Page 9 of Merciless Prince
3
Shay
Cori slumpedin her seat and looked at her window, which had fogged up thanks to the Uber’s heater.
“I’m trying not to think of this as a bad luck sign,” she said as she slowly ran a finger along the glass to create a clear streak. Outside, dark clouds dominated the sky, and rain streamed all over the road in thick rivulets. “But it’s weird how things were bright and sunny until we arrived. Then suddenly there’s a torrential downpour.”
I nudged her knee with mine. “I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as bad luck signs from the universe. I checked the weather report earlier and it said there was a fifty percent chance of rain here today.”
She turned to look at me with wide eyes. “You don’t believe in signs at all?”
“Not really.” I lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Superstition has never done it for me.”
“Well, I believe in it. Every single time it’s started raining just before I went into an audition, I didn’t get the part. And every time it’s been sunny before I went in, I got the part. Like when I got the beer ad. Remember?” She looked out the window again. “I was so happy earlier, but now I feel like today is going to suck.”
I raised my brows. I thought I was being paranoid on the train earlier, but Cori was really taking the cake right now. “What do you think will happen when we get to Bellingham?” I asked. “Do you think we’ll disappear into that Triangle thing you were telling me about?”
Cori laughed. “We’re already in the Triangle,” she said. Then she waved a hand. “But you’re probably right. I’m just being stupid.”
“I’m sure today will be fine,” I replied. “I’ve memorized the entire campus map so we won’t get lost. Besides, all we really have to do is find our dorms, unpack, and explore the place. It’ll be fun.”
As long as I don’t run into Killian Knight again,I privately thought. There wasn’t much of a chance of that happening, though. Bellingham University had thousands of students and faculty members, and Killian was a fourth-year student, so the chances of us crossing paths on campus were quite low.
“I know.” Cori let out a light sigh. “Honestly, I’m mostly worried about the other students. So many of them are going to be rich, snobby douchebags.”
“Um, you’re pretty rich too,” I said with a grin.
Cori’s mother was an ex-socialite from a Connecticut-based family that owned several famous wineries, and her stepfather Robert was a powerful political consultant down in DC, so she wasn’t exactly struggling. She tried to make her own money through acting instead of relying on her trust fund, but she always had a safety net if anything went wrong. Not everyone could claim that.
She grinned back at me and playfully poked me. “You know what I mean. Like, old money WASP-types who look down on everyone. Pretty sure Bellingham is crawling with them.”
“Yeah, I get what you mean. But don’t worry. I’m sure the place is crawling with cool people too.”
By the time our Uber pulled up by Bellingham’s main entrance, the rain had slowed to a soft, barely-there patter. Cori and I wrestled our gigantic cases out of the trunk and popped the wheels out so we could easily pull them around with us. Then we tipped our driver and headed up to the entrance.
The black iron gate was twice my height and set in a gray stone wall. Other students were already streaming through it, hauling duffel bags, suitcases, and laptops with them.
“The rain finally stopped,” I said, glancing at Cori. “Isn’t that one of your good signs?”
“Yeah.” She stared ahead, eyes wide with wonderment. “God, look at this place.”
I stared too, equally entranced by the sprawling campus in front of us. It looked like something straight out of the European countryside. The buildings were made from pale gray stone in a Gothic Revival style with arches, cathedral windows, spindly towers, and carved buttresses. Ivy clung to large patches of the walls, and angry-looking gargoyles peered down at us from high corners.
I’d once read that the campus was filled with little architectural tricks—doors to nowhere, hidden passages behind interior panels, fake windows, secret meeting rooms behind bookshelves. It was idyllic and fantastical; the perfect place for students to tap into their creativity.
“Ready to go in?” I asked, looking over at Cori again. She nodded, and we stepped through the gate and headed over to one of the many cobblestone paths that curved around the landscaped grounds.
Our excitement and wonderment was soon dampened by the presence of a man who recognized Cori. She’d recently booked an ad for a beer company that was running every day on several channels, so it wasn’t the first time someone had recognized her in public. Unfortunately, the sort of people the ad targeted were the exact kind of guys we wanted to avoid—frat-boy-type douchebags who thought it was okay to pass by a hot woman from a commercial while saying stuff like ‘show us your tits,’ or ‘are they actually real?’ while ogling her chest and acting like it was a compliment.
That was a big problem with any kind of fame, especially if you were a woman. Some of the worst sorts of people would approach you in public and try to hit on you or grope you, and you simply had to grin and bear it in most cases. If you didn’t, you were labeled as difficult by the media. A diva. Abitch.
Cori got the worst of it, because she was a stereotypical blonde bombshell with long, tanned legs and a natural DD-cup chest. She didn’t like to complain about it very often, because she thought it made her sound ungrateful for the work she received, but I knew how much it bothered her when sleazy men harassed her while she was just trying to live her life.
As I expected, the young man who recognized her was nice at first, but quickly started hassling her for personal information. His lecherous eyes remained firmly on her chest the entire time.
“I’m surprised he even recognized me,” she remarked when we finally managed to get away from him. “He barely even looked at my face.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” I said, glancing at him over my shoulder. He was still watching Cori with interest gleaming in his eyes.
