me. The other Night Keepers and their relationships with her weren’t going to fuck this up for us because I let myself get jealous.
Saint took a moment to lean over her, gathering her damp hair and tugging it away from her face to make her more comfortable. His fingers lingered against her cheek as he looked down at her and there was a softness to his features that I’d never seen in him before. He wiped his face to a blank mask again before he stood upright and I was guessing I hadn’t been meant to see that, but I had. And the most annoying thing was that it made me question some of the assumptions I’d been clinging to about him.
Because if he was capable of caring about her the way it was starting to look like he did, then I had to accept that there was more to him than I wanted to see.
He stepped away and I took my moment with her, leaning down and kissing her lips softly, the warmth of them banishing some of the worries in my heart. She was breathing deeply, no sign of her feeling unwell aside from the fact that she clearly needed to sleep it off and I took comfort from that. But the dark blue bruise which was growing on her jaw had my anger burning hot with the need to destroy whoever the fuck had hurt her.
Blake had already closed his eyes again and I glanced between Kyan and Saint as the three of us moved away to let them rest.
“Where are we going to start?” Kyan asked hungrily, his eyes alight with the promise of violence on the air.
“Did you let Toby out of the closet when you checked on him?” Saint asked, turning away from us and heading up to his room while we waited at the foot of the stairs.
“No,” Kyan replied with a shrug. “I had more pressing shit to deal with and I didn’t much feel like offering out explanations.”
We waited while Saint disappeared at the top of the stairs and he soon reappeared wearing a shirt and carrying one for me. I took it with a muttered thanks, pulling it on as we all headed for the door and grabbed our coats.
“We’d better go and let him out. Maybe if we give him the chance to speak up, he will have some insight into who might have set him up. There is of course a chance that he was just a convenient patsy, but someone as emotional as the Justice Ninja would have most likely targeted him because he was an enemy of theirs whether he knew it or not.” Saint pulled the door open and we all headed out into the cool evening air.
It was gone eleven so there weren’t many people about, but it wasn’t so late that we’d be waking up the entire campus either. Kyan swung his baseball bat happily as we walked, a dark smile tugging at the corner of his lips which promised someone would end the night screaming at his hand.
We made it to the Redwood Dining Hall where they’d left Toby earlier on and Saint used a key to unlock the dark building. He really shouldn’t have had that key and as the headmaster I was pretty sure it was my duty to take it from him alongside the rest of them, but it was really the least of the crimes I was letting him get away with around here so it didn’t seem like it was worth mentioning.
We strode down the corridor outside the dining hall until we came to the closet in question and Kyan unbolted the door while whistling the Kill Bill tune, Twisted Nerve by Bernard Herrmann.
“I thought we were meant to be here to say sorry, not scare the shit out of him,” I muttered.
“He’s covered in flour and olive oil,” Saint said flatly. “I think this conversation needs to be had after he’s cleaned up. No need to jump the gun.”
Kyan swung the door open, illuminating the flashlight on his cell phone and shining it down on the shivering, shirtless, flour and olive oil covered boy inside it.
“It’s your lucky day, Stalker,” Kyan announced, swinging his baseball bat up to rest over his shoulder. “But King Saint can’t bear to look at you while you’re in such a god awful state, let alone have a conversation with you in your current condition.” He waved a vague hand at