Here Lies a Saint (Here Lies #2) - C.L. Matthews Page 0,2

with life and madness.

What draws my attention most is the way the moonlight shines in through the glass above the window pane. It's shaped like... fuck. It's shaped like a serpent. I stare at the ground at where it points—on top of the rug.

This feels like some weird-ass fantasy novel, the light coming into a room and pointing at the ground. Maybe it's a coincidence? It's not like this is fiction.

I move the carpet over from the floor and see a hatch. The center of the lock looks exactly like the little emblem on my necklace. I pull it from around my neck, the sword Mom gave me for my sixteenth birthday shining bright against the flashlight pointed at the wood hatch. Sliding it into the metal-encased lock, I turn it until a click sounds out.

"Fuck," I audibly gasp.

Inside the floor sits a book.

The one I've been looking for.

The one I've spent the last year in search of.

The one that'll save us all.

Chapter Two

Present

Lennox

I warned Colt.

But like every time I’ve tried giving advice to her, she doesn't take it.

When you're raised in this world, told what would happen if you break the rules of the game, and beaten until those warnings become creed, you know when shit will go down.

Stopping Colt before she made it to the Dean's office was for her protection. Did I know they'd kill Yang for her part in this? No. Did I know Yang would be here? No. Did I know someone would pay the price for them running amuck and seeking answers they had no right to have? Yes.

If anything, though, I thought they would hurt Colt.

I stare at Colt on the sodden ground. It smells of death, dew, and sadness.

Her eyes are filled to the brim with sorrow. Her normally dark contrasted face full of makeup is bare. Her blue eyes, the ones I've loved since seeing them the first time, are present. They're crystal clear and visible in every sense.

The pure heartbreak she's experiencing has me on edge. Not for Yang but for Colt. Unlike Colt, Yang knew the rules. She knew what she was doing.

She betrayed the cause and paid for it.

We’re still with Yang’s body in the grass outside. "Everyone needs to leave," Dean Rimbaur explains, clutching her chest. She's in a nightgown and robe. Her intent was apparently sleep, while the rest of the guys and I prepared for the walls to tumble.

None of us make a move to leave.

She narrows her eyes at us. "Mr. DeLeon, you may be student body president, and your father may be one of our largest donors, but you do not get to disobey me."

Emily Rimbaur is a formidable woman. She's tiny, a buck twenty-five tops and short, but her tenacity and drive to prove that having a pussy doesn't make her weak is definitely something to respect.

I nod at the others, and all but Tennison leave. His face is ashen, depleted of what little light he has, and seeing his fear and the trepidation in his posture and knowing he's as stiff as Yang's body... I can’t fix all that.

He's the empath of the bunch.

Feels too much, experiences it all, and hurts others to offset the pain riddled inside him.

Much like Ross, Tennison uses his humor to counteract his pain. Unlike Ross, he's constantly and visibly unhappy. Ross acts the sobering kind of happy. Fake. Over the top. Flagrantly obtuse.

"Going to get him?" Jordan asks, placing a hand on my shoulder. We’re in the tree line between Opal and Crystal.

I shrug him off, still not over the bullshit he said about Maxim. Hell, or the shit he said about Cassidy.

He smirks at me, that fucker with his charming persona and asshole reality. I hate it.

I hate him.

"He's coping how he can."

"He didn't even like her," Ridge comments, following us close behind as we trail through the aspens. The air is humid, the cold kind that brings a clamminess to skin and an unbearable bone-deep chill.

"She's not who he's coping for."

"She'll be fine," Ross mutters, but when I rotate and spy his solemn expression, I know as much as he does that she won't be.

She lost Cass less than a year ago. Yang might have been at Duponte this year, but she mattered to Colt, keeping her sane and happy during the times we’d abandoned her.

"Yang knew what she was doing," Ridge adds, and I want to smack him for stating the obvious. Whether he said it to make us all more aware