Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 25

We’ve been back at Sorrowsong for a week, and Alex has spent half of it in Paris with his mother’s doctors.

But the other half? Bliss. Drinks in the Hemlock halls with Alex, Vin, Bella, Jack, and Colette. Poker games in the Nightshade library. Unthinkable nights in Alex’s bed. Shared desserts in the dining hall.

I could grow to like Sorrowsong if this is what it’s like.

We both have a free period after lunch today. I thought a walk might be nice, but Alex, not so much. He’s only really interested in one extracurricular activity at the moment. He is really good at it, though. We are really good at it.

“We need business cards. We fuck like professionals,” he says breathlessly, making me laugh. Completely undressed, he sits up in bed with a lazy sigh, kissing the purple bruises on my naked breasts and reaching for the sharing bag of crisps on the side table. His phone lights up with a call.

“Mind if I get it?”

“Go for it.”

He puts the phone on Speaker, folding a hand behind his head. “Hello?”

“Hi, Alex. It’s Ms. Dunn, Fleur’s senior year mentor. Is now a bad time?”

“No, hit me.”

“She says she’s not sending any college applications at all? She’s very bright.”

Alex sighs. “I know she is. She’s…we have a lot going on at home. She’s struggling with it all.”

“Should I urge her to reconsider?”

“She’s a teenage girl. Asking her to do something will make her not want to do it. If she’s going, she’ll do it of her own volition.”

“Her attendance is slipping this month.”

He sits up. I wish I could fix things for him. I’m glad the report won’t see the light of day. “I had no idea. I’ve not been in the country.”

“I’ll see you at her parent teacher conference in February?”

“I’ll be there, hopefully with my mother, too.” He hits hang up and flops his head back on the pillow. The second he does, his phone rings again. I’m sure he doesn’t have a favourite sibling, but when Mia FaceTimes him, his eyes light up.

“MiMi.”

“Ally. How’s you?”

“Good. Guess who’s here.”

Her face brightens. “Ophelia! Alex, get your ugly face off the camera and show me your girlfriend.”

I laugh, waving to the girl on the camera. She has her father’s blonde hair. “Hey, Mia. How was the party the other day?”

She lowers her voice. “I had a beer.”

“What?” Interjects Alex. “You’re fifteen.”

“Whatever, it was gross, anyway. I called to show you guys this.”

She pans the camera round onto a loaf of sourdough. “You made that?” I ask.

“Yep. Wish you could smell it. I had to feed the starter every day to keep it alive.”

“Christ. I have a hard time keeping myself alive.”

Alex laughs, nuzzling my neck from behind. “That’s why I’m here.”

She turns the camera back onto her proud grin. “You guys are cute.”

Alex rests his chin on my shoulder. “Very clever, Mia. You better recreate it next time I visit.”

“Will Ophelia come too?”

Alex squeezes my hand gently. He knows as well as I do, I have a lot of personal development to go through before I can step into their house. He pulls me back down to the mattress, swamping us in the duvet. “It’s far for her to travel. Next time we’re staying in London, she might.”

“You guys are so lazy.”

He’s anything but lazy, but that conversation is not appropriate for a fifteen-year-old.

It’s late by the time I reach the eastern spire of the castle for a study session. My phone pings as I climb the steps.

Alex is in the Nightshade library playing poker with Vin, Bella, and Jack, the surfer dude turned trainee neurosurgeon turned nineties porn star from their rugby team. It’s tempting.

Oh my god. I nearly fall up the stairs. I’m feral for him, even if Ophelia’s pussy is the worst crossword answer known to man.

Our money. The man is insane. There’s no too soon when it comes to Alex. But I think about what his therapist says, about his need to fully commit because he wants to protect people, and my heart softens. I can give him that, if that is what he needs. Plus, his protection doesn’t make me feel pathetic. He makes me bolder, braver.

I laugh into the empty stairwell and chuck my phone in my pocket. There’s no way he’s focusing on the cards right now. Another text pings through.

“Ophelia,” says Dr. Bancroft as I sit down in his office. “Good Christmas?”

“It was nice, thank you. Yours?”

He smiles warmly, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “Quiet. Did you get a chance to do the essay questions?”

“Yes.” I hand him three pages of my writing. “The third one was really hard; I didn’t know what to say.”

He paces the floor as usual, reading my answers. He nods his approval. “You’re coming along very well. You’ve really caught up on the lectures you missed.”

“Thank you, sir. Can I ask you…when you mentioned Carmichael before Christmas. Do you think there was ever anything going on between them? Him and my mother?”

He stops pacing. “It crossed my mind a few times, but she did seem to like your father.”

My chest deflates. “I thought that, but apparently not.”

“Ophelia, maybe all of this digging is bad for you. You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

He sits down beside me for once and picks up a red pen, scrawling on my top answer. As he sits, a whiff of his aftershave wafts toward me. The reaction from my body is so visceral, so disgusted that I almost gag.

My pen falls from my hand.

Clove, anise, and cinnamon burn the inside of my nostrils. Old Spice. An awful flashback of being drowned slams into me, choking on the brown clay beneath my lips. I can’t inhale.

A panic attack rears its head at the back of my mind.

It’s him. It’s Bancroft.

Ophelia, you fool.

I can’t breathe. Can’t focus. Terror clogs my throat, threatening to suffocate me. My hand violently shakes as I rifle around in my bag, pretending to search. “Damn it. Left my laptop charger outside. I’ll just go and grab it.”

“Isn’t that it?” he says, pointing at the cable on the desk in front of me. Oh God. I’m going to die.

It’s him. I don’t even have time to process that it’s him. I just need to get out of here alive. “Oh, yeah. I’ll just use the bathroom while you mark my answers.”

I’m up and out of the chair in a flash, typing a frantic text to Alex. I’m hitting all the wrong letters with my fingers, but I don’t care. My breaths come faster, more panicked as I reach the door. I turn the door handle, but it doesn’t move.

I’m locked in here. I try it again, frantically twisting the brass knob until a knife caresses the back of my nape, forcing me against the door. A hot, sticky breath brushes my ear, making the hairs on my neck stand on end. I hit Dial on Alex’s number, but Bancroft slaps the phone to the ground and stomps on it until it shatters.

I screw my eyes shut as his body presses against mine, the knife at my throat now. His voice is different, no longer soft but gnarly and harsh. “You’re just like your whore of a mother.”

“You killed her,” I whisper as he crushes my head against the wood.

“She was supposed to be mine!” he shouts, slamming my head against the door on the final word. Stars explode behind my eyelids. “She was supposed to leave with me, but she turned her back on me for you.”

My penknife is in my bag across the room. I’m helpless as he runs the knife down my side and back up again. “One little video of Cain Green fucking Eva over her desk and he’d have done anything I asked. Anything to protect that shiny reputation. Killing a couple of nobodies was an easy decision to uphold his image.”

I’m trapped into stillness by the blade at my spine. “I let you live, almost forgot about you, and then one day, there you are in my lecture hall.” The knife draws blood at my neck, and I muffle a scream. “Like the universe is just begging me to end your bloodline. I gave you a chance to run. Spiked your drink, killed your roommate, but you were too obsessed with him. The tarn was my mistake, I’ll admit. I thought I’d left you dead.”

I feel sick, my skin crawling as he presses my body harder to the door. I scream Alex’s name, rewarded with a knee to the lower back. “And there I was, thinking you’d hate Cain Green. Didn’t take you long to fuck his son, did it?” The knife runs between my collarbones and all I can do is stand there and do nothing. If I step back, I’m dead. Every fiber of my body shakes. “Do you like it rough like your mother did?”

I wretch against the door. I don’t struggle against the weapon, not now I have something to live for.

I want it all with Alex. I want the busy Christmases and the messy kitchens and a basket full of our laundry and I want to wash his hair until the end of time. I scream his name again, in the hope someone, anyone, will hear me.

I love him, and I haven’t told him.

“What do you want from me?” I choke out.

His cackle makes my eyes screw shut. “Oh, darling. We’re so far beyond bargaining. I just want to have fun with you.”

I drop to my knees, sending him forward where he no longer has me to lean on. The knife lands in the door. I dart out from beneath his legs, kicking him where it hurts.

“You bitch!” he shouts, falling to his hands and knees. I can’t replace a key for the door. My only hope is killing him. I tear open the pocket of my rucksack, tucking my new earphones into my tights and reaching for the knife.

Earphones have trackers, right?

I’m too slow. A searing pain radiates my arm as Bancroft slices over my hand. It hurts so bad I can’t grip my blade. It clatters to the carpet, the sting from my hand making my vision blur.

Panic crushes my chest. What if Alex thinks I didn’t want him enough to fight? Will he know I tried?

I kick Bancroft in the knee, his howl of pain reverberating in the repugnant atmosphere around us. He kicks me back just as hard, but I barely register the pain. I grapple for the giant knife in his hand, the blade nicking at my skin. His blood joins my blood, dripping down my arm like paint on a canvas.

“Fucking bitch,” he seethes, crushing his palm onto my face. He kneels on me with all his weight crushing my lungs.

I’m light-headed from the bang to my head, short of breath from his weight. I’m all out of fight. His eyes are so dead, so empty as he covers my nose and mouth with his palm and presses until a hazy mist clouds my vision.

“Alex,” I whisper, like there’s some miracle by which he’d hear me.

My body feels broken. My mind proves to be the traitor it always has been. I hate myself for being so pathetic. Hate myself for losing to Bancroft again.

Only this time, it’s Alex’s soft smile that keeps me company as the room fades away. It’s the kisses beneath my ear that wake me up each morning. It’s the unwavering belief he’s always had in me. It’s the feeling of being his, so warm and so welcome.

If these are to be my last moments, I’m filled with nothing but gratitude for him.

For the second time, my world fades to black beneath Bancroft’s hands.