Foretold (St. Bastian Institute 1)

“How do you plan to do that?”

“You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Darya, if I weren’t here, you’d be on the floor writhing in agony right now.”

“I know that, and I’m grateful. Seriously, I owe you one, but leave Belinda to me. I won’t let her get away with this, and what I do to her will be much scarier than a verbal dressing down from Principal Wolf. Hell, half the girls at this school go out of their way to be sent to his office so that they can swoon over how handsome he is.”

Peter looked intrigued by this last part. “Not you?”

I scrunched up my face. “Ira Wolf is one of my mother’s closest friends. He also used to date my aunt. That would be like fancying my uncle or something. Plus, he’s like, seventy years old.” Not that he looked his age, but still. Quite like vampires, shapeshifters tended to stop aging for a long time after they reached their late thirties. My father had been born in the eighteenth century and barely looked a day over forty.

A flicker of humour crossed Peter’s features. “Okay, noted, but I still think you need to tell him about Belinda. Even if you plan to deal with her, whatever that means, the school still needs to know she’s capable of using magic to hurt people.”

I stared at him, feeling torn. Peter was right. One of the main tenets of our magic classes was to do no harm unless as a form of defence. I hadn’t even been paying attention to Belinda when she cast a spell on me just now.

My eyes were still locked with Peter’s, and I didn’t know what to say to him, so I replied, “I need to use the bathroom.”

I turned and hurried from the gym, not even noticing that Peter was following me until I felt his hand clasp around my shoulder. I stopped in my tracks.

“What do you want?” I huffed and heard him exhale. We were standing in a deserted hallway, the silence echoing around us.

“I want you to come to the principal’s office with me and inform him of what happened during class just now,” Peter replied evenly.

I turned around, and his hand fell away from my shoulder. “You want me to tell the principal that I took all six foot three of you down with my hands behind my back?”

Peter frowned. “Don’t play dumb, Darya.”

“Look, I’m not ratting out Belinda. I want her to suffer a real punishment. Not a slap on the wrists,” I said, my dark half shining through. I liked to think I was a good, moral person, but there was a part of me that was more beast than human, a part that became incensed at injustice and corruption. So far, my life hadn’t provided me with many situations to lure this dark half out, but I always knew it was there, lingering beneath the surface, just waiting for the right time to emerge.

“That’s not your decision to make. You don’t have the authority to dole out vigilante justice. That’s not how it works.”

I barked a laugh. “Wow. I never imagined the stoic and aloof Peter Girard would be such a rule follower.”

He shot me a funny look. “Aloof?”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t purposefully cultivate a persona to keep people away from you.”

Now he was the one to laugh, but there was no joy in it. “If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t need to cultivate a persona. My last name alone is enough to keep me ostracised for the rest of my life.”

For the barest second, there was a sadness in his eyes that made my chest tighten. Did he feel lonely? Did he wish to have a large group of friends, to be accepted by the other magical families here at St. Bastian’s?

“And besides, if anyone cultivates a persona to keep people away, it’s you,” Peter went on, and I blinked at him.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s obvious that you enjoy people being afraid of you.”

“People aren’t afraid of me,” I said, frowning. Were they?

“You barely speak to anyone except for Grace and Nic, and you’re one of the only dhampirs in the school. You’re a rare species that people don’t know a lot about. You could have abilities we aren’t even aware of. The way you spar with a singular focus in Weapons and Self-Defence is definitely frightening, and that’s before you even factor in who your parents are.”

“Even if all that were true, it still didn’t stop Belinda from messing with me.”

“That’s because Belinda is a spoiled brat with an inflated sense of her mediocre powers,” Peter said, and I had to admit, there was something sexy about him when he insulted my enemies.

A faint smile touched my lips. “Well, it’s good to know someone else noticed she isn’t anything special. I don’t understand how so many people think she’s amazing.”