GLASS || The Catalysts, #1 [REWRITE]

VIII

Lena's heart may as well have shattered right there with those words. And all her hopes along with it.

"I'm so sorry. He's like that," Neesha hastily clarifies again. She shoots her friend a glare. "Caelus!"

Roen laughs, earning an equally disapproving glare from Neesha.

"It's the truth," Caelus says, but he stares Lena down, as if daring her to say otherwise. "We've never met."

Now he's being suspicious. If he'd not looked back at her, Lena will just be convinced she'd heard wrongly. But with the way he's looking at her now, however aloof he may appear to ne on the surface, she can't deny the intensity she feels from his gaze. Time slows as Lena can't decide to be intimidated by his eyes... or feel challenged from it.

Lena reins in her words. Maybe it isn't the time or place to say anything. Eventually, she'll find him and make him talk. As if she's going to let this one door to her memories slip from her grasp. Her determination seals her fate to his—or his to hers—as Lena makes him target number one for information. He'll be easy enough to find, now that Lena knows he's also a student in the academy she will be attending. She files the fact that him, Neesha, and Roen are all classmates for later use.

"Sorry about that." Lena musters all her might to smile, brushing off the hostility from Caelus. She's mildly irritated by his behavior, but it won't do her good to cut him off entirely. She still needs something from him. Stepping forward and extending a hand, she redoes her introduction that went wrong earlier. "I've got it wrong. I'm Lena."

Take it, Lena wills mentally. But she knows how she's playing the cards; if she's ever going to seek out someone as difficult as Caelus, she'll need to go through his friends. And this is the only opportunity to establish that they're on speaking terms before Neesha and Roen, so she can use them as a stepping stone to Caelus later if she wants any answers from him.

Eventually, he takes her hand and shakes it, albeit reluctantly. His strange set of purple eyes meet hers for just a brief flicker of a moment, and they narrow, calling out her game. And yet it worked and he isn't doing anything about it because the peer pressure from his friends is working, exactly what Lena betted on.

"You really need to take some advice from me sometimes," Roen chirps into the silence, barely stifling a laugh at Caelus' side. "You know the ladies love me."

"It's not like that," Caelus refutes without a show of emotion, and frustratingly, Lena is somehow the one ending in a blush.

His hand cold and fingers light like a phantom's, he lets go slackly. But instead of stepping back, he takes a tiny step forward, closing the distance between them.

"Well," Neesha announces, as if to ward off the awkwardness, "unfortunately the day's not done."

"Do we really have to go to classes after all that?" Roen complains, but mostly he's looking from Neesha and then to Caelus and Lena in widened eyes. "Caelus? Are you going back to class?"

Caelus ignores both them both, stepping into Lena's space. He isn't that much taller than her, only an inch or two, or somewhere in between. But the air he carries is intimidating enough for Lena to want to back down, but she fights the urge to move. With their eyes leveled, Lena finds herself consumed in those stunning purple eyes.

And is it just her or somehow the air had somehow grown tighter? The pressure low, it's hard to breathe—

Caelus does a quick movement of his hand beside them, close to Lena's ear. For a terrifying second, she thinks he might be about to attack her. But then he merely extends his right arm, palm outstretched to Lena's left. She looks from the hand to his face, completely baffled. There is no one there to pass him whatever he is expecting.