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Noah’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
“James must have picked up where he left off to keep you scared. He’s been directing our movements, but someone else is controlling his actions. I’ve never met them and don’t know their real name. I don’t even know if what I said will get me killed or not.” He slouched. “I don’t want to be part of this anymore. I want my life back. What little life I had. I never wanted this, but I didn’t have anyone.”
“What about your parents? They’re in Rosebrook Valley.”
He met Charlotte’s eyes. “They hate me.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know if I ever told you if I had siblings or not, but I had a sister.”
Riley tilted her head. “Did?”
“When we were kids…” He sucked in his cheeks, lips pursing as he breathed in through his nose. “I went camping with some friends on the Savannah River. Trudy wanted to come along. I didn’t want her to go. You know, annoying little sister and all.”
Riley rolled her eyes.
“She was two years younger, so it wasn’t like she was out of place with us.” He shook his head. “Anyway, she wouldn’t let up until I agreed, and my parents told me I was responsible for her since there were a bunch of boys around. The first night there, we’d all settled into our oversized tent to sleep. She slept next to me because Dad would kill me if I let her near the other guys.” He laughed. “She woke up and had to go pee. I fell back asleep before she came back. Everyone else was already asleep.”
Charlotte didn’t like where this was going.
“The next morning, we all got up, and she was nowhere to be found.” Noah swallowed. “My buddy Shane went down to the riverbank and…”
“Oh no,” Riley said, hand going over her mouth.
“Yeah. Trudy was half on the shore, half in the water. She’d drowned. We have no idea how she ended up in the water. She couldn’t swim.”
“You can’t heal from drowning,” Charlotte whispered.
“No. You can’t,” he confirmed, his voice hard and distant. “Anyway, my parents blamed me for not watching out for her hard enough. They’ve never forgiven me.”
“That’s stupid,” Riley said, anger in her tone. “It wasn’t your fault.”
It amused Charlotte how quickly Riley could flip her point of view regarding someone. She wasn’t shallow or fickle, but she didn’t dwell on the worst in people.
“Well. Enough about all that. It’s not relevant.”
Charlotte frowned. “You should come to the academy and talk to the headmistress. See if she can help you. You don’t have to live like that if you don’t wanna.”
“I can’t do that. I exposed myself to a human. Not to mention I worked with the rogues who are trying to get to Blaire.” He scoffed. “They’ll ship me off to Cresbel Asylum so fast I won’t know what hit me.”
“What’s that?”
Riley looked at Charlotte. “It’s where criminals of our kind go. Whenever Vasirian commit acts that go against our laws, they usually have a trial in front of the Blackthorn Clan, and if it’s bad enough, they are sent there. Sometimes they are sent straight there if they do something stupid like kill someone.”
It made little sense for Noah to go to prison over what he did. He didn’t hurt her. Prison? The punishment seemed extreme. But trusting him to come to the academy… Could she trust he wouldn’t sell her out to the rogues? He first befriended her under false pretenses. Who was to say he was telling the truth now?
Still, his life was in danger. She couldn’t stand by and allow him to be killed when he seemed sincere.
“You need to do it, Noah. I won’t press charges against you.”
Riley laughed, and Charlotte turned toward her. She didn’t see anything funny.
“There’s no charges.” At Charlotte’s confused expression, Riley added, “It’s not your call. If Blackthorn Security is aware of an attack on a human, they normally do the thing with the trial, just with the Order—which is temporarily disbanded as you know. So instead, they would haul them off to the clan.”
“So Noah would face your king?”
“Yep.”
