Page 5 of Sinner
All of their multi-slates chimed at the same time, and they paused to check the message from the school. Sure enough, it was announcing the death of Juri and informing the students that the festivities would be postponed by a single day. They were allowed to head home for the holiday but reminded that official festivities would start tomorrow with the traditional production ofHis Dark Nightput on by the university’s ballet.
“Well, we all suck and we’re going straight to hell,” West stated.
“Tell us something we don’t know.” Yejun dropped his arm and blew out a breath. “Think Nix checked his messages?”
“Probably.” Lake wished otherwise, but knowing Nix, even as spaced out as he was, he still had his multi-slate on him. Maybe Briant had taken it away from him and ordered him to get some rest. Doubtful, but that was the type of shit older cousins did for their younger family members, right?
He almost laughed.
If Beck had ever tried a stunt like that, Lake would have decked him.
“What do we do?” West pulled him from his thoughts. “Are we still going to stick to the plan?”
“You’re seriously thinking about partying right now?” Yejun scowled.
“What? Like you weren’t looking forward to it every bit as much as I have. Not the ballet part. Obviously. Unless Nix wanted to go. Shit. Do you think he wanted to go to that?”
Demons Passing was the largest holiday on the planet, celebrated by practically everyone. At its root, it was a marker for incoming warmer weather, with smaller festivities planned leading up to the last day, where the gates of hell supposedly opened and the damned were allowed to roam freely for a single night.
Their ancestors used it to explain away the sudden heatwaves that came with summer—lingering warmth from the opening—and the holiday used to be taken seriously. Now, many of the fun traditions were still implemented, though like with everything else on Tulniri, it’d been turned into an excuse for debauchery and play.
Everyone dressed up and donned masks, meant to trick the spirits into thinking they were one of them, so they’d be left alone. Yejun had spent months working on masks for the four of them, meaning it was safe to assume West was correct in his assumption that their friend wouldn’t want to skip out on the final party, despite his comment.
What made it even bigger of an event was the fact that Demons Passing was one of the few things put on in collaboration between Foxglove and Club Essential. The massive, campus-wide party was a tradition in its own right.
A few months ago, Demons Passing meant something more than another day to get shitfaced and wave around theirwealth and status. Back then, it’d been the date set for them by the Order, the timeframe given to root out the hacker those uppity pricks had believed tried to sneak into their systems.
There’d never really been a hacker, at least, not one trying to break into the club. It’d been a front, a made-up story to buy themselves some time while they’d hunted down whoever was responsible for trying to attack them. They hadn’t gotten very far in their search, admittedly, before Nix had come along.
Prior to their Songbird’s arrival, all they’d known for certain was that Branwen, who’d they’d called Iris, had repeatedly used a sedative on Yejun and had poisoned West. She hadn’t been the mastermind behind it, but they’d been unable to get her to spill on who was pulling her strings.
She’d convinced Yejun she didn’t know, but then Nix had arrived looking for a secret lover of Branwen’s who’d supposedly hurt her. He’d come all this way just for revenge on her behalf, but what he’d uncovered during his investigation had left him shaken, the foundation of their relationship put to the test.
It was harder to forgive the dead. They weren’t here to offer explanations or excuses. Weren’t available to talk things out or apologize.
Branwen had purposefully tricked her cousin into coming here to fight for her after she’d given up. As far as Lake knew, she’d never even tried fighting for herself. If she had, she would have confessed and given them a name. But she never had.
And now they were being told that the very foundation they’d believed in this entire time might be a lie?
If she hadn’t poisoned West, who had?
Did it even matter?
Did it change things?
At the end of the day, weren’t they still searching for the same hidden figure, no matter what her level of involvement had been?
“We need Nix to explain things.” But he didn’t seem like he was in the right state of mind for that, and Lake didn’t want to push him, no matter how important this was.
It couldn’t wait, but it was going to have to. They all owed their Fourth that much.
“Juri was blackmailing Nixie into speaking out against you to the Order,” West said, piecing together what they’d gathered at the meeting. “As soon as we told him Briant was safe, he flipped on Juri.”
There hadn’t been a single moment where Lake had doubted Nix’s loyalty, so that hadn’t been surprising at all.
“If Nix had known about Juri’s lineage sooner, he would have told us,” Yejun added. “Which means he must have told him about it when the two of them met at the dorms.”
Nix had made plans with Juri earlier yesterday, promising to call Yejun when he was ready to head home. He’d never made the call, but Lake had been busy at waif practice and hadn’t been aware until later.
