Page 67 of Cruel Destinies

“Well, I broke up with Ashlyn before I left. Brett texted and said Ashlyn’s beenmopey.”

I clapped a hand on his shoulder again in a mock gesture before saying, “You’re giving yourself too much credit. When have you ever made a girlmopey?”

Niko shrugged off my hand and punched me in the shoulder, knocking me off balance so I had to plant both feet on the ground again. “Thanks, jerk!”

But we laughed it off.

“How about you? How are things withArya?” Nick sang her name.

I stared at the opposite wall, feeling the heat rise in my neck. “We may have hooked up a few days ago.” I looked down at my feet, not wanting to meet what I was sure was a surprised expression on his face. “But I haven’t spoken to her since Saturday, when I pretty much told her she could go and get herself killed.” I blew out an exasperated breath.

“I thought she was different than the others?” Niko only sounded half-surprised. It made me want to crawl into a hole.

I chose anger instead and gripped a fistful of my hair. “She is!” I let go and smacked the wall behind me. “But I was so angry that she could be sostupidand go topside, the words just came out.”

“You really care about her,” he said slowly, making me cringe inwardly even though it was more true than he knew.

“Her safety is important, yes. If she’d been captured...” I let the gravity of those words hover in the air in front of us. “It would be disastrous for all of us. Every shifter would be in danger.”

Iwould be in danger. If she died, I would die, too. But it wouldn’t be a quick death. It would be a long, slow, agonizing torture. It was bad enough not having spoken to her since our fight. But if I never got to see her ever again… The terrified pain that consumed my entire body and soul at the thought was too much to bear.

I needed to change the subject.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked, shoving my angry, panicked feelings toward Arya aside. “Is my father here?”

“Yes,” Niko said, snapping to a more business-like demeanor that was so unlike him. “He’s asked me to fetch you. He’s in Ms. Tanis’s office and wants to speak with you.”

I paused for a few seconds before answering. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”

***

Arthur sent Niko to the kitchen for our lunches when we arrived, proving that Niko really was Lord Dracul’s errand boy. Niko probably felt it was demeaning, but I was grateful. It meant my friend was safe and not in the line of battle.

I had only been in Ms. Tanis’s office a handful of times, and most of the space was not particularly interesting. A few feminine touches that were typical in any of the female faculty offices decorated it, such as a purple orchid on the edge of her desk, a knitted blanket hanging over the chair in the corner, and a framed watercolor on the wall of what looked like a harpy woman with golden eyes and a white braid talking to a partly submerged merman with jet-black hair hanging on the wall.

Whatwasinteresting about her office was the framed painting on the back wall. The one Ms. Tanis could see from her chair as she graded essays and scored tests. It was an enlarged print of the oil painting I had once seen hidden away in one of the undisturbed, dusty rooms at home.

The painting was of a fearsome dragon with iridescent, purplish-blue scales. Its wingspan filled the canvas from edge to edge, and the icy blue eyes reminded me of Tamara’s,which led me to believe that it must be the portrait—the shifted portrait—of one of the Dracul line. I couldn’t help but turn as I entered the room to gaze at the painting. It wasn’t the original, but it still conveyed the power of the beast.

“Isn’t she magnificent?” Arthur asked. He was perched on the edge of Ms. Tanis’s desk.

“Who is she?” I asked without turning his way. “Do you know her?”

I heard him move toward me, stopping at my left side. “She was our relative. A famous one, at that.”

I did look at him then, waiting for him to elaborate.

Arthur’s smile was knowing. “Claudette Dracul,” he said, then crossed his arms and turned away from the painting. “The original is at the manor, but your mother detests it and demanded it be moved somewhere she was less likely to see it every day.”

“Claudette Dracul? The one who—?”

“Yes, yes.” He cut me off, waving a hand in a gesture that demanded we get back on topic. “The woman who brought the curse upon the Draculs. That’s probably why your mother hates it. But we don’t know her story. Whatever she did to bring on that loathed curse couldn’t have been as bad as the curse itself.” He eyed me with a hint of a smirk. “Perhaps we should track down those witches someday and make them pay for over a century of Dracul misery,huh?”

I was at a loss for words. It was the most I’d ever heard my father talk about the curse. Most of the time, he acted like it was a myth or that it didn’t exist. So I merely nodded.

“But that’s not why I wanted to speak with you.”

I situated myself internally, if not physically. I never knew what grandiose task or chastising conversation Arthur had planned.

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