Chapter 115: _ The Betrayer Friend

The door swung shut behind me with a thud, clicking into place just as Ivar had demanded. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, leaning my back against the wood for a quiet second. I was back in Room 3B. Safe. Or at least, as safe as a markless commoner tangled up with four royal heirs could possibly be in an academy full of snipers.

I pushed off the door, smoothing down the front of my dress.

"Ivar is actually outside," I called out to the empty room, offering a self-deprecating smile. "He made me promise to wait until he heard the lock click. Can you believe..."

The words died on my tongue.

The room was in ruin.

Trunks lay overturned across the floor, their contents strewn over the shattered remains of Miriel’s wooden desk. Shattered glass crunched underfoot. But it wasn’t the mess that made my stomach plummet; it was the two figures tied to the chairs in the center of the room.

Bren and Miriel.

Their wrists were bound tightly with anti-magic rope. Thick leather strips were jammed across their mouths as gags, muffling whatever panicked sounds they were trying to force past their lips. Bren’s face was pale and scraped, her eyes wide and bloodshot as she thrashed against his bonds the second she saw me.

Miriel wasn’t thrashing. She slumped forward in her chair. Her shoulders were shaking violently, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks as silent, heartbroken sobs wracked her entire body. Bren was awkwardly leaning her upper body toward her, trying as best as she could while tied down to rub her shoulder against Miriel’s in clumsy comfort.

I froze, every single drop of blood draining straight from my face.

What happened? Who did this? Was it Headmistress Maisie?

Before I could even take a step forward to untie them, the silence of the room was shattered by a choked gasp from Miriel. Bren managed to spit her leather gag out, chest heaving as she stared at me not with relief, but with betrayal and exhaustion.

And then, like a physical blow to the chest, an epiphany hit me so hard I stumbled backward.

Miriel.

Miriel had a huge schoolgirl crush on Prince Ivar Wulfram.

Ever since the Sunken Arch, she has lived in a daze of red-and-black daydreams. She was the one who had gushed endlessly about his mismatched eyes, his swagger, and the way he commanded a room. When Ivar had randomly danced with her at the gala, Miriel had convinced herself that she was the one the Wolf Prince was trailing when he stalked us.

I had known. Gods help me, I had known. There had been a dozen moments when I wanted to pull her aside, shake her gently, and tell her the inconvenient truth that the Wolf Prince’s strange interest in our circle had nothing to do with her. But every time I saw her beaming face, every time I listened to her talk about how a royal heir was noticing her, my cowardice had won out. I didn’t want to burst her bubble. I didn’t want to crush her fragile happiness.

So I kept my mouth shut.

And now?

Now, Miriel hadn’t just found out the truth from schoolyard gossip. She hadn’t just heard rumors whispered in the corridors.

She had watched it.

The entire academy—every student, every professor, every noble snob—had stood in front of the jumbo scrying screen in the Quadrangle yesterday afternoon. They had all looked up at the sky and watched the arrogant, untouchable Wolf Prince lift a girl against the stone wall, rip her tunic open, sink his fangs into her neck, and take her in high-definition glory.

And as Miriel stared at me now with a tear-streaked face twisted in devastation, her eyes dropped down to the dark, pulsing wolf mark proudly displayed on my collarbone and she went numb.

"Miriel..." I choked out, my hands trembling as I took a tentative step forward. "Miriel, please. Let me explain..."

"Don’t. Don’t you dare say a single damn word to her, Elira." Bren snapped at me.

I stopped dead in my tracks, stung as if I’d been whipped. I looked from Bren’s hard, judging eyes over to Miriel.

Miriel slowly raised her head. The loyal friend who had stood beside me during all the hurdles of Last Bastion, looked at me as if I were a stranger she despised. Her eyes were red-rimmed and hollow.

"You knew," Miriel whispered, her voice cracking so violently it barely sounded human. "You actually knew."

"Miriel, I didn’t mean for..."

"Every single night," Miriel interrupted, her voice rising in a hysterical pitch as fresh tears spilled over her lashes. "Every single night in this very room, I sat right there on that bed and gushed about him! I told you everything! I told you how much I loved him, how I thought he looked at me, how I thought maybe—just maybe—a fallen noble could have something special!"

She let out a dry, jagged laugh that sounded like glass grinding together.

"And you sat there! You listened to me smile and play the pathetic fool while you were sneaking around behind my back, spreading your legs for the exact man I wanted!"

"That’s not how it happened! I didn’t seek him out, Miriel! The bond—it’s a fated bond! I didn’t ask for this!" I cried out, desperation clawing at my throat as my own eyes burned with shameful tears.

"Oh, shut up with your fated bond garbage!" Miriel screamed, straining so hard against her ropes that the wood of the chair groaned in protest. "It’s always about you, isn’t it?! The great, tragic Elira No-One! The poor little trench rat who steals everyone’s attention! First Raice, then Ajax, and now him! You didn’t just take him from me, Elira—you humiliated me in front of the entire realm! Do you have any idea what it felt like standing out there in the Quadrangle yesterday, watching the entire school watch the boy I loved fuck you against a wall?!"

Her words struck me like physical daggers. I felt small, filthy, and profoundly disgusting.

A betrayer. A fraud.