasn’t anything additional expected from me.

Even though no one tried to drug or kill me, Linard and Aiden still followed me around. And when they were busy, it was Leon’s massive shadow that lurked behind me. I’d taken to hanging around the training rooms even on the days Seth and I wouldn’t practice. I knew that Aiden would eventually find me there. We didn’t talk about being afraid again, but we sort of just… hung out… in the training room.