Promised To The Devil On Ice

Chapter Four

Elowen

"Say that again. Slower. Because I don't think I heard you right."

"You heard me right."

"You're engaged."

"Apparently."

"To Nikolai Sterling."

"Also apparently."

Zadie stares at me across the cafeteria table like I've just told her I'm joining the circus. Neither of us has touched our food since I said the word engaged like it was a normal thing to drop between a granola bar and a chemistry quiz.

"This is insane." She presses both hands over her face. "People don't just get engaged at twenty-one because their parents decided it over tea."

"Tell me about it."

"How could that even happen? Did you not have a say at all?"

"None. Zero. I found out the same way I'm telling you now, except with his entire family sitting in my living room and the good china out."

"Oh my god." She drops her hands. "Oh my god, Elowen."

"I know."

"He's dangerous."

"I know that too."

"No, I don't think you..." She stops, already winding herself up for the rant I know is coming. "I've watched that boy stand at the blue line and stare down a six-foot-three defenseman without blinking. He doesn't even have to say anything. He just exists at people until they back down. That's not a person you marry. That's a person you avoid in hallways."

"You're not telling me anything I don't already know."

"Then why do you sound so calm about it?"

I turn my water bottle slowly between my hands, buying myself a second before answering.

"Because being upset about it doesn't change it. My parents already agreed. His parents already agreed. The only thing left is what I do with it."

"Which is what?"

I look up at her, and somewhere between the funeral and my mother's kitchen and Nikolai's warning last night, something inside me has shifted.

"Figure out what he's hiding," I say. "Before I let any of them plan a wedding around it."

We don't get to finish because Coach Reyes claps her hands together at the gym doors hard enough to summon a demon.

"Bellrose! My office. Now."

I'm not even surprised. I squeeze Zadie's hand once, mutter something under my breath, and cross the mat with my spine straight.

"Sit," Coach says once the door closes behind us.

I don't.

"Your mother has already called me twice this week, and frankly, I can't have you distracted going into Regionals..."

"My mother called you?"

"She's worried. We're all worried. This whole situation with the Sterling boy, on top of everything with Ivo..."

"Don't."

The word comes out flatter than I mean it to, but hearing his name beside Ivo's makes my chest tighten.

"Don't put his name in the same sentence as my mother's phone calls."

"I'm simply saying that if your head isn't in the right place..."

"My head is exactly where it needs to be." I hold her gaze. "If you have concerns about my focus, Coach, you talk to me. Not my mother. Not behind my back like I'm a problem to be managed. Next time you have something to say about me, you say it to my face."

Coach opens her mouth, probably to argue, but I'm already turning for the door.

I walk out with my chin up and my jaw tight, and by the time I reach the hallway, I'm almost surprised by how good it feels to have said it. Maybe the girl everyone at this school thinks they know is still in here somewhere. She's just harder to reach now.

Practice runs long, and by the time we hit the floor for stunts, the boys' team is already on the ice through the glass below the bleachers. I catch myself watching before I even realize I've stopped stretching.

Nikolai is running drills with the rest of the Ravens, and something about the way he's playing is off...sharper than usual, harder, checking guys into the boards a beat later than the play calls for, like he's trying to work something out of his body that has nothing to do with hockey.

"He's playing like he wants to hurt someone," I mutter.

"You noticed that too?" Zadie asks beside me.

"He left my house last night mid-conversation. Got a call, went completely white, and walked out with his entire family without saying a word about where he was going." I don't take my eyes off him. "Whatever happened on that call, he hasn't shaken it off."

"Maybe it's nothing."

"It's not nothing."

I say it with more certainty than I actually feel, but the second the words leave my mouth, I know I believe them.

Down on the ice, Nikolai slams a guy into the boards hard enough that the whole rink flinches. Coach Whitlock's whistle cracks through the noise.

Then, like some part of him is permanently tuned to exactly where I am, he looks up.

Straight at me.

For a second, the noise of the rink seems to fall away. Neither of us moves. I hold his stare without blinking, refusing to look away first, because something in me refuses to give him that today.

His mouth curves.

Not a smile. The shape of one, maybe, borrowed from somewhere that isn't actually feeling it.

A dead smile.

Then he turns and skates toward the bench like nothing happened, and I realize I've been holding my breath.

"Okay," Zadie says carefully. "That was deeply unsettling."

"Yeah."

"Elowen..."

"I need to change." I'm already grabbing my bag. "I'll meet you at the car."

The locker room empties quickly, everyone racing off to dinner or homework or boyfriends, and by the time I'm alone at my locker, the quiet feels too big for the room.

I pull the door open.

There's a folded scrap of paper sitting on top of my bag.

My stomach drops.

Someone was in here.

Someone got into a locked room just to put this exactly where I'd find it.

My hands aren't steady when I unfold it.

THE STERLINGS AREN'T INNOCENT.

Same block letters. Same cheap paper. Same certainty that whoever wrote this knows something I don't.

"Okay," I whisper to the empty room, mostly to hear a voice that isn't the one screaming in my head. "Okay."

I fold the note along its crease and slide it into my bag beside the first one. The simple, precise movement steadies me more than it should.

My mother says it's nothing. The police ruled Ivo's death an accident. Nobody who could actually help me believes there's anything here worth finding.

Fine.

I know Ivo. I knew him.

He wasn't suicidal. He didn't die by accident. Someone is telling me the Sterlings are involved, and three months after his death, my family has decided I should marry into theirs.

I'm done pretending those things aren't connected.

Whoever's sending these notes wants something from me. So does Nikolai's family. So does mine, apparently. Everyone wants something from me right now, and I'm tired of being the only person in every room who doesn't know what it is.

I zip the bag shut and straighten.

My reflection stares back at me from the metal of the locker door, and for a second I barely recognize her.

Not grieving.

Not scared.

Something else.

Something with teeth.

Ivo's face flashes through my mind, laughing in that stupid memorial photo, alive in every way that matters.

I think about the note in my bag.

The warning.

The engagement.

Nikolai's face across the dinner table.

And I think about the promise I made in that vestibule while his father's grief still rang through the walls.

"I'm going to find out exactly what happened to you," I whisper to the empty room.

This time, I don't say it like a wish.

"I promise."