Page 18 of Savage Elites

I nodded. “Let’s go back to the hideout and make preparations for tomorrow.”

The boys treated me to therapeutic bed baths both in the evening and on Christmas day, chasing away the last of my melancholy. They’d even bought me the latest iPhone to replace the one I had lost.

In the following week, the headaches receded to the point where I no longer felt pressure in my skull or throbbing pains. Since the neurologist had told me to finish the course of medication, I continued taking the pills.

In the few days before term started, anxiety nibbled at the edges of my mind. The boys had filled my heart with their love and attention during our time at the snowy oasis, and I wasn’t ready to return to Brittas Academy.

On Sunday afternoon, I rested on the sofa watching Leopold and Sebastian move boxes from the treehouse into the jeep, and a pang of regret struck me through the chest.

Leopold sank into the leather seat next to me and placed a hand on my thigh. “Headache?”

I shook my head. The painkillers and stress-relieving orgasms were doing a tremendous job. “What if the person who had tried to kill me made another attempt?”

He glanced up at Sebastian, who was carrying my case to the door of the treehouse.

A pained look crossed Sebastian’s features, and he fixed his gaze onto the wooden floor. “Between Leo, Kash, and me, there’ll always be one of us at your side.”

Later that evening, the boys escorted me to my room in the west wing, where a few of the girls in my year strolled back from dinner. Ashley hadn’t been to my room since her initiation, but dread rolled through my belly at the thought of her lurking inside.

I shook off those paranoid thoughts, stepped into the room, and switched on the light. An envelope lay on my desk.

“What’s that about?” asked Sebastian.

“Do you want me to do the honors?” asked Leopold.

“Would you mind?” I asked.

“Not at all.” He strode into the room, picked it up, and tore it open. After pulling out a slip of paper and reading its contents, his face fell. “Not good.”

“What does it say?”

“Please visit Mrs. Benazir’s office on Monday at 7 am.”

* * *

The next morning, the scent of lavender filled my nostrils as I stepped into the headmistress’s office. Mrs. Benazir glowered up at me from her desk chair, and behind her stood the imposing, dark figure of Miss Claymore. The deputy headmistress’s face twisted into a grimace that made me wonder if she was constipated.

My insides knitted themselves into a series of complicated knots, and the blood vessels around my brain pounded in time with my quickening heart. How would I tell them that one of their students had tried to kill me when I had no evidence and no recollection of that disastrous Monday night?

“Sit,” said Mrs. Benazir.

I lowered myself onto the chair and gulped.

The headmistress pushed a copy of the Cumbria Gazette across her desk.

DRUNKEN SCHOOLGIRL PLUMMETS OFF HARD KNOTT PASS

Another pupil of the renowned Brittas Academy succumbs to the stress of maintaining the Elite Register top spot.

Throat tightening, I skimmed the contents of the article. The reporter had dug around for details and depicted me as an orphan taken up by Mrs. Benazir to artificially inflate the grades of paying students.

The article also said that students paid £80,000 a year for their education and compared it with Eton College, an institution established in 1440 that charged £42,500 and Institut Le Rosey, the most expensive school in the world, which cost approximately £105,000.

I sucked in a breath. Corrine had underestimated the price of Brittas Academy by fifty percent, but her diary entry matched the journalist’s scathing remarks.

Before I could turn the page, Mrs. Benazir’s sharp voice cut through the air like a whip. “Explain how the reporter linked you to the academy. Have you been speaking to the press?”

I reared back. Of all the things I had expected the headmistress to say, it wasn’t an accusation of deliberately tarnishing her precious academy’s reputation.