The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 277

Liora’s POV

“Liora!” Mia came running up to me, her face full of worry. She was still in her pajamas and slippers, with her coat hastily thrown over the top. “What happened? I heard you failed the exam!”

“You don’t even want to know.” I was already turning back toward the forest. I needed to find evidence that Bianca had been the one to poison me with wolfsbane. If not her, then who else? She likely didn’t like the idea of me moving on to the next semester and wanted to prevent me from doing that. But I wouldn’t let her get away with it.

“Wait up!” Mia called out, running after me. I slowed down my pace, even though my heart was running a mile a minute, so she could walk beside me. My friend reached out and grabbed my hand. “Liora, please tell me what happened.”

“Bianca happened,” I said curtly. I veered toward where the proctor had woken me. I’d fallen asleep leaning against a tree. If there was any evidence of Bianca’s meddling, then it would likely be somewhere around there. “But don’t worry. I’m going to handle it.”

Mia stopped walking and watched as I crouched down beside the tree, searching for evidence. If I could just find something, anything, pointing to her having something to do with the incident, then it would be enough. Even Principal Alder would have to investigate.

“Can you please explain?” Mia asked quietly.

I looked up to see her watching me with concern. She was wringing her hands, and her eyes were watery. “Are you gonna have to repeat next semester?”

My throat tightened. I felt bad for not being more open with her. About this. About everything.

“I hope not.” I stood, not having found anything of use, and began retracing my steps. “The last thing I remember is taking a sip of my water, and it tasted funny. I passed out within minutes. It was wolfsbane. I think Bianca was behind it.”

Mia’s eyes widened. “You were poisoned with wolfsbane? But… how are you still alive without a wolf?”

I didn’t know how to respond to that without telling Mia the truth about everything. And for a moment, I almost did just that. Maybe it was time. I was pretty sure Zane already knew. Mia might as well be next.

But just as I opened my mouth to say it, I spotted it. My water bottle was laying nearby, discarded amongst some shrubs.

“Aha!” I ran over and snatched it up, immediately uncapping the bottle. I recalled how Bianca had picked up my bottle earlier, before the test. “She must have drugged me in this before—”

My words caught in my throat. The bottle was empty. Not just empty, but so vigorously cleaned that it looked brand new on the inside. It wasn’t even damp. When I sniffed it, it just smelled like metal, not the herby tang of wolfsbane.

“The hell…?” I muttered, staring into the bottle.

Mia peered over my shoulder with a furrowed brow. “What’s that?”

“I thought… Nevermind.” I recapped the bottle, then looked around some more. Unfortunately, there was nothing else of note in the area. No plants, no packets of powder, not even a stray hair.

It was frustrating, but I wouldn’t let my hopes die out. Bianca was often sloppy in her schemes, so long as I looked hard enough. I would find a crack in the facade, just as I had so many times before. Maybe not tonight, but soon.

I was not going to fail. Especially not because of her.

The following morning, I woke to the sound of my father’s mindlink. It jolted me out of a dreamless, fitful sleep.

“Liora, I heard you failed your exam. What happened?”

“Good. I can’t keep promising her that you’ll handle things, when she knows fully well that they aren’t getting handled.”

“I know.”

My father’s presence softened a little. “She misses you, Liora.”

“I miss her, too.”

And I did. Even if my mother and I hadn’t been the closest while I was growing up due to her mental health often making her lock herself in her room, sometimes for weeks at a time, we still loved each other.

I felt protective over her, and I saw a part of myself in her that I sometimes wished I could ignore. While my father was like a bear, my mother was like a dove. Fragile, beautiful, and yet she was the glue that held our family together despite everything.

Whenever my father and I fought, she was there to make amends. Whenever things seemed like they were going wrong, she would do her “rituals”, as she called them.

And even if it felt silly sometimes, it really did make me feel better. Like when I was a kid having nightmares and she would insist on putting black salt on my windowsill to keep out the evil spirits. Or when I got my first period and she cut my blueberries in half at breakfast every day for a month, even when there didn’t seem to be much of a rhyme or reason to it. It just… helped.

“Miss who?”

The mindlink abruptly cut off when Zane’s voice came from within the doorway. I gasped, pulling my blankets up to my chin, and looked up to see him standing there with a knowing look in his eyes.

Had I said that last part out loud?