King of Cups: A Dark College Bully Romance Read online

  That meant processing applications and tuition payments, assigning rooms and class schedules, ordering food, books, and other provisions. It broke down cleanly: Amelia did all the critical thinking, and I did all the grunt work.

  Amazingly, in a world of cloud storage and wireless internet, most of this work required taking stacks of papers all over Stormcloud’s labyrinthine campus. Folders for the bursar. Folders for the professors. Folders for the security guards. And always stacks and stacks of sealed documents for Dean Schmidt, many of them stamped with literal wax like papal decrees.

  I’d worn out a pair of tennis shoes tramping all over the school’s unyielding stone and oak. Yet all the tidbits about Stormcloud’s history had lodged in my brain, and I now had a GPS-quality understanding of its countless secret doors and passages.

  On that particular morning, I let myself out of Amelia’s portico office and turned onto the blessedly soft runner that led toward the women’s wing. My endpoint was the infirmary at the far end of the East Wing. A newbie would think I was heading the wrong way.

  They didn’t know that if you tapped the gilded rose on the wainscoting four rooms down with your foot, a secret door would pop open, leading to an iron spiral stairwell. Take that up, and you’d find yourself in a dimly lit corridor that runs parallel to the student auditorium on the fourth floor. There’s a panel you could slip around that would take you under the stage, then a trap door you’d pop out of next to the dressing rooms. The story went that a mezzo-soprano on loan from Munich did a masterclass at Stormcloud in the mid-1800s, and the headmaster at the time began an affair with her. He built the secret fourth-floor corridor to give himself access to her after performances.

  Anyway, once you were backstage, you could step up to the catwalk, shimmy past a false wall to a covert door that leads to the roof. From there, you could walk across to the extreme eastern edge, back in through the service access, then through two masked sliding partitions. The first would take you into a secret surgical amphitheater that I didn’t dare ask Amelia about. The second led to the office of the school’s physician.

  I dropped the files on his desk. The whole trip took less than five minutes. Using the regular route, with its winding hallways and hand-cranked elevator, would have taken twice that time.

  I decided to spend my saved minutes taking a hidden stairwell down to the blossoming courtyard and enjoying the fresh late-summer air.

  With a sense of true self-satisfaction, I stepped out into the light. I was, at last, a legit student of Stormcloud Academy. To hell with the haters and the naysayers!

  So it took the wind out of my sails when the first thing I saw when I entered the courtyard was a familiar pair of serious gray eyes set below a shielding brow and a swoop of sandy blond locks.

  It was Theo, newly arrived, tanned, and refreshed. Of all the people I could run into, he was perhaps the one I was least prepared to see.

  Even so, the moment he saw me, he flashed a perfect smile of gleaming white teeth. He was smitten, as always, and I fought hard to contain my own joy at seeing him. I didn't want him to know I was as happy as he was.

  CHAPTER 2

  THEO

  I didn’t know what I’d expected. Coming back to Stormcloud a week before the start of term was not something I’d generally do. Normally, I relished every second away from that nest of vipers, but that summer was different. I had someone on campus I wanted to return to.

  Of course, that was idiotic logic. The last time I’d seen Biba, she was shutting the door in my face—the door to Zephyr Williams’ room. Knowing what was to follow in that room . . . it was too much for me to stomach on the last night of classes. I’d hopped into my car with two trash bags of clothing and bolted. I was halfway to Milan Malpensa before I received the news about Gail Monfort. I’d fired off a text to Biba, not wanting to call her while she was with . . . him.

  I’m so sorry, I’d typed. It was all I could think to say.

  She hadn’t replied. Had I expected her to?

  I’d done my best over the next two months to keep Biba Quinn and Gail Monfort out of my mind. Miss Amelia had arranged a last-minute volunteer posting in the Solomon Islands. The Oceanic nation had been dealing with rising waters from climate change. They desperately needed volunteer labor to shore up their waterfront homes.

  It was hopeless work, unfortunately. The waters would continue to rise. The floods would keep coming. All we could do was add additional support to the base of the homes and find places to build makeshift levees against the ocean. They would hold a few years, at best, unless significant action were taken to stem melting icecaps and weather changes.

  Selfishly, I felt like the work had been more charitable to me than it was to the Islands. It had succeeded in helping me forget the madness of Stormcloud. Each morning, I would wake with the sun to a breakfast of fresh fruit, toasted bread, and coffee, strap on a harness, and position thick logs under the decking of a local family’s home. I wondered what it would be like to have been part of a family that I could go back to. What would it be like to have a home to return to during summers and holidays?

  In the afternoon, I would heave sandbags into low surf until my arms ached. Then I’d rest in a hammock until sunset. We had built bonfires in the sand at night, cooked fish and pork over the open flame, danced to the music on our phones, and drank kava and cheap beer. It was heaven. I’d slept each night like a dead man.

  As August had approached, however, my peace of mind had begun to dissipate. I’d started waking before the sunrise and lying in my cot for hours, staring into the darkness. My heart would thud in my chest like it might burst through my ribs. What was I afraid of?

  The answer was simple: Biba. I was afraid I would have to leave that paradise and return to the mountaintop butchery that was Stormcloud. I feared the first time I would see Biba and Zephyr together on campus. I feared the first time I had to pass Gail’s old room. It wasn’t like the three of us—Gail, Biba, and me—ever felt truly contented: we were always struggling against some malevolent force we neither understood nor were equipped to fight. But for a time, I had convinced myself we could overcome the darkness.

  Then it took Gail.

  It was going to take Biba too, and she was willingly walking into it.

  I did not think I could stand by and watch the Kings corrupt her, chew her up, and leave her broken in the trash pile behind the school. Biba Quinn had such fire inside her—resilience, intelligence, and grace. That had drawn me to her when I saw her in the dining hall her first morning at the school.

  I wished to God that I’d had the strength to take her in my arms and kiss her that first night. I wished I’d told her I cared for her and would always protect her, no matter how bad things got. I wished I’d decided earlier to fight for her.

  It was too late, and each morning in the Solomon Islands, I had to contend with my own failure. The school year was approaching, and soon, I’d have to return. I didn’t have wealthy parents like Zephyr Williams, Sol Stamos, or Arvo Hurley. I didn’t have parents at all. Just like Gail and Biba, I was an orphan. I needed Stormcloud to find my way in the world.

  One morning, I’d stepped into the cool, powdery sand in the predawn hours and breathed in the salty air. Suddenly, it was clear what I had to do. I needed to return to campus immediately before Zephyr could get there. I needed to see Biba, alone.

  “Theo,” she gasped, stopping dead in her tracks.

  I was as surprised as she was. Biba had emerged from a service door that I didn’t even know was there. I was mustering the courage to enter the school and find her, and then, out of nowhere, we were suddenly face-to-face.

  The cloudless mountain summer had given her fair skin a golden glow and brought out some freckles on her cheeks. That flaxen hair was now a hundred shades of blonde, cascading over her bared shoulders and down the swell of her breasts. She wore a powder blue chiffon sundress that seemed to flutter weightlessly around her perfect body.

  I wanted to taste her lips right then and there. She seemed, at that moment, to be the perfect girl I’d fallen in love with last spring, before the Equinox Ball and Zephyr’s bullshit.

  I found I was smiling dumbly, helpless in her presence.

  She returned my grin with a sweet, closed-mouth smile of her own.

  “I came back early,” I heard myself admitting. “I wanted to see you. Can we sit somewhere and talk?”

  “I’d like that,” she replied immediately.

  The sun felt a little warmer.

  We sat on a bench in the courtyard, enjoying the refreshing breeze from the mountain peaks’ stubbornly icy caps. I told Biba about the Solomon Islands, and she discussed her summer working for Miss Amelia.

  “Island life agrees with you,” she complimented me. “You look better than I’ve seen you since . . .”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she meant: since I was beaten nearly to death last spring.

  “It was good to work with my hands for a while. The only problem was . . . well, I couldn’t stop my mind from going back to what happened to you at the year-end party. And then what happened to Gail.”

  She nodded gravely, and I saw her chest heave and her lips shake like she was suppressing a sob for a moment. She replied finally, “I got your message.”

  I’m so sorry.

  “It was all I could think to say. I couldn’t believe Gail would do that.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Biba looked me stone-cold straight in the eyes and silently dared me to contradict her. It was the same intensity she’d shown in the face of the Kings’ relentless bullying early last year. At the time, I’d viewed it as the unrealistic hope of a doomed creature. Now I saw that Biba Quinn was a survivor. She took c
ontrol of her fate, even when it meant allying herself with the enemy.

  She was tough as nails. Tougher than me, certainly, which was why I feared she would get hurt. She was too confident that she could manage Zephyr and the Kings. It blinded her to the danger they posed.

  “You’re right,” I answered. “There’s no way Gail killed herself.”

  “Not when we were so close to the truth, and the fact that she died the same night someone attacked me—”

  “But who? Do you have any idea—?”

  “No,” she shot back, cutting off my line of questioning. She knew where I was going. No one could convince me that Zephyr or his toadies didn’t have something to do with Gail’s death. Nothing goes down at Stormcloud without the Kings signing off, and the simple fact was that Gail and Biba were digging into the Kings’ past.

  “Listen,” she continued, “we aren’t the only people who think there’s something fishy. There’s a detective in Wachsbrunnen. He thinks Gail was murdered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He questioned me over the summer.”

  “What evidence does he have?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t tell him anything.”

  What the hell was that about? I couldn’t even reply. Biba had found a cop who agreed with her and wanted to investigate Gail’s death as a murder . . . and she hadn’t told him anything.

  “Why?” was all I could manage to say.

  “Think about it, Theo. Someone is on to us already. They tried to kill me, and they already killed Gail. If I give everything to this detective, the best-case scenario is that someone kills him too.”

  “And the worst case?”

  “He could be working for Gail’s killers.”

  “Biba, you’re being paranoid. Lying to the police is a terrible idea. You could be arrested.”

  Her nostrils flared as she stood from the bench.

  “That’s a better fate than Gail got. I can’t let some stranger find justice for her. I need to do it myself, and I’d like your help.”

  I stood quickly, without a second’s hesitation, and took her hands in mine.

  “I will do whatever it takes,” I promised.

  The thing I did not say aloud but promised in my heart was:

  Whatever it takes, I will find Gail’s killer before you do, Biba. You’re the dearest person in my solitary life. Someone tried to take you from me once before. They won’t do it again.

  CHAPTER 3

  BIBA

  Ten days before the start of classes, I found myself antsy. Students were already trickling in, mostly second and third-years trying to get the lay of the land before the term officially began. I watched them all from the fourth-floor window of Zephyr’s suite.

  They came in Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and spacious stretch limos. Their hair was sun-bleached and their skin bronzed after summers of leisure. I could only imagine where they’d spent their breaks: Caribbean isles, Mediterranean yachts, villas on Lake Como, chalets in Sochi. It struck me anew that my classmates were the children not just of privilege but of extraterrestrial wealth.

  What was I doing in this rarified air? My father was successful but not a billionaire. Though he couldn’t shower me with couture clothes and lavish vacations, he gave me all the love a child could want. He went to Stormcloud Academy once upon a time but never saw fit to tell me. The funds to place me in this school were shrouded in mystery, an endowment arranged without my knowledge. Now I sat at the top of its rigid hierarchy. Within the perimeter walls of Stormcloud, I was a protected mistress of the ancient order of Kings. The children of politicians, oligarchs, and lords—and they’d cleared a path to power for me.

  Even now, that seemed insane, like something from a gothic romance—the provincial girl who became a queen.

  Nevertheless, a flutter began inside my chest as the school year approached. It grew into an earthquake of anticipation.

  I turned to Theo, my partner in crime—or, rather, my partner in avenging a crime. It was a relief to have him back. It kept me sane, having a person to reassure me I wasn’t paranoid about Gail’s death. We swapped theories and clues.

  “Try to remember,” he pressed me that afternoon. “When was the last time either of us saw her?”

  I puzzled it out. It must have been that afternoon—the last of final exams. I’d gone back to her room to get dolled up for the end-of-term bash. Then I’d left her before sunset to find Zephyr.

  “Didn’t you see her during the party?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I muttered, trying to remember. “We were gonna steer clear of each other until it was time to meet at Amelia’s office. Do you remember seeing her?”

  He thought hard, then shook his head. “No good. . . . I can’t for the life of me remember seeing her that night.”

  “That begs the question, then: what if she didn’t leave her room after I last saw her? I mean, Gail wasn’t much of a party girl. What if she stayed hidden until it was time for us to meet?”

  “Someone would have needed to break into her room—”

  “Yeah, but there was no forced entry.”

  “So either the killer had a key . . . or she knew them.”

  We locked eyes. Every one of my talks with Theo ended in this unnerving place, with the sinking suspicion that whoever did this was someone we all knew. Just as frightening was that since I was attacked on the same night Gail was killed, this person could still be looking for me. . . .

  We had three things in common, Gail and I. Both of our fathers went to Stormcloud. Both of our fathers died in mysterious accidents. And both of us had been digging through the Stormcloud archives in secret. One or several of these commonalities had made us targets. The only thing that separated her fate and mine was that I had Zephyr and Theo to defend me.

  After many months apart, it was nice to reconnect with Theo, but these conversations did nothing for my high-headed anxiety. They stirred primal feelings inside me. There was a time, not so long ago, when I wanted nothing more than to give myself to Theo Brant, to open myself physically and spiritually to his strong, attendant hands and lips. I ached for him to make me a woman. The one time we’d kissed in front of the school was, in many ways, the purest rush of passion I’d ever felt. I could still conjure the sensation of his tongue slipping past my lips and smell the cypress shampoo that perfumed his golden locks.

  No matter how dire and bleak the topics we discussed, I could not help but feel an agonizing desire when I gazed into his hypnotic eyes. I nearly gasped whenever he bit his lower lip, puzzling out one of our hypotheticals.

  It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t been touched in months and was reaching a seismic level of horniness.

  That afternoon ten days before classes was no different. As I often did after having lunch with Theo, I rushed to my borrowed suite, dodging incoming students with their Yves Saint-Laurent rolling bags and Versace backpacks. Then I latched the door, pulled the chain, and ran a warm bath in the footed marble tub.

  More and more, I was forgoing showers in favor of slow, luxurious baths—with a decent amount of citrus-scented oil and a little Lana Del Rey playing on the speaker to cover up my, shall we say, appreciative noises. It’s debatable how clean these baths made me, but they relieved some of my tension.

  I slid gently into my soothing tub, my dress and undergarments cast aside as soon as I locked the door. No sooner had my back pressed against the slanted stone than my hands traced their way up my belly and ribs. My aching breasts responded to the pressure of my palms, and the moment I pinched my hard, wine-red nipples, the passion within me began boiling over. This was going to be fast, I knew. My lunch with Theo had primed me for immediate release.

  My left hand was under the water a second later, spreading myself and teasing my swelling clit.

  But I was interrupted in my self-pleasure by the sound of the suite’s door latch clicking open and the security chain going taut.