Page 86 of Savage Elites

“About what?” I lowered myself onto his armchair.

He glanced to the side. “I failed you, just as I failed Corrine.”

“How?”

“I was possibly the last person who saw you on the night Miss Claymore tried to kill you.”

My mouth fell open, and a dozen questions rose to the back of my throat. The first of them was to demand why he had left me vulnerable to the whims of an obsessive murderer. I shook off the accusation and forced myself to listen.

His Adam’s apple rose and fell before he said, “If I hadn’t left you in the infirmary, Miss Claymore wouldn’t have caught up with you.”

“Then why—”

“After the auction, we went out for drinks, and I explained to you exactly what had happened between Corrine and me. How my actions had killed her spirit.”

My eyes bulged. What auction? Nothing he said made any sense. “How could you possibly kill—”

“I should never have started the game.” Prakash picked up the kettle and took it into the bathroom.

I bit down on my lip, trying to process a resurfacing memory. “But you fell in love with her.”

“You remember?” He stepped out of the bathroom, holding the kettle.

“Snippets.” I rubbed my temples and pictured velvet chairs and a butler with a tailcoat. “We sat in a fancy bar with table service, right?”

“That’s right,” he said with a lilt of hope in his voice.

My muscles relaxed. If he had attacked me as Miss Claymore had implied, he wouldn’t seem so pleased about the return of my memory. “But I don’t get how you killed her spirit.”

Prakash turned on the kettle and picked up the teapot. “Corrine seemed perfectly normal before I started the game and perfectly normal until Geraldine and Bianca announced that she was my pig.”

The only way I could describe my brain during this conversation was déjà vu.

“Then she changed.” I quickly added, “Cormac said she had become obsessed.”

He knelt at his cupboard and pulled out a few items. “That’s a mild way to put things, but towards the end, Corrine was no longer the sweet girl I knew.”

As I nodded, my gaze caught the knife in Prakash’s hand. My stomach twisted, and I placed my hand on the arm of the sofa… Just in case my memories were all wrong. “There’s one more thing about that night.”

His brows drew together. “What?”

“You telling me that you’d always save me. And you’ve always been there for me whenever possible.”

“But not enough.” He placed the knife on the cabinet and picked up a cake tin.

A gust of relief blew through my insides, and I gave myself a mental slap for not dismissing Miss Claymore’s words. I pushed myself off the sofa and strode to the other side of the room.

“Kash, look at me.”

He turned around, meeting my gaze, his dark, fathomless eyes etched with pain.

I pressed my hands on both his cheeks. “You couldn’t possibly have killed Corrine.”

“How could you know?” bitterness laced his voice. “You weren’t even in the academy when she died.”

“Because you made a stupid mistake when you were young. Because two vindictive girls got between you and poisoned Corrine’s mind. Because no murderer would go to such lengths to rescue a girl he didn’t even know.”

The corner of his lip curled for a millisecond in one of those ironic smiles. Maybe we’d had this conversation already, and I’d forgotten it. Maybe it was because he considered us more than just classmates.