Page 26 of Twisting Beauty

“You wound me, Ru,” he called after me in mock hurt as his friends’ laughter tittered across the front lawn.

He didn’t follow me, but the unease clung to me.

As I climbed the steps to the main door, my nerves stretched so tight they almost hummed. Every footstep slapped too loud against the stone. Sweat gathered between my shoulder blades beneath Rua’s clothes, and my grip kept slipping on the books from how damp my palms had become.

The manor had been one kind of stage. Ravenwood was another—bigger, louder, and so more public. Every single student or teacher was a threat to my deception.

It would be even harder to survive here. I’d have to be even more on my guard.

My reflection caught in the glass of the door, pale and wrong beneath the dark spill of Rua’s clothes.

Shite. The collar had shifted. The cut on my throat showed in a thin, red line above the lace.

I yanked the fabric back into place, but the movement came too late. A girl standing a few feet away had already gone still, her gaze fixed on the place I’d covered. She leaned into her friend and began to whisper, her eyes still on me.

Feckin’ great.

I pushed through the giant gothic doors with the bag digging into my shoulder and Rua’s books clutched to my chest and let the building engulf me.

Inside, the entrance hall rose up in a sweep of dark stone, vaulted ceilings, and carved beams blackened with age, the split staircase curving up like claws to a second mezzanine level.

Footsteps cracked against the flagstones and voices echoed. The air smelled of old paper, chalk dust, and furniture polish, adding to the jangle of noise in my head.

Portraits of old deans and important donors lined the walls in heavy gilt frames, all stern mouths and hawkish stares that seemed to follow me as I passed them. My shoulder blades tightened with each step. At any moment it felt as if a hand would clamp down on my shoulder and a voice would cut through the hall, Imposter!

“Miss Lasair.”

A stern male voice called out before he stepped across my path, causing me to halt.

Silver threaded his dark hair at the temples, and his sharp features were softly weathered with age. Everything about him was polished and restrained, from his immaculate tailoring to the measured way he held himself.

I bowed my head in respect as his name fell off my tongue. “Dean Bewley.”

He adjusted one cuff, a signet ring flashing on his hand. “We weren’t advised of your return.”

Justifications rushed up too fast, something about Romania, travel, timing spilling out my mouth.

Bewley just strode away, leaving me speaking into empty space, a blunt dismissal.

I gathered myself, set my shoulders, and kept walking, Rua’s instincts tugging me along.

Conversation thinned around me in strange little pockets as I moved deeper into the hallway. A pair of girls glanced over at me and said something too low to catch. A boy by the lockers grinned at me for too long. Another student looked away too fast the second I met his eyes.

My next step faltered.

Up ahead, Lorcan stood around a set of lockers with three boys, their voices low and loose with private amusement until I came level with them. The whole group fell silent as one. Four heads turned. Four sets of eyes dragged over me.

Lorcan said nothing, but his stare hit hardest, sharp and openly hostile, like he resented the fact that I was there at all.

I kept my head down and hurried past, too busy trying not to look at him to take in anything else before it was too late.

A shoulder clipped mine hard enough to jolt the books against my chest.

I stumbled one step and tightened my grip before any of them could hit the floor again. The humiliation from the front lawn was still too fresh. Another spill here would finish me.

The student kept walking.

The casualness of it unsettled me more than open hostility would have.