Page 8 of The Knight

And I'm not through finding the truth that I can only find here, where my brother's path took a terrible turn in the wrong direction.

It isn't fair—the Elites have done plenty that could've gotten them kicked out of school, save maybe for Lukas. They've drunk on school grounds and had girls in their boys-only residence halls. Blake has stolen student work—mywork—as a TA, and Cole breaks the school codes against bullying. But no one in the administration will dare to even suggest suspending them as long as their families run so much of this privileged world with their money and influence. They won't be fined by the police for drunkenness or public nudity. Theirs is a life above the law.

Of course, I can't pretend I'm not a sinner.

I know I've done things that no one would approve of.

Things that, if my father found out about, might make him angry enough to start hitting me the way he used to hit Silas. That is, if he were around to find out.

Somehow that makes me want to stay at the school even more.

It's hard to explain any of this to the two Elite boys staring at me now. My best friend, Jade, would say that I'm stubborn as a mule and then some, and she's not wrong about that.

But if Cole is getting me kicked out of school right now, it might not matter how stubborn I am. There are no second chances for fucked up girls like me. They save those for boys with white teeth and long names. I don't get to be badandloved. Only discarded for my sins.

"I guess this is it, then." I find myself pinching the sheet that covers me and fussing with the threads as if they might unravel between my fingertips. "Last night really was my last night at Coleridge."

Lukas's mouth thins into a line. "It's for the best."

Wicked, wicked Tanner says, "If you'd like one more last night, you're always welcome in my sheets. Not like you can get expelled twice."

To think, his father is running for President. You wouldn't know it from the way he acts. Maybe that's the point for him—the kind of rebellion that will cost his absent father everything. He certainly seems to enjoy pushing the line so far that it's practically curved into a circle at his insistence.

"I'll decline your offer," I tell him, pushing my voice until the words drip with sarcasm. "From what I've seen—and heard—you probably have something."

"Oof." Tanner places his hand over his heart in mock pain. "An allegation of venereal diseases? You wound me. It's a good thing you won't be going to Coleridge much further, or I might throw myself into the wolf enclosure in despair."

His words send suspicion through me. Earlier this semester a group of girls put a bag over my head and dragged me into the wolf enclosure at night, leaving me there, the gate locked behind me and the groundskeeper nowhere to be found.

Before I can ask him if he had something to do with that—not that I think he's bad enough at lying that I'd be able to see through him if he feigned innocence—someone new walks through the door.

Someone new and very, very familiar to me.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Brenna won't be leaving Coleridge." Those dusky green eyes unique to Cole Masterson seem to be brimming with secrets and mysteries. "I decided she was better off staying."

Chapter 4

"You decided? And here I thought the administration got a say in that."

"Yeah, well, I was the one who found your falsified records. So I massaged things a bit."

"Massaged?"

"As far as they're concerned, you're enrolled as Brenna Wilder and always have been. Anyone who saw or believes otherwise has had their memory corrected for them." He cocks a brow at me, and I suck in a breath, wondering what thisfavorwill cost me. "You're welcome."

"Why?" Lukas asks, voice low and horrified. "Cole, we all agreed that she shouldn't be here."

I can't help it; his words are a blow. To my ego, maybe, or the part of me that thought he was the kindest of the four brutal Elites. He kissed me so softly, and seemed wounded about what I did. I thought, foolishly, that Lukas DuPont cared for me. But he's made it clear more than once now that he wants me nowhere near the academy, so clearly I was completely wrong.

"Wanting her gone is in the past now," Cole says, like he didn't just spends months of his life devoted to tormenting me, and sic a bully of a redhead named Georgia on me. "I changed my mind."

I'm the one who asks, "Why?"

"That's what I'd like to now." Blake Lee, the Hollywood slash Seoul celebrity progeny himself, slips into the room. "You said some bullshit about being whimsical and prone to flights of fancy, Cole, but we both know that's not the real reason you changed your mind on Brenna sticking around Coleridge. When you make a decision like this, it affects all of us. So I want to know why."

Cole looks to me, and I can't stop myself from briefly, embarrassingly, licking my lips. It's foolish to think that a kiss from a girl like me, raised in Wayborne Virginia, could possibly change Cole's mind. He doesn't like me—I'm the one who instigated the foolish kiss, for one thing, but for another it was a hate-filled thing, brief as a lightning bolt and just as destructive.

He's kissed girls like Holly, had every socialite on both coasts on his arm, and could snap his fingers and have a model delivered to his door—even after the scandals he's been embroiled in. Maybe even because of them. No girl thinks she'll be the body in the trunk, after all. Not when a boy like Cole looks at her.

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