Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2), Lan Chan [readict TXT] 📗

Somebody called my name. The haze drowned it out. My mind was blanketed with the memories of all the things she’d said to me. I had a three-inch scar on my abdomen thanks to her. She’d chosen the worst possible time and place to tell me about Nanna. I knew she hadn’t done it out of the goodness of her heart.

She stepped back against the trees. A whooshing filled my ear. The demon blade hurtled through the barrier in the dimensions and appeared in my hand.

If the flap of wings hadn’t distracted me for a second, I probably would have tried to strike her. As it was, a hand came down on my shoulder.

“That’s enough,” Kai said.

I threw him off, turning my head so that I wouldn’t inhale his scent.

“What’s going on here?” Astrid said.

I ignored them both and strode to where Sophie was now helping Diana to stand. Her clothes were soaked through.

“They attacked me for no reason!” Brigid shouted. “That bitch broke my nose!”

“You are so full of it!” Diana yelled back. Her teeth were chattering.

“You did this?” Astrid asked.

I shrugged. It occurred to me that I was still holding the demon blade. The urge to cut into Brigid hadn’t subsided. The blade was trying to bend me to its will again. I forced a measure of my dark power down into the blade. It stopped tapping against my thigh.

“We’re going to have to bring you both in,” Kai said.

I turned my back on him and started walking away. “Blue.”

A week ago, I might have argued with him. Today, I just wanted to be left alone. I stepped toward Astrid. “Fine, take me in.”

She hesitated. I wasn’t speaking to her either. As a guard, and as someone who lived inside Seraphina, she had to have known about Nanna. She wasn’t the one who I’d placed my trust in, though. “I might take Brigid,” she said.

“I’m not going with him.”

She was at a loss. That much was obvious when she broke her stride like she was caught between two equally unpleasant conclusions. Kai had no such hesitation.

He marched forward and grabbed my arm. This time, he didn’t allow me to shrug him off. “Can you stay with Diana for a while?” he said to Sophie. Alarm had me trying to pry his fingers off.

I landed on my own bed a second later. The teleport was no longer unexpected. It was just unwanted. Before, I would have challenged him. Now, I shoved my legs against his chest so that he would have fallen backward if his reflexes weren’t so quick. The demon blade landed beside me.

Kai dropped into a perfect cat crouch. I really wanted to point out that he was breaking rules by being in my dorm room. I wanted him to leave. Almost as much as I wanted to punch him in the face. That was about half as much as I wanted all of this to be an illusion so that we could go back to the way things were. The thought pissed me off even more than I already was. It made my jaw clamp shut.

“So, you’re just going to spend the rest of your time pretending I don’t exist?” he asked. He relaxed his posture. One knee rested on the floor. The other was still bent so that his elbow leaned on it. I wasn’t fooled by the gesture. If I tried to move off the bed, he would spring. This wasn’t any different to being inside the prison. The guard was just prettier.

I focused my attention on something over his shoulder. Unfortunately, in a fit of anger, I had tried to shred both the dresses he’d bought me. Sophie had intervened and taken them away. I now saw the blue slip of material bulging out of one of her suitcases.

I couldn’t shift my attention in case he took that as a sign of weakness. Kai massaged his forehead with the heel of his palm.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have kept the truth from you.”

The silence stretched on. “Okay,” I said. “Can you hand me my punishment now and go away?”

He leaned forward, his gaze darkening. “I wouldn’t have done it unless I thought it might hurt you.”

“Thanks. I’m not hurt now at all.”

I hadn’t meant for there to be so much bite to it. My inability to remain placid around him was infuriating. I just couldn’t stop. “If your family were alive, regardless of the circumstances, wouldn’t you want to know?”

It was a low blow. It was meant to be. His eyes closed for a second. When he opened them, his expression was haunted. He was still looking at me, but it was unfocused. His thoughts were a million miles away.

“Yes,” he said after what felt like an eternity.

“Then you see my point.”

“I’ve always seen your point.”

My glare could have sliced him in two. “Yet you chose not to say anything. In all the time we’ve spent together not once did you think to say, “hey, by the way, your grandmother, the only family you’ve ever had, is conscious. So you can stop feeling like you’re trying to catch something that’s always just out of your reach.” But hey, whatever gets you through the day.”

He blinked slowly. When he shifted position so he was on his knees, I tucked my legs underneath me. It created more space between us.

“As much as you’d like to believe it,” he said, “I don’t get to just do whatever I like without consequences.”

“The fact that you’re in my room without breaching some alarm says otherwise.”

“There’s a difference between this and disobeying a full Council mandate,” he said.

“I really couldn’t care less what the Council wants.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “That’s half the problem.”

“Everything I do is a problem. Yet Brigid gets to swan around like she’s untouchable.”

“Brigid is a known quantity.” His fist clenched. “She has boundaries. You’re different. Nobody is quite