“You still don’t understand how this works,” he huffed in frustration. “No one will take me seriously if they find out about us. If I want to impress Devereaux, I have to show him that I’m one of them…”
I wrenched from his grasp, staring at him in disbelief. Couldn’t he hear how sick he sounded?
“With the right kind of girl at your side, you mean?” I countered, not caring that my voice was reaching a decibel level unwelcome in a library. I bit down on the inside of my cheek to stifle my temper.How could he do this to me?We’d spent weeks sneaking around, avoiding speaking in classes unless strictly necessary.
Last summer, Monty Prescott caught us wandering campus after dark. I couldn’t recall the details of the lie August had hastily fabricated to explain why we were alone together on the grounds—something about attending a dinner thrown by a mutual professor. Whatever it was, August’s tight expression plainly displayed his anxiety that Monty might guess at the truth—that we’d planned to steal a moment of privacy under thecloak of darkness. When Monty finally departed, his suspicions quelled, August and I stood together in silence.
A night jar crooned in a nearby grove, its song like an elegy, a death knell. The conflagration that had engulfed us only moments before Monty’s arrival had gone cold.
I swallowed hard, a lump growing in my throat. “Well, I’m sorry, August. I’m sorry that my father was an academic with a drinking problem and not the president of a fucking country club. Unlike your friends, I wasn’t bred to be a society wife or a show pony.” I couldn’t stop the hot, salty tears from streaming down my cheeks and dripping onto the carpet. If only I’d been born the heiress to a Penbury gold mine, maybe then he’d tell his precious Devereaux about us. Maybe then he wouldn’t be ashamed of me.
I fought the urge to collapse onto the carpet at the look of pity in August’s eyes. Anger and betrayal burned through me, and I was overwhelmed by the sudden urge to break things. Maybe I should’ve seen this coming, considering that August had recently become obsessed with joining the Gilded Circle. In the aftermath of his father’s financial ruin, he’d become desperate to redeem his family’s name by rising through the social ranks. Acceptance into any of Ouverham College’s exclusive societies would do wonders for his social standing, but I’d underestimated just how far he’d go to obtain that security.
Was it possible he’d truly erased everything between us with just a few sentences? In one conversation, he’d dismissed every stolen caress, every word exchanged in notes passed between classes, the way his laugh rumbled through a room.
“I’m sorry you fell for someone so selfish,” he said after a moment.
I staggered back, surprised by his admission, waiting for the lie to cross my lips. It never came.
“Why now?” I demanded.
August shrugged, avoiding my gaze. “It just… felt like time. There’s no point in dragging things out.”
It occurred to me that he might be concealing the truth, telling a lie by omission. His avoidant gaze and evasive body language seemed to confirm my suspicions.
“Something else is going on, and you don’t want to tell me what it is.” I allowed the accusation to hang heavily between us, my gaze lingering on his pale skin, the purple shadows ringing his eyes.
“You look…”Terrible. Sick. Like someone I hardly recognize. “Exhausted,” I finished.
August arranged his features into a neutral expression before pushing past my accusation. “Trust me, Arden,” he said in a clipped tone. “It’ll be better this way.”
“I can’t believe you would do this to me, today of all days.”
“It needed to be done,” he muttered, looking at the floor.
He knew that today marked the second anniversary of my father’s death. He knew, and he was still dumping me.
Frowning, August turned to leave. Just before he reached the stairwell, he paused. “Our agreement still stands?”
The way he phrased it wasn’t really a question.
“Of course,” I snarled. I shouldn’t be surprised that August cared more about his secrets than anything else.
When he disappeared, I released the breath I’d been holding.It’s over,I told myself.He doesn’t love you, and he probably never did. He knows you won’t tell anyone. Let him go.
Worse than my misjudgment of August was my former willingness to accept his secrecy, which meant I was now forced to bear my heartbreak in silence. Our previous agreement promised as much. The sconces on the walls flickered, signaling that the library was closing soon. I leaned against the nearest bookshelf, struggling to draw air into my lungs in the suffocating silence. Outside of myths and romance novels, no one actually died of a broken heart, did they?
My father’s words suddenly clanged through me:The truth is a dangerous thing, Little Arrow.The saying had become something of a family proverb, shared just between the two of us. I was his Little Arrow—a nickname based on my last name, Farrow.
I was grateful that at least he wasn’t witnessing his daughter’s disgrace. If they’d met, my father would’ve hated August. He loathed ambitious social climbers, and he’d worn resentment on his sleeve ever since Ouverham rejected his teaching application years ago.
My father, Malcolm Flynch, had raised me on a steady diet of the classics, but my true inheritance amounted to a collection of useless axioms and a scholarship to the most exclusive private college in the Northeast—the latter of which had doomed me to four years of misery. But my father’s myths and stories hadn’t prepared me for this. I looked around at the endless rows of books, the cozy leather armchair I loved to curl into with a novel. The Labyrinth had been like a second home. A sanctuary. And August had ruined it.
The last of the lights winked out in the library, ensconcing me in darkness. A sudden rustling in the nearby stacks had me whirling around to see—no one.
Steeling myself, I called out, “Who’s there?”
An eerie silence met my inquiry. Fear pricked along my spine like thorns. I scarcely dared to breathe as I peered into the pitch-black room. Slowly, with my heart thundering in my ears, I crept across the carpet until my fingers found the hilt of a heavy brass lamp. If some sicko wanted to attack me in the library, I wasn’t going to make it easy for them.