King of Cups (Stormcloud Academy 2)

CHAPTER 2

THEO

I didn’t know what I’d expected. Coming back to Stormcloud a week before the start of term was not something I’d generally do. Normally, I relished every second away from that nest of vipers, but that summer was different. I had someone on campus I wanted to return to.

Of course, that was idiotic logic. The last time I’d seen Biba, she was shutting the door in my face—the door to Zephyr Williams’ room. Knowing what was to follow in that room . . . it was too much for me to stomach on the last night of classes. I’d hopped into my car with two trash bags of clothing and bolted. I was halfway to Milan Malpensa before I received the news about Gail Monfort. I’d fired off a text to Biba, not wanting to call her while she was with . . . him.

I’m so sorry, I’d typed. It was all I could think to say.

She hadn’t replied. Had I expected her to?

I’d done my best over the next two months to keep Biba Quinn and Gail Monfort out of my mind. Miss Amelia had arranged a last-minute volunteer posting in the Solomon Islands. The Oceanic nation had been dealing with rising waters from climate change. They desperately needed volunteer labor to shore up their waterfront homes.

It was hopeless work, unfortunately. The waters would continue to rise. The floods would keep coming. All we could do was add additional support to the base of the homes and find places to build makeshift levees against the ocean. They would hold a few years, at best, unless significant action were taken to stem melting icecaps and weather changes.

Selfishly, I felt like the work had been more charitable to me than it was to the Islands. It had succeeded in helping me forget the madness of Stormcloud. Each morning, I would wake with the sun to a breakfast of fresh fruit, toasted bread, and coffee, strap on a harness, and position thick logs under the decking of a local family’s home. I wondered what it would be like to have been part of a family that I could go back to. What would it be like to have a home to return to during summers and holidays?

In the afternoon, I would heave sandbags into low surf until my arms ached. Then I’d rest in a hammock until sunset. We had built bonfires in the sand at night, cooked fish and pork over the open flame, danced to the music on our phones, and drank kava and cheap beer. It was heaven. I’d slept each night like a dead man.

As August had approached, however, my peace of mind had begun to dissipate. I’d started waking before the sunrise and lying in my cot for hours, staring into the darkness. My heart would thud in my chest like it might burst through my ribs. What was I afraid of?

The answer was simple: Biba. I was afraid I would have to leave that paradise and return to the mountaintop butchery that was Stormcloud. I feared the first time I would see Biba and Zephyr together on campus. I feared the first time I had to pass Gail’s old room. It wasn’t like the three of us—Gail, Biba, and me—ever felt truly contented: we were always struggling against some malevolent force we neither understood nor were equipped to fight. But for a time, I had convinced myself we could overcome the darkness.

Then it took Gail.

It was going to take Biba too, and she was willingly walking into it.

I did not think I could stand by and watch the Kings corrupt her, chew her up, and leave her broken in the trash pile behind the school. Biba Quinn had such fire inside her—resilience, intelligence, and grace. That had drawn me to her when I saw her in the dining hall her first morning at the school.

I wished to God that I’d had the strength to take her in my arms and kiss her that first night. I wished I’d told her I cared for her and would always protect her, no matter how bad things got. I wished I’d decided earlier to fight for her.

It was too late, and each morning in the Solomon Islands, I had to contend with my own failure. The school year was approaching, and soon, I’d have to return. I didn’t have wealthy parents like Zephyr Williams, Sol Stamos, or Arvo Hurley. I didn’t have parents at all. Just like Gail and Biba, I was an orphan. I needed Stormcloud to find my way in the world.

One morning, I’d stepped into the cool, powdery sand in the predawn hours and breathed in the salty air. Suddenly, it was clear what I had to do. I needed to return to campus immediately before Zephyr could get there. I needed to see Biba, alone.

“Theo,” she gasped, stopping dead in her tracks.

I was as surprised as she was. Biba had emerged from a service door that I didn’t even know was there. I was mustering the courage to enter the school and find her, and then, out of nowhere, we were suddenly face-to-face.

The cloudless mountain summer had given her fair skin a golden glow and brought out some freckles on her cheeks. That flaxen hair was now a hundred shades of blonde, cascading over her bared shoulders and down the swell of her breasts. She wore a powder blue chiffon sundress that seemed to flutter weightlessly around her perfect body.

I wanted to taste her lips right then and there. She seemed, at that moment, to be the perfect girl I’d fallen in love with last spring, before the Equinox Ball and Zephyr’s bullshit.

I found I was smiling dumbly, helpless in her presence.

She returned my grin with a sweet, closed-mouth smile of her own.

“I came back early,” I heard myself admitting. “I wanted to see you. Can we sit somewhere and talk?”

“I’d like that,” she replied immediately.

The sun felt a little warmer.

We sat on a bench in the courtyard, enjoying the refreshing breeze from the mountain peaks’ stubbornly icy caps. I told Biba about the Solomon Islands, and she discussed her summer working for Miss Amelia.

“Island life agrees with you,” she complimented me. “You look better than I’ve seen you since . . .”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she meant: since I was beaten nearly to death last spring.