Page 79 of Radiant Shadows

“I thought you knew I was here,” Niko said with a smirk.

“How could I know?” I shouted.

Niko kept his tone cool despite my misplaced fury. “Because you nodded when I asked if I could join you? Remember?”

I ran a hand through my hair, gripping it tightly and scrunching my eyes closed. I didn’t remember, but I also didn’t exactly remember starting the simulation. I’d flipped a switch to auto-Tobias-mode the instant I walked into the Defense Room.

But now that I thought about it, I vaguely remembered Niko’s tense smile when I’d entered. Niko was stressed about something, and I probably figured he could use a flight, too.

“I guess?” I muttered. “I don’t know.”

I walked to retrieve my clothes from the corner, which were in a pile next to Niko’s, and pulled them back on.

“Everything alright?” Niko asked, then pulled a gray sweatshirt over his head.

I stepped back into my jeans. “Arya hates me.”

He frowned. “How did that happen? I thought things were going great between you two.”

I sighed and explained without looking up at him. “Apparently, Arthur told her about assigning me to befriend her. She thinks everything between us was a lie.”

He was quiet for a moment, the only sounds in the room those of our rustling clothes as we finished getting dressed.

“Is that why she destroyed the greenhouse?” Niko asked solemnly.

I felt my eyes—and the crack in my heart—widen. “That was her?” That explained her weird comment about it. But how did she manage it? Did she really hate me that much? “How?”

“Apparently, she’s also an ursa.” Niko shrugged like it wasn’t huge news to find out that the siren/mermaid/harpy was also a werebear. “It was her first shift, from what I’ve been told.”

“Huh.”I didn’t have any other words, let alone thoughts, about it. In the past, I would have been fascinated to hear of such a shifter. I would’ve asked a thousand questions and done a ton of research on the subject.

But this wasArya. She’d long ago gone from a shifter who made me curious to a woman who made me crazy and protective and clearly willing to break a curse I vowed never to trigger.

Apparently, she hated me so much that she would destroy school property because it reminded her of me. That was the first place we bonded after our attack, the last place we’d been before she decided to sleep with me.

“And not to add more to your plate,” Niko added. “But your father has taken over the school.”

I whipped my head toward Niko, who shrugged. “What about Caesar?”

“He’s being removed,” Niko said awkwardly, as if that was the most delicate way he had of saying what we both knew to be a hostile takeover.

“On what grounds?” I asked. I knew my dad could be especially persuasive, but there was no way the other professors would side against Caesar.

“There’s been evidence against him that he was working with a vampire,” Niko replied.

I slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, a maniacal laugh bubbling up out of my throat. My shoulders racked, and my ribs clenched with the insane sound that shook out of me, and I gave into it even as humorless tears trickled from my eyes.

I felt the graze of Niko’s body as he sat beside me. “Are you okay, man?”

“No,” I barked a laugh, slapping my knee. “Nothing is okay. I’m the son of a fucking psycho!”

Laughter peeled out my tight throat, sounding like a hoarse shriek.

“He’s managed to frame the only person who actually gives a damn about any of us, he’s taken over the school so that he can control the only woman I’ve ever cared about, and he’s ensured that I triggered our curse so that I can once again be his obedient soldier!”

My voice was so high-pitched, even I couldn’t understand the words I was saying.

“Curse?” Niko asked. “What curse?”

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