Chapter 103: The Fall Festival, Part Eighteen

Chapter 103: Chapter 103: The Fall Festival, Part Eighteen

Chapter 103: The Fall Festival, Part Eighteen

Audra had spent the entire morning waiting for Cyrus to end up alone.

The glamourkin ring had remained on her finger beneath the cuff of her uniform. Every time she spotted him in the hall, someone else stood nearby. He worked the haunted-house entrance beside Faye, wandered through crowded activity rooms, and drifted between food booths where witnesses moved in every direction.

Then he injured his ankle.

Audra followed at a distance and watched him limp toward the school nurse’s office. No students accompanied him, and the nurse appeared to be elsewhere helping with the festival.

Her patience had finally been rewarded.

Audra entered without making a sound and locked the door behind her.

Cyrus sat on the edge of an examination bed with his back turned, focused on the bandage in his hands. The quiet room separated them from the festival noise outside, leaving only muffled music, footsteps, and distant laughter slipping through the walls.

Audra stood behind him in the fox mask she had worn the previous night.

All morning, one thought had kept returning.

Cyrus needed to understand her appeal.

She had tried being helpful. She had tutored him, paid for his food, protected his secret, and spent the festival walking beside him. None of it had made him treat her the way he treated Faye.

He had accepted Faye’s cake with genuine gratitude.

He had let Faye take his hand.

He had followed Daphne home.

He worked in a lounge where strangers could watch his uncovered face for hours.

Yet whenever Audra approached, he guarded every word.

The ring had made that unfairness impossible to ignore.

Cyrus seemed to sense someone behind him. He turned sharply, one hand braced against the examination bed.

Audra was ready.

She raised the glamourkin ring before he could speak.

The pink stone caught his attention.

His expression emptied.

The tension left his shoulders, and the hand gripping the bandage went slack. Audra had seen the same change enough times to recognize when the ring had taken hold.

She crossed the room and pushed the fox mask away from his face with more force than necessary.

The sight beneath it eased some of the anger inside her.

Cyrus’s bangs had fallen out of place while he treated his ankle. Audra lifted them more gently, exposing the features he hid from everyone at school. Her fingers moved through his hair with a care that did not match the rough way she had removed the mask.

"Why have you never felt anything for me?" Audra asked.

"There are girls who are more..."

Audra covered his mouth before he could finish.

She had already suspected the answer.

Hearing the beginning of it made the thought unbearable.

More beautiful?

More important?

More appealing?

Was he thinking about Faye, whose uncovered face had nearly matched Audra’s own? Was he thinking about Daphne, who waited outside the lounge and walked home beside him? Was he thinking about Helena, whose composed beauty had unsettled even Audra when she saw her near the entrance?

The jealousy that had been simmering since yesterday surged under the ring’s influence.

Audra stared into Cyrus’s unresponsive eyes.

Nothing about him belonged to her attention alone.

That was the part she could no longer accept.

She knew his hidden face. She knew he lied about his appearance. She had questioned him under the ring and learned things no one else understood. Even after gaining that much access, she still felt as though he kept choosing everyone except her.

Audra’s thoughts narrowed around one conclusion.

If she became the person he valued most, he would finally see her.

The idea repeated until it no longer sounded unreasonable.

How did someone become important to Cyrus?

She had to make him important to her first.

The logic was distorted, but Audra could not separate her own desire from the pressure moving through the ring. Its pink stone had brightened against her finger, feeding every possessive impulse while making restraint feel pointless.

Color rose along her ears.

She pushed Cyrus back onto the examination bed.

He offered no resistance.

Audra leaned over him and crossed the same boundary she had crossed before, only this time she did not stop after a brief violation. Cyrus could not consent, move away, or tell her to release him. His blank expression should have forced her back.

Instead, the ring turned his helplessness into permission inside her mind.

Audra kissed him again and lingered until her breathing grew uneven.

Cyrus remained trapped beneath her.

The silence of the nurse’s office made every movement feel louder than it was. Audra pulled open part of his uniform and touched him without permission, following the ring-driven need to prove that she could affect him even if he showed nothing while conscious.

His skin was cold beneath her hand.

A faint response from his body encouraged her, though his eyes remained vacant and his mind was absent. Audra knew the difference. She ignored it anyway.

She had stopped recognizing where the ring’s influence ended and her own choices began.

Every touch made her feel more certain that Cyrus should react to her.

Every lack of reaction made her push further.

When she sensed an involuntary response from his body, Audra’s restraint weakened completely. A reckless satisfaction moved through her, followed by the thought that perhaps he would finally understand if he woke while she was close enough.

She almost wanted that to happen.

If Cyrus regained awareness, he would see her at her most vulnerable and most determined. He would no longer be able to pretend she meant nothing to him.

Audra reached lower.

Cyrus swallowed reflexively.

The ring on his hand had begun to cool.

At first, the cold was mild enough to disappear beneath the confusion clouding his mind. Then it spread through his finger, wrist, and forearm with increasing force.

The glamourkin ring’s hold started to fracture.

Cyrus’s thoughts returned all at once.

His body felt wrong.

His uniform was open. Someone was leaning over him. The taste in his mouth carried an unfamiliar floral sweetness, and a hand was moving where no one had permission to touch him.

His eyes focused.

A masked woman hovered above him.

Cyrus reacted before understanding anything else.

"What are you doing?"

He caught her wrist and pulled it away.

The woman did not stop.

Her other hand reached toward him, and Cyrus seized that wrist too. He used the movement to push himself upright, ignoring the sharp complaint from his injured ankle.

The masked woman struggled against him.

Her attention remained fixed on the vulnerable part of his body she had been trying to reach. The open hunger in her posture made his stomach turn.

Cyrus tightened his grip.

He had no intention of releasing her.

A pink light flashed near his fingers.

Dizziness rolled through his head.

His strength dropped without warning, and his vision blurred at the edges. The woman noticed immediately. Her struggle became more forceful as his grip weakened.

Cyrus clenched his teeth and held on.

The fox mask slipped from her face.

It landed on the examination bed between them.

Audra Sloane stared back at him.

Her cheeks were flushed, and the usual control in her expression had disappeared. Possessiveness filled her eyes so completely that Cyrus barely recognized the composed girl who sat in his classroom.

Shock cut through his dizziness.

Audra had found him alone.

Audra had controlled him somehow.

Audra had been touching him while he could not resist.

Cyrus had known she was strange. He had known she watched him too closely and kept appearing wherever he tried to be alone.

He had not expected this.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" Cyrus demanded.

Audra did not answer.

She tried to pull free again.

The ring on her finger glowed with a deeper pink, and another wave of confusion pressed against Cyrus’s thoughts. His grip weakened further.

He needed to stop her before the dizziness took him again.

Calling for help would expose the locked door, his open uniform, and whatever Audra had done. It might also bring half the festival into the nurse’s office before he could hide his face.

Cyrus chose the faster option.

Cold gathered in his palms.

He kept the amount controlled, using only enough Frostborn power to send a sharp chill through Audra’s wrists. He needed to break whatever state she was in before his hair changed or the room temperature dropped enough to become suspicious.

Audra shivered.

Her struggle faltered.

The cold spread through her arms, cutting across the heat and fixation that had consumed her. Her breathing hitched, and the obsessive haze in her eyes began to clear.

Cyrus released the power immediately.

Then he let go of her wrists and pulled his uniform closed.

Audra remained beside the examination bed, staring at him as awareness returned.

Outside the nurse’s office, St. Alder’s Fall Festival continued without interruption. Students laughed in the hallway, music played from the courtyard, and another group cheered somewhere near the game booths.

Inside the locked room, neither of them spoke.