Broken Empire (Boys of Oak Park Prep 3)

My body flew through the empty frame of the mirror, and then I was falling.

Falling.

Hurtling through so much empty space it felt like it would never end.

I was tossed about like a piece of driftwood in a choppy sea, jerked one way and then another as the world around me spun.

A harsh, grating screech filled my ears—filled my entire being, eating me up from the inside out, devouring me alive until I was nothing but deafening sound and pain.

Then blackness swallowed me up.

The first thing I became conscious of was the noise around me. Unlike the scream of metal that had invaded my dreams, this was low and muffled. Gentle, like the sound of the ocean as I walked along the beach, soft waves that rose and fell in a hypnotic rhythm. It was soothing and comforting, and it made me want to stay in this quiet place a little longer, where there was only the soft sound and darkness.

But I couldn’t, could I?

I had somewhere to go, somewhere I was supposed to be.

That thought jabbed at my brain like a pinprick, and I stirred slightly, an inarticulate sound falling from my lips.

The noises around me stopped, and it was the utter silence that finally compelled me to pry my heavy eyelids open.

Bright light swam in my vision, and I blinked it away, each rise and fall of my lids seeming to take several seconds. I was staring up at a pristine white ceiling, and faces hovered over me.

Five of them.

I knew them all, knew them so well I could picture every detail of their features even though my eyes were having a hard time staying focused.

“…Grandpa…?” I asked, the word slurring out of my mouth like thick molasses.

My gaze settled on the figure standing near the foot of the bed. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and he looked… haggard. Worse than he’d looked since he’d had his stroke. A spike of worry tried to penetrate the fog in my mind.

He shouldn’t be pushing himself. He shouldn’t be letting stress get to him. It isn’t good for him.

“Talia.”

He breathed my name with both relief and pain in his voice, and I tried to shake my head, to tell him not to worry, but I wasn’t sure if I actually did it or not. I felt disconnected from my body, as if I were on another plane of existence and merely peering through my own eyes like they were portals into this room.

“I tried…” My half-formed thoughts came out as half-formed words. “Tried… to stop.”

My grandfather’s face pinched, and he drew in a deep breath. “It’s all right, Talia. You’re all right. I’ll go get the doctor.”

He stepped away from the end of the bed, and the four faces that had hovered at the edges of my vision moved closer. Two on each side of me, gazing down with intense, dark stares. Their expressions were set in grim lines, and I thought maybe they were each touching me, but I couldn’t be sure.

I couldn’t be sure I still had a body at all.

“What. Happened?” the boy with emerald green eyes asked. Fury radiated from him like it might rip through his skin and destroy the whole world at any moment.

“Dude, Mason. Calm down.” That was Finn, and although his broad shoulders were stiff with tension too, he shot his friend a quelling look. “She just woke up. Give her a minute to just fucking breathe.”

Mason’s nostrils flared, and the muscles in his jaw popped as he clenched his teeth. I could hear his harsh breaths, and I wished I could find my hand to put it on his. To touch him. To release some of that anger and tension before it tore him apart.

But now that he’d posed the question, my brain latched onto it, spinning it around in my head like a puzzle.

What had happened?

Adena had made copies of every page in the little black book I’d spent the semester writing in as I gathered damaging information about the Princes.

She’d taken the videos and pictures and posted them online before flinging the photocopied pages out of the windows of Craydon Hall, sticking them on trees and streetlamps across campus.